Syndeo Names New CEO

Syndeo, a developer of Class 5 VoIP Call Management Server/softswitch technology, named John Vaughan as its new CEO, replacing Ted Griggs, Syndeo's co-Founder, who has been named Chairman of the Board. Previously, Vaughan was the President and CEO of Cinta Networks, an optical networking company. Before Cinta, Vaughan was President, Global Sales and Service at Tellabs, where he was responsible for worldwide product revenues, the professional services business, and corporate marketing. Syndeo also announced the appointment of David Van Valkenburg to its Board of Directors. Currently, Van Valkenburg is the chairman of Balfour Associates, a corporate advisory firm providing advice and counsel to CEOs, Boards of Directors, and private equity funds. Previous to Balfour, Van Valkenburg held several executive roles within the cable industry, including CEO of Telewest (UK), Executive Vice President at MediaOne and MediaOne International, and President of Cox Cable, Paragon, and MultiVision.
http://www.syndeocorp.com

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Cable & Wireless Announces Management Changes, Wallace Steps Down

Cable & Wireless announced that its current CEO, Graham Wallace, will be leaving the company as soon as a replacement is found. The company also announced a number of changes to its Board of Directors. Rob Rowley, a non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee has been appointed executive deputy chairman. Don Reed, executive director and Raymond Seitz, non-executive director are retiring from the Board. Tony Rice and Bernard Gray will join the Board with immediate effect.
http://www.cw.com

• In November, Cable & Wireless announced that it would withdraw from certain markets in the US and Continental Europe and restructure its operations in the UK and Japan. http://www.convergedigest.com/Mergers/financialarticle.asp?ID=5573

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Taqua Secures $20 Million for Next-Gen Class 5 Switch, Rich McGinn Joins Board

Taqua, a start-up based in Richardson, Texas, secured over $20 million in new funding to support its next generation Class 5 switching system. Taqua's flagship OCX incorporates softswitch, signaling and media gateway functionality on a single-card design. Taqua said it secured more than 40 customers during 2002. The new funding brings total financing to date to over $140 million. The latest round was led by RRE Ventures, and also includes investments by Investcorp and Point Judith Capital Partners, as well as all of Taqua's existing investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital and Court Square Ventures. In addition, Taqua also announced that Rich McGinn, a general partner at RRE Ventures, and former chairman and CEO, Lucent Technologies, and Alex Guira, partner, Investcorp, have joined its Board of Directors.
http://www.taqua.com

• In June 2002, Taqua named Charles Vogt as its new president and CEO. Vogt previously served as vice president of worldwide sales for Santera Systems. Prior to Santera, Vogt was vice president of worldwide sales and customer service at Accelerated Networks.

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Axiowave Secures $45 Million for Core and Metro Networking Gear

Axiowave, a start-up based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, closed $45 million in Series C funding, bringing the total funding to date to $96 million. Axiowave is developing intelligent core and metro networking equipment. Product plans have not yet been publicly announced. Axiowave said its forthcoming platform is currently being tested in carrier labs. The new funding was co-led by Argonaut Private Equity and existing investors Gainesborough Investments, Ray Stata, Mukesh Chatter and other private investors.
http://www.axiowave.com

• Axiowave was founded in May 2000 by Ray Stata (formerly a founder of Nexabit Networks), Mukesh Chatter (formerly a founder and CEO of Nexabit Networks), Satish Soman (formerly VP of Chip Development and Modeling at Nexabit Networks), and Peter Marconi (formerly a founder of Nexabit Networks).



• In June 1999, Lucent Technologies first announced plans to acquire Nexabit Networks, a start-up developing a terabit-class IP switch/router, in a stock swap deal valued at about $900 million at the time (14 million shares of LU). The announcement came one day after Lucent completed its acquisition of Ascend Communications.



• In October 2002, Lucent Technologies confirmed that it had abandoned its TMX 880 high-capacity core network switch, which was based on technology acquired from Nexabit Networks.

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Voyant Acquires Octave Communications for Conferencing Solutions

Voyant Technologies, a provider of voice conferencing and collaboration solutions, has acquired Octave Communications, a conferencing equipment provider, in an all-stock transaction. Financial terms were not disclosed. The management team estimates that Voyant will have approximately 60% market share in the service provider voice conferencing systems market. Voyant's headquarters will remain in Westminster, Colorado. It will also maintain Octave's New Hampshire-based office.
http://www.voyanttech.com

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Adelphia Deploys BigBand's Broadband Multimedia-Service-Router (BMR)

Adelphia Communications, the fifth largest US cable company, has deployed BigBand Networks' Broadband Multimedia-Service-Router (BMR) for digital broadcast services at four headend system locations. The equipment is being used to gain better control over programming and its consumption of network bandwidth. The BigBand BMR's media processing enhances bandwidth efficiency through selective application of rate shaping video bit rate adaptation to some or all programs on an as-needed basis.
http://www.bigbandnet.com

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U.S. State Department Awards Contract to Qwest

The U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Telecommunications Service Program Office awarded a ten-year contract to Qwest Communications under the SPECTUM program. Qwest has the opportunity to receive up to $36 million per year -- or $360 million over the life of the contract -- for a variety of services. Qwest's subcontractor partners for this effort are COMSAT General (a division of Lockheed Martin) and Communication Technologies, Inc. (COMTek).
http://www.qwest.com

• In December 2002, both WorldCom and AT&T announced 10-year contracts to provide advanced communications services to the U.S. Department of State under the SPECTRUM program.

