France Telecom Launches EUR5.5 Billion Bond Issue

As part of its recently announced financial restructuring, France Telecom set the final terms of its EUR denominated benchmark issue. Announced as a 3 billion EUR deal in two tranches last Friday, the transaction was increased to 5.5 billion EUR with an additional 30-year tranche, to meet investor demand. The proceeds will be used to refinance existing debt.
http://www.francetelecom.com

• On 05-December-2002, France Telecom announced a financial restructuring that includes €15 billion in new equity, including € 9 billion from the French government, which holds a 55% interest in the company. Under the “15+15+15�? plan, France Telecom would also make operational improvements to increase free cash flow by €15 billion to reduce debt, and the company would reschedule €15 billion of debt. The company said it would focus on integrated management of key assets such as its France Telecom, Equant, Orange and Wanadoo brands, while divesting from operations with weaker or less strategic positions. The company will move away from its decentralized organization to develop greater synergies between units, including centralized purchasing, R&D, support, marketing and administrative functions.

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Catapult Introduces Linux-Based Telecom Test System

Catapult Communications introduced an entry-level, Linux-based system for testing VoIP, 3G and other types of telecom networks. The single-user test system provides a graphical user interface for developing a range of multi-call and multi-protocol test applications.
http://www.catapult.com

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Ceragon Networks Signs OEM Agreement with China's Datang for Wireless Equipment

Ceragon Networks, a supplier of high-capacity broadband wireless systems based in Tel Aviv, Israel, announced signed an OEM agreement with Datang Telecom Technology Co. Ltd. (Datang), China's leading wireless telecommunications equipment provider. Datang will offer Ceragon's FibeAir product family as a solution for metropolitan access and cellular backhaul applications in the Chinese market.
http://www.ceragon.com

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Novilit Signs NTT-AT as Distributor in Japan

Novilit, which provides a design environment for embedding communications protocols in software, hardware or firmware, signed a distributor agreement with NTT Advanced Technology of Japan. The Novilit Protocol AnyWare development environment is aimed at embedded system developers and engineers developing protocols for wired, wireless, terrestrial and satellite systems. Novilit is based in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
http://www.novilit.com

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Latvia's Capitol City Deploys net.com's Service Creation Manager

Riga, the capitol city of Latvia, is deploying net.com's Service Creation Manager (SCREAM) platform in a multiservice broadband network that will connect over 300 schools, hospitals, police stations and other administrative institutions. The Riga City Council initially deployed SCREAM50 and SCREAM100 platforms for ATM switching and traffic shaping. The municipality is now expanding with additional SCREAM50 nodes and SCREAMVue network management. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.net.com

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FLAG Telecom Opens Internet Exchange in Egypt

FLAG Telecom, together with local partner National Telecom Company, inaugurated the Cairo Regional Internet Exchange (CR-IX), which will serve as a central peering point for domestic ISPs. The new facility also provides global IP, Ethernet and bandwidth services offered jointly with Telecom Egypt.
http://www.flagtelecom.com

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Marconi Selects Xilinx Virtex-II Platform FPGAs

Marconi is using Xilinx's Virtex-II Platform FPGAs for new SONET and SDH products designed for carrying Gigabit Ethernet traffic. The Xilinx Virtex-II Platform FPGA offers densities ranging from 40,000 to eight million system gates. Xilinx also announced an online resource for designers of products for metro access networking.
http://www.xilinx.com/esp/optical/

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Rogers AT&T Wireless Renews Supply Agreement with Ericsson for 3 Years

Rogers AT&T Wireless, Canada's leading wireless provider, renewed its supply agreement with Ericsson for the next three years. Ericsson is Rogers AT&T Wireless' exclusive supplier of wireless mobile network core and radio access gear. The deal includes the rollout of nationwide 850MHz GSM/GPRS capability.
http://www.rogers.com

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ECI Telecom's NGTS Subsidiary and NexVerse Merge into Veraz Networks

ECI Telecom's NGTS division and NexVerse Networks completed their previously announced merger forming Veraz Networks (previously introduced as Chorale Networks). Additionally, Veraz has closed the planned $30 million financing round. The new company will provide global carriers with packet-based replacements for traditional TDM infrastructure. The ECI-NGTS business, which provides an existing revenue stream, is an established provider of digital compression equipment for the TDM networks of major international carriers. The company also supplies VoIP media gateways. NexVerse offers a carrier-class softswitch and call control platform that delivers traditional toll, tandem and local (Class 4/ 5) voice services, as well as new, converged voice-data services. The NexVerse platform features open, standards-based interfaces to media devices, application servers and back-office systems. In the new financing round, Argonaut Private Equity has invested $5.5 million, ECI Telecom has invested $10 million, and NexVerse's original investors - Norwest Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Levensohn Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers - invested $14.5 million. ECI now owns 43.2% on a non-fully diluted basis and 36.2% on a fully diluted basis of Veraz Networks.
http://www.veraznetworks.com

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Lufthansa Begins Trial of In-flight Wireless and Wired LAN Service

Lufthansa began a commercial test of Wi-Fi (802.11b) service throughout all the cabins of a 747-400 flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Washington, DC. In addition to Wi-Fi access, an Ethernet connector is available in the passenger seats. Connexion By Boeing, a mobile information services provider, is providing the infrastructure that allows two-way-live data between the plane and the ground, with speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream. Cisco Systems is providing the technology for the onboard network. Five Cisco Aironet 350 Series Access Points have been fitted throughout the plane, along with one Cisco 3640 Router and nine Cisco Catalyst 3548 XL Series Switches. Cisco said Lufthansa is also evaluating its recently launched Cisco 3200 Series Mobile Access Router, which provides seamless transitions between various wireless networks. Lufthansa plans to add the service to its entire long range fleet over the next year.
http://www.cisco.com

