Nokia wins Broadband Access Deal from China Telecom

Nokia will supply DSL equipment to four of China Telecom's subsidiaries in Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangsu provinces. The frame agreements cover the year 2003, and call for the supply of more than 100,000 DSL lines. Nokia will supply D50 and the D500 next-generation multiservice access platform and related services. Delivery and implementation have already started. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nokia.com

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Verizon Wireless and Vodafone to Offer Laptop Datacard Service

Verizon Wireless and Vodafone will develop a dual branded ‘Verizon Vodafone' laptop data card service for business customers working and traveling between the US and Europe. The service will be based on the existing Vodafone Mobile Connect Card, which lets business customers access their e-mail, Internet and corporate applications on their laptops within Vodafone's territories. Verizon Wireless and Vodafone intend to cooperate on data card hardware, service inter-connectivity, roaming and inter-operator billing.
http://www.verizonwireless.com

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Marconi Signs Access Contract with BT, Revises Optical Agreement

BT signed a three year frame contract with Marconi for the provision of its Multi Service Access Node platform in the BT Next Generation Network project. Financial terms were not disclosed. The companies also reached agreement on revised terms of an existing optical equipment supply contract. Throughout the remainder of the contract period, Marconi will supply a minimum of 70% of BT's optical network equipment requirements.
http://www.marconi.com

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Deutsche Telekom Launches T-Com Brand for Fixed Networks Division

Deutsche Telekom's fixed network division began operating under its own "T-Com" brand name effective 01-August-2003. Services for the fixed telecommunications network, for example T-ISDN and T-DSL, will be made available under the new brand name. In taking this step, the Deutsche Telekom Group is pursuing its strategy of focusing on four market segments: Fixed network, mobile communications, Internet and systems operations. T-Com will now join the T-Mobile, T-Online and T-Systems brands. T-Com has launched a new website.
http://www.t-com.de

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NEC Reorganizes its R&D Efforts

NEC is reorganizing its research and technology development efforts into three domains:

• 1) IT network integration solutions


• 2) Semiconductor solutions


• 3) Fundamental research (such as nanotechnology and environmental material technology).

NEC plans to consolidate the eight R&D facilities it currently operates across Japan into five sites. The R&D focused on IT and network technology that was to date conducted at NEC's Central Research Laboratories, Fuchu Plant, Tamagawa Plant and its head offices will be consolidated to its Tamagawa Plant by the end of this fiscal year. Simultaneously, LSI design research currently carried out at the Central Research Laboratories will be moved to the Tamagawa Plant.
http://www.nec.co.jp

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Siemens and Pirelli Build Optical Network in Indonesia

The Indonesian telecommunications company Indosat has commissioned Pirelli and Siemens to deliver an optical backbone for the nationwide transport of both fixed network and mobile telephony data. The three subnetworks in East Java, Jakarta-Bandung and Sumatra cover a total of more than 1376 km. The contract was valued at EUR 20 million. The companies noted that Indonesia has a population of around 220 million but a fixed-line penetration coefficient of only 3%.
http://www.siemens.com

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Verizon to Launch SHDSL

Verizon plans to begin offering symmetric high bit-rate DSL (SHDSL) featuring variable bit rate, non -real time (VBRnrt) quality of service (QoS). The service will support symmetric rates up to 1.5 Mbps. Verizon's VBRnrt arrangement supports bursty data traffic with average and peak traffic parameters and allows SHDSL traffic to take precedence over unspecified bit rate (UBR) traffic in the network. Regular DSL traffic in the Verizon network is UBR. Verizon has already conducted successful SHDSL trials in Maryland and Florida. Verizon plans to offer SHDSL nationwide within the serving areas of its current footprint. SHDSL will be marketed to small and medium sized businesses, branch offices of large enterprise businesses, and as a wholesale service for other ISPs.
http://www.verizon.com

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Tellabs Outsources North American Manufacturing

Tellabs announced plans to outsource manufacturing of its North American products to Sanmina-SCI, resulting in the layoff of 325 employees. The company will close its manufacturing facility in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Tellabs said it is making the change to benefit from lower manufacturing costs and to free capital now tied up in equipment, inventory and facilities. Beginning in Q3, Tellabs will record an estimated $90 million to $110 million in charges connected with the outsourcing move.
http://www.tellabs.com

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Juniper Networks Partners with ARRIS on Cable Solutions

Juniper Networks entered into a strategic partnership with ARRIS targeting solutions for Multi-Service Operators (MSOs). The co-marketing initiative combines Juniper's IP platforms with the ARRIS cable modem termination system (CMTS). As part of this partnering strategy, Juniper Networks also announced its intention to voluntarily discontinue its G-series CMTS product line. Consequently, Junipers plans to take a one-time charge of approximately $10-15 million comprised primarily of costs associated with workforce reduction, vacating facilities, contract termination, non-inventory asset impairment charges and other related costs.
http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.arrisi.com

• In November 2001, Juniper Networks agreed to acquire Pacific Broadband Communications, a start-up developing a next generation cable modem termination system (CMTS), for approximately $200 million in stock (Nov 2001 prices). Pacific Broadband, which was based in San Jose, California, developed a carrier class CMTS supporting 32 downstream channels and 128 upstream channels, enabling cable operators to support more cable modem traffic with less bandwidth. To achieve this, Pacific Broadband had designed custom ASICs capable of using 16 QAM transmissions within 3.2 MHz segments, effectively doubling or quadrupling the upstream data throughput. Prior to the acquisition, Pacific Broadband had secured a distribution agreement in North America with Scientific Atlanta.



• In July 2003, ARRIS agreed to acquire certain cable modem termination systems (CMTS) related assets of COM 21, including the stock of its Irish subsidiary, for a purchase price of approximately $2.8 million. COM 21 had earlier filed for Chapter 11.



• ARRIS' broadband division (Arris Interactive) was created from ANTEC's joint venture with Nortel Networks. In August 2001, Arris Interactive and ANTEC merged to form the new ARRIS. The company has 900 employees and is based in Duluth, Georgia.

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France's Outremer Telecom Selects Redback's SmartEdge 800 Service Gateway

Outremer Telecom, a private telecommunications operator based in France, has deployed Redback Networks' SmartEdge 800 Service Gateway platform to offer high-bandwidth services to both its business and residential broadband subscribers. The SmartEdge Service Gateway platform combines subscriber management capabilities with edge routing functions. Outremer Telecom is using the SmartEdge 800 in its POPs to deliver VPN services to its corporate customers and DSL to residences. Redback said its service gateway was selected for the deployment because it supports the necessary subscriber level features for DSL, such as PPP termination and RADIUS authentication, while also offering VPN services using a variety of methods, such as Layer 2 and Layer 3 MPLS and GRE encapsulation. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.redback.com

• In June 2003, Redback Networks announced the integration of its subscriber management systems (SMS) technology into its SmartEdge platform. The combined feature set will allow service providers to utilize the same Redback network management, policy management, user profiles and billing systems in an edge platform with dynamic policy enforcement, carrier-class IP routing, ATM mediation, MPLS VPNs, multicast and QoS capabilities. At the same time, Redback is introducing the SmartEdge 400 , a smaller version of its SmartEdge 800 platform. The new platform is designed for deployment in smaller central offices and POPs, whereas the SmartEdge 800 is positioned for larger POPs.

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Avanex Completes Acquisitions of Alcatel Optronics, Corning Assets

Avanex completed its acquisition of Alcatel Optronics France SA, a subsidiary of Alcatel that operates the optical components division of Alcatel, and the purchase of certain assets of the photonic technologies business of Corning Incorporated. Avanex said the acquisitions give it the "necessary scale and resources to be the leading supplier of optical solutions." The combined company is headquartered in Fremont, California, and includes former Alcatel facilities in France and Scotland and former Corning facilities in the U.S. and Italy.
http://www.avanex.com

• In May 2003, Avanex first announced plans to acquire Alcatel's and Corning's optical components businesses in combined transactions valued at approximately $63.5 million. The deal brings together the optical businesses of three of the industry's leading providers of optical components, modules and subsystems for fiber optic transmission networks. After the mergers, the new Avanex would offer products that address optical wavelength generation and modulation, multiplexing and demultiplexing, signal amplification, wavelength routing and dispersion compensation. Alcatel and Corning said they would assign approximately 1,400 patents to Avanex and additionally license several thousand patents to Avanex as part of the transaction. In return, Alcatel and Corning will receive as consideration 28% and 17% respectively of Avanex's outstanding common stock of the post-transaction company.


• 
  
  Alcatel will contribute its key optical component operations in France and the UK. Alcatel's optical component division had sales of EURO 7.3 million for Q1 2003. The division has 950 employees. Key products include lasers, photodetectors, optical amplifiers, transponders and key passive devices such as arrayed waveguide gratings and Fiber Bragg grating filters. As part of the deal, Alcatel would also contribute over $110 million in cash and Avanex will be designated a key supplier to Alcatel for a 3 year period.


• 
  
  Assets purchased from Corning include optical amplifier, dispersion compensation, and micro optics operations located in New York and Corning modulator operations located in Italy. These businesses have 490 employees. Key products include optical amplifiers, dispersion compensation modules, Lithium Niobate and electro-absorptive modulators, and micro optics products. Quarterly sales amounted to approximately $11 million in Q1 2003.


• 
  
  The new Avanex expects to have over $250 million in cash and 1,600 employees on the closing date.

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NETGEAR Raises $98 Million in IPO

Shares of NetGear began trading on the NASDAQ National Market under the ticker "NTGR." Net proceeds from the offering were approximately $98 million. NetGear offered seven million shares of its common stock at $14 per share. Trading ended on 31-July-2003 at $17.69.
http://www.netgear.com

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MCI WorldCom Barred from Future Government Contracts

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) will bar MCI WorldCom from receiving new U.S. federal government contracts. Specifically, the GSA concluded that "MCI WorldCom lacks the necessary internal controls and business ethics" to be eligible to compete for new government contracts. Neither GSA, nor any other U.S. federal agency, may award a new contract while MCI WorldCom is on the excluded parties list. The GSA is a centralized federal procurement and property management agency.