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Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Selects RADCOM's VoIP and VoDSL Testing

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom selected RADCOM's VoIP network test and quality management equipment. The purchase includes five integrated VoIP modules: SIPSim, a SIP Call Generator; 323Sim, an H.323 Call Generator; QPro, a PSTN and SS7 call quality tester; and MediaPro, a voice and signaling expert system.
http://www.radcom.com

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Marvell Introduces Single-Chip Integrated SOHO Gateway Router

Marvell introduced a single-chip integrated SOHO gateway router solutions that provides full-wire-speed 100 Mbps WAN/LAN routing, which passes the FCC Class B EMI conformance test. The new "Link Street" SOHO gateway routers include a 133 MHz ARM9 processor, the Marvell Link Street FE 5-port/6-port switches, and five Marvell 0.15-micron FE transceivers.
http://www.marvell.com

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General Bandwidth Expands Packet Telephony System with Gigabit Ethernet

General Bandwidth has added a Gigabit Ethernet interface to its G6 packet telephony platform, which has been deployed at several dozen locations worldwide in support of packet voice services over ATM networks. With the new release, the General Bandwidth platform offers support for VoATM, VoIP, traditional telephony protocols such as GR-303/TR-08 and V5.2, and packet telephony protocols such as Megaco, MGCP, and SIP.
http://www.genband.com

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Ubiquity Moves to Version 2.0 of SIP Conferencing

Ubiquity Software Corporation released Version 2.0 of its SiPEAK media conferencing software. Enhancements include better programmability for enabling service providers to customize the browser-based management interface image and text to produce a branded and differentiated solution. This includes support for multiple languages for system announcements and Web-based text messages to increase user satisfaction. SiPEAK 2.0 supports a larger number of greeting, status, and advisory messages to provide a more natural meeting environment. In addition, Ubiquity has added a rich set of DTMF-based conference controls mirroring the browser-based user interface.
http://www.ubiquity.net

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RSA Develops Software Token for NTT DoCoMo Phones

RSA Security has developed a SecurID Software Token that delivers two-factor user authentication through NTT DoCoMo's i-appli compatible phones based on i-mode. The tokens can be used to authenticate users and help protect valuable online information resources. A two-factor authentication process requires users to identify themselves with two unique factors -- something they know and something they have -- before they are granted access. RSA SecurID authenticators come in a variety of form factors including hardware tokens, smart cards and software tokens. NTT DoCoMo currently has 36 million i-mode subscribers.
http://www.rsasecurity.com

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Aruba Wireless Networks Unveils Wi-Fi Switch

Aruba Wireless Networks, a start-up based in San Jose, California, introduced a new Wi-Fi platform that acts as an intelligent, centralized switching system for wireless services within a corporation. Aruba's new Wi-Fi switching system combines wireless network access and air monitoring with Gigabit Ethernet switching and higher-layer packet processing. The system is designed as a centralized control point for thousands of wireless users. It provides an automated wireless intrusion prevention feature that proactively searches for rogue access points on the network and prevents users from connecting to them. In addition to protecting the air, Aruba's switching system creates a private switched connection per user over the air. Aruba's switch isolates individual users' traffic and authenticates users over their individual switched connections using standard schemes such as 802.1X. Once authenticated, the switch applies unique per-user stateful firewall policies to ensure that the user has access only to resources that they are authorized for in the network.
http://www.arubanetworks.com

• Aruba Wireless Networks has received $10 million of Initial venture funding from Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company was founded by Pankaj Manglik and Keerti Melkote, formerly from Alteon WebSystems, Cisco Systems and Intel.

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AT&T and Partner Build Global VPN for China Ocean Shipping

AT&T and UNISITI, a telecom services joint venture in China, have been awarded a contract to build the Asia Pacific network of China Ocean Shipping (COSCO). The project involves linking COSCO's global network and data center based in Pudong, Shanghai with the company's regional offices in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The facilities will be interconnected to the AT&T Global Network. AT&T and UNISITI will also provide COSCO's European Wide Area Network, which provides Frame Relay coverage to Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.ap.att.com

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Marconi Announces First Sale of 10 Gbps ATM Interface to US Military

The U.S. Department of Defense has become the first customer for Marconi's new 10 Gbps (OC-192c/STM-64) ATM port card, which interfaces to its flagship BXR-48000 multiservice switch- router. The Department of Defense will use the 10 Gbps ATM interface for classified applications in multiservice, broadband network expansion projects. Marconi said the new 10 Gbps ATM interface enables network operators to move information at the highest feasible speeds while secured by the most rigorous encryption technologies. The system is also being positioned for managing growth in legacy Frame Relay and ATM services as well as for emerging high-bandwidth applications such as high-definition video, distributed computing and storage networking. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.marconi.com

• Marconi's BXR-48000 is a multiservice packet switch-router that scales from 40 to 480 Gbps. The BXR-48000 platform concurrently and natively supports connectionless IP routing, MPLS and ATM switching at up to OC-192c.

