FHP Wireless Secures $8.3 Million for Metro Scale Wi-Fi

FHP Wireless, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, secured $8.3 million in third round funding for its solutions aimed at metro-scale Wi-Fi networks. FHP Wireless is layering intelligence on top of Wi-Fi to create a new class of Wi-Fi cell products. Wi-Fi cells self-organize and intelligently forward information from one to another until the data reaches a device with a wired connection to the Internet. The FHP system allows the creation of Wi-Fi hot zones in which some nodes do not require a wired connection. The company said its designs can grow to metro-scale networks. The latest financing was led by Voyager Capital and included investments from all previous investors including Benchmark Capital, Boston Millennia Partners and Hanna Ventures. FHP Wireless has raised $13.5 million to date.
http://www.fhpwireless.com

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Seranoa Networks Launches T3 Concentrator for GigE Links

Seranoa Networks, a start-up based in Boxborough, Massachusetts, launched its WANport T3 Edge Concentrator - an IP-aware layer-2 switch positioned as a lower cost alternative to edge router line cards. The company said the vast majority of edge router cost is tied up in line cards for subscriber aggregation. Seranoa's WANport concentrators aggregate up to 12 incoming channelized T3 access circuits onto redundant Gigabit Ethernet trunks for connectivity to popular edge routers. The Seranoa concentrators would front-end existing edge routers.
http://www.seranoa.com

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Calix Appoints Carl Russo as CEO, Announces $50 Million in New Funding

Calix, a start-up based in Petaluma, California, named Carl Russo as its president and CEO, replacing company founder Michael Hatfield, who will now focus on key technology and business development issues. Calix is developing infrastructure platforms designed to provide local exchange carriers with high metallic and optical density in their access networks. Specifically, the Calix C7 platform terminates up to 480 copper connections, including POTS, DSL and Ethernet. Integrated POTS splitters allow support for baseband POTS and DSL on the same line. The platform also terminates up to 480 fiber connections, enabling the selective migration of copper-based subscribers to FTTH connections. In addition to existing DS1 and DS3 services, the Calix C7 supports SONET transport and both 10/100 Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet services. The company said it has shipped over 500 of the platforms to date to over 50 US local exchange carriers. In addition, Calix announced $50 million in new Series E funding. The company has raised over $260 million since its founding in 1999.
http://www.calix.com

• Previously, Carl Russo was president and CEO of Cerent, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in August 1999 for $6.9 billion in stock. Cerent developed an optical access and transport platform. Prior to founding Calix, Michael Hatfield was founder and COO at Cerent, and held a variety of senior management positions at AFC and DSC (later acquired by Alcatel).

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Evolved Networks Spins Out of BT, Targets Network Design Software

Evolved Networks, a new company spun out from BT, will offer software tools to automate network design, planning and service provisioning for telecommunications networks. BT is already a customer. Evolved Networks is supported by NVP Brightstar.
http://www.evolvednetworks.com

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Azure Solutions Spins Out of BT, Targets Telecom Billing

Azure Solutions, a new company spun out from BT, will target the global market for telecom billing. Azure already sells its software products and services to over 20 voice, data, wireless and cable operators worldwide. Its range of revenue assurance offerings for telecom operators include; mediation management, interconnect accounting, billing integrity, route optimization and fraud prevention. The venture is supported by NVP Brightstar.
http://www.azure-solutions.com

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Microwave Photonics Spins out of BT, Targets Wireless LANs

Microwave Photonics, a new company to be based in southern California with operations in the UK, announced its entrance into the market for enterprise wireless LAN and mobile cellular network equipment. Microwave Photonics will combine advancements in fiber optics, radio frequency (RF) and wireless systems' architectures to enable wireless systems to dynamically manage and allocate capacity. The technology behind Microwave Photonics comes from BT Brightstar, the corporate incubator created by BT's research and technology business, BTexact Technologies. Microwave Photonics entered BT Brightstar's corporate technology incubator in May 2002. The company is expected to deliver products into the OEM marketplace. Backers of the venture include Coller Capital, the UK-based global private equity investment manager; and New Venture Partners, the US-based venture capital firm.
http://www.btbrightstar.com

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BT and Venture Firms Form NVP Brightstar Incubator

BTexact Technologies has teamed up with Coller Capital and New Venture Partners (NVP) to create a new, independent corporate venturing partnership to be known as NVP Brightstar. The new organization will have the exclusive rights to create new start-up businesses with BTexact using BT's extensive and developing intellectual property portfolio. The total capital commitment of the parties is approximately US$100 million.
http://www.bt.com

