IEEE ComSoc Technology Blog

Verizon Communications says it has reached a breakthrough in lab trials of NG-PON2 technology that will allow various vendors to supply NG-PON2 components to service providers. NG-PON2 can support 40 gigabits per second of network capacity.   Verizon called the interop test a “breakthrough,” because it represents a significant step in creating a platform that will enabling the mixing and matching of vendors for various components for NG-PON2, an emerging standard  (ITU-T approved the NG-PON2 specs in 2015)  that enables up to 40 Gbps of capacity and symmetrical speeds of up 10 Gbps per customer.

In current PON deployments, operators have to use the same company for both optical line terminals (OLTs), the termination point on the service provider side, and optical network terminals (ONTs), the termination point at the end user location. Verizon is determined to change that paradigm. The company plans to publish the open OMCI (ONT Management and Control Interface) specifications that define its new OLT-to-ONT interface in the coming months.  The Verizon OMCI spec is being developed as part of the ITU–T G.988 standard.

“We would like NG-PON2 to be the first PON system which is interoperable from day one, and that’s very important for us,” Verizon’s lead engineer on the trial, Dr. Denis Khotimsky, told Light Reading.   He said it’s too early to speculate on when NG-PON2 will be ready for commercial deployments.  “We’ll proceed with deployment once we see the technology to be mature, cost efficient and when we see the customer demand for the services it provides,” he told MultiChannel News (see reference below).

Unlike when Verizon upgraded from BPON to GPON more than a decade ago, Verizon is hoping to create a more flexible ecosystem of vendors for the migration to NG-PON2.   Verizon’s current FTTP networks for FiOS use both the BPON and GPON, but the technologies used for them are not interoperable, so those systems are partitioned geographically while also requiring Verizon to use the same vendor for each end-point of those systems.

The mega telco’s first interop test for NG-PON2 included Adtran Inc, Broadcom Corp, Cortina Access, and Ericsson AB (in partnership with Calix Networks Inc).  If Verizon can ultimately depend on interoperable gear from a wider group of vendors, it may be able to exert pricing pressure more effectively and help drive the cost of NG-PON2 deployments down.  For now, Verizon isn’t willing to share if it’s working with other companies on NG-PON2 in addition to those listed in the trial.

Nokia Corp would be an obvious bet as an additional equipment partner, but so far that vendor has been left out in the cold. (See Verizon Readies Landmark NG-PON2 Trial.)

NG-PON2 is important for several reasons. It increases total capacity in the access network to 40 Gbit/s, with symmetrical 10-gig speeds possible for each individual customer. NG-PON2 is also resilient in a way that current GPON technology can’t match. Telcos will be able to use NG-PON2 to deliver services over multiple wavelengths on each fiber, making it easy to fail over from one wavelength to another as needed.

In particular, NG-PON2 is believed to be an important foundation for the future growth of 5G wireless technologies. One of the major use cases cited for the PON upgrade is the ability to provide both backhaul and fronthaul support for 5G deployments.

Despite the advantages of NG-PON2, however, several operators are considering an interim step on the road to next-generation PON. Companies like AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD) are evaluating XGS-PON technology for the near term as a less expensive alternative to NG-PON2.

For more information:

http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/fttx/verizon-proves-ng-pon2-interoperability/d/d-id/729487   and

http://www.multichannel.com/news/technology/verizon-touts-progress-next-gen-fttp/410105

In Pursuit of Next Generation FTTP, Verizon OMCI Specs Seek NG-PON2 Interoperability

by Stéphane Téral, Senior Research Director, Mobile Infrastructure and Carrier Economics

The mobile infrastructure market outlook remains cloudy as 2017 brings us 2 years past the LTE peak, with fewer and fewer potential 2G/3G mobile networks that need to be upgraded to LTE. In the Q4 edition of our Mobile Infrastructure Market Tracker – Regional, released 1 December 2016, we had 537 live commercial LTE networks and a total of 560 in the forecast for the full year. As we believe there are roughly 750+ mobile networks worldwide and those left with no LTE have small footprints in the range of fewer than 1,000+ nodes, the LTE infrastructure hardware market is poised for steep decline this year.

Telecom spending (CAPEX) appears to be very flat at best! Little has changed since last year, and in our most recent biannual Service Provider Capex, Revenue, and Opex Market Tracker – Regional report, released in November 2016, we still expect worldwide capex to barely budge from $341.5B last year to 342.8B by year end—just 0.4% YoY growth.

