Lucent Reaches Agreement with Unions

Lucent Technologies reached national and local agreements with the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) on 20-month contracts. Under the separate agreements, there will be a general wage increase of 2% on June 1 and an additional increase of 2% on May 30, 2004. Changes in healthcare benefits include increases in co-payments, deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, and modest improvements in certain dental benefits.
http://www.lucent.com

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AT&T Canada to Relaunch Under New Name, Notes Progress in Capital Restructuring

AT&T Canada announced new commercial agreements with AT&T Corp. defining how the companies will serve customers as AT&T Canada transitions to a fully independent and re-branded company. AT&T Canada will launch a new brand name by September 9, 2003. The deal also enables AT&T Canada and AT&T Corp. to continue working together on a non-exclusive basis, maintains network ties between the two companies, recognizes AT&T Corp.'s ability to serve Canadian customers directly (including by competing with AT&T Canada), and provides AT&T Canada the ability to forge additional supplier relationships. AT&T Canada also noted progress in its ongoing bankruptcy case. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued an order to disseminate to shareholders the details of a capital restructuring plan under which the company's outstanding public debt would be exchanged for 100% of the new equity of AT&T Canada and a minimum of $200 million in cash. The company hopes to complete the capital restructuring at the end of the first quarter of 2003.
http://www.attcanada.com

• AT&T Canada provides a full range of integrated services over its 18,700 route kilometers of local and long haul fiber.



• As of 15-Ocober-2002, AT&T Canada reported $4.5 billion of outstanding public debt.

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Alcatel Tests New Optical Micro Cabling Technology

Alcatel tested a newly developed optical micro cabling technology that proved capable of installing a fiber optic cable route of approximately 20,000 ft (6.1 km) in slightly under an hour and a half. The technique involves blowing specially designed fiber optic cables into small microducts placed inside empty or partially filled ducts. The cable was installed in multiple sections, with the longest achieved blowing distance of 6400 ft (1.950 km) within 28 minutes. The Alcatel microduct cable used in the trial was 7.2mm in diameter and contained 72 fibers. The DuraLine Silicore microduct into which this cable was blown measured 10mm in inner diameter and 12mm in outer diameter. Both the microducts and the microduct cable were blown using jetting equipment provided by Sherman & Reilly, with installation and consulting services provided by Oasis Micro Networks.
http://www.oasiscompanies.com
http://www.alcatel.com

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BT Awarded Broadband Contract with National Health Service (NHS)

BT was awarded a £168M agreement with the National Health Service (NHS) Information Authority to provide upgraded broadband connections to more than 7,000 NHS sites throughout England, including hospitals, general practitioners and NHS Trusts. The broadband upgrade supports the new NHS National Strategic Plan for IT and it underpins three major projects: electronic booking systems (online appointment bookings), integrated patient care records, and electronic transfer of prescriptions. The upgrades will be provided using secure IP-VPNs. Broadband is defined as 256 kbps connections to general practitioners' offices and 2 Mbps services to hospitals and other NHS facilities.
http://www.btplc.com

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JDS Uniphase Launches 2.5 Gbps Transceiver

JDS Uniphase introduced a new 2.5 Gbps, small form factor pluggable (SFP) MSA transceiver designed for 1310 and 1550 nm wavelengths and for short, intermediate, and long reach applications. JDS Uniphase said its new CT2 device meets all SONET specifications, including receiver reflectance, and provides automatic extinction ratio control for the entire life of the product. The device has a microprocessor-based design that allows the implementation of all the Digital Diagnostic Monitoring (DDM) functions in the MSA. It is "hot-pluggable" both optically and electrically. http://www.jdsu.com

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Infineon Ships 40 Gbps (OC-768) Chip

Infineon Technologies shipped multifunctional single-chip solution for high-speed line cards that can perform both interface conversion and serializer/deserializer (SerDes) operations. Infineon's Titan 768MD could be used in 40 Gbps OC-768 line cards to perform SerDes Framer Interface Level 4 (SFI-4)-to-Level 5 (SFI-5) interface conversion. When performing narrowband SFI-5-to-SFI-4 conversion, 40 Gbps data throughput can be achieved in both directions across a network while leveraging investments in 10 Gbps framers. In addition, the Titan 768MD can perform inverse multiplexing of the OC-768c payload from a router. Infineon said the new device could also be used with a high-speed framer and pointer processor to provide a two-chip OC-768 solution for line cards operating at a 40 Gbps throughput.
http://www.infineon.com

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ITU Develops Modem over IP Standard (V.150.0 and V.151.1)

The ITU adopted a Modem over IP (MoIP) standard to ensure that as networks move to a ‘pure IP' infrastructure they will still be able to efficiently handle calls generated by dial-up modems. The new standards would also give end users the ability to carry on using their modems to the full extent of their capabilities on both circuit switched as well as packet networks. The two ITU-T Recommendations that deal with MoIP are V.150.0 and V.151.1. The technical group responsible for the specification was ITU-T Study Group 16.
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com16/index.asp

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Senators Propose Broadband Expensing Act of 2003

A new "Broadband Expensing Act of 2003" has been introduced in the U.S. Senate aimed at providing an economic incentive for the rollout of last mile networks. Initial backers of the bill include Senators Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Orin Hatch (R-Utah), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Jim Bunning (R-Kent.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)

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