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Korea Telecom to Trial Flarion's Wireless Broadband System

KT (Korea Telecom) will conduct a field trial of Flarion's flash-OFDM wireless broadband system in Seoul, Korea. KT will deploy multiple Flarion RadioRouter base stations to test handoff and utilize existing towers and infrastructure for backhaul. KT employees will use Flarion's PC card modems for their laptops and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), to field test broadband Internet access, enterprise productivity applications and gaming. The test will use the 2.3GHz frequency band.
http://www.flarion.com

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Aperto Ships Wireless Access System for 5.8 GHz U-NII and ISM bands

In compliance with new FCC rules, Aperto Networks began shipping broadband wireless access systems in the overlapping 5.8 GHz U-NII and ISM bands. The new FCC rules (Part 15.247) allow the use of additional digital modulation techniques in the ISM band and thus enable higher peak usable power for 5.8 GHz non-spread spectrum wireless access systems than for U-NII systems. Aperto said the enhancements more than double the coverage footprint for carriers. The improved coverage comes from a combination of higher power radios that increase cell radius from 5 to 8 miles, 20 Mbps capacity in a narrow 6 MHz channel size, and improved interference resilience that enables multiple service providers to operate in the same area. Aperto said that by operating in the 5.8 GHz ISM band, it is boosting available spectrum by 25%, an increase from 16 to 20 non-overlapping 6 MHz channels, versus the typical competitive norm of 5 wide channels.
http://www.apertonet.com

• Aperto Networks offers point-to-multipoint PacketWave base stations, subscriber units, and associated radios and antennas in 2.5, 3.5, 5.3 and 5.8 GHz frequency bands. Aperto's base station leverages advanced TDMA and bi-directional burst mode transmission to operate with adaptive TDD or FDD radios.
• 
  Last month, Aperto introduced a new carrier class point-to-point wireless bridge that could be used as an alternative to leased T1/E1 connections for providing Wi-Fi hotspot backhaul. The PacketWave 600 Series Wireless Bridge provides a dedicated air interface at a 20 Mbps data rate to locations as far as 30 miles (48 km) from the carrier's wireless base station.
• 
  Aperto Networks is a start-up based in Milpitas, California. The company has raised $57 million in funding.

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Samsung Selects Conexant's Set-Top Box Chipsets

Samsung Electronics selected Conexant Systems' digital satellite set-top box (STB) semiconductor solution for deployment in Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting's (KDB) SkyLife satellite television network. The STB supports the digital video broadcasting-multimedia home platform (DVB-MHP), which provides viewers with Internet access and interactive services such as Web browsing, Internet gaming, online shopping and TV mail. Conexant is working with Alticast to deliver DVB-MHP as part of the set-top box design.
http://www.conexant.com

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Internet Photonics Tests its 10 Gbps Ethernet Transport with Midstream's VOD Server

Internet Photonics completed interoperability testing of it 10 Gbps DWDM transport system with MidStream Technologies' IP2000 Video Server. The joint solution can be used to deliver up to 1.8 Gbps of VoD traffic or approximately 425 to 480 unique 3.75 Mbps streams of content per unit. Internet Photonics' LightStack MX product can multiplex/demultiplex up to 8 Gigabit Ethernet feeds onto a 10 Gbps wavelength. Each LightStack MX can connect to a set of up to four MidStream servers (delivering 1,700 to 1,920 VoD streams per LightStack MX).
http://www.internetphotonics.com
http://www.midstream.com

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Convergys Acquires Cygent for Web-based Customer Management Software

Convergys Corporation has acquired Cygent, a privately-held software developer offering a Web-based customer, order, and service management platform for the communications industry. The acquisition price was less than $5 million in cash. Cygent's principal target market is large and medium-size wireline providers. Cygent named Qwest, WorldCom, BellSouth, Genuity, Telecom Italia, BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises) Teleglobe, Looking Glass Networks, Request DSL, and QuantumShift as customers.
http://www.convergys.com

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Agilent Introduces High-Power Tunable Laser Source

Agilent Technologies introduced a high power compact tunable laser source for testing next-generation optical communications devices. Agilent said the new device provides twice the power of current lasers and can be used for optical amplifier test and measurement of nonlinear effects in metro, DWDM and 40 Gbps components and applications.
http://www.agilent.com

