IEEE ComSoc Technology Blog

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 40G/100G and ROADM Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, which details the plans of operators transitioning optical transmission and switching equipment to higher-speed 40G and 100G wavelengths.

Based on respondent ratings of various technologies for optical deployments in metro regional networks, most operators prefer the same solution they already use in the long haul in the metro, albeit with lower specs and cost, Infonetics’ survey shows. Most new technologies designed to address the metro 100G opportunity (not all in the survey are shown in the accompanying Infonetics chart) were rated highly by only a few respondents.

ABOUT INFONETICS’ 40G/100G/ROADM SURVEY:
For its 26-page 40G/100G and ROADM strategies survey, Infonetics interviewed 28 incumbent, competitive, mobile and cable operators from Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America that have an optical transport network using WDM. Together the respondents represent a significant ~40% of the world’s telecom capex and revenue. The survey answers questions such as:
.    The extent to which coherent technology is and will be deployed in existing brownfield networks versus new greenfield builds
.    The magnitude and timing of future metro and core 100G deployments
.    Preferred technologies for 100G metro and core deployments, including direct-detect 100G and Raman amplification
.    How disruptive the rollout of 100G in the metro will be for vendor market share
.    ROADM node deployment growth, as well as expected changes in the size and scale of ROADM nodes
.    Service provider perceptions of and expectations for the cost of colorless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) ROADMs
.    The rate of adoption of 100GbE clients, a key driver of metro 100G demand

ANALYST NOTE:
“The next big questions around 100G optical technology are about deployments in the metro network: When will deployments kick in, what will the volume be, which technologies will make the transition possible – advanced modulation, Raman amplification, pluggable formats, non-coherent approaches? We asked service providers around the world these questions and many more in our latest optical survey, and we learned a lot about what is about to happen in the market,” says Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.

Schmitt continues: “We now know, for example, that based on current operator thinking, 2016 will be the year that coherent 100G technology arrives in volume in metro networks. That is also when we expect cost-per-Gigabit pricing for 100G to edge out 10G in shorter reach applications. Right now what most people want is just what they have now, only cheaper,” adds Schmitt.

To buy the survey, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

FREE WEBINAR: ALL ABOUT EDGE P-OTS
Join analyst Andrew Schmitt for a live debate about the advantages of a packet-optical transport system (P-OTS) architecture, integrating multiple layers, achieving optical layer-like transparency with different technologies, the role of software-defined networks (SDNs) in P-OTS, and more.

All About Edge P-OTS, Live Wednesday, December 4, 11:00 AM EST:
http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=701343&s=1&k=035B786667CFC4BC1BAD2D1AAD952B11

Infonetics Research released vendor market share and preliminary analysis from its 3rd quarter 2013 (3Q13) Optical Network Hardware report. (Full report published November 26.)  Seems like North America tier 1 carriers are spending big on 100G optical links.

3Q13 OPTICAL MARKET HIGHLIGHTS:
.    Globally, the optical network hardware market (WDM and SONET/SDH) is down 7% sequentially in 3Q13, and down 1% from the year-ago quarter
.    Total optical spending is flat on a rolling 4-quarter basis, with WDM growth accelerating and notching a 5th consecutive quarter of growth in 3Q13
.    North America optical spending jumped 13.4% year-over-year in 3Q13 following an 11.1% YoY increase the previous quarter, driven by aggressive 100G rollouts by tier 1 operators
.    In 3Q13, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) WDM spending declined on a year-over-year and sequential basis, nearing the record low set in 1Q13
.    Japan dragged down the Asia Pacific optical market in 3Q13, a result of spending retracing huge gains in 2012
.    Huawei, Ciena, and Alcatel-Lucent are the WDM market share leaders in 3Q13

ANALYST NOTE:
“In the third quarter of 2013, sales of WDM optical equipment are up 4% from a year ago and remain at the elevated levels reached earlier in the year, but overall optical spending is down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-over basis,” says Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.

Schmitt adds: “Looking ahead, we expect tier 1 carriers to dial back spending. Capex was so strong in the first and second quarters of 2013, it’s unreasonable to anticipate a big flush in the fourth quarter, especially in North America. There’s a general weakness in the market, even from carriers that didn’t aggressively ramp spending earlier this year.”

ABOUT THE OPTICAL REPORT:
Infonetics’ quarterly optical hardware report provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, forecasts through 2017, analysis, and trends for metro and long haul SONET/SDH and WDM equipment, Ethernet optical ports, SONET/SDH/POS ports, and WDM ports. Vendors tracked: Adtran, Adva, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Cyan, ECI, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, NEC, Coriant (NSN), Tellabs, Transmode, Tyco Telecom, ZTE, and others.

