Networking

Image: Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies and Marvell have launched a solution aimed to address current performance challenges of Open RAN deployment in virtualised distributed unit environments.Speaking with ZDNet, Dell Technologies Asia Pacific and Japan head of telecom Sam Saba explained the Open RAN Accelerator Card has been designed to bring the performance of traditional RAN solution to Open RAN.”[There’s] this gap of performance and energy consumption. Effectively, we believe now this card will bridge that performance,” he said.”The way we’re doing this is through what we call the layer 1 offload. With that, we’re looking at taking all that layer 1 processing out of the standard CPU that sits in the server, which occupies 60-70% of overall processing capacity … and putting it in a PCIe card in line into the virtual distributed unit close to the base station … in doing that we’re effectively relieving, or releasing, a lot of the capacity in the standard processing card to do more processing.”Saba added the card also features PTP syncing to enable various parts of a telco network to be synchronised, eliminating the need for additional modules to orchestrate the synchronisation. Additionally, Dell has introduced its Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation featuring Bare Metal Orchestrator modules designed to help telecommunications service providers (CSPs) integrate Dell’s hardware with cloud support software platforms, including RedHat, VMWare, and Wind River.Dell claims the Multi-Cloud Foundation is touted to help CSPs reduce operating expenses by 39% and improve total cost of ownership by 32%.

“[This is] primarily due to savings in time spent on testing and certification, manual processes, provisioning, integration, software updates, as well as planning and engineering. This where we see the primary source of reduction,” Saba said.To support Dell’s plan to set up a 5G Innovation Lab at its Round Rock headquarters in Texas, Dell has developed its OTEL solution integration platform to allow partners and operators to connect their own 5G lab with Dell’s.”We give them a lot more flexibility, rather than having to invest in different configurations in their own labs; we can do that for them, as we can give them a lot more flexibility to be able to test these different variants of solutions,” Saba said.Dell has also brought a new product called ProDeploy for NFVI to help accelerate the disaggregation of virtualised telecom networks. Further, to assist CSPs deliver enterprise services on 5G, the company has also launched the Dell Services Edge 1.2 to bring together edge compute resources with private wireless connectivity.”What we’re talking about here now is laying the groundwork for operators to be able to start to use the mobile network to deliver enterprise services,” Saba said. The tech giant first flagged its foray into the telecom space during Dell World in May, before it announced a slew of hardware and software to build out its cloud-native telecom ecosystem.According to Saba, these latest announcements is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to bolster its position in the global telecom sector.”We need to build up the capability … this is what we’re doing. This is why we’re bringing out all these solutions but also, we’ve been ramping up in the last year with more than 1,000 people, like myself, who have come from the telco industry,” he said.”We’re already engaged with some of the biggest aggregated network, so the likes of Vodafone in the UK … so we’re on track to bring out the performance and show proof of what we’re doing and that we’re very serious.” Related Coverage More

Image: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Among a bevy of telco results on Tuesday morning, the standouts were Superloop and Uniti Group seeing significant contributions from the pair’s recent acquisitions. For Superloop, it was the AU$100 million addition of Exetel that impacted its results, with revenue for the first-half to December 31 up 125% to AU$120 million with operating expenses increasing 84% to AU$30.5 million. This gave the telco an underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of AU$9.1 million, up 12%, but once AU$3.2 million in transaction costs from buying Exetel and selling its Hong Kong business and parts of its Singapore business as well as a AU$2.7 million EBITDA hit from those businesses were accounted for, the telco was left with statutory EBITDA of AU$3.2 million, a drop of 44%. For its bottom line, the telco closed its net loss by 28% to end at AU$18.5 million in the hole for the half. Superloop said its consumer broadband subscribers had more than tripled to 155,000 and revenue rocketed from AU$14.7 million to AU$59 million for the half, while business revenue grew 180% to AU$35.7 million and wholesale saw 13% growth to AU$18 million in revenue. “Fundamentally, Superloop now has a simpler, more focused business, and a greater strategic focus on growth. It is particularly pleasing that the growth across all segments demonstrates the true strength and diversification of the Superloop business model,” CEO Paul Tyler said. “Whilst we have seen some solid contribution of the Exetel network synergies to be realised from the acquisition during the first half, we are looking to a greater contribution in the second half.”

