Esrey, LeMay to Remain at Sprint for Now

William T. Esrey agreed to remain Sprint's chairman and CEO until his successor can assume the role of CEO. Sprint's independent directors intend to name Gary D. Forsee to succeed Esrey as soon as permitted by the Georgia courts. Ronald T. LeMay has agreed to remain as Sprint's president and chief operating officer during this same transition period.
http://www.sprint.com

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Cablevision Reports 770,100 Cable Modem Users, 20.8% Penetration

Cablevision, which serves 3 million households located in the New York metropolitan area, added 90,100 high-speed data (HSD) cable modem customers in Q4 2002, giving it a total of 770,100 customers. This represents a 20.8% penetration rate for its high-speed data service, compared to 17% in the same period a year earlier. HSD revenue per subscriber averaged $36.82 in December 2002, up 21% from $30.48 in the year-earlier period. Meanwhile, Cablevision recorded a loss of 5,300 cable subscribers in Q4. Cablevision also noted that its Lightpath telecommunications businesses throughout the New York metropolitan area achieved a 14% increase in net revenues to $41.9 million and a 65% increase in Adjusted EBITDA to $17.1 million, in each case compared to the prior year period.
http://www.cablevision.com

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Efficient Networks Ships One Million DSL Devices in Q4

Efficient Networks, a subsidiary of Siemens, shipped 1 million units of its SpeedStream DSL CPE in Q4 of 2002, marking a record for the company. Products shipped during Q4 included DSL modems and consumer/SOHO DSL routers from its SpeedStream 5x series of DSL CPE.
http://www.efficient.com

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CommWorks Logs 15 Billion Minutes of Voice Traffic on its IP Telephony System

IP telephony systems deployed by the service provider customers of CommWorks have now carried in excess of 15 billion minutes of cumulative voice traffic. CommWorks said the milestone was reached earlier this month, less than three years after the first commercial deployment of its IP telephony equipment in April 2000. CommWorks IP telephony equipment is now carrying an estimated 985 million minutes of voice traffic each month for service providers worldwide.
http://www.commworks.com

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Kagoor Secures $7.5 Million for its VoIP Border Control

Kagoor Networks, a start-up based in San Mateo, California with R&D facility in Herzeliya, Israel, raised $7.5 million in its third round of financing for its VoIP Border Control solution. Kagoor's VoiceFlow platform addresses VoIP security and firewall issues, network address translation (NAT), firewall traversal, call admission control, remote monitoring and management of VoIP endpoints, Quality of Service (QoS) features like packet marking, and bandwidth management and compression. The company has completed trials with major US and international carriers and service providers. The new funding was co-led by VantagePoint Venture Partners and ComVentures.
http://www.kagoor.com

• Kagoor Networks was co-founded in February 2000 by Opher Kahane, a key contributor to the H.323 standard and previously vice president, strategic planning and global alliances at VocalTec Communications; Itzik Parnafes, previously a co-founder and R&D manager of Class Data Systems (acquired by Cisco Systems); and Shai Mohaban, also a cofounder of Class Data Systems.

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Adjungo and Nomadix Offer WLAN Solution for Mobile Operators

Adjungo Networks and Nomadix entered into an alliance that combines Adjungo's authentication technology for mobile users with the Nomadix family of public-access Gateways. Nomadix also provides patented Dynamic Address Translation technology that resolves proxy-related issues within the browser. Adjungo Networks' MobileGate platform provides security and authentication, as well as the backend functions (OSS, billing and customer care) of mobile carriers. http://www.nomadix.com
http://www.adjungonet.com

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BT Tests Cramer's Inventory Management and Provisioning System

BT will begin testing Cramer's inventory management and provisioning solution for its nationwide access network. BT will evaluate Cramer's capabilities for overall management of the provisioning of voice and DSL services across BT's entire national copper access network. Cramer already provides its inventory and provisioning automation solution to BT and approximately 40 other operators worldwide.
http://www.cramer.com

