What’s up with… Ciena, Nvidia & Sakana AI, AT&T

• Ciena set to turn a corner in its fiscal Q4
• Nvidia invests in Japanese AI startup
• CWA union walks out of strike mediation talks with AT&T

In today’s industry news roundup: Ciena sees improving market conditions and expects its fiscal fourth-quarter sales to top $1bn; AI chip giant Nvidia is one of a number of big name investors in Sakana AI; a lengthy period of industrial action looms for AT&T; and more!

Optical networking equipment giant Ciena has reported revenues for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on 27 July, of $942.3m, down by 11.8% year on year, and operating profit of $26.7m, down 66%, as the vendor market continues to be hampered by reduced telco capex budgets. But Ciena’s CEO believes the market is turning a corner and that investments will start to pick up from hereon in, especially in the North American market that accounts for about three-quarters of Ciena’s business. “We delivered strong results for the fiscal third quarter that reflect growing momentum with cloud providers and continued gradual recovery with service providers,” noted Smith. “With leading innovation that is well-aligned with our customers’ focus on building cloud and AI-capable infrastructures, we are well positioned to continue to gain share and deliver profitable growth,” he added. With some semblance of recovery underway, Ciena expects its fiscal fourth-quarter revenues to be between $1.06bn and $1.14bn and for full year revenues to be around $4bn, which is what the vendor had originally forecast.   

Nvidia is one of the investors in Japanese AI startup Sakana AI, which has just revealed a funding round of $100m. “We are thrilled to announce our Series A funding round, where we are proud to raise over $100m from key investors and partners who believe in our mission. Our Series A round is led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures and Lux Capital, with participation from Nvidia. We are also excited to announce a new collaboration with Nvidia around research, infrastructure and AI community building in Japan,” the company noted in this blog. “Countries are embracing sovereign AI to capture and codify their data, culture and language through their own unique large language models,” stated Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “The team at Sakana AI is helping spur the democratisation of AI in Japan by developing cutting-edge foundation models to automate and speed up scientific discovery with Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform,” he added. 

But for once it’s not all good news for Nvidia… The AI chip giant saw its share price slump by about 10% following news that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued the vendor with a subpoena as part of its probe into the company’s potentially anticompetitive practices, reports Reuters. The DoJ had previously sent  questionnaires to Nvidia but has now issued legally binding requests for information. 

AT&T could face an extended period of strike disruption after the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union told the telco and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) that it is “no longer interested in the mediation process” because of “AT&T’s disingenuous use of the mediation process to stall negotiations.” According to the union, which called for a walkout on 10 August following the dismissal of one of its members and now has more than 17,000 of its members on strike in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, it had been “optimistic that AT&T’s suggestion that we enter mediation with the FMCS meant that the company was finally ready to bargain in good faith. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Instead, the company was using the mediation process as another delaying tactic… We appreciate the mediator’s efforts. Our message to AT&T is: No more excuses. It’s time to get serious about bargaining so we can get back to work serving our customers.” According to the union, the members currently on strike are “technicians, customer service representatives, and others who install, maintain, and support AT&T’s residential and business wireline telecommunications network” who have taken industrial action “in response to AT&T’s failure to bargain in good faith”. It added: “As a result of the strike, AT&T is using undertrained managers and contractors to perform maintenance and repairs. As a result, AT&T customers have experienced widespread outages and long wait times for repairs and service.” AT&T responded to the CWA’s decision to exit the mediation process by stating that the CWA’s move was “unexpected, since withdrawing from mediation seems inconsistent with the union’s allegation of unfair labour practices” and “goes against their stated intention to bargain toward a mutually agreeable resolution.” AT&T added that it is “focused on reaching a fair and competitive agreement that benefits our hard-working employees as quickly as possible, and this won’t change.”

Low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite hopeful AST SpaceMobile is set to launch its first commercial satellites, called BlueBirds, into orbit “on or after September 12,” the company announced early on Wednesday. The five BlueBirds are designed to enable satellite-to-smartphone connectivity, “each featuring the largest ever commercial communications arrays to be deployed in low earth orbit.” The company explained: “This large array of antennas is designed to reach standard smartphones directly at cellular broadband speeds for voice, data and video and other non-communications government applications. After launch, the BlueBird satellites are planned to offer non-continuous cellular broadband service across the US and in select markets globally. This initial service, based on premium low-band spectrum, is planned to support beta test users for AT&T and Verizon, and will target approximately 100% nationwide coverage from space with over 5,600 coverage cells in the US.” AT&T and Verizon will be hoping the launch goes well as, currently, they are set to be beaten by T-Mobile US, which has teamed up with Elon Musk’s Starlink, in the race to be the first to offer satellite-to-smartphone services in the US. 

SK Telecom, in collaboration with its fixed access network subsidiary SK Broadband, has deployed an 800 GBit/s optical transport link over a distance of 1,200km between the South Korean cities of Seoul and Busan using next-generation reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) systems and deployed a 1.2 Tbit/s network at its facilities in Incheon, the telco noted in this announcement (in Korean). SK Telecom added that it has been installing next-gen ROADM equipment “in a mesh-like manner in major cities across the country” and plans to launch a nationwide 800 Gbit/s network in the future. 

– The staff, TelecomTV