In a press statement, MCI said it accepts the General Services Administration's (GSA) decision for proposed debarment, noting that the decision does not affect its ability to serve its existing federal government customers. Michael Capellas, MCI chairman and CEO, also stated that the GSA decision does not in any way affect the timing of the company's planned emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
http://www.gsa.gov

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BT's Earnings Rise on Flat Revenue Growth

BT reported strong earnings of 4.1 pence per share, up 64% compared to the period last year, despite flat quarterly revenue of £4.586 billion. The company credited financial discipline for its ability to generate free cash flow of £618 million for the quarter. Net debt has now been reduced below £9 billion, £4.4 billion less than at this time last year. Some key operating statistics:

BT Operating Statistics
	30-June 2003	31-Mar 2003	30-June 2002
BT Group exchange lines
Business, incl. wholesale	9,215,000	9,197,000	9,122,000
Consumer, incl. service provider	20, 492,000	20,448,00	20,192,000
BT Retail
BT Openworld Broadband	333,000	292,000	167
BT Broadband	203,000	137,000	-
Total ISP customer base	2,035,000	1,948,000	1,754,000
BT Wholesale
ADSL lines provided	1,058,000	800,000	277,000
network volume growth	3%	6%	3%
% UK households where available	71%	67%	66%
BT Global Services
Inter city fiber (kms)	48,000	48,000	57,000
Web hosting centers	22	22	19
Dial access ports (000s)	615,000	606,000	637,000

http://www.bt.com

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Cavium Hires Intel Executive

Cavium Networks announced appointment of Rajiv Khemani as Vice President of Marketing. Khemani joins Cavium from Intel Corp., where as a Director of Marketing in its Network Processor Division, he led the product management, technical marketing and ecosystem development for Intel's network processor product line. During his five-year tenure with Intel, he also served as general manager of its high-end network processor business unit. He joined Intel through Intel's acquisition of Netboost, a venture-backed network processor startup. Before that, he managed strategy and business development at Network Appliance.
http://www.cavium.com

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Cavium Networks Secures $18M for its Security Processors

Cavium Networks, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $18 million in an oversubscribed Series C round of funding to support its rollout of security processing chips. In the two and a half years since its founding, Cavium has introduced three security processor families, with over 20 security processor and board products, targeted for IPsec, SSL, Wireless LAN and Multiservice applications. Cavium claims over 30 customers, including several tier-1 communication OEMs, who are using its security chips in VPN gateways, SSL VPNs, wireless gateways, SSL load-balancers, routers, switches, web-servers and SANs. New investors in this round include NeoCarta Ventures, NTT Leasing Co. (investment arm of NTT), China Development Industrial Bank and William Jones and Associates. Current investors Menlo Ventures, Alliance Ventures and Diamondhead Ventures also participated in the round. The closure of this round brings the total funding received by Cavium Networks to $ 41.5 Million.
http://www.cavium.com

• Earlier this week, Cavium Networks introduced its NITROX Wireless family of security macro processors for enterprise access and aggregation points. The processors support the full range of security algorithms currently used in WLAN security and the emerging 802.11i standard -- including AES, 3DES and ARC4 and the various modes of each algorithm. Additionally the Cavium NITROX Wireless processors perform protocol processing of CCMP, IPSec, IKE, MPPE and functions of TKIP. They also feature a true hardware Random Number Generator. Cavium will offer ten versions to target a range of price / performance points.


• 
  
  Aruba Wireless Networks, a start-up offering high-performance wireless network switching systems for enterprises and hot spot service providers, has adopted Cavium's NITROX Wireless security processors. The devices are also being used by several server motherboard and OEM vendors for VPN gateways, SSL VPNs, wireless gateways, server load-balancers, routers, switches, web-servers and SANs.

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U.S. Court Issues $4.26B Judgment to Motorola in Telsim Case

A U.S. District Court issued a $4.26 billion judgment against the Uzan family of Turkey, ruling that the Uzans perpetrated massive fraud against Motorola. The court ruled that the Uzans fraudulently induced Motorola to loan $1.8 billion to Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon Hizmetleri A.S. ("Telsim"), a telecommunications entity owned and controlled by the Uzan family. Members of the Uzan family and the companies they control have been ordered by the court to pay Motorola $2.13 billion in compensatory damages and another $2.13 in punitive damages. Nokia plans to use the court ruling to pursue its own legal case against the Uzans.
http://www.motorola.com

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net.com and Digiquant Enter Alliance

Network Equipment Technologies (net.com) and Digiquant entered into a product and marketing alliance focused on carrier-class VoIP solutions. The alliance combines net.com's SHOUTIP programmable packet telephony platform with Digiquant's Internet Management System (IMS), a software solution that authorizes and bills for network usage. Together the products deliver a fault-tolerant, distributed system that allows service providers to offer and precisely bill for services such as calling cards, toll bypass, and wholesale voice offerings.
http://www.net.com
http://www.digiquant.com

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Comcast Increases Subscriber Forecasts, Network Integration Proceeding Well

Comcast increased its 2003 guidance for subscriber growth and financial performance following significant gains during Q2, which normally is a seasonally slow quarter. Pro forma Comcast Cable revenue for the quarter was $4.379 billion (not including QVC), representing a 9.2% increase over the $4.009 billion in the second quarter of 2002. QVC's consolidated revenues for the quarter were $1.101 billion, an increase of 11.3%. Last month, Comcast agreed to sell its 57% stake in QVC to Liberty Media for $7.9 billion. Some highlights for the quarter:

• Comcast added 12,100 basic subscribers, which the company described as a "remarkable turnaround" from the loss of 133,300 subscribers in the same quarter last year. In Q1, Comcast added 56,900 basic subscribers. The company feels it has reversed the previous losses to DBS TV providers. For the second time this year, Comcast is increasing guidance for basic subscribers to 125,000 to 150,000 net additions. Previous guidance was for 75,000 to 100,000 net additions.


• 
  
  The digital cable customer base grew by 19.4% year-over-year to 6.950 million subscribers. Comcast said it is focusing heavily on the profitability of digital services rather than fast subscriber growth.


• 
  
  VOD is now available to 20% of subscribers and is expected to increase to 50% by the end of this year as Comcast accelerates the VOD deployment into new markets during the second half of 2003.


• 
  
  HDTV is available to 54% of the customer base at the end of Q2 and is expected to increase to 65% by year end.


• 
  
  The company added 350,900 cable modem users, a pro forma increase in net additions of 32.8% over the same period one year ago, to finish Q2 with nearly 4.4 million subscribers, representing a penetration rate of 13.7%. Cable modem ARPU is now $43.34, up 3.6% compared to a year ago. More than 81% of the homes in Comcast's footprint, or 32.1 million homes, are now eligible for cable modem service. Growth in the second half of 2003 is expected to be driven by continuing expansion of the service's footprint, to 34 million homes, expanded retail distribution through more than 3,800 retail outlets and a new "Instant Install" marketing initiative. Comcast expects to add 1.6 million cable modem users for all of 2003.


• 
  
  Comcast does not plan to reduce cable modem pricing, saying the current level is "fair" especially compared to AOL dial-ups users with a second home phone line. The company is looking to retail channels and partners to increase subscriber numbers. Comcast is also looking to increase average cable modem downlink speeds from 1.5Mbps to 3.0 Mbps in its major markets. Comcast believes it can increase these speeds without bearing a major cost.


• 
  
  Comcast had under 1.4 million cable telephony customers at the end of Q2, down by 52,000 compared to the previous quarter. Comcast lost 20,000 cable telephony subscribers in Q1. The company said it is focusing on profitability of its cable telephony operations by eliminating bad debt customers. Comcast believes it will lose a total of 150,000 cable telephony customers for all of 2003.


• 
  
  CAPEX for Q2 was $1.05 billion as Comcast Cable completed the upgrade of nearly 16,000 miles of plant to end the quarter with more than 89% of its footprint upgraded to provide two-way digital and high-speed Internet services.


• 
  
  Newly-acquired AT&T Broadband systems are now 85% upgraded to deliver two-way digital cable and high-speed Internet service, up from 80% at the end of Q1. The company said the integration is ahead of its expectations in every metric.


• 
  
  Cable cash flow margin was 36.5% for Q2 and annualized cable operating cash flow per subscriber was nearly $300.

http://www.comcast.com

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AT&T and Oracle Collaborate on Managed Hosting, Outsourcing Contract

Michael Baker Corporation, an engineering and energy management firm based in Pittsburgh, awarded a three-year, multi-million dollar managed hosting and application management outsourcing contract to AT&T and Oracle. Oracle will manage Baker's applications with its E-Business Suite Outsourcing services; AT&T will provide managed hosting services from one of its Internet Data Centers that support 24x7 monitoring and maintenance and includes performance-based SLAs.
http://www.att.com
http://www.oracle.com

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Cisco Systems Ships its 2 Millionth IP Phone

Cisco Systems reached a major milestone by shipping its 2 millionth IP phone. The milestone phone was delivered to SouthTrust Corp., a bank that has replaced over 10,000 traditional phones on its legacy circuit-based PBX network in favor of a new virtual Enterprise IP PBX. The new system employs more than 10,000 Cisco IP Phones.
http://www.cisco.com

• In August of 2002, Cisco announced that it reached the 1 million milestone for shipped IP phones. Its first IP phone was introduced in 1999.