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Time Warner and Teletrips Track Telecommuting for Emission Reduction Credits

Time Warner Cable's Road Runner Business Class Internet service is teaming up with Teletrips Inc., a company that tracks telecommuting sessions for work-at-home employee programs. Teletrips is a partner in the US EPA's eCommute Pilot Program now underway in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Denver, Los Angeles and Houston. Each week, employees can log "non-trips to work" through the teletrips.com web-based system. Teletrips calculates, verifies and aggregates the reduced vehicle emissions attributable to the employer's telework program. The Road Runner/Teletrips service allows participating companies to acquire air emission reduction credits that could be sold in the US stationary emissions trading market.
http://www.teletrips.com

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Bandwidth9 Suspends Operations, Citing Weak Market for Tunable Lasers

Bandwidth9, a start-up based in Fremont, California, will suspend its operations due to "limited revenue potential for tunable transmitters in the foreseeable future." Bandwidth9 said it intends to seek long-term opportunities to integrate its VCSEL-based products with interested companies. The company recently began deployment of its second generation OC-48 tunable transmitter, capable of transmitting to distances beyond 600 km. Furthermore, Bandwidth9 claims significant results in fixed-wavelength VCSEL technology, which it believes could be able to achieve 10 Gbps operation at 1310 nm using its Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) structure.
http://www.bw9.com

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Avaya Offers IP Voice Response System on Sun Server

Avaya introduced a configurable multi-media voice response system for integration into converged IP voice and data networks. The system enables touchtone and speech-enabled access to information in company databases and business applications. Avaya Interactive Response software ships pre-configured on a standard Sun Microsystems' Sun BLADE 150 workstation.
http://www.avaya.com

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Cisco Systems Enhances its IP Contact Center Solution

Cisco Systems announced two enhancements to its software-based call routing solutions: the Cisco Internet Protocol Contact Center (IPCC) Enterprise Edition 5.0 and Cisco Intelligent Contact Manager (ICM) Enterprise Edition 5.0. The products are designed to support both single site and enterprise-wide contact centers scaling from 50 employees to thousands of seats. New features include multichannel automatic call distributor (ACD) reporting, routing and streamlined administration capabilities with IP telephony in a unified solution. Contact centers will now be able to manage customer queries via the channel of customer choice (web, phone, chat) and route the calls to the correct agent, regardless of agent geographic location.
http://www.cisco.com

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Bell Labs Develops 24 Mbps Turbo Decoder Chip for 3G

Researchers at Bell Labs have developed a "turbo decoder chip" for 3G data terminals that supports the evolving High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard. The chip, which will be licensed to manufacturers of wireless data terminals, handles data rates up to 24 Mbps. HSDPA is an evolutionary enhancement to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) spread-spectrum technology, also known as wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). The chip uses a highly parallel architecture and a new compression technique that enables it to operate at a low clock frequency and yet still achieve high data rates. Lucent said the new chip is fast enough not only to support first-generation HSDPA systems, which will offer transmission speeds between 5 and 10 Mbps, but also future Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output (MIMO) HSDPA systems, which are expected to achieve peak data rates up to 20 Mbps. Design work for the device was done by a Bell Labs research team in Sydney, Australia.
http://www.bell-labs.com/issccpaper/http://www.bell-labs.com

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360networks Supplies Optical VPN to SaskTel's Navigata

360networks will provide an optical VPN service to Navigata Communications, a subsidiary of SaskTel, the incumbent communications company in Saskatchewan, Canada. The optical VPN enables Navigata to establish OC-n port capacity throughout their network and scale circuits at STS-1 or 50 Mbps increments in a matter of hours. Various protection levels will be offered at STS-1, ranging from an unprotected circuit to a fully-protected mesh circuit. Navigata will use the service to expand the footprint of its backbone network in both the US and Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.navigata.cahttp://www.360.net

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UTStarcom Signs New Contract Valued at $26.5 Million with China Telecom