See also: How Vodafone Australia changed its 5G plans after the Huawei banFor Uniti Group, the results follow its purchases of Opticomm and Telstra Velocity, which it spent the past year integrating. The results were a 98% jump in revenue to AU$110 million, a 355% spike in EBITDA to AU$65.8 million, and an increase in net profit from AU$3.9 million to AU$29 million. “Well over 90% of our earnings are now generated from high margin, recurring, annuity revenues which are delivered predominantly on our owned super-fast FttP networks, and this ratio will continue to expand as our contracted FttP order book of nearly 300,000 premises deploys over the years ahead,” Uniti managing director and CEO Michael Simmons said. “With integration and simplification largely completed in 2021, Uniti is now primed for continued organic growth in greenfields and adjacent property markets and inorganic growth through asset acquisitions aligned to our core infrastructure business.” Elsewhere in the telco space, following its acquisition spree, Swoop saw revenue increase 62% to just shy of AU$24 million, and EBITDA almost tripled to AU$3.8 million, as it closed its net loss by 11% to posting being down by AU$2.86 million for the half to December 31. The company saw its connections number grow 47% to 37,500, consisting of 25,700 residential services, 5,750 business services, and a tripling in wholesale connections to 6,000. Continuing its streak of EBITDA growth, Macquarie Telecom saw a 4% increase in revenue to AU$149 million, an 11% increase in EBITDA to AU$40.5 million, and a 48% drop in net profit to AU$3.7 million that was due to increased capital expenditure. The telco recently said it would spend AU$78 million to build out its 32-megawatt Intellicentre 3 Super West facility. While MacTel’s cloud services and government, and data centre arms tracked as having 25% and 8.4% EBITDA growth over the past two years respectively, its telecom arm has been contracting at a rate of 3.4% over the past three years. “Telecom revenue and EBITDA will continue to be affected by COVID lockdowns, which is partially offset by demand for new technologies including SD-WAN,” the company said. Related Coverage More

Image: Chorus
Chorus had a solid first half to the 2022 financial year, with profit, revenue, and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation) seeing increases across the board. Net profit after tax rose 55% year-on-year to NZ$42 million, operating revenue increased by NZ$6 million to NZ$483 million, while EBITDA jumped from NZ$326 million to NZ$347 million. As Chorus continues transitioning away from copper-based services, fibre broadband once again took up a larger share of the telco’s total revenue when compared to years prior by chipping in NZ$267 million. Fibre broadband now accounts for 55% of the telco’s revenue, an increase of 7 percentage points compared to the same period in the year prior. After fibre broadband, copper-based broadband contributed NZ$80 million, while fibre premium, copper-based voice, and field services all provided around NZ$30 million in revenue for the half year.Providing an update on the telco’s Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) rollout, Chorus CEO JB Rousselot said his telco only has to connect 30,000 more premises to complete the fibre network. So far, 1.3 million premises are eligible for UFB, with 67% of those premises — 918,000 — connected to the network as of the end of 2021. The 67% connectivity rate is a 2 percentage point increase since June, which amounted to 47,000 new fibre broadband connections in that six-month period. “The continued growth in fibre demand is testament to the reliability fibre broadband is delivering through the challenges of the ongoing COVID pandemic,” Rousselot said.