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UTStarcom Wins New IP-DSLAM Contract with China Netcom

China Netcom Corporation awarded UTStarcom its second major contract to deploy over 100,000 lines of its AN-2000 IB IP-based DSLAM solution in ten major cities in the Inner Mongolia, Shandong, and Shanxi Provinces. UTStarcom said the new contract will bring its total IP-DSLAM deployments to more than 500,000 ADSL lines within multiple provinces in China. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.utstar.com

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Charter Continues to Lose Video Subscribers, Cable Modem Growth Slows

Charter Communications reported Q2 revenues of $1.217 billion, an increase of 7.0% over last year's second quarter revenues of $1.137 billion. Income from operations totaled $112 million in Q2 2003, an increase of 31.8% from a year ago. Net loss was $38 million, or $0.13 per share. Charter said Q2 traditionally is weak in terms of subscriber growth due to disconnects from annual price adjustments and seasonality in many of its communities. Some highlights from the end of the quarter:

• Revenue generating units (RGU) totaled approximately 10,463,500, up 5% from a year ago, but down by approximately 10,900 units, or .1%, compared to Q1 2003.


• 
  
  Total advanced service RGUs, defined as digital, high-speed data and telephony units, increased by 748,300 units, or 23%.


• 
  
  A loss of 253,200 analog video customers, or 3.8% over the past twelve months. Charter now has 6,486,900 analog video customers compared to 6,740,100 a year ago. The estimated penetration of analog video homes passed is now 53% compared to 57% a year ago.


• 
  
  There was also a decline in digital video customers. At the end of Q2, Charter had 2,603,900 digital video customers, down from 2,682,800 at the beginning of the year. At this time last year it had 2,380,500 digital video customers.


• 
  
  Added approximately 76,700 cable modem customers in Q2, bringing its total to 1,349,000. Charter added 134,200 cable modem customers in Q1 2003. The estimated penetration of high-speed data homes passed is now 13%.


• 
  
  Cable telephony customers total 23,700, up from 22,800 at the end of Q1 and 17,600 a year ago.

Charter plans to introduce new pricing and service packages in many of its Top 25 markets during the second half of the yearhttp://www.chartercom.com

• In July 2003, Charter Communications ordered 100,000 units of the new Motorola Broadband Media Centers (BMCs) powered by Digeo's Moxi Service. Motorola said the announcement marks the first widescale deployment by a cable operator of a digital cable media center with advanced features such as dual-tuner "watch and record" personal video recording (PVR), high-definition television (HDTV), and a progressive-scan DVD player.

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Lucent Wins Two Optical Contracts with China's Guangdong Eastern Fibernet

Guangdong Eastern Fibernet Company (GEFC) awarded two contracts to Lucent Technologies for expansion of its SDH and DWDM network across Guangdong province. Under the contracts, Lucent's LambdaUnite MSSs will be deployed to form the core ring of the SDH network in the cities of Guangzhou, JiangMmn and Shenzhen. This core ring will connect the metro rings formed by Lucent Metropolis ADM in Zhaoqing, Zhanjiang, Jieyang, Shantou and Huizhou. GEFC also will deploy Lucent's WaveStar ITM-SC network management system to help integrate the new hardware into its existing SDH network. The WaveStar OLS 1.6Tand Metropolis EON will be deployed in the major cities of Guangdong province. Financial terms were not disclosed. Shanghai Tiantong Telecommunications Equipment Co., LTD, a Lucent Business Partner, has provided pre-sales support on both projects.
http://www.lucent.com

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AOL 9.0 Optimized for Broadband

America Online introduced the latest version of its AOL and AOL for Broadband software. The major improvements in the AOL 9.0 release include better anti-spam filters, new instant messaging features for starting phone conversations and sharing files, email enhancements, McAfee Personal Firewall Express for broadband users, multiple simultaneous log-ins for up to seven screen names on one broadband account, and an enhanced Video@AOL media player supporting multiple formats.
http://www.aol.com

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China Telecom Selects Nortel Networks in Zhejiang, Hubei

China Telecom awarded two contracts to Nortel Networks covering the deployment of Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Nodes (BSNs) in Zhejiang province, and Shasta 5000 BSNs and Nortel Networks Passport 8600 Routing Switches in Hubei province. The Shasta 5000 BSN supports wholesale dial, DSL, fixed and mobile wireless, metro optical and Ethernet extension, ATM, Frame Relay and leased-line subscribers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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Deutsche Telekom Tests Marconi's Core Optical Switches

Deutsche Telekom is using specially enhanced versions of Marconi's MSH family of optical switches to form the intelligent core of its Global Seamless Network (GSN) research and demonstration project. Deutsche Telekom has installed four nodes comprising Marconi's core optical switches at sites in Berlin and Darmstadt. Each node is connected to the others with an advanced WDM system, also supplied by Marconi. The nodes are equipped with a distributed control plane based on the latest ASTN standards. The ASTN control plane automates multiple network functions and significantly improves network operation.
http://www.marconi.com

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Cox Anticipates VoIP Rollout in 2004, Revenues Up 14% in Q2

Cox Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the US, reported Q2 revenue of $1.4 billion, an increase of 14% over Q2 2002 and up from $1.366 billion in the prior quarter. Cox continues to gain traction in advanced services (including digital cable, high-speed Internet access and telephony). It also cited higher basic cable rates and a $5 price increase on monthly high-speed Internet access adopted in certain markets in Q4 2002 for its 14% increase in revenues year-over-year.


Some highlights, as of 30-June-2003:

• 6.3 million basic video customers, up 0.5% from 30-June-2002 and flat from the prior quarter.


• 
  
  10.7 million total revenue generating units (RGUs), up 2% for the quarter, driven by 6% growth in advanced-service RGUs for the quarter. Total RGUs and advanced-service RGUs were up 12% and 34%, respectively, compared to June 30, 2002.


• 
  
  Added 112,452 cable modem customers, ending the quarter with 1.7 million high-speed Internet customers, representing year-over-year growth of 50%. In Q1, Cox added 154,433 cable modem customers. The company cited the end of the school year and other seasonal factors for slower growth, but added that net gains are expected to increase again for the rest of the year. Seventy percent of new cable modem customers are converting from dial-up service.


• 
  
  Added 56,170 Cox Digital Telephone customers, ending the quarter with 0.8 million telephone customers, representing year-over-year growth of 45%. The Cox cable voice network is now handling 29 million calls per day. Cable phone penetration rates for existing Cox customers in Orange County, California has now reached 53%. Service bundling and integrated billing are keys to the success.


• 
  
  Cox said that is VoIP service trial in Roanoke, Virginia is proceeding "very well." The company believes that technology is now sufficiently mature for a major VoIP rollout to begin during 2004. Cox believes it is best positioned among the cable operators to succeed with a VoIP cable service.


• 
  
  Achieved Cox Digital Cable net additions of 69,100 customers, ending the quarter with 1.9 million digital cable customers. Cox Digital Cable is now available to 98% of the homes in Cox's service areas with penetration of the basic video customer base exceeding 30%.


• 
  
  Early results from VOD implementations indicate that VOD customers are buying twice as much video content as households with pay-per-view services.


• 
  
  Video on demand is now available in four markets and will be launched in five more markets by March 2004.


• 
  
  Reduced CAPEX to $337.2 million for the quarter, down 32% from Q2 2002. CAPEX in Q1 2003 was $325.7 million.


• 
  
  For the full year 2003, Cox expects year-over-year growth in basic video subscribers of just under 1%.

http://www.cox.com

• In June 2003, Cox began to move its long distance voice traffic onto its national IP backbone. Cox is using Nortel Networks' Succession cable VoIP solution and Nuera Communications' media gateways. The companies confirmed that this is the first packet trunking deployment by a cable operator in North America.


• 
  
  In May 2003, Juniper Networks announced that Cox Communications had deployed its T-series routing platforms in a national IP backbone. Juniper's T320 platforms serve as peering points in Cox's new IP backbone.

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Broadcom Introduces 10 Gigabit Ethernet Multi-Layer Switch for Enterprises

Broadcom introduced a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) multi-layer switch that delivers wire-speed Layer 2 through Layer 7 switching and routing capabilities over a 10GBASE-CX4 copper medium (CX4). The highly integrated single-chip device could be used to build stackable 24- and 48-port Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches with multiple 10GbE interfaces in a compact 1U form factor. Broadcom said the rapid transition from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet for desktop and notebook computers has accelerated the need for GbE stacking switches in the wiring closet equipped with 10GbE uplinks for data aggregation and routing at the core of the network.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Grand River Mutual Deploys Turin Platform

Grand River Mutual Telephone, the largest telephone co-operative in Missouri, will deploy Turin Networks' flagship Traverse Platform in a new RUS-financed OC-192 SONET network spanning its exchanges in northern Missouri and southern Iowa. Turin's Traverse platform integrates SONET Add-Drop Multiplexer (ADM), digital cross connect (DCS) and edge switch functionality in a single compact system that scales from DS1 to OC-192 per system slot. In addition to SONET transport, Grand River is using the Turin equipment to aggregate traffic from Ethernet-based DSLAMs, as well as to deliver TDM DS1 and DS3 private-line services to their customers. The new OC-192 system could also be used to deliver services such as video transport and bandwidth wholesaling in the future. Grand River's network, which includes 33 exchanges in Missouri and 15 exchanges in Iowa, serves in excess of 25,000 access lines. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.turinnetworks.com/

• Turin's Traverse platform is based on a custom, distributed ASIC switch-fabric that grooms and switches both TDM and packet traffic. It supports the full SONET feature set, including UPSR, BLSR and 1+1 APS. It also incorporates a unified optical control plane and advanced bandwidth management system, including virtual concatenation and rate shaping features, as well as capabilities that enable the fast activation and delivery of dynamically scalable Ethernet services.


• 
  
  In May 2003, Turin added scalable wideband DCS functionality to its flagship Traverse Platform. The new integration of wideband cross-connect functionality further reduces the number of elements needed in the network. Turin said its Traverse Platform supports seamless growth from 96 to 384 STS-1 equivalents (2688 to 10,752 VTs) of fully protected, non-blocking capacity in a single shelf that takes up one fourth of a standard 7-foot rack. Expansion can be accomplished completely in-service, in 48 STS-1 increments.