For an update, please visit https://techblog.comsoc.org/2017/06/05/sk-telecom-rolls-out-4-5g-service-in-south-korea-plans-1g-bsec-service-in-2018/

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Separately, IHS-Markit’s Michael Howard writes that 70 percent of respondents to an IHS Markit survey plan to deploy CORD in their central offices — 30 percent by the end of 2017 and an additional 40 percent in 2018 or later.

The Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Center (CORD) combines network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) to bring data center economics and cloud agility to the telco central office. CORD garnered so much attention in 2016 that its originator — On.Lab‘s Open Network Operating System (ONOS) — established CORD as a separate open source entity. And non-telcos have joined the open source group, including Google and Comcast.

IHS Markit found that 95 percent of operators surveyed are using or planning to deploy servers and storage in selected central offices to create mini data centers to offer cloud services. And they will use them as the NFV infrastructure on which to run virtual network functions (VNFs).

The survey results are based on interviews with router purchase decision-makers at 20 global service providers that control 36 percent of worldwide telecom capex and a third of revenue.

In other survey findings, operator respondents indicated that 100-Gb/s Ethernet is the wave of the future. They said that it will make up 38 percent of their 10-, 40- and 100-Gb/s Ethernet port purchases during 2018, which is more than two times that of 2016.

In addition, 70 percent of operators surveyed are deploying packet-optical transport systems (P-OTS) or plan to do so by 2018. Between 2016 and 2018, the percentage of nodes with P-OTS is anticipated to grow six-fold in core/long haul and almost double in access, aggregation, metro core, and regional.

“We believe these plans will keep a damper on router sales,” writes IHS Markit senior research director Michael Howard in a summary of the report. “And despite much industry talk, respondents have little current demand for a multilayer data/transport control plane.”

By Michael Howard, senior research director and advisor, carrier networks, IHS Markit

Highlights:

• IHS Markit’s operator respondents say that 100GE will make up 38 percent of their 10/40/100GE port purchases during 2018—more than two times that of 2016
• 70 percent of operators surveyed are deploying packet-optical transport systems (P-OTS) or plan to do so by 2018
• 70 percent of respondents plan to deploy central office re-architected as a data center (CORD) in their smart central offices (COs)

IHS Markit Analysis:

Our routing, network functions virtualization (NFV) and packet-optical study covers hot and emerging topics in the carrier Ethernet, routing and switching space, with a focus on the IP edge—the area where architectural changes are occurring closer to the customer. The survey looks at operator deployment plans and strategies, deployment locations, router bypass, port mix, expected price per port, and more.

What’s clear from this latest survey is that telecom is moving to 100G now. Sixteen percent of the 10/40/100GE router ports our survey participants purchased in 2016 were 100GE on average, and these service providers expect their 100GE port purchases to more than double to 38 percent in 2018.

In 2017, almost all operator respondents (88 to 96 percent) expect to be paying “10GE parity” or less in three main areas of their networks. “Parity” means that a 100GE port is priced at ten times the price of a 10GE port.

P-OTS remains an integral part of carrier network architecture. Seventy percent of respondents are deploying P-OTS or plan to do so by 2018. Between 2016 and 2018, the percentage of nodes with P-OTS is anticipated to grow six-fold in core/long haul and almost double in access, aggregation, metro core and regional. We believe these plans will keep a damper on router sales. And despite much industry talk, respondents have little current demand for a multi-layer data/transport control plane.

95 percent of operators surveyed are using or planning to use smart COs by deploying servers and storage in selected COs to create mini data centers to offer cloud services and to use them as the NFV infrastructure on which to run virtual network functions (VNFs).

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For this year’s survey we added questions about CORD. CORD combines NFV and software-defined networking (SDN) software to improve elasticity and bring data center economics and cloud agility to the telco CO. Seventy percent of respondents plan to deploy CORD in their smart COs—30 percent by the end of 2017 and an additional 40 percent in 2018 or later.

Routing, NFV and Packet-Optical Survey Synopsis:

The 25-page 2016 IHS Markit routing, NFV, and packet-optical strategies survey is based on interviews with router/CES purchase decision-makers at 20 global service providers that control 36 percent of worldwide telecom capex and a third of revenue. The survey provides insights into plans for moving router functions from physical routers to software vRouters and VNFs; 100GE adoption and use of IPoDWDM; router and CES protocols; planned uses of vRouters; plans to deploy P-OTS versus routers; and metro architectural changes and deployment of CORD in smart COs.