To buy the report, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

Market research firm Ovum has a different forecast.  The optical networks (ON) market will exceed US$17.5bn by 2018, for a 3.1 percent CAGR from 2012, predicts global analyst firm Ovum. An exceptionally strong 2Q13 has signaled the beginning of a spending bounce-back.  2Q13 was the strongest quarter in the last six and was the 7th highest quarter in the last 10 years.

In a new forecast analysis*, Global ON is projected to be up 1.1 percent in 2013 compared to 2012 based on positive growth forecasts for North America, SLTE, Asia-Pacific and South & Central America.

“Ovum’s 9.1 percent growth projection for North American ON sales in 2013 signals a solid bounce-back year after two years of non-growth” says Ian Redpath, Analyst, Network Infrastructure and author of the report.  “Network core investments are resuming and 100G is being deployed in volumes. The North American tier-1 communications service providers (CSPs) and cable operators are investing in their core network to support all traffic types. ”

http://ovum.com/press_releases/ovum-predicts-global-optical-networks-market-will-exceed-us17-5bn-in-2018-as-100g-surges/

Huawei is leading the global optical networking (ON) space with 21 percent market share in the third quarter of 2013, said Ovum.  Huawei’s Chinese rival ZTE has 13 percent market share in Q3 in ON.  Alcatel Lucent is in the third position with 11 percent ON market share.

The Ovum report says telecom vendors Ciena, Fujitsu and Infinera grew revenues sequentially and year over year, thanks to their presence in North America. Infinera moved into the top 10 globally, ousting Coriant.

Global optical networking spending decreased 9 percent to $3.7 billion in Q3.

Ron Kline, principal analyst – Network Infrastructure at Ovum, said total spending may be under pressure, but when it comes to deploying the latest infrastructure to support exploding bandwidth requirements, the demand for 100G, OTN and packet switching capabilities provided by CPO gear continues to see strong growth among telecom operators.

The Ovum report says sequential and year-over-year gains in North America have mitigated declines in Asia-Pacific, EMEA and South & Central America. Market spending continues to fluctuate by quarter depending on region/sub region and seasonal spending patterns, resulting in stagnant sales on a global level.

The telecom analysis from Ovum says there will be 1 percent growth in ON in 2013 to $14.8 billion and exceeding $17.5 billion by 2018.

Strong Tier-1 N.A. operator spending drove increased converged packet optical (CPO) and 100G deployments in the North America. ON revenues in the region topped $1.1 billion in Q3.

Ovum says spending for ROADM, 40G and 100G all increased slightly over the prior quarter. CPO revenues fell due to lower spending in Asia-Pacific. Annualized CPO spending surpassed $7 billion for the first time.

CPO represents more than 50 percent of ON spending. The data center is the new central office, and operators are refreshing network technology to address changing traffic patterns as the steady march to IP continues.

http://www.telecomlead.com/telecom-equipment/huawei-leads-optical-networking-space-21-percent-market-share-q3-ovum-94655/

AT&T has surpassed the 10 million-subscriber mark for its U-verse broadband service, the telecom said Friday. U-verse customers composed 60% of AT&T’s wireline high-speed Internet base as of Sept. 30, compared with 43% a year earlier. The telecom cited Project Velocity IP, its multibillion-dollar effort to complete its fiber-optic and wireless platform, as a major factor in the surge in U-verse subscribers.

AT&T, which ended the third quarter with 9.7 million U-verse broadband customers, attributed part of its growth spurt to Project Velocity IP, its multi-billion dollar, three-year capital infusion to build out its Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network and its U-verse platform. According to AT&T, it has added about 2.5 million broadband customer locations since announcing the initiative about a year ago. The plan calls for AT&T to expand its IP broadband reach to about 57 million customer locations by the end of 2015.

“This latest milestone shows how U-verse is helping transform AT&T into a premier IP broadband company,”
said Lori Lee, senior executive vice president, AT&T Home Solutions.

AT&T is ramping up U-verse speeds, offering up to 45 Mbps (downstream) in 79 markets, with plans to ratchet speeds to 75 Mbps and 100 Mbps later. The new 45-meg tier, called U-verse High Speed Internet Power, carries an introductory price of $49.95 per month, putting it almost on par with the cost of the 6-Meg Elite tier, which costs $46 per month. Following the introductory offer period, the Power tier will be offered at $76 per month.