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ST Demonstrates EoVDS for the First Mile

STMicroelectronics demonstrated Ethernet over VDSL (EoVDSL) in the First Mile (EFM) at the IEEE802 plenary meeting in San Francisco last week. The company said traditional DSL deployments have used ATM framing as the physical interface for copper in the last mile, but that it was seeing a strong interest in Ethernet for delivering voice and data communication to the home. ST's Zipperwire VDSL chipset, which was introduced in March 2003, delivers aggregate bit rates in excess of 100 Mbps over short loops.
http://www.st.com/VDSL

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D-Link Introduces New SOHO/SMB Gigabit Switches

D-Link introduced a new line of Gigabit Ethernet switches with pricing under $30 per port. The line-up includes a 5-port and an 8-port 10/100/1000 switch, both of which are aimed at Small Office Home Office (SOHO) and small to medium businesses (SMB).
http://www.dlink.com

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Taiwan's HiNet Selects Juniper's E-series

HiNet, Taiwan's leading ISP, selected Juniper Networks' E-series platform for its island-wide broadband network. HiNet, which is a subsidiary of the incumbent carrier Chunghwa Telecom, currently has more than 1.5 million DSL subscribers. The company has been using Juniper's E-series for more than a year. The new order will help it double revenues from value-added services and boost subscriber numbers to 4.5 million by the end of 2003. Juniper's E-series combines IP routing, IP service creation and subscriber management in a single platform. It supports 16,000 multicast streams in a single chassis, paving the way for new multicasting services over DSL. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.juniper.net

• In April 2003, Chunghwa Telecom announced an ADSL promotion aimed at helping the government of Taiwan achieve its target of 6 million broadband users by the end of the year.


• 
  
  In June 2003, Juniper Networks introduced several enhancements to its Service-Built Edge portfolio aimed at supporting new service models for carriers. The rollout includes:

• the ERX-310 edge router featuring 3-slots and 10 Gbps backplane. The
  ERX-310 is the smallest edge router in Juniper's portfolio and positioned
  for deployment in smaller POPs supporting up to 16,000 subscribers. The
  ERX-310 is aimed at untapped markets, such as smaller DSL nodes and 802.11
  hotspots


• new Ethernet services PIC offered in 1-port and 2-port Gigabit Ethernet
  versions. It provides per-VLAN QoS and accounting. It complements
  Juniper's existing ATM services PIC. Both PICs could be deployed
  simultaneously in the same M-series router.
  
• new BRAS enhancements for providing secure remote access for IPSec, IPv6
  capabilities, and the ability to support 48,000 subscribers with full
  services. The secure remote access capabilities would enable carriers to
  terminate an IPSec client session at an E-series edge router for
  interconnection into a corporate VPN.
  
• Juniper is also adding support for Ethernet-connected DSLAMs and new
  Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) support based on the Kompella draft.
  Juniper's VPLS Kompella delivers inter-metro Ethernet LAN services by
  leveraging BGP signaling. The solution supports autodiscovery and Inter-AS
  for large carrier-to-carrier partnerships
  
• new J-Flow accounting capabilities for aligning billing with actual
  resource consumption. Juniper said its flow-based accounting is
  distinguished by being independent of the data path, thereby ensuring no
  performance hit for turning on the accounting capabilities.

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Thailand's AWC Selects UTStarcom's IP-PAS

Asia Wireless Communication Company (AWC), a subsidiary of TelecomAsia Public Company, selected UTStarcom's IP-Based PAS (Personal Access System) for deployment in key business districts in the Bangkok metropolitan area. Further contracts will be awarded to cover other parts of the business and residential areas in Bangkok. The equipment will be used to rehabilitate the carrier's existing Personal Handyphone System (PHS) network, which covers approximately 1,600 square kilometers of central Bangkok and has more than 600,000 subscribers.
http://www.utstar.com

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Virginia's CavTel offers DSL for $25/month, No Contract

Cavalier Telephone, a facilities-based CLEC based in Virginia, began offering a DSL service priced at $25 per month with free modem, free installation and no contract. Cavalier recently entered into an agreement with Paradyne to deploy ADSL2 technology for faster link speeds. The company said it believes its DSL price to be the lowest in the U.S.


Cavalier has just completed a significant upgrade in its Baltimore/Washington DC network to a fully redundant fiber backbone. The network upgrade eliminates Cavalier's dependence on any third-party carrier throughout the region.
http://www.cavtel.com/

• Cavalier Telephone currently services over 30,000 business and 100,000 residential customers in Richmond, Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia, Maryland, Philadelphia, Delaware, Southern New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. During Q2 2003, Cavalier added more than 2,000 business customers and more than 12,000 residential customers.

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Linksys Offers 802.11 b/g Game Adapters

Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, introduced a Wireless-B Game Adapter and a Wireless-G Game Adapter for connecting PlayStation2, Xbox, or GameCube consoles to a broadband connection. A pair of Game Adapters could also be used to form a "cable-less cable" between two game consoles for head-to-head gaming -- in the same room or all the way across the house. The Wireless-B Game Adapter will have an estimated street price of $79 while the Wireless-G will be $129.
http://www.linksys.com

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TI Acquires Radia Communications for 802.11 RF

Texas Instruments (TI) acquired Radia Communications, a start-up developing radio frequency (RF) semiconductor, subsystem, signal processing and networking technologies for 802.11 WLAN multi-band/multi-mode radios. TI and Radia have already developed joint reference designs for 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g products as partners, and have customers signed up for the TI and Radia components in those reference designs. TI said its customers now have a single source for their WLAN media access controller (MAC), baseband and RF. Radia is based in Sunnyvale, California and has approximately 50 employees. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.ti.com

• In June 2003, Texas Instruments began shipping its 802.11g chipset solution to customers. The company said current TI customers, SMC Networks and U.S. Robotics, and new customers, NETGEAR, Samsung, and Sitecom, would be using TI WLAN technology for their 802.11g and multi-mode Wi-Fi products.

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AT&T to Add DSL to its Residential Service Bundle

AT&T will begin offering a new residential DSL option as part of its consumer communications bundle of local and long distance voice services. The offer is now generally available in the state of New York and will be expanded nationwide. The DSL bundle is being promoted at $19.95 a month for the first three months and $39.95 a month thereafter. The DSL network is being provided by Covad Communications.
http://www.att.com

• Covad has previously announced DSL partnerships with America Online, EarthLink, Sprint, Speakeasy, MegaPath and XO.


• 
  
  As of the end of Q2, Covad had 453,000 lines in service, a 9% increase since the end of Q1 2003.


• 
  
  Covad services are currently available in 96 of the country's top Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Its network passes some 40 million homes in 35 states.

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FCC to Collect $269 Million in Regulatory Fees for 2003

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates it will collect $269 million in regulatory fees for FY 2003 from over 2,200 companies in 47 regulated categories -- such as television, radio, cable, wireless telephone, interstate telephone, satellite, paging/messaging, and microwave. The fees are largely used to recover the regulatory costs associated with the Commission's enforcement, policy and rulemaking, user information, and international activities. All regulatory fees are due by 24-September-2003.
http://www.fcc.gov

• In February 2003, the FCC submitted a budget request for $280,798,000 for fiscal year 2004, up 1% from 2003. The FCC said the budget provides for mandatory increases for salaries and benefits and other areas and inflationary increases for contract services. The budget level also includes funds for additional staff to provide engineering expertise to ensure effective management of the electromagnetic spectrum and encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public, continue infrastructure improvement for the laboratory facility, and enhance the audit capabilities of the Office of Inspector General.

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Internet Photonics and Jedai Broadband Enter Cable Partnership

Internet Photonics and Jedai Broadband Networks have formed a partnership aimed at cable operators. The alliance combines Internet Photonics' LightStack family of Optical Ethernet multi-service switching and transport products and the Jedai FrontRunner 3200 Access Switch Router family. The Jedai FrontRunner 3200 supports 10/100BaseT, 100BaseFX, T1/E1 and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. At a cable operators' hub, Internet Photonic's LightStack MX or LightStack GSLAM can aggregate or switch the traffic of several FrontRunner 3200 access systems for transport to other hubs or to the headend - even contention-free over the same wavelength carrying video traffic. At the headend, the LightStack GSLAM can switch traffic between hubs, to other headends, to backbone switch/routers, or to another FrontRunner 3200 for T1 termination. Both companies are based in New Jersey.
http://www.internetphotonics.com
http://www.jedai.com

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Nortel Networks Announces New Security Products

Nortel Networks announced new products, product enhancements and a security partner program for enterprise customers. The line-up includes:

• a new Alteon Operating System (AOS) 21.0 software release, currently available for Alteon Application Switch products, that provides Advanced Denial of Service (DoS) Protection, fault-tolerant Web Services enabled by Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) inspection for Web Services-aware traffic management, and intelligent peer-to-peer application management.


• 
  
  a new Alteon Secure Socket Layer Virtual Private Network software release designed for companies that utilize SSL VPNs as their primary means of remote access.


• 
  
  enhancements to the Nortel Networks Alteon Application Switch portfolio, including products optimized for IP telephony, streaming media, video teleconferencing, resource planning, e-mail, file transfer and financial activities.


• 
  
  a new Alteon Switched Firewall product line, which includes two significant enhancements, stealth mode deployment and Alteon Switched Firewall 5114. Stealth mode deployment provides intrinsic, high-performance security that cannot be detected by hackers or malicious users.