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or[email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or [email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or [email protected]

by FBR Media & Telecom Staff

Summary

We see 2017 as the year when telecom and media sing “kumbaya.” We see the regulatory stance under the Trump Administration as supportive of M&A, causing investors to increasingly discount the possibility of more combinations. We see this becoming a meaningful, investable, multiyear theme for the group—helpful for potential targets, and possibly threatening for those left single.

■ TMT outlook: kumbaya. We see AT&T’s (T) acquisition of Time Warner (TWX) closing and setting a template for future deals. While investors have reasonably pushed back on the merits of content/pipe combinations by citing a dearth of synergy at CMCSA/NBCU, they forget synergies were constrained by regulations that we see going away in a Republican FCC. So we see potential for cable companies to gain more freedom to use their own backhaul facilities to favor in-house 5G services, driving more cable/wireless mergers. We also see wireless/wired operators gaining freedom to favor in-house content, with such things as 0-based data service and performance advantaged private nets, or by charging rivals more for data access/performance. That should drive more telecom/content mergers, like T/TWX and Sky/Fox, helpful for big content brands that could be seen as in the cross-hairs for the next big deal, such as CBS. Internet video services unattached to a physical plant, like NFLX, Google/YouTube, and AMZN Prime Video, could face new competitive hurdles. The environment also seems poised for a loosening of constraints on local media combinations, which could spark more duopoly-driven asset swaps by TV station owners or expansion of national TV station footprints by broadcast nets, helpful for TV station equities like TGNA.

■ Media & leisure outlook: fundamentals improving. The entire media group would benefit from what seems to be the most likely tax reform, as outlined in our report published on December 16. We see the currently modest pressure on affiliate fees potentially easing slightly, driven by cord-cutting moving toward “app-shaving.” We see income-challenged millennial cohorts migrating away from dropping pay TV altogether and toward embracing the new, low cost virtual bundles, like DirecTV Now. TV advertising will have to comp recurring lifts in 2016 from political and Olympics but should benefit from a stronger economy. Normal weather would be positive for theme parks after a tough summer 2016. Regional ski resorts also have easy comps versus a historically bad season in the Northeast/Midwest last year.

■ Telecom services outlook. We increase our view on the telecom services sector from Underweight to Overweight for 2017 driven by potential valuation upside from regulatory relief, tax reform, and M&A activity under a Republican Administration. We see higher likelihood of an Sprint/T-Mobile combination but less likelihood of a wireless acquisition by a cable company in the near term as their in-house services can be disruptive to wireless valuations ahead of a deal. A politically influenced DOJ may be necessary given the extensive public record justifying four nationwide wireless providers and a limited economic versus legal admin skill set. The ongoing broadcast incentive auction will likely wrap up in early 2017, with final proceeds likely much lower than expectations as the industry continues the shift to higher bands, leveraging a lower-cost, software-centric technology cycle, which we believe will drive up spectrum reuse and drive down valuations for high-band spectrum. We expect a capex investment shift from efficiency-driven automation to edge security and analytics engines that evaluate unstructured data from the device to the application server. Legacy capex trends will again be ugly as telecom network returns on incremental capital investment remain negative, which is driving a change in investment strategy across the industry.

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Will cable enter the wireless space in the near term?

The combination of an intensely competitive wireless environment, negative incremental returns on invested capital, and organic disruption from cable companies to the wireless sector should discourage a near-term wireless acquisition by cable companies, in our view. However, we believe cable will gain greater leverage over the wireless sector over time, and a wireless asset or partnership is likely in the medium to longer term to augment delivery of profitable content to customers beyond their footprints. In the short term, we think cable companies prefer to better understand their impact on the wireless business model. Ahead of an acquisition, we think they will focus on testing the disruptive capabilities of their in-home and in-building assets as they incorporate LTE on commodity spectrum bands into their hardware. In the meantime, Verizon and AT&T continue to diversify away from a fiercely competitive wireless access market into content and are positioning their respective companies to manage the next wave of wireless network usage by pivoting to a lower-cost dark fiber–rich distributed compute platform. We expect additional M&A activity in both content and dark fiber in 2017. Sprint’s firmer footing suggests there is potential to make another attempt at a merger with T-Mobile US. We believe a second merger attempt could pass regulatory muster under a business-friendly Republican-led Administration.

