• Ciena knocks it out the park in Q2
• Amazon linked to stake in Bharti Airtel
• Is PCCW Global up for sale?

Ongoing success for Ciena and further speculation about investments in India’s mobile operator community lead the charge in this race to the news finishing line.

• Ciena exceeded expectations by reporting a 3.4% year-on-year increase in its fiscal second quarter revenues to $894.1 million and an adjusted operating margin of 17.9%, up from 12.7% a year earlier. Its Blue Planet division, which develops orchestration and automation software for network operators, reported a 20% increase in revenues to $15 million. The company noted that 42.2% of its revenues came from non-telco customers, including 24.1% from webscale companies and 9.5% from cable operators. “Our strategy, centered around innovation, diversification and global scale, has resulted in a resilient business capable of navigating challenging times and delivering strong shareholder value over the long-term,” noted CEO Gary Smith (pictured above). As the chart below shows, all its metrics are heading in the right direction. 

• Amazon is reportedly in talks to take a 5% stake in Indian operator Bharti Airtel for $2 billion, according to Reuters. Bharti Airtel is India’s third largest mobile operator, with 328 million customers at the end of January, giving it a 28.4% market share according to regulator TRAI. Investing in India’s mobile networks is all the rage, it seems, as Jio Platforms (which controls Reliance Jio) has taken on multiple investors lately, including Facebook, while Google is reportedly interested in acquiring a stake in Vodafone Idea. 
• International carrier PCCW Global could be put up for sale with a price tag of $1 billion, according to Hong Kong media reports.
• The SD-WAN market grew a further 24% year-on-year during the first quarter of this year, but that was well short of the 64% annual growth seen in 2019, according to Dell’Oro. The top five SD-WAN vendors are Cisco, VMware, Silver Peak, Versa, and Fortinet, according to the research house.
• euNetworks, which owns and operates fiber networks in 17 cities and also operates a long-haul network that spans 15 countries, has secured an additional €250 million of capital from the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario and Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, which holds a majority stake in the network operator.
• Colt says its Ethernet VPN service has been expanded to offer multipoint “any-to-any connectivity globally,” and can now offer bandwidth of up to 40 Gbit/s. 
• The UK government is reportedly sticking its unqualified oar into the UK’s 5G equipment supply chain by holding talks with NEC and Samsung, according to Bloomberg. Such talks are linked to the ongoing plans to oust Huawei from the UK’s next generation networks. Is it madness to suggest that maybe such discussions are best left to the network operators? 
• Meanwhile, Reuters has reported how Huawei tried to cover up its links to Skycom Tech, which had been seeking to sell prohibited US technology to Iran. 
• Will the snooping ever end? Google is tracking users’ private browsing, activity that has led to a massive, $5 billion class action suit, reported ZDnet.
• Having already shaken up the mobile market in Italy, Iliad is now preparing to do the same in the fixed broadband services market via an agreement with Open Fiber, the Italian wholesale fibre access network operator, according to Reuters.
• ServiceNow has announced two new products for the telecoms sector – Telecommunications Service Management and Telecommunications Network Performance Management – that aim to “provide new workflows that connect customer service and network operations, including Proactive Customer Care and Automated Service Assurance.” 
• Conferencing platform Zoom Video Communications has reported a 169% year-on-year increase in fiscal first quarter revenues to $328.2 million. In the current quarter, sales are expected to be at around $500 million. For all the details, see this press release. Zoom’s share price has increased by more than 200% this calendar year and currently stands at $223.87, giving it a market valuation of $63.1 billion.
• Canadian operator Telus has selected Ericsson and Nokia to be its 5G network equipment suppliers. 
• CenturyLink is adding edge compute hardware to 100 central offices and, along with its presence in 2,200 data centres across the US, is able to use those facilities to offer connectivity with latency of just 5 milliseconds, the operator’s CMO Shaun Andrews stated during a recent financial webcast, reports Telecompetitor. 

- The staff, TelecomTV