• 
  
  and a new security certification program for channel partners in North America.

http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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Equipe Adds MPLS LSR Functionality to its E3200 Platform

Equipe Communications released a software upgrade that adds MPLS LSR functionality to the native ATM switching and ATM/MPLS Interworking support of its E3200 platform. Equipe said having all three functionalities in a single platform is the key for making an MPLS core a reality for incumbent Layer 2 service providers. Unlike router-based implementations of MPLS, the Equipe 3200 offers the ability to Interwork ATM and MPLS or switch both in their native formats; provide per-connection traffic guarantees and operational visibility for all traffic types; ensure high-availability of the software, with non-stop routing and forwarding of ATM and MPLS services; and provide the virtual circuit and LSP scalability for a connection-oriented core network.
http://www.equipecom.com

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Canada's SaskTel Selects Lucent for Optical Upgrade

SaskTel, the incumbent service provider in Saskatchewan, Canada, will deploy Lucent Technologies' new optical management system to provide real-time provisioning and virtually instantaneous restoration of its optical backbone. Under the contract, Lucent will supply products from its Metropolis DMX family of access multiplexers and optical amplifiers from its Metropolis Wavelength Extension Solution to build regional transport rings in the province of Saskatchewan. Lucent will also supply the new Navis Optical Management System (OMS). SaskTel is deploying IP video over DSL, along with advanced Ethernet services. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.lucent.com

• In May 2003, SaskTel signed a US$5 million contract for the supply of Nortel Networks Multimedia Communications Portfolio and Succession VoIP equipment. SaskTel is expected to be the first service provider worldwide to offer new revenue-generating multimedia and packet voice services using Nortel Networks Succession equipment. SaskTel is evolving its Nortel DMS circuit switched network to the Succession Communication Server 2000 platform. In addition, SaskTel said that it would deploy Nortel Networks Passport Packet Voice Gateways (PVGs) to expand its network reach and Nortel Networks Universal Signaling Point to interface between classic SS7 signaling and next generation IP and ATM packet networks. SaskTel will use the network for SIP-based hosted multimedia and packet voice services for both residential and business customers.
• 
  
  SaskTel is using the iMagicTV software platform for delivering interactive television service to its DSL subscribers. SaskTel will offer a triple-play service in which subscribers will receive high speed Internet access on both a television and computer, four email addresses, over twenty digital television stations, thirty CD quality music channels and Saskatchewan AM and FM radio stations.

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Centillium Revenues up 22% Sequentially, Cites 24 Mbps DSL in Japan

Centillium Communications reported Q2 revenue of $33.9 million, a 22% increase from the $27.8 million of revenues for Q1 2003, and a decrease of 1% from revenues of $34.4 million for Q2 2002. The GAAP net loss for Q2 was $511,000, or $0.01 per share. Centillium said the DSL market in Japan continues to grow, adding approximately 1.2 million new subscribers in Q2, for a total of 8.3 million lines in use at the end of June nationwide. Japan is a key marker for Centillium, where its customers are migrating to silicon systems supporting 24 Mbps ADSL service. The company also noted increased sales to China.
http://www.centillium.com

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MCI Launches Review of Least Cost Routing Operations

MCI hired Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, a law firm based in Washington D.C., to investigate competitor claims surrounding the company's handling of call routing and access fees. MCI said it routes approximately 8% of its traffic to Least Cost Routing (LCR) companies, which it claims are legitimate businesses that provide long-distance and competitive local exchange carriers with an alternative to terminate traffic and reduce access fees. The company denied charges that some secure U.S. government traffic could have been compromised in any way.
http://www.mci.com

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Eutelsat selects Alcatel to build HOT BIRD 7A satellite

Eutelsat selected Alcatel to build a new HOT BIRD 7A communications satellite. The original HOT BIRD 7 satellite was lost during a launch in December 2002. In addition to the original specifications, HOT BIRD 7A's mission has been expanded to provide additional back-up and replacement capacity at Eutelsat's key orbital slot, 13 degrees East. The new satellite will be based on Alcatel Space's Spacebus 3000 B3 platform. Launch is planned for the autumn of 2005.
http://www.alcatel.com

• On 11-December-2002, Arianespace's first Ariane 5 rocket carrying a 10-ton payload for Eutelsat and the French space agency CNES failed soon after launch from Kourou, French Guinea. The Ariane 5 rocket and its Hotbird 7 satellite were purposefully destroyed at an altitude of about 69 kilometers and a distance of 800 kilometers off the coast of French Guiana. HOT BIRD 7, a direct-broadcast television satellite, was designed as an early replacement for an existing Eutelsat broadcasting satellite that will now continue in service. The Ariane 5 rocket was also carrying STENTOR, a telecom technology demonstration satellite for the French space agency.

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Alcatel Returns to Profitability

Alcatel returned to profitability in Q2, with all of its major segments at break-even or better. Reported quarterly sales were EUR 3.149 billion, up 6% compared to the previously quarter but down 26% compared to Q2 2002. Alcatel said its restructuring is on-track and starting to deliver positive results, despite a weak telecom environment overall. Some highlights:

• revenues for Fixed Communications (service providers) increased sequentially by 6.8% to EUR 1.405 billion


• 
  
  revenues for Mobile Communications increased sequentially by 4.5% to EUR 834 million


• 
  
  revenues for Private Communications (enterprise) increased sequentially by 6.3% to EUR 1.012 billion


• 
  
  employee headcount is 72,000, down by 4,000 compared to the end of Q1 and down by 18,000 year-over-year. With its divestitures and on-going restructuring, Alcatel expects to have 60,000 employees by year-end 2003.


• 
  
  fixed operating costs were below EUR 1.3 billion, down 6% sequentially and 27% year-over-year


• 
  
  gross margin was 35.1%, up 1% sequentially and up 5% year-over-year


• 
  
  geographical distribution of sales were W. Europe (42%), other Europe (8%), North America (15%), Asia (17%) and rest-of-world (18%)

Alcatel expects the market in the second half of this year will be close to the second half of 2002, at a constant dollar/EUR exchange rate.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Verizon's DSL Growth Slows and UNE-P Loss Continues, Strong Free Cash Flow

Verizon Communications added 101,000 net DSL customers in Q2, compared to 160,000 net additions in Q1. On the financial front, Verizon reported operating revenues of $16.8 billion for Q2 2003, compared to $16.3 billion in the preceding quarter. The company described the quarter as very solid, especially for strong growth in wireless and long distance services. Key metrics include:

• Verizon Wireless: 1.2 million net retail customer additions, up 10 percent from last year's quarter (1.3 million total net customer additions); record-low churn; strong margins; service revenue up 14.7 percent from last year's quarter; customer total at 34.6 million. Text messaging grew to more than 300 million billed text messages a month, and 1.4 billion in the first half of this year. Usage on the company's Express Network has significantly increased over the preceding quarter. Wireless operations have generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow this year.


• 
  
  Long Distance: there were 1.4 million net additional long-distance lines in the quarter. Total long-distance lines now number 14.6 million, a 36.1% year-over-year increase.


• 
  
  DSL: added 101,000 net DSL subscribers, giving it a total of 1.9 million DSL lines. About 67% of Verizon's 56.8 million access lines are qualified to receive DSL service. During the quarter, Verizon eliminated outbound telemarketing promotions for DSL. This was done to address high churn levels and improve profitability. In mid-May, Verizon cut its DSL prices and launched a promotion with MSN8. Since then, Verizon said it has regained momentum in adding DSL customers. It now expects DSL growth rates to be much higher for the rest of the year.


• 
  
  Bundling: nearly 24% of Verizon consumers now subscribe to a package of Verizon services, including either local service plus enhanced calling features or local service plus broadband, long distance or wireless services.


• 
  
  Data Services: generated $1.8 billion in Q2, down slightly from the year-earlier period, with increased demand for high-speed services such as ATM, Frame Relay, SONET and DSL, offset by a lessened demand for low-speed services.


• 
  
  Access Line Loss: Verizon was serving 56.8 million access lines at the end of Q2, down 3.7% compared to the same period last year. The loss includes access line loss due to WorldCom disconnects -- without these WorldCom losses the decline would be 3.4% Business line loss was higher than consumer line loss. Factors affecting this loss are technology substitution and UNE-P competitors.


• 
  
  UNE-P lines: Verizon lost 518,000 lines to UNE-P competitors in Q2, compared to a 386,000 line loss in Q1 2003. Total resale and UNE-P lines now number 4,999,000, up by 36% from 3,678,00 at this time last year. The UNE-P increase was attributed to long distance company competitors (AT&T) in a handful of states. Verizon warned that unless regulators changed policies or pricing, UNE-P line losses were likely to continue in those states. The company cited New Jersey (AT&T's home state) as the state with UNE-P rates furthest out of balance.


• 
  
  The MCI saga: Verizon has been pursuing two lines regarding the WorldCom bankruptcy. First, Verizon reached a settlement with MCI to be reimbursed for some of the money it is owed for access charges. Second, Verizon believes that WorldCom must be punished and not allowed "to enjoy the fruits of its fraud."


• 
  
  Video Content: Regarding the recent SBC + EchoStar and Qwest + DirecTV and EchoStar deals, Verizon sees this trend as positive for the ILECs overall. Verizon does not plan to do such deal but might consider a video partner over the next 6 to 9 months. Long term, Verizon will look to a video solution that leverages its network, possibly an FTTP solution.


• 
  
  Labor negotiations: Currently underway. Contracts are expiring in the next few days.


• 
  
  FCC Triennial Review: Verizon eagerly awaits the final release of the FCC's triennial review so that it can factor the details into its business activities.


• 
  
  Diluted earnings per share (EPS): $0.12 in fully diluted EPS, compared with a loss of $0.78 per share in Q2 2002


• 
  
  Net debt at the end of Q2 was $48.1 billion, down by $3.7 billion since year-end 2002.