U-verse broadband has helped AT&T counterbalance losses of traditional DSL customers. While AT&T U-verse high-speed Internet subs continues to climb, the telco still lost 26,000 net broadband subs in the third quarter when DSL losses were factored in.

Note that customers may still be able to get U-Verse Internet access (called IP DSLAM), even when U-verse TV service is not available in that customer serving area.

The latest U-verse gains by AT&T come as US cable operators are beginning to experience a slowdown in their long-heady broadband growth. In a report issued by MoffettNathanson Research last week, senior analyst Craig Moffett found that cable operators are signing up substantially fewer high-speed data subscribers this year and taking less market share than they did before.

Moffett noted that cable operators accounted for 78 percent of the new broadband subscribers in the third quarter, down from an amazing 99 percent the year before. So, although cable is still taking the lion’s share of new broadband customers, he wrote, “it is doing so at a much more modest pace.” He also noted that two of the five largest MSOs, Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) and Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), reported unexpected broadband customer losses in the summer quarter while most major telecoms registered strong sub gains.

References:

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=25107&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=37296&mapcode=consumer|financial

http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/att-u-verse-surpasses-10-million-broadband-subs/146719

http://www.lightreading.com/u-verse-hits-10-million-mark-/d/d-id/706640?f_src=lightreading_gnews

Backgrounder:

 Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) delivers the first data center and cloud solution to offer full visibility and integrated management of both physical and virtual networked IT resources.  

Leading companies supporting Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure include: BMC, CA Technologies, Citrix, EMC, Embrane, Emulex, F5, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, Panduit, Puppet Labs, NIKSUN, OpsCode, Red Hat, SAP, Splunk, Symantec, VCE and VMware. 

ACI is comprised of the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), the Nexus 9000 portfolio, and enhanced versions of the NX-OS operating system. The Nexus 9000 family, running optimized NXOS, enables unmatched “zero-touch” operations across high performance data center networks, and can save customers millions of dollars in capital and operating expenses.

The new Nexus 9000 is also the foundation building block for the Cisco ACI solution, enabling a smooth transition from optimized NX-OS to the ACI-mode of NX-OS with a software upgrade and the addition of APIC. Using merchant silicon and custom ASICs, this portfolio delivers best of breed price performance and non-blocking port density for 1/10G to 10/40G and in the future 100G transitions in existing and next generation data centers. The Nexus 9000 portfolio includes state of the art system innovations including the industry’s first backplane-free modular switch to provide investment protection, efficient power and cooling, and a simpler design leading to two times the improvement in mean time between failures.

Note: Many testimonials are included in the news release at:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1281658/Technology-Leaders-Rally-Behind-Cisco-s-Application-Centric-Infrastructure?utm_medium=rss

Analysis By Scott Thompson of FBR:

On Wednesday, November 6, Cisco announced its long-awaited initial products and roadmap for its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) platform. The solution is rolling out in the form of an SDN controller Application Programmable Controller Interface, or APCI) and yet another switching platform (Nexus 9000) that combine to deliver the ACI platform. We view the ACI platform, along with Cisco’s recent announcement of its NCS platform, on September 24th, as another step in the right direction and the core product battery that will drive refreshed orders in Cisco’s networking product set for the next three to five years. While the product refresh could drive orders, we expect the implications to gross margin, at least initially, could be negative. Our checks indicate the platform is getting positive feedback from service providers and large enterprises, but there are a few questions in our mind that were left unanswered:

 
(1) How much does the product cost?
(2) Will the product planners eventually open the northbound interface?
(3) How will the platform integrate new architectures moving forward? Most importantly, how much opportunity will ACI generate in rackscale architectures, which we believe will become a significant portion of IT spend in 2H14 and beyond?

While these questions remain, we view today’s announcement as another positive step for Cisco’s chances to maintain or grow market share in a changing industry. 

    * Full ACI rollout will take time. While our checks indicate the platform is being met with a reasonable amount of positive reviews from enterprises and service providers, the rollout time frame could be longer than many customers and investors would have hoped. Cisco continued to move slowly with respect to rolling out the ACI solution. While the Nexus 9000 switch is available today, many of the other components, including the controller, will not be available for beta test until at least January and are not  scheduled to be generally available until next summer.

    * Less talk of custom ASICs, more merchant silicon. We were surprised to hear the rhetoric around custom ASICs was
significantly toned down during the ACI announcement. The Nexus 9000 line appears to have utilized Broadcom’s Trident II ASIC, which is likely to help keep both costs and hardware differentiation down. Despite fewer references, we believe Cisco expects to continue to pursue its custom ASIC strategy over the longer term.