UTStarcom signed a contract valued at approximately $26.5 million with China Telecom for new deployments of its IP-based PAS in Wuhan city, the provincial capital of Hubei Province of China. UTStarcom said the contract represents its largest PAS/iPAS deployment in Hubei Province (population 60 million). The company noted that its PAS platform was supporting more than seven and a half million Chinese customers as of December 2002.
http://www.utstar.com

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Lucent Supplies Optical Backbone for Shanghai Metro

Lucent Technologies will supply its Metropolis optical equipment to link subway stations on one route of Shanghai's metropolitan subway system. The installation will use Lucent's Metropolis ADM MultiService Mux, which supports both voice and data. Shanghai Metro will also be deploying the WaveStar Integrated Transport Management - Subnetwork Controller, which provides element management functions for optical transport networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.lucent.com

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Sprint Deploys Alcatel 1696 Metro Span DWDM

Sprint selected the Alcatel 1696 Metro Span DWDM for its communication transport network. The Alcatel 1696 is a compact platform featuring a "4xAny" service concentrator that enables the grooming of many different services into one standard SONET/SDH signal. The Alcatel equipment has been deployed in Sprint's Las Vegas network, where initial DWDM service based on the platform has begun. The Alcatel 1696 is being used to transport a variety of services at the regional level, including TDM and ATM, which is in high demand in Las Vegas, according to Sprint. Financial terms were not disclosed. Alcatel has collaborated with Sprint on optical networking projects since 1999, including the recent deployment of Alcatel's 1630 GSX in Sprint's international network.
http://www.alcatel.com
http://www.sprint.com

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NTT-ME Selects Juniper Networks' M-series Routers

NTT-ME, a subsidiary of NTT-East offering broadband Internet service to residential and corporate users, has deployed Juniper Networks' M-series routers at both the core and the edge of its network. The core routing platforms support high performance peering and transit and the edge platforms deliver private line services to business customers. NTT-ME currently has 230,000 broadband customers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.juniper.net

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FCC Postpones Unbundling Decision, Rival Proposals Cited

The FCC unexpectedly postponed its landmark decision on the unbundled network elements (UNE) requirement for incumbent carriers for one week, until 20-February-2003. The FCC decision on new UNE rules is now expected to occur on the last day under which the current unbundling rules have legal effect. Last May, the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the FCC's current unbundling rules and has stayed their decision until 20-February-2003.
Citing sources inside the FCC, The Washington Post reported the delay is due to a rival UNE proposal from Commissioner Kevin Martin that appears to have gained the support of some fellow commissioners, potentially derailing the UNE proposal backed by FCC Chairman Michael Powell. According to the report, the Martin proposal would preserve the power of state regulators to decide unbundling requirements and would require incumbents to lease their lines for data services at rates up to 1.5 Mbps. The Powell proposal was seen as more accommodating to RBOC interests. The Washington Post also comments on the evident political split amongst FCC commissioners, noting that the rivalry is between Republican commissioners.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54167-2003Feb10.htmlhttp://www.fcc.gov

• Michael Powell, Republican, sworn in as a commissioner in November 1997 and designated as FCC Chairman in January 2001 by President Bush. Powell previously served as the Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice. Before that, Powell was an associate in the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP.





• Kevin Martin, Republican, nominated in May 2001. Before joining the FCC, Martin was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and was Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Martin was an advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.





• Kathleen Abernathy, Republican, nominated in May 2001. Prior to her FCC appointment, Commissioner Abernathy was Vice President of Public Policy at BroadBand Office Communications, and before that, she was a partner at the law firm of Wilkinson Barker Knauer.





• Michael Copps, Democrat, nominated in May 2001. Copps previously served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Development at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Copps began his Washington career in 1970, joining the staff of Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) and serving for over a dozen years as Chief of Staff. He has also held positions at Collins and Aikman Corporation and the American Meat Institute.





• Jonathan Adelstein, Democrat, nominated in July 2002. For the past seven years, Adelstein has been a senior legislative aide to United States Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

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