Will a rollback of regulatory restraints under the new Trump Administration spark more M&A over time?

We believe so. Trump’s early FCC brain trust is populated by free market enthusiasts who seem diametrically opposed to the Obama Administration’s embrace of constraints like net neutrality and the threat of Title II–backed rate regulation. To us, this suggests that wireless and cable companies will gain new freedoms to leverage their investments in wired, wireless, and content assets for their own benefit. We see this favoring more mergers of wireless companies with those owning physical plants, such as cable companies, and more mergers of wireless and cable companies with content companies.

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Editor’s Note: We strongly disagree with many points made above by FBR, especially related to M&A, which we feel is incredibly destructive to the telecom industry, results in less competition and higher prices for consumers and concentrates too much power in the acquiring company, e.g. AT&T if they take over Time Warner.

According to a January 5th Bloomberg article:

Donald Trump remains opposed to the megamerger between AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. because he believes it would concentrate too much power in the media industry, according to people close to the president-elect, who has been publicly silent about the transaction for months.

Trump told a friend in the last few weeks that he still considers the merger to be a bad deal, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversation was private. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is also opposed to the deal, another person said.

It remains unclear whether Trump would try to influence the regulatory review of the merger, either by pushing officials to impose conditions or to block the deal entirely. The transaction, which would combine the biggest U.S. pay-TV and internet provider with one of the largest creators of TV programming, will be reviewed by the Justice Department and possibly by the Federal Communications Commission.

Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, to lead the Justice Department, and hasn’t named a successor to departing FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

In October, before the election, Trump said his administration wouldn’t approve the merger, saying, “It’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” He cited the deal as “an example of the power structure I’m fighting.”

AT&T hopes to begin using “5G”-based millimeter wave spectrum technology to wirelessly deliver its “DIRECTV Now” (Internet TV) service to homes.   The company has achieved speeds of 14 gigabits per second in lab tests with several partners that include Intel, Ericsson and Qualcomm.  AT&T’s goal is to see how millimeter wave “last mile” technology handles high volume video traffic.

AT&T’s John Donovan says the mega carrier plans to offer commercial point-to-point “5G” next year (2018), which is two years before ITU-R completes the first round of true 5G standards.  Nonetheless, AT&T says its mobile 5G service should be commercially available in 2019, according to Mr. Donovan who has led AT&T’s network upgrades over the past nine years from 2G to 3G to 4G.   He now says 5G will have a bigger impact by enabling things like driverless cars, live maps and virtual reality.

“Five G is a bigger thing than I have ever been involved in my career because it opens up whole new worlds,” he said.

To read more:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/att-details-5g-evolution-300385196.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/at-t-to-test-5g-wireless-for-delivery-of-directv-now-to-homes

https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/04/atandt-to-conduct-5g-streaming-tests-with-directv-now/

By Michael Howard, senior research director and advisor, carrier networks, IHS Markit

Highlights:

• Among IHS Markit’s service provider respondents, Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia form a top tier separated by a wide margin from other router and switch vendors
• Cisco was the top-scoring company in edge/core router and Carrier Ethernet Switch (CES) leadership
• All four vendors—Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia—were named by respondents as leaders in next-generation routing technologies such as 100GE, vRouter and IP data center interconnect (DCI)

IHS Markit Analysis:

The IHS Markit router and switch vendor leadership survey measures service provider attitudes toward and perceptions of edge router, core router and CES manufacturers. The 20 responding operators to our study control 36 percent of worldwide telecom capex and one-third of revenue.

In the 2016 study, Cisco was at the top of respondent edge/core router and CES manufacturer leadership scores. Cisco—along with Juniper, Huawei and Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent)—form a top tier clearly separated by a wide margin from the other manufacturers. Together, these four manufacturers account for about 86 percent of worldwide revenue market share for routers and CES.

Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia were the leaders in all five of the carriers’ top manufacturer selection criteria: price-to-performance ratio, product reliability, service and support, technology innovation and product roadmap. There was a big gap between these four and their competitors, with the sole exception being price-to-performance ratio.

Looking at the individual manufacturer selection criteria, when it comes to product reliability and service and support, Nokia was tops among respondents, followed by Cisco and Juniper. For technology innovation and product roadmap, Cisco and Nokia were numbers one and two, respectively. And for price-to-performance ratio, the Chinese vendors led with Huawei at number one and ZTE at number two.

Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia also led in other measures including unaided awareness, familiarity (or aided awareness), and equipment installed and under evaluation. The vendors likewise ranked at the top when survey respondents named leaders in next-gen routing technologies including 100GE, vRouter and IP DCI.

Router and Switch Survey Synopsis:

The 15-page 2016 IHS Markit switch and router vendor leadership survey sheds light on how global service providers select router and CES manufacturers, whose equipment they have installed and will evaluate for future purchases, and which manufacturers they consider to be leaders in key manufacturer selection criteria. The study features operator ratings of 11 vendors (Brocade, Cisco, Coriant, ECI, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Juniper, NEC, Nokia [including Alcatel-Lucent] and ZTE) on 9 criteria.

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or[email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or [email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or [email protected]

Several networking startups, most of which are actually software companies, launched products claiming to transform networking with SD-WAN, SD-Security, wireless networking with machine learning, guest WiFi services, and various new twists on network virtualization and virtualized routers.  Many of these startups are focused on the SD-WAN market, which IDC forecasts will reach $6 billion by 2020.

The new age networking companies included: Barefoot Networks, 128 Technology, Apstra, Cloud4Wi, Mist Systems, CloudGenix, and SnapRoute. In November, Forward Networks launched out of stealth using formal verification to model network behavior and help prevent outages.

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We believe that Barefoot Networks, headed up by South African Martin Izzard, is the most promising of the bunch and very well funded.  The company announced it’s programmable switch platform in June – touting it as the world’s fastest and most programmable series of switches. Barefoot’s Tofino switch chip can fit inside hardware devices to direct the flow of data traffic across networks, and the company plans to advance SDN though its software suite of tools for programming Tofino. The startup also built a programming language, P4 — Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors – to allow developers to differentiate their networks and solutions.

In November, Chinese web goliaths Alibaba and Tencent led a $23 million funding round for Barefoot. Since it emerged from stealth in June, the company has raised more than $150 million, backed by venerable and respected companies like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Google and Goldman Sachs.

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Viptela is a four year old startup that specializes in network virtualization and SD-WAN.  90% of Viptela’s customers are hosted on Amazon Web Services. The others are giant enterprises that use its services in their own data centers.  The company recently named Praveen Akkiraju as CEO. More details at: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/01/12/cisco-veteran-takes-reins-at-san-jose-competitor.html

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Conclusion:

The startups boast impressive leadership and funding, but we believe very few, if any, will actually survive and gain critical market mass to challenge incumbent network equipment companies left, e.g. Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, Cisco, ZTE, Ciena, etc.

Overview:

We strongly believe that cloud computing has and will continue to have more impact than any other IT trend.  Conversely, we think there’s a tremendous gap between the hype surrounding many new technologies/movements and their profit making potential.  The hyped technologies include, but are not limited to “5G”, Internet of Things (IoT), Open Networking/SDN/SD-WAN/NFV, Virtual Reality, etc.

Cloud computing changes the networking industry in the following ways:

1.  The branch and spoke topology of private WANs and IP VPNs has been based on branch offices connecting to the centralized corporate computing data center (via IP VPNs, private lines, Ethernet virtual private lines, etc).  That’s now giving way to branch offices accessing cloud computing resources via a variety of networking schemes that we’ve discussed in several previous articles (one we especially like is AT&Ts Netbond).
2. The volume of networking equipment sold for enterprise/private networks is decreasing due to the flat to declining growth of premises data centers which are remotely accessed via switch/routers.  Many of the mega cloud providers, like Google and Facebook, design their own switch/routers for use in their mega data centers.  Other cloud players, like Microsoft, continue to buy switch/routers from legacy vendors (e.g. Cisco, Juniper and Arista Networks).
3. Large backbone networks used to be designed and deployed ONLY by government agencies (like NSA, NSF, European Commission, etc) and global telcos with huge footprints.  Those telcos include AT&T, NTT, BT, Verizon, Level 3, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, etc.  Their backbone networks will not grow as fast in the future as none of those companies are large cloud computing or storage service providers.  Even the US government is moving from premises based to cloud computing services, which decreases the need for government agency private networking.
4. The big cloud players (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, etc) are constructing and adding on to their wide are backbone networks which inter-connects their mega data centers. For example, Amazon has recently completed deployment of a  8,700-mile undersea cable, which is part of its A.W.S. global network.  Microsoft and Facebook are also building a large undersea cable network called MARIA.
5. The control and analytics for the IoT are likely to be built on cloud platforms, such as AWS IoT.   These are managed cloud platforms that lets connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices. AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely.
6. When standardized and certified “5G” service finally arrives (sometime in 2021 or later), we believe that remote user access to the cloud will be a very valid use case for IoT real time control/analytics and other applications that require low latency to/from wireless endpoint and the cloud.