    * ACI offers Virtual Machine (VM) tax avoidance? Cisco seemed to respond rather directly to the threat posed by VMWare’s NSX. Cisco seems to be boasting a 75% annualized per port cost savings when compared with an NSX solution. The primary difference, according to Cisco, is a “VM tax” or the recurring license payments one might make for the NSX solution, which is avoided by deploying Cisco’s ACI architecture. While Cisco does seem to have a point, we question whether VMWare will allow the argument to stand without a retort or making an adjustment to its pricing model.

Cisco Webinar on Unified Access:

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest Macrocell Mobile Backhaul Equipment and Services report, which ranks mobile backhaul equipment vendors, identifies market growth areas, and provides analysis of equipment, connections, cell sites, and service charges.

MACROCELL MOBILE BACKHAUL MARKET HIGHLIGHTS:

.    Infonetics expects global macrocell backhaul equipment revenue to inch up to $8.1 billion in 2013, an increase of just 1% from 2012
.    IP/Ethernet is the clear driver of the macrocell backhaul market, performing the heavy lifting for ever-growing mobile bandwidth usage
.    94% of macrocell backhaul equipment spending in 2013 will be on IP/Ethernet gear
.    Fiber is making up an increasing share of mobile backhaul installed connections, growing to 43% in 2017
.    Ethernet microwave radio is forecast by Infonetics to grow at a 36% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2012 to 2017, the highest of any equipment segment

ANALYST NOTES:
“Though it’ll be slow growth ahead for the macrocell mobile backhaul equipment market, this is still a huge market, one for which we expect operators to spend a cumulative $43 billion over the five years from 2013 to 2017,” notes Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research.

“Looking at the big picture, microwave TDM spending is declining, but the IP packet parts are gaining,” Howard adds. “We look for microwave revenue to dip slightly this year, while Ethernet microwave grows through 2017. IP edge routers will peak this year and then rumble along slightly downhill, with the strongest downward pull from Asia Pacific, countering the worldwide microwave momentum.”

REPORT SYNOPSIS:

Infonetics’ biannual macrocell mobile backhaul report provides worldwide and regional market share, market size, forecasts through 2017, analysis, and trends for macrocell mobile backhaul equipment, connections, installed cell sites, and service charges by technology. Companies tracked: Accedian, Actelis, Adtran, Adva, Alcatel-Lucent, Aviat Networks, BridgeWave, Canoga Perkins, Celtro, Ceragon, Ciena, Cisco, DragonWave, ECI, Ericsson, FibroLan, Huawei, Intracom, Ipitek, Juniper, MRV, NEC, NSN, Overture, Positron, RAD, Siklu, Telco Systems, Tellabs, Telrad, Thomson, ZTE, and others.

A separate Millimeter Wave Equipment report tracks unlicensed E-band and licensed millimeter wave equipment by market application (access, backhaul, and transport).

MILLIMETER WAVE EQUIPMENT MARKET HIGHLIGHTS:
.    In the first half of 2013 (1H13), worldwide millimeter wave equipment revenue totaled $64 million, up 45% from the second half of 2012 (2H12)
.    The millimeter wave market in EMEA comprised 61% of overall market revenue in 1H13, with growth coming from the UK, Germany, and Russia in particular, where 3G operators are deploying millimeter wave to support bandwidth backhaul in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
.    70-90 GHz (licensed) equipment accounted for 81% of millimeter wave sales in 1H13
.    Israeli vendor Siklu was a major driver of unit volumes in 1H13 with its EtherHaul licensed millimeter wave products
.    Sub10 Systems also saw increased activity and customer engagements in 1H13, predominantly in the 60 GHz range, where it plays a role in driving overall unit volume growth

ANALYST NOTE:
“A number of factors are converging to power robust growth in the millimeter wave equipment market-wider adoption by operators, price erosion, spectrum availability, and the continuing demand for backhaul capacity. Infonetics is forecasting a 61% compound annual growth rate for millimeter wave gear from 2012 to 2017,” reports Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics Research.

Webb adds: “From 2014, licensed and unlicensed millimeter wave will play an increasingly significant role in outdoor small cell backhaul, driving the total market for equipment as deployments start to scale.”