For the rest of the 2022 financial year, Chorus has also raised its EBITDA guidance to NZ$665-685 million due to a $9 million holiday pay provision that was released in December. The New Zealand telco added its expected capital expenditure range for the remainder of the year has dropped from NZ$550-590 million to NZ$520-560 million.Beyond Chorus, other telecommunications movements across the Australia-New Zealand region include Field Solutions Holdings announcing it will use Nokia and Mavenir equipment for its new network build. The rural telecommunications provider is currently in the process of delivering 19 new place-based networks across Australia. These networks, comprising over 100 sites, will be 4G and 5G capable, and are set to be delivered by the 2024 financial year.Digital services provider Webcentral, meanwhile, reported its half-year loss was cut by almost AU$9 million to AU$2.3 million. Inching closer to being in the black, the company attributed the improved performance to revenue for the six months to December 2021 increasing by 25% to AU$48 million.In light of the increased revenue, provided by higher cloud and domains demand, Webcentral said its EBITDA of the half of AU$7.1 million outperformed the guidance it set out last year.It wasn’t all good news for WebCentral, as hardware sales and service delivery decreased by almost 50% year-on-year during the first half of FY22 due to COVID-19. The company said it expected to bounce back in this area for the second half as restrictions continue to ease across Australia.RELATED COVERAGE More

Image: Aussie Broadband
Aussie Broadband has reported its revenue for the first half of FY22 continued the company’s upward trajectory, rising by almost 50% year-on-year to AU$229 million. The sharp revenue increase led to Aussie Broadband seeing an after-tax profit of AU$1.39 million, with the company’s revenue once again closing the gap on its expenses. By comparison, the company’s first-half performance in the previous financial year culminated in an almost AU$10.5 million loss. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) for the half year was AU$9.1 million, an increase of 7% compared to the same period a year ago.On the connections front, the company said it had just shy of 495,000 broadband connections and 32,000 mobile connections at the end of 2021, representing 45% and 70% year-on-year jumps, respectively. The broadband connections comprised of 422,034 residential connections, 45,483 business connections, and 27,286 wholesale connections.The company’s migration of white label services also began during the first half of FY22, with 8,725 services being transferred during the period. The remainder of the services are expected to be migrated by the end of March, Aussie Broadband said. Aussie Broadband added its market share for NBN broadband, excluding satellite, reached 5.66% at the end of 2021. Six months prior, the company’s NBN market share had sat at 4.9%.With the growth in connections, Aussie Broadband also increased its staff count, which rose 29% year-on-year to 733.

“It’s been another year of growth for Aussie, and I am extremely proud of the work the whole team has put in to create some great half-year results,” said Phil Britt, Aussie managing director. Looking ahead to the remainder of the financial year, Britt said he expected another 85,000 to 95,000 broadband connections to be added to its customer base, and full-year EBITDA to be in the range of AU$27-30 million. Britt also provided an update on its pending acquisition of Over the Wire, saying the deal was on track to be completed next month following Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Federal Court approval.  Related Coverage More

Netgear’s Orbi Wi-Fi 6E

, aka AXE11000 or RBKE963, mesh Wi-Fi router hardware is expensive with a capital E. It currently costs a cool $1,500 for the router and its two satellites. But, for that money, you’ll get the fastest Wi-Fi networking you’ve ever seen. How fast is it? I used the Ixia’s IxChariot networking benchmark and my

Galaxy S21 Ultra smartphone

to measure its throughput and it beat every other Wi-Fi network I’ve ever tested. And, friends, I’ve tested a lot of network gear in my day.For example, for years now Wi-Fi router companies have been claiming they could break the 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) barrier. Spoiler alert: None of them could. Until now. This new model Orbi cracked the speed barrier at 20-feet with traffic just over 1 Gbps. Color me impressed.

LikeGreat speedGreat rangeEasy setup

Don’t LikeHigh costBarebones software

Of course, at further distances, its speed dropped. But even at 50 to 150 feet I still saw speeds in the 200 Megabit per second (Mbps) to 100 Mbps range. That’s still darn good. Better still, I was seeing these speeds, not across empty space but through the walls and floors of my two building home: A century-old, two-story historic house with thick Wi-Fi unfriendly walls and a brand two-story new office and studio. Together they cover approximately 4,000 square feet and I got good connections from one end of my property to the other. Good luck getting that to work with other Wi-Fi hardware.In addition, my home/office has dozens of computers, half-a-dozen tablets, three smart TVs, and a host of other networked connections. In short, my network gets a real workout. And, the Orbi kept it all running without a moment of trouble. Netgear claims theAXE11000 can cover up to 9,000 square feet and connect up to 250 devices. I see no reason to doubt their claims.