• 
  
  CAPEX to revenue ration is now 15.2%

Verizon reiterated 2003 guidance of $2.70 to $2.80 in adjusted EPS, 0-2% comparable revenue growth, and $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion in capital expenditures. Also, Verizon is now targeting a further $3 billion to $4 billion reduction in net debt -- from a range of $49 billion to $51 billion, to $46 billion to $47 billion -- based on continued strong operational performance, and the use of proceeds from non-strategic asset sales.
http://www.verizon.com

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Telefónica Reaches 1.9 Million ADSL Subscribers

The Telefónica Group reported growth in semi-annual revenues, EBITDA and operating profits, which grew 5.2%, 10.7% and 22.8%, respectively. Strong free cash flow from operations and reduced CAPEX and OPEX was used to cut the company's net debt by EUR 2.5 billion to EUR 19.9 billion. By geographical region, Spain now accounts for 62% of the Group's overall revenues, compared to 55% a year ago. ADSL connections across the whole Telefónica Group totaled 1.9 million at the end of June 2003, up 88% over a year ago. Spain accounted for 1.3 million of the ADSL total.
http://www.telefonica.com

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Telecom Italia acquires Germany's HanseNet

Telecom Italia will acquire HanseNet Telekommunikation GmbH, a broadband operator with approximately 80,000 subscribers in the Hamburg area. HanseNet is a facilities based operator that uses unbundled local loop elements for local access. The deal was valued at EUR 250 million.
http://www.telecomitalia.it

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Airspan Introduces Major Improvements in its Wireless DSL

Airspan Networks announced increases in performance, capacity and operational range for its non-line-of-sight broadband wireless platform, which operates in frequencies between 1.9 and 4.0 GHz. Specific improvements include an improved link budget of up to 165dB using high gain subscriber antennas; higher capacity CPE units supporting 2.3 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream of IP and four 64 kbps PCM voice lines; and better latency of 1ms for 64 kbps for voice Lines and less than 12ms for IP traffic. A new compact Base Station delivers 170 Mbps IP traffic and/or 480 erlangs of voice traffic in a contiguous cellular deployment.
http://www.airspan.com

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MIPI Alliance to Define Open Standards for Mobile Application Processors

The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance, a new industry initiative backed by ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments, announced its charter to define and promote open standards for interfaces to mobile application processors. The MIPI Alliance is intended to complement existing standards bodies such as the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and 3GPP. While these organizations focus on services and air interfaces, respectively, the MIPI Alliance is focused on microprocessors, peripherals and software interfaces. The alliance arose in response to the broad interest in the OMAPI standard launched by ST and TI in December 2002.
http://www.mipi.org

• In December 2002, STMicroelectronics (ST) and Texas Instruments (TI) agreed to jointly define and promote an open standard for wireless application processor interfaces. The new Open Mobile Application Processor Interfaces (OMAPI) Standard is aimed at promoting faster and broader deployment of multimedia-enhanced mobile devices and applications. The standard will be comprised of a set of software interfaces to the operating system and a set of hardware interfaces defining common application peripherals.

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France Telecom Stabilizes Local Competitive Threat

France Telecom said the impact of the opening of the local telecommunications market to competition, which affected its telecommunication revenues in 2002, has substantially subsided. The quarterly decline in revenues from fixed line telephony in France slowed to 2.0% in Q2 2003 compared to a decrease of 4.8% in Q1 2003 and a decrease of 7.5% in Q4 2002. France Telecom's market share in local traffic in June 2003 amounted to 77.8% compared to 79.1% in March 2003, representing a decrease of 1.3 points over the second quarter compared to a decrease of 1.8 points in Q1 2003. Some other highlights of its quarterly report:

• Revenues from ADSL broadband Internet access (excluding revenues from Wanadoo clients) increased 75% compared to Q2 2002 due to the rapid development of ADSL in France.


• 
  
  The number of broadband Internet access connections (including Wanadoo's ADSL access in France) nearly tripled, reaching 2,037,000 for Q2 2003 compared to 695,000 for the year-earlier period. Growth continued at a steady rate, with 260,000 new ADSL connections in Q2 2003.


• 
  
  France Telecom aims to have 3 million ADSL connections by the end of 2003.


• 
  
  The company reported consolidated Q2 revenue of EUR 11.5 billion, a 3.3% decrease compared to Q2 2002 on a historical basis. On a comparable basis, excluding the negative effect of exchange rates and the exit from its Dutch cable operations, France Telecom's quarterly revenues continued to improve, with a 4.4% increase in Q2-2003, after a 3.3% increase in Q1 2003 and 2.9% in Q4 2002.


• 
  
  Revenues from Orange and Wanadoo recorded sustained growth in Q2 2003 comparable to that achieved during the preceding quarters.


• 
  
  Orange had a total of 45.6 million mobile customers globally at the end of Q2.


• 
  
  CAPEX for Q2 was EUR 1.1 billion, or 10% of quarterly revenues, compared to approximately EUR 1.7 billion EURs for Q2 2002 on a comparable basis, representing a decrease of approximately 34% and a savings of approximately EUR 578 million. Approximately 80% of CAPEX was allocated to growth sectors (compared to 20% for maintenance, renewal and operations). Spending on ADSL increased relative to Q2 2002.

http://www.francetelecom.com

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MCI Offers Managed Enterprise Content Delivery Service

MCI introduced a Managed Enterprise Content Delivery Service (ECDS) designed for distributing enterprise-wide applications including streaming video and distance learning over an enterprise Frame Relay, IP, ATM, Private IP or private line network. MCI's service offers built-in security, load balancing, cache pre-population, content redirection, distribution and control via a Web-based portal.
http://www.mci.com

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Telenor Offers Mobile Packet Data Service for Aviation Customers

Telenor is launching Mobile Packet Data Service (MPDS) that provides satellite-based connectivity for aircraft. The service is aimed at Internet applications including Web access, file transfer, e-mail, and remote monitoring in the commercial aviation industry. The Telenor service is based on Inmarsat's Swift64 technology.
http://www.telenor.com

• In October 2002, Telenor Satellite Services launched "Sealink," a service that provides broadband capabilities on a leased basis to ships at sea. Sealink provides turn-key managed communications solutions for a wide variety of maritime industries including ferry and cruise lines, drilling, energy exploration, and scientific research projects, as well as ocean-going transportation and supply operations. The service combines Telenor's Ku-band capabilities of the former NORSAT Sealink service with the C-Band services of Telenor's U.S.-based business. It supports simultaneous multiple phone, fax, and data access at speeds up to 2 Mbps.

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MSN Attracts 350 Million Worldwide Users Each Month

Microsoft is attracting 350 million unique worldwide users per month to its MSN network of sites, a 17% increase since September 2002. More than 100 million users are using the free MSN Messenger service per month. MSN is currently offering localized versions in 34 markets globally and in 18 languages. Microsoft said its claim to 350 million unique users was verified by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
http://www.microsoft.com

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Wanadoo Adds 206,000 Broadband Subscribers in Q2

Wanadoo, the Internet division of France Telecom, added 445,000 new broadband customers during first six months of 2003, including 206,000 during Q2 alone. For the first six months of 2003, Wanadoo had revenues of EUR 1.227 billion, up 34% over the year-earlier period. This increase was led by a 64% jump in revenues from international business, which totaled EUR 305 million EURs for the period. Growth is also being fueled by broadband services and portal revenues. Some additional highlights:

• As of 30-June-2003, Wanadoo had 8.807 million Internet access customers in Europe, including 1.819 million broadband customers (ADSL and cable).
• 
  
  Wanadoo added 206,000 new broadband customers during Q2 2003, including 191,000 ADSL customers.
• 
  
  Broadband customers now represent 20.7% of the total Wanadoo Internet Access customer base, up from 18.4% at the end of Q1 2003.
• 
  
  Wanadoo's customer base in France totaled 4.23 million active subscribers at the end of Q2, up from 4.13 million at the end Q1 2003. Wanadoo had 1.394 million active broadband subscribers in France, including 1.32 million for ADSL. Average revenue per user (ARPU) continued to increase, reaching EUR 17.3 at the end of Q2.
• 
  
  Wanadoo operations in Spain had 1.454 million active subscribers at end June 2003, including 131,000 ADSL subscribers.
• 
  
  In the UK, Wanadoo's Freeserve had 2.639 million active subscribers at end June 2003, including 1.011 million customers with a paying subscription and 91,000 broadband subscribers.
• 
  
  Average page views on Wanadoo's portal sites increased to 3.296 billion per month, up 125% compared to this period last year.

http://www.francetelecom.com

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Terra Lycos Reaches 477,000 ADSL Users

Terra Lycos, the Internet portal of the Telefónica Group, was serving 477,000 ADSL customers as of 30-June-2003, up by 26% compared to December 2002 and up by 59% compared to a year ago. Overall, Terra Lycos had 3.6 million customers paying for access, communications and portal services, an increase of 59% compared to a year ago. Revenues increased 11% compared to a year ago to EUR 321 million and the EBITDA loss was EUR 28 million.
http://www.telefonica.es

• During the first half of 2003, Terra and Telefónica de España began marketing a mundoADSL service for value-added broadband connectivity.

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eXchange @ 200 PAUL Builds Carrier Hotel Momentum

eXchange @ 200 PAUL, a major carrier hotel and colocation facility in San Francisco, has opened a second facility in nearby Santa Clara, California. The new facility is already serving a number of carrier customers, including Verizon Global Networks, SBC Communications, WilTel Communications, Qwest, Neopolitan Networks, Looking Glass Networks, Silicon Valley Power and Tyco Telecom. Between its two facilities, eXchange @ 200 Paul now has over 42 carriers and IP service providers.