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SBC Signs 3 Year Supplier Agreement Extension with ADC

SBC Communications signed a three-year extension to its supply agreement with ADC. The agreement calls for ADC to supply copper and fiber connectivity products including digital signal cross connect (DSX) systems, fiber optic panels and frames, and fiber optic cable raceway systems. These products are used in a variety of central and remote office installations.
http://www.adc.com

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Convedia Delivers IP Media Servers With Native VoiceXML 2.0 Support

Convedia added native VoiceXML 2.0 support to its line of media servers. The company said application developers could use its SIP/VoiceXML control interface to create enhanced services for 2.5G/3G wireless and next generation wireline networks. Examples could include voicemail and unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted PBX, phone-based Internet information retrieval systems, multimedia conferencing, calling card services, speech-enable applications, Class 5 services, etc. VoiceXML, which is based on the Worldwide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Extensible Markup Language (XML), supports touchtone (DTMF keypad) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) for user input, and pre-recorded audio and text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) for output.
http://www.convedia.com
http://www.voicexmlforum.org

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Telefónica Deploys IP/MPLS Backbone in Brazil with Juniper/Nortel

Telefónica's Brazilian subsidiary, Telefónica Empresas, has rolled out a nationwide multiservice network based on Nortel Networks' Passport Multiservice Switches and Juniper Networks' M20 routing platforms. The network supports a range of voice, data, IP and MPLS services, including IP VPNs, Internet access and remote access to corporate intranets. The Nortel equipment is manufactured in Campinas, Brazil. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com
http://www.juniper.net

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CLECs Lobby for Pro-Competition UNE-P Rules

Executives from 22 competitive carriers called on the FCC and Bush Administration officials to uphold the rules requiring Bell monopolies to lease parts of their networks to competitors. The executives warned that the threat to competition posed by the impending FCC Triennial UNE Review decision could stop local phone competition in its tracks. In a statement, the group said current UNE-P rules could be credited for more than 85% of the net growth in competitive access lines during the first half of 2002. The lobby is led by the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel), whose members include AT&T; MCI, Dominion Telecom, Birch Telecom and others.
http://www.comptel.org

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Senator Outlines NexGenTen Agenda For Communications Reform

U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) outlined his ten top priorities for his chairmanship of the Senate Communications Subcommittee during the current 108th Congress. The "Burns NexGenTen Tech Agenda" includes:

the reintroduction of the Burns-Wyden CAN-SPAM bill, which requires senders of unsolicited commercial email to provide an easy "unsubscribe" option for consumers and imposes harsh penalties on transgressors who falsify information to mask the origins of the sender.

Spectrum Management Reform to move away from the failed auction model and possibly toward a royalty based approach

an E-911 bill that mandates 911 as a universal wireless emergency number.

an initiative to take aim at The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' ( ICANN) "half-hearted" efforts to self-reform. Burns charges that ICANN ineffectiveness poses serious problems for American national security, as evidenced by the recent "denial of service" (DOS) attack on nine of the 13 Internet "root servers" in October.
a new bill that would protect wireless privacy by prohibiting the use of scanners or other technologies to eavesdrop on wireless callers without their knowledge

an online privacy bill that adopts a "two-tiered" approach, requiring an opt-in consent for sensitive information and opt-out for everything else. The bill also preempts inconsistent state laws or regulations.

legislative support for a "U.S.-Asia Network" program that would address the problem of national government favoritism for domestic technologies and seek to expand consumer choice in the Asia-Pacific region

a new Broadband Expensing bill that would provide tax incentives to business that invest in broadband, with a focus on accelerating the deployment of high-speed Internet access across the country, especially in rural America. The broadband bill creates a temporary tax incentive for providers in the form of "expensing," allowing an immediate deduction of a capital expenditure in the first year of service rather than depreciating that investment over time. In the case of "current generation" broadband investments in rural and underserved areas, the bill would allow 50% expensing of the investment, with the rest to be depreciated according to normal depreciation schedules. When providers build out "next generation" broadband networks, the bill would provide for 100% expensing.

support a solvent and stable Universal Service Fund that sustains consumers in rural America

more support for digital democracy initiatives, such as webcasts and online documents.
http://www.senate.gov/~burns/

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Nielsen//NetRatings Report Shows Solid Growth in US Broadband, Decline in Dial-up

The latest monthly report from Nielsen/NetRatings for the month of December 2002 shows that broadband access at home in the US continues to post double-digit growth with a 59% year-over-year increase, marking more than 33.6 million broadband users (not households or lines). Narrowband users (dial-up) in the US numbered 74.4 million for December 2002, a decline of 10% compared to the previous year. Some other key figures from Nielsen/NetRatings:

Broadband users spent an average of 17 hours and 20 minutes online last month, while time spent for dial-up users averaged less than 10 hours during the same timeframe.

Broadband users viewed over 1,300 pages per person, more than double the amount of pages accessed by their narrowband counterparts.

Men comprised 52 percent of all broadband users, while women made up 53 percent of all narrowband surfers

Older age Internet users (55 to 64) were the fastest growing segment using broadband, up 78% year-over-year to 3.1 million users. Teenagers using broadband numbered nearly 4.2 million, up 66% year-over-year.

The Nielsen/NetRatings survey provides further audience demographics as well as data on the most popular sites visited.
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com

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