virtualisation

Rakuten

Rakuten Mobile loss almost doubled in Q2

Operating loss incurred at Japan’s challenger operator increased by 85% in Q2 to reach $900 million, which the company attributed to aggressive investment in network rollout and rising roaming cost.

Rakuten to build mobile network for 1&1

Rakuten announced partnership with 1&1 to build “Europe’s first fully virtualised mobile network” for the German greenfield operator. The company also set up a separate unit to drive global expansion.

ETSI publishes new spec and reports on 5G tech

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI, released a new specification on packet formatting and forwarding and two reports on transport and network slicing respectively.

Ericsson to help Telstra introduce SDN, NFV

In a bid to support more cloud and digital services Telstra announced that it is working with telecoms equipment vendor Ericsson to introduce software defined networking and network function virtualisation into the telco’s network.

China Unicom, Huawei to work on cloud tech

The cloud platform division of China Unicom signed a strategic cooperation agreement on Software Defined Networking (SDN) innovation with local kit vendor Huawei this week.

Citrix appoints former CA Technologies exec to lead Northern Europe

Virtualisation incumbent Citrix has announced the appointment of former CA Technologies executive Jacqueline de Rojas as area vice president, Northern Europe. In her role she will help drive awareness of the company’s virtual and mobile offerings across the region.

VMware taps SoftBank, China Telecom for Asia-Pacific hybrid cloud expansion

Virtualisation incumbent VMware has inked partnerships with China Telecom and SoftBank in a move that will see both telcos host and help sell the company’s hybrid cloud service in the region. The move marks a significant expansion of the service as VMware looks to take its hybrid cloud offerings beyond North America and Europe.

FreeBSD founder quits Apple to focus on Big Data

Jordan Hubbard, co-founder of the popular FreeBSD operating system and Director of Unix Technology at Apple, has stepped down from his role at the Cupertino-based firm to become CTO of iXsystems. The Silicon Valley firm specialises in high availability servers and storage systems and has close ties with the FreeBSD community.

Everyone who’s anyone is doing SDN

Software Defined Networks (SDN) for telecom networks are the next big thing and MWC was not short of announcements and new marketing campaigns from big vendors. It comes at the right time too, when LTE and data awareness now require greater network flexibility, scalability and cost performance. The difference with earlier technologies is that IT vendors are now entering the telecoms market since SDN (or virtualization) is a concept widely used in the IT market.

ANALYSIS: Can commodity hardware cut it in SDN world?

Of late there seems to be an SDN (software defined networks) related announcement every few days, as vendors get their ducks in a row to pitch the next evolution of technology to carriers at MWC. But the concept demands a change in mindset for the vendors as much as it does the operators.

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