The original eXchange @ 200 PAUL facility is currently providing 65 Gigabit Ethernet connections through 11 services providers including NTT/Verio, Above.net, Wiltel, Cogent Communications, OnFiber Communications and Optigate.
http://www.e200paul.com

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Equant Offers Outsourced Cache Management Service

Equant is launching a managed caching service that could help multinational companies reduce their IP VPN traffic by as much as 40% while improving response-time for some Web-enabled applications by 95%. The new service uses Network Appliance's caches installed at the customer premise.
Corporate VPN caches are especially effective for commonly accessed intranet pages, MS Office documents and e-learning applications. As a managed service, Equant provides 24X7 monitoring, maintenance of caches, and service level agreements for parameters such as service availability, fault and change management. Simon Abrahms, Product Manager for Equant's new Cache Management service, said the bandwidth savings, improved application performance and a single contact point for customer support are primary benefits to the new offering. He noted that reduced bandwidth usage is not antithetical to Equant because the company's business proposition is not about "selling big pipes." Two major European multinationals -- one of the world's largest retailers and a global leader in electronics manufacturing -- have already deployed Equant Cache Management on their corporate IP VPN networks, with a total of 380 caches in more than 50 countries.
http://www.equant.com

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EC Reduces Regulations for Leased Lines

As part of the new regulatory framework for electronic communications the European Commission repealed former directives that required incumbent operators to provide leased line circuits throughout their territories. One of the principles of the new framework is that regulation must be removed when competition is delivering the desired result. In the case of leased lines, this means that national regulatory authorities in EU member States will be able to remove the obligation for an operator to provide some or all of the leased line types in the minimum set where market analysis shows that there is effective competition in the relevant leased line market.http://europa.eu.int

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New EC Framework on Electronic Communications Goes into Effect

The European Commission implemented a new regulatory framework aimed at harmonizing the policies and enforcing the legal certainty of laws pertaining to electronic communications across the member states of the European Union. The new regulatory framework, which went into effect on 25-July-2003, gives the European Commission powers to oversee the national regulatory regimes of member states through a consultative process with their national regulatory authorities (NRA). This consultative process will take place through the European Regulators Group. The EC said its aims for a lighter but comprehensive and technology-neutral regulatory telecommunications environment founded on competition law principles. The new framework seeks to streamline the entire regulatory process by limiting ex ante regulation to what is strictly necessary and by rendering the regulatory process as transparent as possible.


The European Regulators Group (ERG) is composed of the heads of each national regulatory agency, e.g., Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications (France), Regulierungsbehoerde für Telekommunikation und Post (Germany), and Commission for Communications Regulation (Ireland). The ERG held its inaugural meeting in Brussels in October 2002. Jens Arnbak, Chairman of OPTA in the Netherlands, was elected Chairman of the Group. Among the issues currently under discussion is the adoption of a common policy that ensures bitstream access to broadband networks, especially the DSL networks of incumbent operators. A public consultation on the matter was begun earlier this month.


The European Commission noted that five of its Member States have already taken the necessary action to transpose the new framework into their national laws (Finland, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Ireland). A number of other states, in particular Italy, are close behind. The EC warns that latecomers to adopt the common framework risk infringement proceedings if action is not taken rapidly.


In a speech last week, Mario Monti, the EC's Commissioner for Competition, affirmed his belief that "the development of competition is the best way to ensure that electronic communications markets can prosper and be an important engine for the Union's economic development." As a result of anti-trust actions and with the support of the new framework, Monti argued that competition is establishing itself in the European telecom market. To ensure the success of a competitive telecom market, the EC vows to act in partnership with the national competition and regulatory authorities of each member state. Marion Monti noted that currently there are an estimated 200 operators in most member states delivering national and international voice calls. He credits this level of competition with the average 45% reduction in the cost of a fixed line telephone call over the past three years.
http://www.erg.eu.inthttp://europa.eu.int

• In January 2003, the European Regulators Group (ERG) met in Amsterdam to set its agenda for 2003. More information is at http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=6211
  

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Microsoft to Include Real-Time Collaboration with Office

Microsoft has re-branded the online conferencing and collaboration application suite that it obtained through the acquisition of PlaceWare. The functionality is now part of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2003 and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. The Live Meeting application will also become part of the Microsoft Office family that is anticipated to be released this fall. Live Meeting is a browser-based application that can be used to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. Live Communications Server provides presence-awareness, instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications capabilitieshttp://www.microsoft.com

• Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired PlaceWare, a provider of Web conferencing services. The PlaceWare service is aimed at businesses wishing to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. The service currently supports large-scale meetings with up to thousands of attendees.



• PlaceWare got its start in 1990 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) initially as a multi-user game known as LambdaMOO. The technology later became the foundation for a collaborative computing system for the U.S. Department of Defense.

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Sprint Reports Lower Revenue but Strong Positive Free Cash Flow

Citing solid financial gains in a difficult environment, Sprint reported consolidated net operating revenues for Q2 of $6.5 billion, compared to $6.7 billion in the same period last year. Net income for Q2 was $7 million compared to a net loss of $68 million last year. Second quarter operating income was $370 million compared to $670 million a year ago. There was $925 million in free cash flow in Q2, bringing total free cash flow for the first half of the year to $1.3 billion. Some highlights of the quarter:

• Q2 revenues for Sprint's global markets division, local division and other wireline businesses declined by 8% compared to a year ago.
• 
  
  The decision to wind down the company's web hosting operation led to a pre-tax charge of $348 million in Q2
• 
  
  There was pre-tax charge of $241 million to write-down the value of Sprint's stake in Earthlink
• 
  
  Sprint's local division continues to focus on increasing penetration of bundled services and DSL, expanding Sprint-branded local service beyond existing local service territories and converting circuit-based networks to packet technology. During Q2, the division successfully converted a local office to packet switching and plans to convert a total of 210,000 lines by the end of the year.
• 
  
  Sprint's local division continued to experience an erosion of access lines and minutes. At the end of Q2, Sprint was serving 7,982,000 access lines, down 2.4% from a year earlier. Access minutes of use declined to 8,038,000, down 4% from a year earlier. Long distance voice minutes of use declined 14% year-over-year to 940,000. Sprint now has over 223,000 DSL lines in service, up from 86,000 at the end of Q1 2003.
• 
  
  Retail business voice revenues declined at a high single-digit rate compared to a year ago but were up modestly sequentially. Wholesale voice revenues declined over 20% compared to the year ago period and declined at a mid single-digit rate sequentially.
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  Data services revenues decreased 1 percent year over year. Double-digit growth in frame relay services was offset by declines in ATM and private-line services. Dedicated IP revenues grew at a double-digit rate in the quarter due to strength in Global IP services. Domestic dedicated IP revenues were flat. Dial IP revenues once again declined in the quarter.
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  Offshore IP demand is being driven by a continued expansion of Sprint's global IP network in key markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.
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  SprintPCS added 617,000 net new customer in Q2, consisting of 360,000 post-paid retail, 177,000 wholesale and 80,000 affiliate additions. It now has 18.8 million mobile customers.
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  SprintPCS's ARPU was $62, compared to $61 in the same period last year and $59 in Q1 2003. There was an average customer usage of nearly 13½ hours per month in Q2, compared to nearly 11 hours a year ago and 12 hours in Q1.
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  2003 CAPEX for Sprint's FON group is now expected to be approximately $1.8 billion, a $200 million reduction from our previous forecast. Capital spending in the local division is expected to be approximately $1.25 billion and Global Markets capital spending is expected to be approximately $450 million.
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  2003 CAPEX for SprintPCS is expected to be $2.1 billion. CAPEX for Q2 2003 was 60% below CAPEX for Q2 2002.
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  Since the beginning of the year, Sprint's net debt has declined by more than $3.5 billion.

http://www.sprint.com

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Equant Announces New CEO and President

Equant named Daniel Caclin as its new president and CEO, replacing Didier Delepine, who has expressed his wishes to pursue other career opportunities. Caclin currently serves as Equant's COO. Previously, he was the CEO of Global One, and prior to that, the CEO of Transpac - companies focused on international and national data and IP services for the corporate business market. Caclin will be based in Reston, Virginia.http:/www.equant.com

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MCI Responds to Fraud Allegations

Following a meeting with the U.S. Attorneys Office, Michael D. Capellas, MCI's chairman and CEO issued a public statement vowing to cooperate with the new investigation into how the company has handled access fees. Capellas also said MCI is conducting its own internal analysis of the charges.


Various press reports on Monday alleged that MCI's "laundering" of call origination and termination data may have helped the company avoid up to $1 billion in local access charges. Competitors, including AT&T, were quoted as saying MCI's scheme included the routing of calls from U.S. government agencies through Canada to avoid local charges. The allegations, if true, could threaten MCI's lucrative contracts with the U.S. government and its chances of emerging from bankruptcy proceedings.
http://www.mci.com

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Zhone and Tellium Agree to Merge, Combine Access with Optical Core Switching

Zhone Technologies, a provider of next-gen local loop access solutions, announced plans to merge with Tellium, a developer of core optical switching systems. Mory Ejabat, current chairman and CEO of Zhone Technologies, said that combining the two businesses would create a comprehensive solution for local, metro and long distance service providers. Tellium would also contribute its $149.8 million in cash to the combined company, which would retain the name Zhone Technologies. Ejabat would continue as chairman and CEO of the combined operation. In the long term, the combined company plans to offer access and transport solutions that bridge existing copper-based loops and fiber optics. Zhone has acquired eight companies over the past four years. Some other specifics of the deal:

• Upon closing, Tellium stockholders would own approximately 40% of the new company. The merged company plans to be listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ZHNE.
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  Tellium's Aurora Optical Switch and StarNet Wavelength Management System is a core optical transport and switching platform. It scales up to 512 OC-48/STM-16 ports or 128 OC-192/STM-64 ports for a total capacity 1.28 Tbps. Tellium is based in Oceanport, New Jersey.
• 
  
  Zhone's local loop product line includes its Single Line Multi-Service architecture (SLMS), FlexBand Multi-service port, Zhone Management System (ZMS), Broadband Access Node (BAN), Multi-Access Line Concentrator (MALC), AccessNode and Universal Edge 9000 products (purchased from Nortel Networks), Sechtor universal voice gateway, the Z-Edge access products and RAPTOR DSLAM. Zhone is based in Oakland, California.
• 
  
  Tellium reported net revenue of $10.1 million for Q2 2003 and a net loss (GAAP) of $12.1 million, or $0.12 per share. Tellium ended the quarter with $149.8 million in cash and a net cash burn rate of $7.4 million per quarter. During the quarter, Tellium completed the next phase of a rollout of its optical transport and switching equipment by Cable & Wireless.
• 
  
  Zhone reported net sales of $20.5 million for Q2 2003, an increase of 20% from net sales of $17.1 million for Q1 2003. There was a net loss of $4.7 million for Q2, compared with a net loss of $6.8 million for Q1.

http://www.zhone.com
http://www.tellium.com

• In February 2003, Zhone Technologies acquired NEC Eluminant Technologies, a developer of optical access products, for an undisclosed sum. Products included in the acquisition include eLUMINANT's ISC-303 digital loop carrier, the VISTA Access SONET ADM, the RC-28D and RC-28E M13 multiplexers and the FD-6 fiber access multiplexer. NEC retains the rights to the FiberSLAM product and intellectual property associated with the passive optical networking (PON) system.
• 
  
  In July 2002, Zhone Technologies acquired Vpacket Communications, a start-up that developed a customer premise IP-based voice/data router. Financial terms were not disclosed. Vpacket's 6100 voice/data router uses a high performance digital signal processor (DSP) for measuring, testing and supporting precise end-to-end VoIP quality and IP Centrex features via third party softswitches and media gateways.
• 
  
  In August 2001, Zhone Technologies acquired Nortel Networks' discontinued AccessNode and Universal Edge (UE) 9000 Digital Loop Carrier (DLC) shelf and UE 9000 Remote access shelf product.
• 
  
  Zhone Technologies was founded in September 1999 by Mory Ejabat, the former President and CEO of Ascend Communications; Jeanette Symons, the former CTO of Ascend; and Robert Dahl, the former CFO of Ascend.

