Topio Secures $10 Million for Disaster Recovery Solution

Topio, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California with R&D in Israel, raised $10 million in second round funding for its disaster recovery solutions. Topio's SANSafe enables system-wide consistent disaster recovery for heterogeneous SAN environments, storage subsystems, direct-attached storage, and storage virtualization schemes exploiting all networking environments, especially IP. The new funding came from Sigma Partners and Sequoia Capital. Topio's total funding to date is $13 million.
http://www.topio.com

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Australia's RBN Raises $11 Million for its WDM Equipment

RBN, a start-up based in San Francisco with R&D in Sydney, Australia, secured $11 million in series C funding for its carrier class optical transport and switching platforms for the outside plant. The company offers a WDM system that can be used in the central office, outside plant remote terminals and enterprise environments. Funding was provided by existing investors Allen & Buckeridge, Macquarie Technology Ventures, Optical Capital Group (OCG), Paecal Investments and Redfern Photonics. RBN has raised $40 million since its inception in February 1999.
http://www.rbni.com

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HelloSoft Raises $11 Million for Networking Protocol Layer Software

HelloSoft, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised over $11 million in a Series A venture capital financing for its networking software solutions designed for networking OEMs and silicon vendors. HelloSoft licenses Physical Layer and Networking Protocol Layer software to companies developing 2.5G/3G Wireless, Wireless LAN, Voice-Over-Packet, Digital Subscriber Line and Bluetooth devices. The funding came from Venrock Associates, Sofinnova Ventures, Acer Technology Ventures, and JumpStartUp Venture Fund.
http://www.hellosoft.com

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Ixia Enhances Test Suite for L2/L3 VPNs, IPv6, MPLS Signaling and Multicast

Ixia added a number of routing protocols to its routing test suite, including support for IPv4 and IPv6 Routing (BGP, OSPF, ISIS, and RIP), MPLS Signaling protocols (LDP and RSVP-TE), L2 (Martini draft), VPLS (Lasserre draft), L3 (RFC 2547bis) VPNs, and Multicast protocols (IGMP, MLD, and PIM-SM). Ixia also highlighted its CPU-based traffic generation load modules, which feature a processor per port. These allow users to run multiple protocol emulations simultaneously on a single port. This unique feature enables the simulation of such intricate technologies as Layer 2 (L2) and Layer 3 (L3) VPNs.
http://www.ixiacom.com

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Gigabit Optics Launches Four Micro Devices for CWDM

Gigabit Optics, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, introduced four new products: Micro OADM, Micro OADM-1, Micro OADM-2 and 4-Channel CWDM Mux/Demux with express channel. The first product, the Micro OADM, is a compact single channel add or drop device for CWDM applications, which can be used for metro core, metro access and Enterprise CWDM systems. The Micro OADM-1 is a single channel add and drop device for CWDM applications, which enables add and drop capabilities of any single channel on a CWDM grid. The third product facilitates add and drop functionality on any two channels on a CWDM grid. The 4-Channel CWDM Mux/Demux is for OEMs who manufacture optical networking subsystems that want to monitor a channel, to upgrade a channel, or to further expand an existing system. Gigabit Optics' said its micro-optical platforms are achieved through the use of proprietary manufacturing technology.
http://www.gigabitoptics.com

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AT&T Launches Video Relay Service for Hearing Impaired

AT&T introduced a web-based service that enables deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate over the phone more easily by using American Sign Language (ASL). The AT&T Video Relay Service uses a webcam at the customer end to communicate with a nationally certified interpreter who relays the conversation over the phone in spoken language to the hearing party.
http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,11277,00.html

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AT&T Wireless Signs Wi-Fi Roaming with Wayport

AT&T Wireless signed a strategic Wi-Fi roaming agreement with Wayport, giving its subscribers access to hotspots in 475 hotels and 10 airports across the US. In addition to AT&T Wireless, Wayport's roaming partners include Boingo, iPass and GRIC.
http://www.wayport.net

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Brazil's Second Largest International Carrier Connects to ITXC

Intelig, Brazil's second largest international long distance carrier, began exchanging international voice traffic to and from Brazil over ITXC's global IP network. The international long distance wholesale business in Latin America is expected to grow from 1 billion minutes of use in 2001 to 15.4 billion minutes in 2007, according to a Frost & Sullivan study cited by ITXC.
http://www.itxc.com