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Data Connection Adds Support for RFC 2547 BGP/MPLS VPNs

Data Connection Limited (DCL) has added RFC 2547 VPNs to its suite of IP Routing and MPLS source code. DC-VPN Manager is a fully portable source code solution that coordinates the provision of BGP/MPLS VPNs and supports tens of thousands of VPN Routing and Forwarding (VRF) Tables per Provider Edge (PE) router. The DC-VPN Manager can be supplied pre-integrated with DC-MPLS and DC-BGP products to provide a complete BGP/MPLS (RFC 2547) VPN control plane. Alternatively, it can be used to upgrade existing BGP and MPLS implementations through open interfaces.
http://www.dataconnection.com

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OIF Plans Interoperability Demonstrations for OFC

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is planning multiple interoperability demonstrations at OFC 2003 in Atlanta, March 25-27. The demonstrations will highlight User Network Interface (UNI), Network-to-Network Interface (NNI) and Physical and Link Layer (PLL) technical work. A qualifying test event will be conducted at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) prior to the public demonstration. Also, a PLL private event will be held at Tektronix in Portland, Oregon.
http://www.oiforum.com

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TIA Publishes Standard for Evaluating xDSL Modem Performance

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) published a new standard, the North American Network Access Transmission Model for Evaluating xDSL Modem Performance (TIA-876) that is intended to be the basis for performance testing of DSL networks. The model includes specifications for the configuration and setup of suitable simulator equipment used in evaluations and comparisons of central office and CPE modem systems.http://global.ihs.com
http://www.tiaonline.org

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Agere and Accelerant Networks Push System Backplanes to 6.25 Gbps

Agere Systems and Accelerant Networks announced a multi-faceted alliance to offer a 6.25 Gbps backplane transceiver technology. Under the alliance, Agere will license Accelerant's 6.25 Gbps backplane transceiver core and becomes Accelerant's exclusive ASIC partner. Agere will provide the 6.25 Gbps backplane transceiver serializer/deserializer (SerDes) macrocell for integration with its own intellectual property in its 130 nanometer ASICs and systems-on-chip (SoCs). Target applications for this technology include Ethernet switches, metro/access networks, and storage and server networks.
http://www.accelerant.nethttp://www.agere.com

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Time Warner Telecom Offers Metro Ethernet with Cisco

Time Warner Telecom is now offering Native LAN metro Ethernet services in 14 markets across the US. The service is based on Cisco Systems' optical networking equipment, including the Cisco ONS 15454 and ONS 15327 Multiservice Provisioning Platforms (MSPPs). Time Warner Telecom is a member of the Cisco Powered Network marketing program.
http://www.twtelecom.com
http://www.cisco.com

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STMicroelectronics Unveils Chips for 2.5/3G Mobile Phones and Portable Wireless Products

STMicroelectronics introduced a new series of processors aimed at 2.5/3G mobile phones, personal digital assistants and other portable wireless products with multimedia capability. ST's new "Nomadik" multimedia processor chips are based on the combination of an ARM926EJ-S core together with programmable "smart accelerators" that operate independently and concurrently to handle the key video and audio coding functions, including pre/post-processing.
http://www.st.com/nomadik

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TI Develops Programmable Chipset for 3G Base Stations

Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a programmable chipset that enables cellular infrastructure manufacturers to create low-cost, differentiated channel cards for 3G base stations without developing their own ASICs. The new chipset features a digital signal processor (DSP) tailored for wireless infrastructure and tightly coupled transmit and receive chip-rate application specific standard products (ASSP).
http://www.ti.com

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Proxim Develops Wireless LAN platform for Managing Corporate Deployments

Proxim announced a wireless LAN platform that centralizes the intelligence of the network. The Proxim Maestro platform, which is aimed at large and mid-sized businesses, would integrate, configure, and centrally manage wireless LAN infrastructure to support the mobile delivery of voice, data, and video across heterogeneous wired and unwired networks. Maestro is one of the core technologies that enable the converged communication solution jointly announced by Proxim, Avaya, and Motorola last month. The architecture uses wireless-enabled switches at the edge of the network that integrate advanced mobility, security, network management, voice-over-WLAN, and power-over-Ethernet services. The system enables roaming across subnets, guaranteeing connectivity while moving around the enterprise.
http://www.proxim.com

• In January, Motorola, Avaya and Proxim announced an alliance centered on converged cellular, WLAN, and IP telephony networks. New products will include a Wi-Fi/cellular dual-system phone from Motorola, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-enabled IP Telephony software from Avaya, and voice enabled WLAN infrastructure from Proxim. Motorola said that by tying together wireless LANs, IP Telephony, and cellular technologies in a single handset, the companies will extend the mobility of cellular networks inside the enterprise.