REPORT SYNOPSIS:
Infonetics’ biannual millimeter wave report provides worldwide and regional market size, vendor market share, forecasts through 2017, analysis, and trends for unlicensed E band (60GHz), licensed E band (70-90GHz), and W band (75-110GHz) millimeter wave equipment by network application (access, backhaul, transport). The report tracks units, revenue, and ARPU and follows Aviat Networks, BridgeWave, CableFree, E-Band, ECI, Ericsson, Fujitsu, GigaBeam, Huawei, Intracom, LightPointe, Loea, NEC, Proxim, SIAE, Siklu, Sub10 Systems, and others.

To buy the reports, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

Ericsson today reported 3Q-2013 earnings that were less than the consenus forecast.  Third-quarter net income of 2.92 billion kronor missed the 3.07 billion kronor average analyst estimate. Profit rose 34 percent from the year-earlier period, helped by lower costs and the company exiting an unprofitable chip venture with STMicroelectronics.  More importantly, revenue fell 3 percent, to 52.9 billion kroner, also below analysts’ average estimate, of 54.3 billion kroner.       

The Stockholm-based manufacturer of telecommunications infrastructure, the world’s largest, is struggling in an increasingly competitive environment and has cuts thousands of jobs in Sweden over the past year to slash costs. Ericsson holds about a 35 percent global market share in the wireless network infrastructure used by carriers like Verizon Wireless and China Mobile. 

Business slowed in the U.S. and Japan where projects to make wireless carriers’ networks speedier are nearing completion.  “It’s hard to offset the slowdown in the largest projects in North America and Japan,” Ericsson’s chief executive, Hans Vestberg, said in a telephone interview with the NY Times. He said that currency fluctuations also were taking a toll on the company’s international sales.

In its earnings report, Ericsson said that a number of its high-profile mobile network projects in both North America and Japan were either completed or nearly so. Sales in Northeast Asia, including Japan, fell 28 percent, to 6.1 billion kroner, in the third quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. The region is the second largest market by sales for the Swedish company, after North America.

“We are currently seeing sales coming under some pressure,” Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg said.  In addition to negative currency effects, the comparable sales figure was hurt by the completion of two large mobile broadband coverage projects in North America.  “We also saw impact from reduced activity in Japan where we are getting closer to completion of a major project,” Vestberg said.

“While the sales level was disappointing in the quarter, such volatility is not unusual in the industry, and increasing spending outside the U.S. is expected to lead to future growth,” said Janardan Menon, a telecommunications analyst at Liberum Capital in London.

“The projects that peaked in the first half in North America are starting to have an effect,” said Fredrik Thoresen, an analyst at DNB ASA in Oslo with a hold rating on the stock. Slowing sales in North America, a high-margin region for Ericsson, bring down its profitability, he said.

Both North American and Northeast Asia have been engines of growth for Ericsson in recent years, while investment in other parts of the world, notably Europe, has waned.

Vestberg said that uncertainty still remains in certain parts of the world, although the macroeconomic climate has stabilized in many markets and the “long-term fundamentals in the industry remain attractive.”

“Ericsson now sees growth in several European markets and margins are also improving as the network modernization projects gradually come to an end and we engage more in new capacity and LTE business,” he said, referring to the high-speed data standard for mobile phones.

References:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/technology/ericsson-sales-slip-and-so-does-its-stock.html?ref=technology&_r=0

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-24/ericsson-profit-misses-estimates-as-competition-weighs-on-sales.html

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ericsson-q3-net-profit-jumps-strong-margins-20665659

http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/investors

Wireless Network Infrastructure Market Overview:

The global mobile network infrastructure business is in transition as the major equipment vendors reorganize. The manufacturers are eager to take advantage of the growth of mobile data, as consumers around the world shift away from making voice calls on their smartphones to accessing the Internet on phones and tablets.

Nokia now owns all of Nokia Siemens Networks, which had previously spun off its optical division.  Alcatel-Lucent is also revamping, having announced this month that it would cut 10,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its global work force. Alcatel-Lucent wants to increase its profitability after several years of declining growth.       

Market analysts say that Nokia or another mobile infrastructure company may look to acquire the struggling Alcatel-Lucent, as rivals position themselves for an expected increase in investment from cellphone carriers into high-speed fourth-generation networks.       

Ericsson and its U.S./European network equipment competitors, however, are also under threat from Asian rivals like Huawei, ZTE and Samsung, which are looking to increase their own market shares in local and international markets alike.  Bloomberg reported this week that Nokia- which divested its handset division to Microsoft- will attempt to acquire Alcatel-Lucent.  