To really get the most from the Orbi AXE11000, though, you need to have the internet bandwidth to feed its need for speed. With a 1 Gbps internet feeding a 10 Gbps wired network, I’ve got that. But, if all you have is say a 300 Mbps connection to the world and older hardware, you’ll be wasting your money with the Orbi.For example, the reason I finally and consistently got a Gigabit of speed from my Wi-Fi is I was able to use the AXE11000’s support for the new short-range 6GHz 6E band.  But, if your equipment can’t support 6E, say with an

Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 (Gig+) adapter

, you’ll never see 6E speed. And there are few computers and smartphones which currently support it. If you have a great internet connection, you may want to pay the money to upgrade your PCs and other gear to 6E. For instance, 6E can deliver sub-five-millisecond latency. It’s a gamer’s dream come true. But, even without 6E compliant hardware, the AXE11000 still delivers the bandwidth you crave. That’s because, as Netgear aptly puts it, the world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi mesh router. Besides the commonplace 2.4 and 5GHz bands we all know and use, it comes with a second 5GHz band for backhaul transmissions, and 6E’s new 6GHz band. That backhaul wireless connection is great for delivering 4K video, for example, to otherwise distant Roku streaming devices and the like. Or, if you have a small business you’ll appreciate that it can support three separate Wi-Fi networks: A 2.4-GHz network, a 5-GHz network, and the new 6-GHz network. A backhaul network is also present and used exclusively for connecting with the satellite units. Making all this work, each separate Wi-Fi unit comes with a dozen amplified antennas for the best possible signal. This is all powered by Qualcomm’s best-of-breed Networking Pro 1610 chipset and a 2.2GHz ARM quad-core processor. Each unit also comes with a GB of RAM and 512MBs of storage for firmware, software, and settings. Combine all this with 802.11ax networking and 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and you get both great speed and the invisible automatic ability to beamform your signals to make the best possible connection with your hardware. This means you can have up to 16 independent streams of data for the best possible, interruption-less connections. For when I really need speed, I still use wired Ethernet and the AXE11000 delivers here as well. Each device includes a 2.5Gbps LAN port with three additional gigabit Ethernet jacks. In addition, the router’s WAN port supports incoming speeds of up to 10Gbps. Too fast to ever be useful? Think again, we’ll have 10Gbps Internet soon enough.  So, is the AXE11000 for everyone? Heck, no! It’s too expensive and overkill for most users. But, if you’re running a small business, are a serious gamer, or, someone like me, who really can use all the network speed and range he can get, then the AXE11000 is a great investment. Related Stories: More

Image: Cole Bennetts/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Australia’s competition watchdog chair Rod Sims has given his two cents on how the NBN should approach recovering its costs, saying that the NBN should be viewed as a sunk cost and decisions should flow from that starting point. “Now that [the NBN’s] built, I think it’s appropriate to treat its cost as sunk and therefore, what matters for Australia is getting the best use out of the NBN,” Sims told Senate Estimates yesterday.The ACCC chair was speaking to the NBN’s efforts to recoup costs, wherein the company responsible for running the network has previously said it needs to eventually have an average revenue per user of AU$51 to avoid a potential write-down. In NBN’s FY22 first-half results posted last week, the company said its average revenue per user finally shifted from AU$45 to AU$46.Debtwise, as of the end of 2021, NBN has AU$17.3 billion in private debt. It also has a AU$19.5 billion loan from the federal government, with AU$7.5 billion of that amount still outstanding.”Obviously, NBN need enough cash going forward to cover their investment, [it] would be absurd not to do that. But I wouldn’t be personally hung up on getting a commercial return on every last dollar spent because I think that’s just bad economics. What’s the best use we can make of the NBN should drive it provided they’ve got enough money to do all the things they have to do,” Sims said.In providing that view, Sims said the NBN should prioritise generating enough revenue so it can continue upgrading and investing into the network to meet future demand rather than prioritising making the utmost commercial returns.