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Alcatel Announces Reseller Deal with Axiom for DSL Management

Alcatel signed a three-year, global reseller agreement to sell, service and support Axiom's 5620 AXiOSS DSL Service Management (DSM) product globally. Axiom's platform covers three main functionalities: business process, inventory management and service activation. Alcatel said the agreement complements its existing "Alcatel Connected" partnerships in service assurance and billing.
http://www.alcatel.com
http://www.axiom-eu.com

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Marconi Adds Gigabit Ethernet Functionality to DSLAM

Marconi has added a Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) card and advanced IP capabilities to its Access Hub DSL platform. The functionality enables carriers to deliver VPN services to enterprises across their DSL networks. In addition, new services, such as a customized wholesale service with billing on a "per user" or "per call" basis can be developed. Marconi recently announced new multicasting and voice over DSL capabilities. Carriers deploying the Marconi Access Hub include Telecom Italia, Telkom South Africa and LDCOM.
http://www.marconi.com

• Marconi's Access Hub features a 32-line xDSL line card enabling up to 576 xDSL lines in a single shelf. The Access Hub, which supports up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth on the backplane, could also act as a wireless or fiber aggregation point.

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Foundry Networks Debuts Two Layer 2 Edge Switches

Foundry Networks introduced two new fixed-configuration Layer 2 edge switches for enterprise customers. These new switches offer 24 and 48 10/100 Ethernet ports along with two Gigabit Ethernet combo ports with integrated Gigabit copper or mini-GBIC slots for media expansion. The US list price is $2,195.
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

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Foundry Debuts 2nd Generation 10 GigE Interfaces, 36% Price Reduction Per Port

Foundry Networks introduced its second generation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface modules featuring double the density of its previous solution. The new two-port card uses Xenpak based hot-pluggable optical transceivers and is accompanied by a 36% price reduction per port. The new hot-pluggable optics include a choice of long reach for up to 10 kilometers and extended reach for up to 40 kilometers. Foundry Network said the modules could be used to deliver 40 Gbps trunks with cross module redundancy as well as full 20 Gbps local switching. For bandwidth intensive metropolitan area networks, Foundry builds in support for both Rapid STP (802.1w) and Metro Ring Protocol (MRP) protocols to offer SONET-like protection capabilities. The US list price for a two port 10 GigE Module without optics is $60,995. The US list price is $7,995 for the XENPAK-based long reach (LR) optic and $29,995 for the XENPAK-based extended reach (ER) optic.
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

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Sify Builds Tier-1 Backbone in India with Cisco

Sify, the largest network and e-Commerce company in India, and Cisco Systems declared Sify's IP backbone network infrastructure to be Tier 1 status, the first such designation in India, according to the companies. Sify has MPLS-enabled the network of Cisco GSRs for differentiated services, prioritizing voice, video or data transmission as required. The backbone reaches 54 POPs in India, representing an estimated 90% of the established PC base in the country.
http://www.sifycorp.com
http://www.cisco.com

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Deutsche Telekom Reports High Customer Growth for Mobiles and DSL

Deutsche Telekom released 2002 figures showing strong customer growth across all its major service segments. Some highlights:

• For 2002, the number of mobile customers served by Deutsche Telekom and its affiliates increased by more than 25% to almost 82 million. T-Mobile USA added more than one million subscribers in Q4 alone, giving it a total of 9.9 million.
• 
  As of 31-December-2002, Deutsche Telekom had sold over 3.1 million T-DSL lines, up by 41% or nearly a million subscribers in a year.
• 
  Demand for T-ISDN continued to grow. The number of channels in use in Germany increased from around 20.4 million to 22.4 million. In a corresponding development, the number of analogue lines in the German fixed network shrunk - primarily a reflection of the substitution effect and a trend that was also apparent in T-Com's Eastern European affiliates.
• 
  Deutsche Telekom's total number of telephone lines served (including ISDN channels) rose to 57.5 million, up from 56.9 million at the end of 2001.
• 
  The company's T-Online Internet service had 12.2 million users at the end of 2002, up from 10.7 a year earlier.

http://www.telekom.de

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China Netcom Selects Nortel Networks for National Optical Backbone