“This deal makes complete sense,” Sami Sarkamies, a Helsinki-based analyst at Nordea Bank AB, said in a phone interview. “Nokia will have the financial flexibility to do this kind of deal and Alcatel needs to slim down. There is a relatively high likelihood of this deal happening.”

Nokia has evaluated options including a combination with Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile-phone networks business, a person with knowledge of the matter said last month. An acquisition would open the U.S. market to Nokia, helping the Finnish company shrink the gap with market leader Ericsson

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/nokia-record-cash-targets-alcatel-wireless-unit-real-m-a.html

Several European carriers like Telefónica of Spain and Telecom Italia are struggling to reduce their debt burdens and have put off infrastructure upgrades to their mobile phone networks.   One bright spot in Europe is the British carrier Vodafone, a big Ericsson customer, which announced in September that it would invest £6 billion, or $9.7 billion, after it sold its stake in the American company Verizon Wireless to its partner, Verizon Communications, for $130 billion.

Meanwhile AT&T continues to build out it’s LTE network footprint, which lags far behind Verizon’s which is available in over 500 U.S. cities.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator

Meanwhile, small cells

Introduction:

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2013 Small Cell Coverage Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, for which Infonetics interviewed wireless, incumbent, and competitive operators around the world about their small cell buildout plans.

SMALL CELL SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS:
 •83% of respondent operators have deployed small cells, an increase of 11% from Infonetics’ 2012 survey
•78% of respondents rate “multimode” and “seamless integration with macrocellular networks” as very important small cell features
•Small cell backhaul staged a comeback as a barrier to deploying small cells in this year’s survey, but overall barriers are waning with the exception of outdoor site acquisition, which remains challenging
•Respondents don’t expect small cells to take the place of distributed antenna systems (DAS) anytime soon, instead viewing the technologies as complementary
•New alternatives to small cells like Ericsson’s Radio Dot System hold the potential to reduce the need for DAS in very specific applications such as medium and large enterprises
•A majority of survey respondents say they will definitely require self-organizing networks (SON) and coordinated multipoint (CoMP) to optimize network performance while diminishing the need for units

ANALYST NOTES:
“As evidenced by our latest small cell study, operators are seriously gearing up small cells for significant macrocellular network enhancements,” says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

“Since service providers will be adding small cells to existing macro sites in very specific parts of their networks, there’s good reason to believe the total number of small cells will surpass that of macrocell sites, but definitely not by large proportions,” continues Téral. “Operators need to look at their spectrum resources and apply them as the need for capacity increases. This means selecting the right tool in the coverage and capacity toolbox.”

From a previous Infonetics report on Small Cells:  https://techblog.comsoc.org/2013/10/04/infonetics-small-cell-market-ramp-wont-happen-this-year

“The large service providers remain committed to their small cell deployment plans, but the pace of deployment is much slower than expected due to a sad reality: Small cell and macrocell rollouts share nothing in common,” explains Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.  Téral continues: “Each technology requires its own internal business processes, which have been in place for decades with macrocells but have to be built from the ground up for small cells taking into consideration things like footfall, building dimensions, backhaul availability, and wireless technology. There is no cookie-cutter template for small cell deployments!” Co-author of the report Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics, adds: “Given that service providers are in the process of retooling their plan of attack, we’re not expecting the small cell ramp to happen in 2013.”

SMALL CELL SURVEY SYNOPSIS:

For its 28-page small cell survey, Infonetics interviewed independent wireless, incumbent, and competitive operators from Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America about their small cell buildout plans. The study helps manufacturers and operators better understand the use cases for small cells, the number and types of small cells needed, frequency bands required, and best-suited architectures.

To buy the report, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

Separately, Amdocs says that mobile operators say that the cost of rolling out small cells is currently around five times too high. Amdocs presented a new solution designed to speed up small cell deployment and cut costs.  “Existing planning tools are not up to the job. They lack automation,” said Phil Bull, product marketing manager at Amdocs.

As it stands, designing and rolling out the backhaul for small cells can take weeks, but operators need to reduce this to just a few days or even a single day, he said. “It’s a complicated challenge to do it manually.”

Amdocs offers an inventory-centric solution that can help operators automatically generate a network design that reduces both cost and complexity.  “[The solution] is being rolled out now,” Bull said. Amdocs is working with pilot customers in North America, where the small cells market is more advanced than in many other markets.

