Low Latency News

Light Reading is proud to present “Meeting the Backhaul Challenge”

By the year 2012, 65% of all phones will be Smartphones, which creates a huge burden on the already saturated networks of the wireless providers. Backhaul becomes the bottleneck and consumers have little patience for poor service, ensure you manage your backhaul correctly to allow you to maintain customers and grow the base exponentially. CFN Services, RazorSight and Cisco have combined their expertise to provide you this webinar to help you navigate the backhaul challenges

Our speakers:

Patrick Donegan, Light Reading:

Donegan has more than 15 years of experience as a telecom market journalist, analyst, and strategist. His in-depth knowledge of wireless technology issues is critical to Heavy Reading’s expanding coverage in this area. Donegan authors Heavy Reading’s “Ethernet Backhaul Quarterly Market Tracker”. Donegan joined Heavy Reading after five years at Nortel Networks, where he was a senior manager of strategic planning for the company’s wireless business.

Robert Synnestvedt, Cisco Systems:

Synnestvedt is Cisco’s global marketing lead for Mobile Internet Transformation of RAN Backhaul. Since joining Cisco in 1998, Robert has successfully lead engineering, management, and marketing of the IP NGN evolution of broadband and mobile networks around the world

Mark Casey, CFN Services:

Casey is the President of CFN Services. Mark brings a successful track record of over 20 years in the communications industry. Since 2001 Mark has led CFN Services in helping wireless operators reduce transport costs while multiplying capacity to support broadband wireless data deployments. His current focus is specific to wireless backhaul and supporting 3G and 4G operators with the design and deployment of fiber and hybrid fiber-microwave backhaul networks that multiply capacity 10 fold while reducing lifecycle backhaul transport costs.

Charlie Thomas, RazorSight

Thomas joined Razorsight’s board in April 2004, and became CEO in February 2005. Charlie has led Razorsight to strong growth resulting in a #8 ranking on Deloitte’s Virginia Fast 50 and a #114 ranking on Deloitte’s National Fast 500 list. Charlie has co-founded, grown and sold 3 companies over the last decade, and he has negotiated over $1 Billion in capital financings for his companies. He has successfully closed over 15 M&A transactions.

What is Dim Fiber?
Optical fiber only partially lit in a fiber optic transmission system (FOTS) employing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).WDM technology can support a considerable number of wavelengths running simultaneously over a single optical fiber within a cable comprising perhaps a great number of fibers. A dim fiber is one over which not all available wavelengths have been lit and which, therefore, has excess capacity.

Why Dim Fiber?

A dim Fiber customer gets assigned a wavelength in a fiber span that provides flexibility and performance similar to dark fiber with the following benefits:

• Use of fiber span not limited to a specific bandwidth, just a specific wavelength, thus the customer has more control.
• Reduced equipment on the circuit reducing potential outages.
• Reduced equipment on the circuit reducing processing latency.
• Dark Fiber performance at a lower cost.
• Dark Fiber performance with a variety of contract terms closer to customer experience with lit services.

Why CFN Services Dim Fiber Solutions?

• With CFN Services as your partner on your dim fiber plans – CFN will manage and monitor the health of the fiber span via other circuits running on the same fiber span.

• CFN takes away the hassle and worry of managing an Outside Plant Network such as relocations, construction, outages, etc. by managing the full solution so as a customer you get only the benefit of dim without the down side.

• For longer spans, CFN can provide mid-span regeneration reducing equipment, new collocations and operational cost and complexity for the customer.

Contact CFN Services to see if Dim Fiber is the solution for you: Contact CFN Now

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By now there’s no doubt about it: mobile operators need to get their backhaul networks in condition to meet the burgeoning market for anytime, anywhere data access. Backhaul, once considered the humdrum side of an operator’s network, has become the topic du jour now that the mobile phone customershave shifted to smartphones and are taking advantage of data-hungry services in a big way. Earlier this month, AT&T reported that its wireless data traffic has grown more than 5,000 percent over the past three years, largely due to smartphones, which are used by about 40 percent of its post-paid customer base. All operators have to contend with this growth, and quickly: smartphones should represent the vast majority (65%) of phones sold in the country by 2012, according to Creative Strategies, an analyst firm. Operators are taking steps to prepare their networks to meet the expected demand, and the process of identifying specific backhaul needs and configuring the best solutions will force companies to bring the backhaul problem to the forefront of their infrastructure and business planning. This is a closer look at the available options and considerations operators must keep in mind as they prepare to build out this part of their networks.

It’s too soon to say how well the first broadband stimulus fund awards will represent the awards that follow (they represent less than 10% of the first-round funds, and the rules may change for the second round), but given how publicly the White House touted these first picks, it would seem they’re intended to be exemplary, to some degree, of what the administration wants in an applicant.

Click here for the top 5 stimulus winner observations

Globally, mobile video traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing by 66 percent between 2008 and 2013. The wireless data market will grow at a rate of 30 percent year over year. This is taxing the mobile operators who need to support such exponential traffic increases. The key to the wireless vendor success will be their mobile backhaul strategy, leveraging the ability to get affordable fiber to wireless sites. To support this effort CFN Services, the leader in mobile backhaul planning and optimization, introduces FiberSource® Access™; monthly access to the most powerful mobile backhaul optimization knowledge based tool.

What is FiberSource?
FiberSource® is the industry’s best and most comprehensive telecom infrastructure knowledge-base tool. For emerging wireless data and WiMax providers, FiberSource® Access speeds wireless distribution and hub site planning with an optimal mix of wireless and wireline backhaul transport by leveraging high capacity wireless hub sites served with fiber facilities.

