Intel Corporation recently announced its latest communications platform, previously code named "Crystal Forest," will help service providers and telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) encrypt and process data across the network more efficiently. The platform will also offer superior communications workload consolidation via a single architecture for greater cost efficiency.

The platform will particularly benefit TEMs that are developing low-end products (such as wireless access and branch routers), as well as high-end equipment (for example LTE core network elements and enterprise security appliances).

Weightless, the global organisation responsible for delivering royalty-free open standards to enable the Internet of Things, today announced a new Special Interest Group (SIG) to accelerate the adoption of "Weightless" as a wireless wide area global standard for machine to machine (M2M) short to mid-range communications.

ARM, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, CSR and Neul have today formally signed the 'SIG Promoter Agreement' which details how they will back Weightless's mission to establish a new standard and encourage its adoption worldwide. The Weightless standard this group will define is on track for completion in early 2013.

To further capitalize on the opportunity for Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) in embedded applications and form factors, AMD today announced the formation of a new Embedded Solutions Group and appointed Arun Iyengar as its corporate vice president and general manager. The AMD Embedded Solutions Group will operate as a separate business within AMD's Global Business Units under AMD Senior Vice President Lisa Su.

"AMD APUs have been extremely well received by embedded system designers who require more graphic-intensive displays and compute power, while continuing to increase our engagement with ecosystem partners to deliver a complete solution," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Global Business Units. "Arun's appointment and dedicated focus on expanding our differentiated embedded offerings will help ensure we are seizing the opportunity to expand in this rapidly growing market."

Apple's next big move will be to provide wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers, according to veteran wireless industry strategist Whitey Bluestein.

Bluestein told an international gathering of wireless operators, resellers and suppliers that Apple has all of the critical elements - the world's leading brand, distribution through 363 Apple Stores, digital content (music, video and apps)-which will allow it to exploit its 250 million iTunes accounts with credit cards on file.

He also noted that Apple has a patent-pending network architecture to enter the wireless industry as a service provider. Apple filed a patent application in October 2006, shortly before the first iPhone announcement, with a diagram on how it would offer wireless service directly to customers using networks of several mobile operators. The patent application was extended in fall 2011. Bluestein said that the patent confirms that Apple has thought through how it would offer service directly to customers.

A team of scientists at the MPQ realizes a first elementary quantum network based on interfaces between single atoms and photons. Whether it comes to phoning a friend or to using the internet - our daily communication is based on sophisticated networks, with data being transferred at the speed of light between different nodes. It is a tremendous challenge to build corresponding networks for the exchange of quantum information. These quantum networks would differ profoundly from their classical counterparts: Besides giving insights into fundamental questions in physics, they could also have applications in secure communication and the simulation of complex many-body systems, or they could be used for distributed quantum computing. One prerequisite for functional quantum networks are stationary nodes that allow for the reversible exchange of quantum information.

A major breakthrough in this field has now been achieved by scientists in the group of Professor Gerhard Rempe, director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and head of the Quantum Dynamics division: The physicists have set up the first, elementary quantum network (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11023, 12 April 2012). It consists of two coupled single-atom nodes that communicate quantum information via the coherent exchange of single photons. "This approach to quantum networking is particularly promising because it provides a clear perspective for scalability", Professor Rempe points out.

According to a recent forecast from IDC, the mobile worker population in the United States will account for 75% of the nation's workforce by 2015, indicating that workers everywhere are leaving the 9-to-5 days in the office behind and working remotely, traveling and collaborating via the cloud. Much of this increase is driven by the popularity of laptops, smartphones and tablets. To meet the demands of the mobile worker, Jabra has introduced a suite of products geared toward this growing category. The line includes the new Jabra SUPREME UC launching in May, and the critically acclaimed Jabra FREEWAY and Jabra SPEAK 410.

Logitech today announced the Logitech BH320 USB Stereo Earbuds, which provide enterprise-grade in-ear audio for PC telephony and videoconferencing. Developed specifically for the business market, the earbuds are both stylish and subtle, while offering a full set of in-line controls and easy installation.

The Logitech BH320 USB Stereo Earbuds are the first earbuds qualified as Optimized for Microsoft Lync, a designation from Microsoft Corp. for communications devices that "provide a high quality user experience, with 'just works' installation, rich audio and video, and a lower total cost of ownership."