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Atheros Surpasses 1 Million Monthly WLAN Chip Shipments

Atheros Communications broke the 1-million unit mark in monthly shipments of its 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g WLAN chips in June, signaling the rapid adoption of its third generation WLAN silicon. The company predicts a rapid industry transition from legacy 802.11b to multi-mode 802.11b/g and universal 802.11a/b/g at speeds of 54 Mbps and up.
http://www.atheros.com

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Cavium Introduces WLAN Security Processor for Access/Aggregation

Cavium Networks introduced its NITROX Wireless family of security macro processors for enterprise access and aggregation points. The processors support the full range of security algorithms currently used in WLAN security and the emerging 802.11i standard -- including AES, 3DES and ARC4 and the various modes of each algorithm. Additionally the Cavium NITROX Wireless processors perform protocol processing of CCMP, IPSec, IKE, MPPE and functions of TKIP. They also feature a true hardware Random Number Generator. Cavium will offer ten versions to target a range of price / performance points.


Aruba Wireless Networks, a start-up offering high-performance wireless network switching systems for enterprises and hot spot service providers, has adopted Cavium's NITROX Wireless security processors. The devices are also being used by several server motherboard and OEM vendors for VPN gateways, SSL VPNs, wireless gateways, server load-balancers, routers, switches, web-servers and SANs.
http://www.cavium.com

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CBC/Radio-Canada Tests Net Insight's DTM for Media Transport

CBC/Radio-Canada has successfully tested Net Insight's Dynamic synchronous Transfer Mode (DTM) technology for transporting high-quality video, radio, IP/Ethernet data and VoIP between its facilities in Montreal and Toronto. The trial used a combination of dark fiber and OC-3 capacity between the two cities. Net Insight's Nimbra One access switches were located at each end. The Nimbra One switches were equipped with modules for Ethernet, E1, DVB-ASI and OC-3. The test equipment used an automated control plane with enhanced GMPLS functionality for load balancing, mesh protection and multicast provisioning. DTM is a circuit-switched technology with strong QoS support. DTM is currently being standardized within ETSI.
http://www.netinsight.net

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Korea's Dacom Selects Quarry's Router for MPLS VPN

Dacom, one of South Korea's leading service providers, has selected Quarry Technologies' iQ Security Service Routers to provide security services to its MPLS VPN customers. Quarry Technologies' iQ8000 Security Service Routers will be distributed throughout South Korea, around the edge of Dacom's MPLS backbone network. Support for VPN technologies, including IPsec and RFC-2547 Layer 3 MPLS VPNs, will ensure integration of the iQ8000 into the network infrastructure. Quarry's Security Service Routers will terminate access-network connections, identify subscribers and classify traffic flows. Additionally, security and traffic management processes will be applied at both the ingress and egress of Dacom's network to assure the highest levels of protection. Stateful firewall filtering, intrusion detection, traffic policing, Denial of Service (DoS) prevention, Network Address Translation (NAT), virtual routing, VPN tunneling, encryption, traffic shaping, and other services will all be provided, as needed, on a per-subscriber basis. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.quarrytech.com

• Earlier this month, Quarry Technologies, a start-up based in Burlington, Massachusetts, named Ian Mashiter as its new president and CEO. Prior to joining Quarry, Mashiter was a co-founder of Ennovate Networks, an IP edge routing venture.

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Tektronix Announces 3G Test Platform

Tektronix announced its new protocol test platform equipped with application software to test 3G, 2.5G and 2G networks. The platform can be used to identify and analyze the source of service degradation in real-time. Application software includes a real-time Multi-Interface Call Trace for 3G, 2.5G and 2G networks. When service degradation is reported, a message, or "trouble ticket," is sent to the operator's operation and maintenance technician. Tektronix's new K15 protocol test platform supports UMTS, CDMA2000, cdmaOne, EDGE, GPRS and GSM.
http://www.tektronix.com

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Universities Look to Internet2 as a backup for Voice Services

The Internet2 Voice over IP (VoIP) Working Group is launching an initiative to ensure the survivability of university and government voice networks in the event that the circuit-switched public network goes down. The VoIP disaster recovery project will use the Internet2's Abilene network to provide a resilient and distributed IP-based disaster recovery alternative to the PSTN's traditional PBX and switched network architecture. The cooperative initiative is being led by BroadSoft, Georgetown University, Internet2, and Paetec with participating member institutions including Catholic University, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Texas A&M.
http://www.broadsoft.com
http://www.internet2.edu/

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NYT: MCI Faces New Fraud Investigation

The New York Times reported that the federal government has launched a new inquiry into whether MCI defrauded other carriers by disguising local and long distance calls in order to avoid paying access fees to local telephone companies at each end of the call. The scheme reportedly changed the origination billing codes in order to pass off the local access charges to another carrier. The allegations claim that the scheme goes back nearly a decade and that it is still on-going. The New York Times cites MCI officials as saying the charges are unfounded and just another attempt by competitors to derail its emergence from bankruptcy proceedings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/business/27MCI.html

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NTL Selects France Telecom for IP Transit

NTL, the UK's largest cable operator and broadband provider, selected France Telecom to provide its IP transit service. France Telecom will connect NTL to its global backbone network via two PoPs -- one in London and a new one in Bristol. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.francetelecom.com

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Nortel Networks Builds 3G Net for Taiwan's Asia Pacific

Nortel Networks is building a 3G Wireless Data Network for Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless (APBW), which plans to launch Taiwan's first commercial 3G services in Q3 2003. Data services will be offered at rates up to 153 Kbps using CDMA2000 1X technology. APBW will also offer higher-speed data services in the Taipei metropolitan area with a peak rate of 2.4 Mbps using CDMA2000 1xEV-DO. Nortel Networks is the sole CDMA infrastructure provider for APBW, one of five Taiwan carriers awarded 3G licenses in February 2002. Nortel Networks provided circuit core, packet core, and access network technologies. Products deployed include CDMA Metro Cell radio base stations, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Radio Network Controller and Element Management System, CDMA Packet Data Service Node, Nortel Networks Passport 8600 Gigabit Ethernet Routing Switch and Passport 7000 Multiservice Switch, and related infrastructure. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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BreconRidge to Acquire Module Business from Nortel Networks

BreconRidge Manufacturing Solutions agreed to acquire certain assets of Nortel Networks High-Speed Modules business unit, which is responsible for the design, development, manufacturing, test and sale of high-speed modules applicable to optical and wireless transmission systems, satellite communications systems, radar systems for the defense industry and other microelectronics applications with speeds greater than 10 Gbps. The deal includes Nortel Networks' leasehold interest in a state-of-the-art facility located at 500 Palladium Drive, Ottawa. This facility consists of approximately 330,000 square feet of highly advanced manufacturing and office space, including, 70,000 square feet of "class 10,000 clean room" and 10,000 square feet of "class 1,000 clean room". BreconRidge, which is a top 50 global electronics manufacturer, plans to consolidate its Canadian operations, including its High Speed Modules business, into this facility. Also as part of the deal, the companies will enter into a three-year supply agreement under which BreconRidge will be a supplier of high-speed modules for use in Nortel Networks 10 Gbps systems. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.breconridge.com/

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FLAG to Make Early Buy Back Of Indenture Notes

FLAG Telecom notified The Bank of New York, its trustee, of its election to redeem all series of notes issued by the company under the Indenture on 25-August-2003. FLAG will redeem the notes, which have a combined face value of $50.25 million, for a discounted redemption value of $35.25 million and will pay all accrued but unpaid interest. FLAG Telecom its decision is a sign of confidence in its business plan.
http://www.flagtelecom.com

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Merrill Lynch Selects Avaya for Corporate VoIP Network

Merrill Lynch selected Avaya IP telephony solutions for its three-year-old corporate campus in Hopewell, New Jersey and its new regional headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan. The deployment will include Avaya Communication Manager IP telephony software and Avaya Media Servers. Merrill Lynch will use a mix of IP and digital handsets to serve its 5800 employees in New Jersey and 1800 employees in Japan -- routing IP calls over its data network and digital calls over its new voice network. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.avaya.com

• Merrill Lynch had previously been using thousands of Cisco IP phones in its network.

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AFC Reports Revenue of $83 Million

Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC) announced Q2 revenue of $83.0 million on a GAAP basis, compared with $80.5 million in the preceding quarter and $86.3 million for Q2 2002. Net income for Q2 2003 was $3.3 million, or $0.04 per share, compared with $8.3 million, or $0.10 per share, in Q1 2003. ALLTEL and Sprint were each 10% customers in the quarter. AFC said service providers will remain cautious about spending in the near term, but that investment in the access network will be a key focus for carriers in the future as they roll out DSL and Fiber to the Premise (FTTP).
http://www.afc.com

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