China Netcom selected Nortel Networks for a national optical transmission backbone. The contract covers the deployment of two long-haul optical rings. The first ring will link the cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, Hefei, Wuhan, Changsha, Guangzhou, Fuzhou and Hangzhou. The other ring is expected to connect the eastern cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Xinyang, Jinan and Qingdao, and integrate with China Netcom's existing optical backbones in northern China. China Netcom will deploy Nortel Networks' 10Gbps OPTera Long Haul 1600 Optical Line System and OPTera Connect DX optical switch. In addition, China Netcom will deploy OPTera Connect HDX switches in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

• Nortel Networks noted that has announced more than 50 contracts for 10 Gbps and DWDM deployments in China.
• 
  Last year, China's State Council split up of China Telecom, China's largest fixed line operator with about 140 million subscribers, into two regional companies. China Netcom retained the assets in North China's Beijing and Tianjin municipalities, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hebei and Shanxi provinces, Northeast China's Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, Central China's Henan Province and East China's Shandong Province. It also incorporated the facilities of China Jitong Network Communications Co Ltd.

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Defense Experts Investigate Collateral Damage from Microsoft Slammer Worm

The Washington Post reported that defense experts are investigating how last weekend's Microsoft "Slammer" worm managed to disrupt such vital services as ATM banking and the 911 emergency operations of two suburban police departments and at least 14 fire departments across the US and Canada. The article notes that Microsoft included the flawed code in some popular consumer products, including Office XP.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53442-2003Jan28.html

• CNET reported that Microsoft was itself a victim of the Slammer worm, having failed to install the recommended security patches on its own servers. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982305.html

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SBC Adds 245,000 DSL Accounts, but Loses 1.2 Million Access Lines in Q4

Citing a difficult environment marked by a struggling economy, a tough competitive market and an uneven regulatory landscape, SBC Communications reported Q4 revenues of $13.3 billion (including its Cingular Wireless share), down 5.3% from $14.0 billion in the year-ago period but up from the $12.8 billion in revenue reported for Q3 2002. For the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2002, SBC's reported earnings totaled $2.4 billion, or $0.71 per diluted share, compared with $1.2 billion, or $0.35 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of 2001. Total operating expenses declined 7.2% to $9.0 billion on a reported basis and 5.7% to $10.2 billion before special items and including proportionate results from Cingular. Some highlights from Q4:

• Added 245,000 DSL Internet subscribers, bringing its total to 2.2 million. DSL penetration is now above 10% for locations passed in California. SBC also noted a 50% decline in both acquisition and recurring costs for DSL since 2000.
• 
  Lost 1.2 million retail access lines, including 810,000 access lines provided to competitors under UNE-p rules. SBC now provides more than 5 million UNE-p lines. More than 90% of the new UNE-p lines were for consumers, and 46% of those were in California. More than 90% of the new UNE-p lines were for AT&T and WorldCom (MCI).
• 
  Wireline voice revenues for Q4 totaled $5.948 billion, down 9.0% from the year earlierOverall, data revenues (including e-services, integration and CPE sales) for Q4 totaled $2.382, down 3.4% from the year earlier. Data transport revenues grew 1.6% year-over-year and 1.7% sequentially.
• 
  Achieved 2.5% consumer retail line penetration within 19 business days after launching long-distance service in California. SBC ended the year with 6.1 million long-distance lines, a 25% increase from the end of 2001.
• 
  Cingular Wireless lost 121,000 subscribers in Q4, leaving it with a total of 21.9 million subscribers. Average revenue per user increased.
• 
  Reduced capital expenditures to $1.8 billion, down 42% from $3.1 billion in Q4 2001. For the full year, SBC reduced capital expenditures to $6.8 billion, a 39% decline from $11.2 billion in 2001
• 
  Reduced total debt, net of cash, by $4.7 billion during the quarter.
  

For its 2003 outlook, SBC noted the following trends and expectations:

• Continued negative access line trends, with long-distance entry in additional states and expansion of SBC's recently announced company-wide bundling initiative helping to slow the rate of decline as the year progresses.
• 
  Consistent long-distance growth, with entry in all remaining states
• 
  Solid DSL growth, with company-wide penetration of locations passed reaching 10% by the end of the year.
• 
  Modest growth in data transport revenues, limited by the weak economy and continued network cutbacks by wholesale customers
• 
  Capital expenditures of $5 billion - $6 billion, or 12 -14%, excluding Cingular Wireless. SBC said its CAPEX budget reflects "weak demand and the fact that current UNE-P prices do not allow a positive return on investment."
• 
  In addition, SBC has started to expense stock options.
  

http://www.sbc.com

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