Easy to deploy unified communications (UC) solutions are increasingly important as more companies must address employee mobility, better utilization of office real estate and an ever increasing need for collaboration. Plantronics (NYSE:PLT) today announced its participation in the Microsoft Lync Hosted Pack Reference Architecture Partner Ecosystem. The ecosystem is designed to support Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Multitenant Pack for Partner Hosting, a special deployment configuration scoped for Hosting or Telecom services providers.

Customers can quickly identify tested options, incorporating audio devices and hosted Microsoft Lync services, which will help speed their implementation times. Optimized endpoints from Plantronics, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, coupled with Microsoft Lync can help deliver a better experience by accelerating UC adoption within an enterprise or an SMB.

The new SAPPHIRE HD 7800 series of graphics cards is based on the third family of GPU's from AMD built in its new 28nm process and featuring the highly acclaimed GCN graphics processing architecture. The new HD 7870 and HD 7850 GPUs have an optimised internal structure sharing many of the features of the high performance HD 7900 series already released but with fewer Stream processors and a new high speed 256-bit memory interface to the latest DDR5 memory types. It is aimed at mainstream gamers looking for excellent performance together with good value and all the latest features.

Two models of the HD 7870 are being introduced by SAPPHIRE at launch. The first is the SAPPHIRE HD 7870 which will ship with a core clock speed of 1GHz, and will be known as the SAPPHIRE HD 7870 GHz Edition. It is equipped with 2GB of the latest DDR5 memory clocked at 1200MHz (4.8Gb/s effective). At the same time SAPPHIRE is introducing a higher performance model, the SAPPHIRE HD 7870 GHz OC Edition, in which both core and memory are factory overclocked and the PowerTune limits are raised to allow even further performance tuning. Both models are equipped with SAPPHIRE's new dual-extractor technology - Dual-X - a highly efficient multi-heatpipe cooler with dual fans providing quiet and very cool operation during normal operating conditions, and superb cooling performance even under extreme load.

US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman sought "smart, practical, voluntary solutions", without mandating his own, for internet service providers (ISPs) to fight online fraud and data theft. Chairman Julius Genachowski estimated that 8.4 million credit-card details are stolen online, each year. "If consumers lose trust in the Internet, this will suppress broadband adoption and online commerce and communication, and all the benefits that come with it," Genachowski said in a speech. The FCC feels ISPs can come up with solutions that prevent client PCs in the US from being forced into malicious botnets by hackers, without having to encroach upon users' privacy.

Genachowski urged ISPs to adopt DNSSEC, a system that ensures people accessing sensitive sites such as their banks' online transaction portals go to the right address, and not redirected to a fraudulent password phishing site. "To be effective, everyone who is a part of the Internet ecosystem must play a meaningful role in ensuring that private and government networks, and personal computers and devices are secured," said Comcast/NBCUniversal President Kyle McSlarrow in a blog posting. Comcast is one of America's biggest ISPs. This is an example of how threats to the sanctity of a productive internet can be defeated with highly-specific solutions that don't threaten privacy and freedoms, instead of broad-scoped legislations that potentially do.

The UK government has a bizarre idea of "communications capabilities development": mass-monitoring of IP traffic, and snooping into what British netizens are up to. Despite being defeated during the UK Labour Party rule, there seems to be a revival of the idea of greater monitoring of internet traffic under the Conservative government, under a legislation titled "Communications Capabilities Development Programme".

This legislation proposes that ISPs and other communications providers be required to maintain logs of individual users' communications, all of them, starting from web history, to IM, to in-game text/voice chat, e-mails, Skype calls, even Twitter messages. This monitoring should run for at least an year, so the establishment collects enough data to draw patterns around.

Intel Corporation today disclosed several significant features for the company's next-generation communications platform, codenamed "Crystal Forest." Building upon Intel's strong presence in communications infrastructure, the platform will handle data processing across the network more efficiently and securely, while addressing the specialized needs for handling cloud connectivity and content processing.

Each minute of the day, 30 hours of video are uploaded across the network, and by 2015 it is estimated to take 5 years to watch all the video crossing IP networks each second. As these numbers continue to climb, the burden will be on equipment manufacturers and service providers to deliver platform solutions that can cost-effectively manage rapidly increasing traffic without compromising performance and security.