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NY Times article (Dec 26, 2016): Why the Computing Cloud Will Keep Growing and Growing, by QUENTIN HARDY

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, along with a couple of his rivals, may eventually control much of the $1 trillion global market for business computers and software.

That is because Amazon Web Services, his big-business computing division, is starting to affect more than just the world of computer servers, data storage and networking at the core of computing. Increasingly, it is also entangled with mobile phones, sensors and all sorts of other devices in the so-called Internet of Things.

It’s the same story at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, the other two big cloud companies. Start-ups and giant corporations rent the core resources, along with related software, instead of owning and running their own machines.

What’s next? As innovations like artificial intelligence and connected devices become popular, customers are putting cloud components in mobile computing, home games and email marketing campaigns. In other words, the big clouds aim to be everywhere.

“When has Amazon ever thought about anything other than world domination?” said Lydia Leong, who follows cloud computing at Gartner. Not content to be in big centralized data centers, she said, “they want to be at the edges, whether that is a customer’s own computers or the Internet of Things.”

This aim for domination was clear at Amazon’s big customer conference, called Re:Invent, which was held in Las Vegas this month. About 32,000 people went to the fourth annual event.

In one talk at the conference, an Amazon Web Services executive showed off the company’s 8,700-mile undersea cable, part of an A.W.S. global network that each day adds computing power equal to that inside a Fortune 500 corporation, and spoke about this expansion. He talked about crushing the costs of servers and networking, most likely sad news for old tech giants that make those things, like Dell and Cisco.

In a nice bit of showmanship during the main keynote, Andy Jassy, the head of A.W.S., appeared onstage with an 18-wheel truck carrying a device that could suck 100 petabytes of data out of a customer’s computers and put it in the Amazon cloud. That is equal to two billion filing cabinets of paper, which a surprising number of companies now possess in digital form, thanks to things like video and sensors.

Put that together with some software Mr. Jassy talked about that would be on chips made by Intel but capable of gaining access to the A.W.S. cloud, and you get the picture: There isn’t a part of computing Amazon doesn’t want to touch.

It is easy to see why this matters to Amazon. In the third quarter, A.W.S. had revenue of $13 billion a year, growing at 55 percent annually. A.W.S. was 10 percent of Amazon’s revenue, but more than 100 percent of the company’s operating income. Amazon’s international retail business lost money, and United States retail sales are nowhere near as profitable.

Amazon says it is hardly moving away from a core business of providing large-scale computing, but rather finding more ways to sell stuff related to it by moving to edge devices.

“We see it less as a move from one to the other, and more of an extension,” an Amazon spokeswoman, Mary Camarata, wrote in an email Saturday. “We have an enormous number of customers excited about leveraging the capabilities.”

Amazon is not alone in this business, and the competition is getting more intense. A.W.S. now has 81 services, including ways to work on home video games. Microsoft’s 67 services include Internet of Things “hubs” and email marketing campaigns. Google has 53, including ways to deploy mobile software globally and steer performance with data analysis. Comparisons of services are difficult, as one company’s service may encompass two or three offered by another.

Machine learning — a method for computers to gain knowledge without being programmed with that information — is front and center for Alphabet’s Google, said Urs Hölzle, the head of technical infrastructure at Google Compute. Google has recently shown off its own global network of submarine cables, along with local devices like cloud-connected office whiteboards. Over the next year, Mr. Hölzle said, Google will open about one new Compute facility a month.

Building out across the globe, with sometimes $1 billion or more in a facility, is critical in some cases to meet local data regulations. Equally, the big cloud companies all want to be as close to customers and their devices as possible.

“Global proximity is a huge advantage,” said Corey Sanders, the director of program management at Azure. “This is a way to transform your business, including the way devices on the edge act.”

There are profound consequences from the scale and ambition of this trend. Given their size, wealth and technical expertise, the big cloud companies are likely to build cheaper designs and demand lower prices for everything in computing. Who is to say they don’t affect the devices themselves?