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Juniper Tunes Edge Routing platform for Public Wireless LANs

Juniper Networks announced an application of its E-series platform to enable differentiated services such as guaranteed bandwidth, virtual private networks, QoS, added security, and controlled access to premium content using public wireless networks (PWLAN). The SDX-300 Service Deployment System, which is based on its Model for Integrated Network Transformation (MINT), consolidates the user authentication and service creation functions from many hotspots into a single, hardware-based platform. The SDX-300 provides simple web-based login via service portals customized for specific users and locations, and dynamic self-selection of the additional PWLAN services through personalized web portals. Juniper Networks said the current approach to building PWLANs, which requires underpowered and feature-constrained CPU-based gateways to be deployed, configured, and managed at each and every hotspot, restricts the service to basic Internet connectivity.
http://www.juniper.net

• Juniper Networks' E-series edge routers are ASIC-driven platforms for deploying IP services at the carrier edge. Four E-series models are currently available, with switch fabric options that operate at 5, 10, or 40 Gbps and a range of interfaces.

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SBC Donates Online Virus Screening Patent to University of Texas

SBC donated a 1998 patent covering two online virus screening methods to The University of Texas at Austin. The technology could be developed and utilized to reduce the likelihood of network security breaches. The first screening method covered by the patent involves network-based filtering of viruses and other harmful material through a service made available to telephone companies and ISPs. The second method involves the creation of a "Virtual Screening System" (VSS). When a user elects to download a program, the program is first installed on a network-based virtual model of the user's equipment and scanned for viruses or other undesirable effects. These are communicated to the end user, or if none are found, the "real" changes will be applied to the "real" system. SBC believes the patent has a commercial value of $7.3 million. SBC Technology Resources is currently collaborating with the University of Texas on other Internet security issues.
http://www.sbc.com

• In November 2002, SBC announced the creation of an Internet Assurance and Security Center (IASC) to focus on security technologies and standards for large telecommunications networks. SBC said its research would encompass all elements of the network: telecommunications providers, enterprise networks, customer networks, and hardware and software vendors. The IASC also will act as a point of collaboration with existing security research efforts in government, academia and industry. Telcordia Technologies is the first partner in the project. The IASC is based in Austin, Texas. http://www.iascenter.org

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Motorola Acquires NetPlane Systems

Motorola Computer Group acquired NetPlane Systems, a developer of networking protocol software, for an undisclosed amount of cash. NetPlane Systems (formerly Harris & Jeffries) was a division of Mindspeed Technologies, the Internet infrastructure business of Conexant Systems. NetPlane develops networking protocol software for the control plane, while Motorola Computer Group provides OEMs with intelligent hardware and software building blocks for next-generation networks and embedded computing applications. Motorola Computer Group plans to expand NetPlane's source code business and support its customer base of nearly 300 OEMs worldwide. The companies also noted that their complementary technologies could also serve markets outside the telecom industry. For example, NetPlane's control plane protocols can be integrated on CompactPCI or VMEbus boards or Processor PMC modules supplied by Motorola for applications in the industrial automation and defense industries. NetPlane Systems has 62 employees in Westborough, Massachusetts and Hyderabad, India.
http://www.netplane.com
http://www.motorola.com/computer

• NetPlane is a supplier of IP, MPLS, ATM, Frame Relay and SS7 source code solutions to network equipment manufacturers. Prior to May 2000, the company was known as Harris & Jeffries. (H&J).
• 
  Conexant Systems acquired privately held NetPlane Systems in October 2000 in a deal valued at approximately $140 million at the time (2.7 million CNXT shares).
• 
  In July 2002, Mindspeed announced plans to reduce its investments in high-end optical networking applications while emphasizing multiservice voice over packet, T/E carrier, and ATM/MPLS network processor solutions. The cost cutting measures included a major workforce reduction (400 jobs or 35% of staff), the elimination of R&D investments in OC-192 packet processing and next-generation SONET solutions, closure of its Novanet OC-192 SONET design center in Israel, and divestiture of its NetPlane subsidiary.

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