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=483930

Video: Manage Signaling Impact of Small Cells on LTE network:

Alcatel-Lucent categories: metro, enterprise and residential small cells http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mupyGC4r4FI

From Scott Thompson of FBR Capital Markets:

We continue to expect the service provider march toward commodity hardware, NFV, and SDN technologies to accelerate through 4Q, with the impact beginning to show in guides as early as 4Q and more significantly in 1H14. We expect enterprise vertical to remain largely steady, at least relative to the changes taking place as webscale, government, and service provider verticals continue to shift toward cloud-based architectures.

Longer term, we continue to expect a marked shift in spend from routing into optical and from hardware into software.

Assessment of Juniper, F5 Networks and Motorola Mobility:

1.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) is poised to top earnings estimates again.  We are raising 3Q13 EPS to $0.34.
Juniper is scheduled to report 3Q13 earnings Tuesday, Oct. 22nd after the close, and to hold its earnings call at 5 p.m. EDT (877-407-8033). We expect the JNPR story to remain challenged, despite what we believe will be a strong quarter report. There does appear to be a substantial core routing upgrade developing in the service provider (SP) vertical. However, we expect competitive pressure from ALU could continue to rise, particularly in the core network. Additionally, we expect current core upgrades will be more muted and less routing intensive than past cycles. Longer term, we believe Juniper could be challenged to transition away from its legacy core routing and switching business and toward a more optical and software-based revenue stream. While our 12-month view on JNPR remains cautious, we raise our 3Q13 EPS estimate to $0.34, above the $0.31 consensus estimate. We are lowering our 4Q revenue estimates nearly 3% below consensus, driving our EPS estimate down to $0.34 for 4Q13.

Oct 23rd Update:

JNPR posted yet another quarter of record MX routing revenues, which drove 3Q results above consensus. While Juniper is performing well against consensus estimates, we are increasingly starting to question how long the MX product family can drive upside to results.

Carriers like AT&T and Verizon, which have each traditionally and consistently driven over 10% of revenues for years, are no longer doing so. This data seems to partially validate our thesis that carriers will spend less on traditional routing and switching going forward. In their place, however, is surging demand from web scale and cable companies,  representing a diversification of the client base that we view positively. We are increasingly concerned that after more than four quarters of strong edge routing upgrades, Juniper continues to struggle to find products to serve as new sources of growth. New products, while reaching over $110M in revenues in 3Q, are contributing but remain ~10% of revenue. Regardless, Juniper continues to throw off an impressive amount of cash. We continue to believe, however, that the SP business is likely to deteriorate for Juniper, leaving its earnings power for 2014 well short of consensus.

2.  F5 Networks (FFIV) positioned for a strong quarter.

F5 Networks is scheduled to report F4Q13 earnings after the close Wednesday, Oct. 23rd and will hold an earnings call at 4:30 p.m. EDT (800-857-3834, password “F5 Networks”). We expect F5’s F4Q13 to reveal a business re-accelerating product growth. Enterprise is likely to remain robust on the back of new product sales and SP is likely to be improving due to an emerging trend where carriers are virtualizing special purpose hardware for NFV-like deployments. We continue to believe, however, that tech vertical (approximately 18% of revenues) may continue to slowly shift away from F5’s traditional hardware platforms in favor of custom software-based load balancing solutions. While we expect shares of FFIV could run over the next few quarters, we believe the risk/reward profile of FFIV is less favorable than leading names in the optical sector. 

3.   Motorola Solutions (MSI) needs to deliver in 2H13.  [Note that Motorola Mobility is now owned by Google]

Motorola Solutions is scheduled to report 3Q13 earnings before market open Wednesday, Oct. 23rd and will hold the earnings call at 8:00 a.m. EDT (866-952-1906, password “MSIQ313”). After a relatively weak 1H, management has        positioned investors to expect a stronger performance in 2H13, particularly on the margin front. All eyes will be on MSI’s  government business as it is set to report what is normally its strongest quarter of the year, tapping strong order backlog built up in 1H13. We expect enterprise spend to continue to be soft as tablets and smartphones are increasingly substituted for ruggedized laptops and bar code scanners. MSI’s share repurchase program is likely to pick up where organic growth leaves off this year, providing a near-term floor for shares. We remain on the sidelines in search of stronger organic growth.

Utility Telephone, Inc. is is an Integrated Communications Provider and Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) which provides a variety of Internet, data and telephone services to businesses and non profit organizations in both California and Nevada.

Specific services include: Internet access and secure data services; private line services for dedicated point-to-point communications; local phone service (PSTN), business voice solutions, auto attendant, on-demand conference, hosted PBX-IP business trunking, music on hold, VoIP phone, and DSL and web  server hosting services.  