FiberSource Attributes:
o Access to 550 Global Carrier Fiber Networks
o 350,000+ miles of fiber routes
o Longhaul and Metro Networks covering 100’s of metropolitan market areas
o Access to 25,000 Data Centers and Lit Buildings
o Fiber Proximity data on more then 200,000 wireless sites
o 80,000 Tower and Rooftop Collocations Sites
o Visibility into existing Fiber served Sites
o Details of the wireless and wireline carriers that serve each site or collocate in the facility
o Central office (CO) location and wire center information across the US covering 20,000+ LEC COs
o Fiber conduit information

What is the Value?
o Shorten design process – locate ideal fiber wireless site in hours not days
o Shortens time to implementation – FiberSource does the heavy lifting and first level research.
o Allows visibility to all available options – providing the ability to make informed decisions that maximize success
o Provides a vehicle to reduce transport costs while growing into new markets or penetrating deeper into existing markets

Herndon, VA August 31, 2009 – CFN Services, in support of the Yankee Group 4G World, is sponsoring the Mobile Backhaul Summit at 4G World. The summit will be held September 15, 2009 3:30 – 4:40 at McCormick Place, Chicago. There is still time to register for this event.  Contact CFN Services 703-788-6633 – backhaul@cfnservices.com for more information. We have a very limited amount of discounted passes left – contact CFN Today

21-May
Focus: 4G
Backhaul the Lifeline to 4G
Jennifer Pigg, VP, Enabling Technologies, Yankee Group

Yankee Group research shows that 50% of mobile network failures today can be traced back to problems in the backhaul.  That’s today – mostly voice, little data, almost no video on the mobile network.  Backhaul is not only a bottleneck, it’s a kluge bottleneck.  Service providers, unwilling to put their voice traffic at risk are leaving it on expensive TDM backhaul solutions and offloading data traffic to a parallel packet network.  In this session, we look at today’s dominant backhaul solutions and explain how the service providers will eat up CAPEX dollars and bleed profits if they do not move to more efficient solutions.  We also handicap the solutions available according to how stable we believe the solutions to be in terms of cost, performance, and management, particularly in terms of QoS and SLAs.

Sponsored by, CFN Services

Why WiMAX?

Thanks to iPhone, Android and the carriers; AT&T and TMobile, it is clear that 3G is a new standard for the digital phone consumers. They are buying up the phones and increasing their services from their wireless provider. But are they frustrated, the phone is so robust but can the backend support the front-end? Do the carriers have the bandwidth required to meet the needs of multimedia applications on the go – such a video conferencing from the wireless device. That is where 4G comes into play – the most exciting aspect of the 4G phones is the download speed – expected to be 100 Mbps – and its equally awesome 50 Mbps upload speed.

Some companies such as Sprint are skipping the 3G world and hyper speeding right into 4G WiMax. The good news for Sprint is consumers have proven they will pay for the speed and quality of a good network with a phone with applications that meet their daily needs. The frustration of the lack of speed for downloads and video will naturally move the consumer to the desire for the 4G networks and they will incrementally pay more for that service.

One thing is for sure, Carriers are investing a lot of resources into their WiMax 4G networks. According to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), carriers in the United States are expected to spend $4.4 billion on WiMAX infrastructure equipment in 2008. Considering that WiMAX is only one potential 4G standard, industry watchers are expecting carriers to drop a lot of dough on 4G gear.

How do the wireless providers invest in new networks during a downturn in the economy and uncertain futures? They need to find ways to be more efficient then they have ever been. They need to work with partners that will ensure they are building in the most cost effective matter and not just sole sourcing with a single vendor. They need to ensure that their networks are standing up to the SLSs in place and are providing the throughput they are paying for. The carriers need to look for partners such as CFN Services

CFN Services is not a fiber company, we acquire fiber from the most efficient and cost effective way – when it makes sense we are able to lay new fiber and complete the installation from end to end. CFN Services is able to take the day-to-day management of the build out away from the carrier and allow the carrier to spend their time on the overall build – out plans and benefits. CFN Services is able to provide a timely analysis of an area and provide the ideal bandwidth mix that is required to provide a robust WiMax platform that will maximize cost efficiencies without derogating any network quality. By working with multiple fiber companies CFN can piece together the highest quality of bandwidth and manage all the contracts and SLA’s for the carrier; while providing cost savings to the Service Provider. CFN supports the design, AAV support and TCO for a carrier. CFN also can implement and manage Fiber based MAN solutions in markets that the Service Provider is looking to have a WiMax presence. CFN Services is your partner for your mobile backhaul and new market expansions.

One a recent contract with a Service Provider, CFN Services analyzed 10,000 WiMax deployment sites to identify 3,000 sites that were proximate to fiber for use as backhaul hubs. Those 3,000 went into an RF design phase where a subset of 500 actual hub sites came back which we then designed physical fiber network to provide high capacity low cost backhaul. Because of this work, CFN Services
was able to save the provider over $615,000 for a 13-market installation.

Chicago, IL March 30, 2009 –4G World – a Transmedia and Yankee Group Conference, announce CFN Services as the lead sponsor for the 4G World Mobile Backhaul Summit. 4G World provides a roadmap for all types of operators planning their 4G technology deployment and business strategies, with a combination of world class keynotes, seminars and training and track sessions.CFN Services – Backhaul Summit Lead Sponsor 4G World 2009

Metro Ethernet Forum White Paper for Mobile Service Proviers to implement MEF Specifications. MEF has identified specific requirements for mobile backhaul applications and has developed the Mobile Backhaul Implementation Agreement. that advises service providers how to successfully and cost-effectively implement Carrier Ethernet for mobile backhaul.