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WorldCom Expands Traffic Management for Network-Based MPLS VPN

WorldCom introduced real-time traffic management and performance reporting capabilities for its Private IP network-based VPN service. Using a secure Web-based interface, customers can review and evaluate real-time and historic VPN metrics like latency, throughput, circuit usage, and packet loss in real-time, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual performance reporting formats. With this level of detail, customers can shift network resources or optimize bandwidth to accommodate up-to-the minute business requirements. There is a monthly fee per circuit managed by the offering. The new capabilities are supported by Visual Networks' performance management technology.
http://www.worldcom.com

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Telehouse Launches IPv6 Peering Exchange in NYC

TELEHOUSE America initiated services at an IPv6 peering exchange at its owned and operated International Internet Exchange in downtown New York City. Tiscali International Network, the carrier arm of Tiscali Spa, has been the first International carrier to connect to the NYIIX IPv6 Exchange. Tiscali has already deployed native IPv6 in all of its 40 PoPs in Europe and the US. TELEHOUSE America currently has over 40 members at its NYIIX facility, including Tiscali, KDDI, Time Warner, Deutsche Telekom, and British Telecom.
http://www.telehouse.com

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Japan Telecom Deploys Cisco for MPLS Internet Exchange (IX)

Japan Telecom is launching an MPLS based Internet Exchange (IX) to interconnect service providers in Japan. The facility will use Cisco 12000 Series Routers and Cisco MPLS IOS software running at up to 10 Gbps. Japan Telecom's MPLS ASSOCIO exchange will provide media-independent any-to-any geographically distributed peering or a virtual backbone based on MPLS LSP (Label Switched Path) for service providers. This will provide service providers with flexible peering to other service providers or content holders. Both Japan Telecom and Cisco are contributing to the Next-Generation IX consortium, which is a project in Japan to architect a Next-Generation Internet Exchange.
http://www.associo.jphttp://www.cisco.com/go/mpls

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Lucent to Resell Cisco Products to Mobile Service Providers

Lucent Technologies will integrate and resell selected data networking products from Cisco Systems to its mobile service provider customers. The multi-year, non-exclusive agreement covers the following Cisco packet data and media gateway products:

Cisco Packet Data Serving Node (PDSN), which enables CDMA2000 operators to provide mobile data access to the Internet, as well as corporate intranets and extranets.

Cisco Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN), which enables GSM and UMTS operators to optimize their networks to deploy high-quality mobile data services.

Cisco MGX 8000 Media Gateway and ATM multiservice portfolio, which enables efficient aggregation of radio access networks and transports voice-over-IP (VoIP) and voice-over-ATM (VoATM) in 2G, 2.5G and future 3G networks.

Lucent Worldwide Services, in cooperation with Cisco, will provide a full suite of services including deployment (installation), engineering, support and maintenance for the packet data and media gateway products covered under the agreement. Both Cisco and Lucent will be providing customer support. To date, Lucent has deployed more than 70,000 CDMA base stations in commercial networks around the globe, more than 35,000 of which support 3G CDMA2000 1X service. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.cisco.com
http://www.lucent.com

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Force10 Networks Cuts 10G Ethernet Prices by 44%

Force10 Networks announced a 44% price cut on its 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, reducing the per-port pricing to $17,000. The company said while "10-Gigabit Ethernet is the natural migration path for today's networks, many customers were waiting for the expected Ethernet style drop in prices before they upgrade to 10-Gigabit Ethernet."http://www.force10networks.com

• Force10 Networks' 10 Gbps Ethernet switch/router supports up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 28 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) per chassis. Six custom ASICs deliver non-blocking, line-rate forwarding across all ports, even with access control lists (ACLs) or QoS applied. Force10's software delivers full functionality L2 switching and L3 routing. The company initially is offering two models: the full-size E1200 featuring 14 line-card slots, 1.2 Tbps non-blocking switch fabric, 40 Gbps bandwidth per line-card slot, redundant route processor modules (RPMs), redundant switch fabric modules (SFMs), redundant power and hot-swap of all key components; and the half-sized E600, which uses the same cards.



• Force10 Networks is headed by Prabhat K. (PK) Dubey. Prior to co-founding the company, Dubey was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at USVP. Before that, he was President and CEO of MMC Networks, a network processor company.



• Force10 Networks has raised $168 million of financing from New Enterprise Associates, US Venture Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors and Pacesetter Capital Group. Force10 is based in Milpitas, California.

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