That is starting to dawn on the rest of the industry. On the first day of Re:Invent, Mr. Jassy had a private lunch with about 10 venture capitalists. It is an annual affair, where he indicates where A.W.S. is going, and they figure out how to make money from it.

“He wasn’t explicit, but if you were hoping to invest in storage, computing — anything below applications — you are hosed,” said Dharmesh Thakker, a partner at Battery Ventures, who attended the lunch. “Andy is smart and approachable, but reading between the lines, I’m not sure this is good for the V.C. ecosystem.”

AT&T Inc. has asked permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to shut down the 13 legacy TDM (Time-division multiplexing) services of its wholly owned subsidiary – Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.  The decision to terminate the services stems from lack of demand.  Southwestern Bell Telephone Company operates in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and parts of Illinois.

“AT&T currently has no customers that subscribe to these service options and has not had any requests seeking these service options in the previous two years,” AT&T said in its FCC filing.  The service is expected to shut down effective Feb 28, 2017, subject to FCC approval.

The services to be shut down include Telegraph Bridging Four-Wire Capability, Voice-grade Active Telemetry and Alarm Bridging Split Band Capability. Telegraph Bridging Four-Wire Capability offers bridging functions on a telegraph grade circuit that connect three or more customer-designated building in a multipoint arrangement. Voice-grade Active Telemetry and Alarm Bridging Split Band Capability is a Telemetry and Alarm bridging network which divides the voice band into two portions, one for each direction of transmission.

TDM service discontinuation has become a growing trend in the wireline segment of the telecom industry. Telecom service providers are moving toward IP-based networks as an increasing number of enterprise customers are opting for IP-enabled cloud services.

AT&T earlier requested the FCC for permission to discontinue a series of legacy services including collect calling, person-to-person calling, bill to third party, Busy Line Verification, Busy Line Interruption and International Directory Assistance in Jun 2016.

Besides AT&T, national telecom carriers like Sprint and Verizon Communications have opted for similar service discontinuation. Verizon seek the FCC’s nod to stop providing postpaid calling card and personal 800 services while Sprint asked to discontinue long-distance voice services. Level 3 Communications  has sought permission from the FCC to discontinue its legacy voice services based on outdated TDM (time division multiplexing) technology.

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/att-seeks-fcc-approval-to-discontinue-13-legacy-services-cm725015

The NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative, meant to address network functions virtualization deployments, has been established by mainstream network equipment vendors – Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies and Nokia.

“The general guiding principles for NFV-ITI are openness, fairness, reasonableness and nondiscriminatory treatment,” the organization noted in a statement. “All relevant NFV vendors are welcome to join this initiative by ratifying the NFV-ITI MoU.”

OPNFV recently unveiled its Colorado platform release, which includes updates targeted at accelerating the development of NFV applications and services by enhancing security, IPv6 support, service function chaining, testing VPN capabilities and support for multiple hardware architectures. The organization noted the updates followed collaboration with upstream communities and are integrated into the “automated install/deploy/testing framework.”

OPNFV also highlighted increased collaboration across ecosystems via working groups focused on management and operation; infrastructure; security and testing, with five “committers-at-large” members elected to the OPNFV Technical Steering Committee “to enhance the meritocratic nature of the project.”

A Technology Business Research (TBR) report from earlier this year found some early adopter telecom operators were moving forward with limited commercial launches of NFV and software-defined networking technologies despite continuing questions around the lack of NFV and SDN standards. According to TBR’s “NFV/SDN Telecom Market Landscape” report for the first quarter, these early launches are “leveraging a mix of vendor solutions and internal resources ahead of industry adopted standards,” with cost reduction and service agility seen as key drivers for initial deployments. TBR noted for carriers like AT&T, NFV and SDN are viewed as “critical for long-term survival.”

“Early adopters pursue differing approaches to build NFV and SDN solutions,” the report notes. “One approach is to build an end-to-end NFV stack leveraging products from several vendors. These deployments require tested, interoperable components to ensure carrier-grade delivery. Adding further complexity, operators must decide which vendor, if any, integrates the stack.”

References:

http://www.rcrwireless.com/20161220/network-function-virtualization-nfv/nokia-cisco-ericsson-and-huawei-partner-on-nfv-interoperability-tag2

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/12/20/899094/0/en/Industry-partners-commit-to-NFV-interoperability-testing-initiative.html

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/cisco-ericsson-huawei-and-nokia-create-joint-nfv-interoperability-testing-initiative

https://www.opnfv.org/