What’s up with… Verizon, HPE, Mavenir & Turkcell

• Verizon boasts 5G first, new renewable energy deals
• HPE turns in better-than-expected numbers
• Mavenir and Turkcell make open RAN progress

Verizon’s 5G virtualization and sustainability efforts, HPE’s numbers and an open RAN development at Turkcell are at the front of this orderly queue of industry news items.

Verizon, with the help of Samsung, Intel and Wind River, has completed the first end-to-end fully virtualized 5G data session in the US, noting this has been made possible following its move to deploy edge compute resources for developers with AWS Wavelength at Verizon’s 5G Edge locations in Boston and the Bay Area. “Completing this call is the culmination of an enormous amount of work, collaboration and coordination that is worthy of celebration,” stated Wind River CEO Kevin Dallas in comments emailed to TelecomTV. “Global operators looking to power 5G vRAN, mobile edge computing (MEC), or a host of industrial edge applications, will inevitably bring virtualization to the edge of their networks. This is no easy task. It is not as simple as retrofitting virtualization infrastructure used in the data center. The network operator needs to deliver the key 5G requirements which include ultra-low latency, high availability, scalability, and security, in a cost-effective way, across a dynamic landscape with multiple remote nodes in order to enable new 5G services,” he added. 

Still with Verizon, the US operator has entered into four more long-term renewable energy purchase agreements (REPAs) totalling more than 450 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy capacity as part of its commitment to be carbon neutral in its operations (scope 1 and 2) by 2035. These agreements, which are virtual power purchase agreements, will help finance the re-powering of wind energy facilities and the construction of new solar facilities. For the full details, see this announcement.

HPE reported better than expected fiscal third quarter financials, with revenues up 13% sequentially, thanks in part to the recapture of some of the business backlog that built up in the prior quarter, but down by 4% year-on-year to $6.8 billion. Operating profit was up 33% sequentially to $484 million but down 32% year-on-year. “Our Q3 results are marked by strong execution and sequential growth,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “We significantly improved operational and supply chain execution and advanced our innovation agenda with the introduction of HPE GreenLake cloud services solutions, our new HPE Ezmeral software portfolio, and our planned acquisition of SD-WAN leader Silver Peak.” The news gave HPE’s stock a 7.2% lift in early trading to $10.00. 

Turkcell has been making headway with its cloud native open RAN efforts, working with Mavenir to complete what the partners claim to be the world’s first virtualized open RAN call using “fully containerized” elements deployed to O-RAN Split 7.2 architecture specifications. The full details, including an array of acronyms, can be found right here. 

The FCC has added $4.585 billion to US government coffers with the completion of the 3.5 GHz spectrum auction (Auction 105) designed to help address the lack of available mid-range spectrum for the 5G effort. Another mid-band spectrum auction kicks off on December 8. For the full details, see this FCC announcement.

Cisco is to acquire privately-held BabbleLabs for an undisclosed sum. Cisco says BabbleLabs’ noise removal and speech enhancement technology furthers its “commitment to deliver an exceptional video meeting experience from anywhere and on any device through the Webex application.”

EdgeMicro is building five new micro data centers across the US, with construction already underway in Cleveland, Indianapolis, Memphis, Houston, and Pittsburgh. See this announcement for the details.

It’s being reported that the Indian government has “quietly” let it be known that Huawei is to be excluded from supplying India’s telecoms infrastructure.  There has been no official announcement. Some observers think the move (or rumoured move) may be linked to the China/India border dispute.

- The staff, TelecomTV