During Senate estimates, Sims also maintained the ACCC’s view that the 25-50Mbps down and 5-20Mbps up Fixed Wireless Plus plan is sufficient for most families if their needs are working from home and using streaming services at the same time. In recent releases of statistics on fixed wireless performance by the ACCC, those on the supposed 25-50Mbps down and 5-20Mbps up Fixed Wireless Plus plan have been shown to be barely able to crack the 6Mbps mark for upload speeds, and it has been that way for some time.The Regional Telecommunications Review, published on Monday, backed ACCC’s stance that the plan was sufficient. The review noted, however, that the 6Mbps target and other speed targets needed to be significantly strengthened to meet continual demand increases and network growth.”This is insufficient for many of the activities higher-bandwidth users are looking to use the service for and inconsistent with the upload speeds available to fixed line consumers,” the review said.When it fronted Senate estimates earlier in the week, NBN said it would be formally lodging its Special Access Undertaking variation with the ACCC in the coming weeks.”I would expect the ACCC will then consult on that variation. As I understand, it is required by legislation actually, and I would expect them, therefore, to issue a consultation paper and provide a timeline for the process,” NBN CEO Stephen Rue said on Tuesday night.RELATED COVERAGE More

Japanese telecom giant KDDI said on Friday it has deployed the world’s first commercial 5G standalone open radio access network (Open RAN) in Japan.

The network, now available in the city of Kawasaki at Kanagawa Prefecture, is powered by Samsung’s virtualised central units and virtualised distributed units as well as Fujitsu’s massive MIMO radio units. Samsung’s baseband and Fujitsu’s massive MIMO radio units are connected with an open interface, the telecom giant said. The site at Kawaski also has network slicing and multi-access edge computing capabilities, which will offer higher speeds and lower latency for mobile users, the company said. KDDI said the use of virtualisation and Open RAN technologies, which use software that can operate on commercial off-the-shelf servers to replace previously hardware elements, will bring flexibility and agility to its network with deployment being more cost-effective. The launch of the network will also allow the company to accelerate deployment of Open RAN across Japan, including in rural areas, which it will continue to do with Samsung and Fujitsu throughout 2022, the teleco said. Prior to Samsung becoming the 5G network equipment supplier for KDDI, the pair had already been collaborating on related technologies since 2017. Last year, the South Korean tech giant also announced it was supplying its 5G kit to NTT Docomo, Japan’s largest telco.

Samsung, a vocal supporter of vRAN and Open RAN technologies, has also provided its vRAN solutions in the US and the UK for Open RAN rollouts there. Related Coverage More

Networking giant Cisco Systems announced its FY22 Q2 numbers on Wednesday. ZDNet summarized the results in this post, so I won’t go into detail on the numbers. At a high level, the company put up a modest beat, which is impressive given the unprecedented supply-chain constraints that are playing havoc with infrastructure vendors.