Unlike many other competitive carriers that resell tier 1 carrier services, Utility operates its own switching and fiber-optic OC-48 networks, including over 30 ILEC collocation sites and a datacenter in Los Angeles, CA.

Utility Telephone’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) and IP-Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) are two robust and secure service offerings for business customers that want the benefits of a private network using managed IP transport.

1. VPN allows business locations to seamlessly communicate over a private and secure connection, sharing information and maximizing productivity across multiple locations.

2. IP-MPLS captures your data for specific user groups, establishing a private network that cannot be accessed by any unathorized viewers, whether they are in different buildings, cities or countries.

The IP- MPLS service has the following benefits for business customers:

• Reduces overhead
• Removes firewalls
• Improves performance-faster throughput and lower latency
• Simple implementation and configuration
• Capital investment savings (CAPEX)

This privately held company was founded in 1996 and has its headquarters in Stockton, California.  Utility is noted for providing “Customer First” support and service to businesses within its serving areas. Long-term customer relationships are valued highly by the company’s executive team.

You can read customer testimonials at:  http://www.utilitytelephone.com/company_testimonials.php

The company has been a Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredited Business since 10/14/2008.

http://www.bbb.org/northeast-california/business-reviews/telephone-companies/utility-telephone-in-stockton-ca-49002184

For further info on the company, please contact me at:  Michaelericweiss@yahoo.com

Regulation:   All CLECs (and ILECs) operating in CA are regulated by the CA Public Utility Commision (CPUC).   The CPUC serves the public interest by protecting consumers and ensuring the provision of safe, reliable utility service and infrastructure at reasonable rates, with a commitment to environmental enhancement and a healthy California economy.

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/

Infonetics Research just released its latest OTN and Packet Optical Hardware report, which tracks optical transport network (OTN) switching and transport equipment and packet-optical transport systems (P-OTS).

OTN AND P-OTS MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• In the 1st half of 2013 (1H13), worldwide OTN revenue (OTN transport and switching equipment) was up 23% from 1H12, to $3.9 billion
• OTN switching spending in North America more than tripled in 1H13, growing 80% from a year ago
• Fujitsu’s OTN hardware revenue market share spiked 152% in 1H13 from 1H12
• Globally, P-OTS equipment revenue is up 41% year-over-year in 1H13
• Incumbents Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Fujitsu, and Tellabs are the P-OTS market leaders, but new players BTI, Cyan, Ericsson, and Transmode are challenging with pure-play P-OTS platforms

ANALYST NOTE:

“OTN switching is experiencing breakout growth in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), where service providers are adopting integrated WDM and OTN switching and rolling out 100G coherent in the core,” notes Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.   Schmitt adds: “Meanwhile, P-OTS growth in the first half of 2013 was healthy as a result of tier-1 carriers ramping spending versus 2012. We’re seeing some of the SONET/SDH spending that went away come back in the form of increased packet-optical activity.”

Infonetics’ biannual OTN and packet optical report provides worldwide and regional market size, vendor market share, forecasts through 2017 and analysis for OTN transport and switching equipment and P-OTS metro edge and metro regional hardware, including port revenue forecasts by type and speed. Vendors tracked: Adtran, Adva, Alcatel Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, Cyan, ECI, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, NEC, NSN, Tellabs, Transmode, ZTE, and others. 

To buy the report, contact Infonetics: http://www.infonetics.com/contact.asp

Infonetics Research Brief: Optical

Week of October 14–18

Data highlighted in this research brief:          

• Coherent 100G WDM shipments tripling this year
• Operators name Ciena, ALU, Cisco and Huawei tops in P-OTS
• 100G network port revenue to surpass $6 billion by 2017
• North America OTN switching revenue more than triples in 1st half of 2013

 http://www.infonetics.com/newsletters/Optical-October-2013.html

Research & Markets: Optical Transport Network (OTN) Equipment – Global Strategic Business Report

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Optical Transport Network (OTN) Equipment in US$ Million by the following Product Segments: OTN Transport Equipment, and OTN Switching Equipment. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Latin America. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2009 through 2018.

The report profiles 47 companies including many key and niche players such as ADTRAN Inc., ADVA Optical Networking SE, Alcatel-Lucent, Aliathon Technology Ltd., Ciena Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., ECI Telecom Ltd., Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Huawei Technologies, Infinera Corporation, JDS Uniphase Corporation, NEC Corporation, Tellabs, Inc., and ZTE Corporation.
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lh99cn/optical_transport