Quarterly revenue and non-GAAP EPS were $56 million and $0.03 ahead of street expectations respectively. The $12.7 billion in revenue represents 6.4% year-over-year growth, which is impressive for a $50 billion annual-run-rate company. While the financials give the industry a sense that demand for Cisco is strong, it’s worth looking behind the numbers to get a better picture of where Cisco’s business is and where it’s going.  Demand for company’s products never stronger The numbers show 6.5% year-over-year growth, but that was tempered by the macro supply chain issues. Total product order growth for the quarter was up 33% YoY, making it the third consecutive quarter this metric has topped 30%. Looking at segments, enterprise orders grew 37%, its strongest number in a dozen years. Service providers and webscale grew 42% and 70%, respectively. These are notable because Cisco has struggled in these segments historically, but that ship seems to have turned on the strength of a refreshed ASR 9K and Catalyst 8K portfolios. These include the acquisition of Acacia. Commercial business (SMB) jumped 34% and public sector 22%. This order growth has resulted in an RPO growing (remaining performance obligation) 8.5% to $30.5 billion, with 53% to be recognized in the next 12 months. Also, Cisco reported its backlog is now over $14 billion, which oddly enough includes $2 billion in software backlog, which is unusual but occurs due to the tie to hardware. CEO Chuck Robbins addressed the backlog on the earnings call and noted that supply issues have not gotten worse but also have not improved. The shift to subscription and inventory backlog has put Cisco in a comfortable, predictable position with demand not seen in more than a decade. AA A massive software company Under Robbins, Cisco has been aggressive in its transition to subscription software. This wasn’t an easy thing to do for a company whose value is mostly tied up in hardware. Total software revenue is now $3.8 billion, 80% of which comes via subscription. That number annualizes to more than $15 billion in software, making it a top-5 software company. While many Cisco products are still delivered as hardware, much of the value is now through software. This is an important pivot because it enables the company to innovate new features its customers can use, faster than with a hardware-only model.

Consider how Teslas, iPhones, and other consumer devices are hardware devices that deliver value through software updates. All of Cisco’s newer hardware products work this way. Customers buy the hardware but also purchase a software subscription. This ensures they can run the latest and greatest features without going through a costly hardware upgrade. The network is not a commodity 

Many industry watchers have been calling for the network to be commoditized for the better part of two decades. The bearish outlook on Cisco was that network features were largely becoming standardized, leaving no room for differentiation and causing the bottom to fall out of the industry. Huawei was going to do this to Cisco, the same way software-defined networking was going to do it to white boxes. These trends have come and gone, yet Cisco’s gross margins remain in the mid-60% range, where it has historically been. In technology, it’s always been my belief that no market is a commodity if the vendor can create differentiation. People pay thousands for a MacBook even though Chromebooks are just a few hundred dollars. VMware maintains healthy margins for virtualization despite a strong push from Microsoft. Cisco’s differentiation in networking has been and continues to be driven via its custom silicon. Most network vendors use merchant silicon from vendors such as Broadcom, but Cisco has largely eschewed that model. It has built its hardware, allowing it to often get a first-mover advantage with new features and performance numbers. From an enterprise perspective, the shift to hybrid work has shone a new light on the network, which rarely earned any C-level attention previously. In a recent ZK Research study, a little over 60% of business leaders stated that the network has grown in business value since the pandemic began. Most enabling technologies for digital initiatives, such as cloud, mobile, and IoT are network-centric, making the choice of network vendor a critical one for businesses. With that being said, the competitive landscape in this area is much tougher for Cisco. Arista, HPE, VMware, Juniper, and Extreme Networks are all strong companies. Also, AWS, GCP, and Azure eyeing network services and 5G could shift things to telcos, so it will be interesting to see if Cisco can continue to stay at the front of the innovation train. Security, collaboration in transition While the network business remains robust at Cisco, its security and collaboration businesses are currently in the midst of transitions. Security showed growth of 7%, which is well behind the growth of companies like Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Zscaler. However, Cisco’s security growth number is a mix of declining on-premises hardware and cloud-delivered security centered in its Duo product. Over time, the hardware business will level out and security growth should jump back up to the teens, but right now the legacy products are acting as a drag on the business.Similarly, Cisco’s collaboration products experienced a decline of 9%. I know the core Webex business is growing, but Cisco has a huge base of customers still using on-premises VoIP, Jabber, and Telepresence. Also, many of Cisco’s newer collaboration endpoints were bitten by supply chain issues, limiting availability. Again, over time I expect to see Cisco migrate customers over to Webex and, as this happens, collaboration should return to growth.

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