3Com Reports Quarterly Revenue of $245 Million

3Com reported quarterly revenue of $245 million. The net loss was approximately $79 million, or $0.22 per share. This compares to a net loss of $69 million, or $0.19 per share, in the previous quarter and a net loss of $227 million, or $0.65 per share, in the same period last year. The company ended the quarter with $1.44 billion in cash and short-term investments, an increase of $7 million from the previous quarter.
http://www.3com.com

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New Scientist: Spider Silk Delivers Finest Optical Fiber

New Scientist magazine reports that researchers at the University of California at Riverside have created the finest hollow optical fibers to date by using the silk from Nephila madagascariensis, the giant orb-weaving spider of Madagascar. The hollow optical fiber has a core of just two nanometres wide and potentially could be used in future, nanoscale optical circuits. New Scientist reports that hollow, spider-based fiber offers a wider range of structures and can be more easily shaped than carbon nanotubes, which have also be researched for this potential application.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993522

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Official Figures Show Rapid Growth of Broadband in France in 2002

Autorité de régulation de télécommunications (ART), France's official telecom regulatory authority, released its 2002 Review, noting over the past year Internet access prices in the country have become among the lowest in Europe, stimulating strong market demand.

• High-speed subscribers now represent about 16% of active Internet subscribers in France
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  For historic and regulatory reasons, cable networks do not cover all of France in a homogenous manner. Cable modem service is currently available to 6 million homes in 650 municipalities. There were over 200,000 cable modem subscribers at the end of 2002, but the growth rate was minimal compared to ADSL.
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  Five ISPs currently represent 80% of active subscribers and Internet dial-up traffic (AOL, Club Internet/T-Online, Free, Tiscali and Wanadoo).
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  The current market price for consumer ADSL service in France is around EUR 45 (including tax) for an unlimited flat rate package with a peak downloading speed of 512 kbps. ART expects this price to decline. The consumer ADSL market is currently dominated by Wanadoo with a very significant majority market share. However, ADSL services with downstream speeds of 128 kbps are being offered by most ISPs at prices of around EUR 30 per month including tax. Consumer ADSL at 512 kbps based on partial unbundling is starting to appear at EUR 30 per month.
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  The report also discusses the ADSL unbundling options available to competitive ISPs and carriers for access to France Telecom facilities, and the resulting price declines following ART's ruling on these issues in July 2002.

http://www.art-telecom.fr

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3Com and Huawei Form Joint Venture in China for Enterprise Networking

3Com and Huawei Technologies will form a joint venture based in Hong Kong with principal operations in Hangzhou, China. Huawei's contribution to the JV will include enterprise networking business assets, including LAN switches, routers, engineering, sales/marketing resources and personnel, and licenses to its related intellectual property. 3Com's contribution to the JV will include $160 million in cash, assets related to its operations in China and Japan, and licenses to its related intellectual property. The name of the joint venture will be 3Com-Huawei in English and Huawei-3Com in Chinese. 3Com said the JV would provide it with modular layer 2 and 3, 10/100/1000 MB switches. The JV and Huawei will also provide 3Com with a full line of enterprise routers.
http://www.cisco.com
http://www.huawei.com

• In January 2003, Cisco Systems filed a lawsuit against Huawei Technologies and its subsidiaries Huawei America and FutureWei Technologies alleging unlawful copying of Cisco's intellectual property. In particular, the suit alleges that Huawei unlawfully copied and misappropriated Cisco's IOS software, including source code, copied Cisco documentation and other copyrighted materials, and infringed numerous Cisco patents. Cisco claims that Huawei's operating system contains a number of text strings, file names, and even bugs that are identical to those found in Cisco's IOS source code.

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Sprint Names Gary Forsee as its new CEO

Gary D. Forsee was named CEO of Sprint, replacing Bill Esrey, who will continue in his role as Sprint's chairman during a transition period. Forsee previously served as vice chairman of BellSouth Corporation where he had responsibility for the company's domestic operations. Before that, Forsee spent 10 years with Sprint, holding leadership positions in the company's long-distance and PCS operations, and one year with Global One, a joint venture of Sprint, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, where he served as president and CEO. His appointment as CEO of Sprint was challenged in court by BellSouth as a violation of his previous employment contract. Judge William Webster, who served as the arbitrator in a suit brought by BellSouth and Cingular against Forsee, issued conditions that Forsee is to follow to protect BellSouth's and Cingular's confidential information. Sprint agreed to the conditions.
http://www.sprint.com

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Corning Introduces Flame Retardant Specialty Fiber

Corning introduced a new polarization maintaining (PM) flame retardant fiber to its specialty fiber portfolio. The new fiber is suitable for on-premises telecom installations with low flammability requirements, as well as non-telecom applications such as sensors, systems requiring a vacuum, and fiber optic gyroscopes.
http://www.corning.com

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Compaq Evo Notebooks to Offer Gigabit Ethernet as Standard

Broadcom's NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Controller will be offered standard in every Compaq Evo 620c notebook PC from HP. The companies said Gigabit Ethernet was the next logical step in business class notebooks. Broadcom's NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet controller includes several features for the mobile market, such as lower overall power consumption and power management capabilities.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Global Crossing Adds New Integrated Web Conferencing

Global Crossing introduced a new integrated web conferencing service as part of its portfolio of audio conferencing services. Online commands give the chairperson point-and-click control to moderate the meeting, share slides, change account options and dial out to additional participants or entire groups from a personalized address book.
http://www.globalcrossing.com

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Telekomunikacja Polska selects Alcatel's Traffic Management

Telekomunikacja Polska awarded a EUR 13 million contract to Alcatel for a new national Traffic Management System for the centralized supervision and control of its nationwide switching and signaling network. The network comprises more than 260 digital exchanges from Alcatel, Lucent and Siemens. The new national Traffic Management System is expected to be fully operational before the end of 2003.
http://www.alcatel.com
http://www.telekomunikacja.pl

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AT&T Lands Multi-Million Contract with Air China

AT&T announced a multimillion dollar contract to provide connectivity and network management services to Air China across 48 sites in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Canada and the US. Air China has requested to transform its corporate network to an IP-enabled global network platform. Under the contract, AT&T will provide end-to-end global Frame Relay services supplemented by bilateral International Private Leased Circuits (IPLC) to link Air China's global network and data center in Beijing with its branches offices around the world. On the network management side, AT&T will provide Managed Network Services from its Global Client Support Center (GCSC).
http://www.att.com

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ITXC Deploys Tellabs 6400 Switch in NYC

ITXC has deployed the Tellabs 6400 transport switch to manage its Internet telephony traffic. The Tellabs 6400 transport switch is a metro edge device that integrates VT/STS (virtual tributary/synchronous transport signal) cross-connect technology, optical add-drop multiplexing and data transport for Ethernet and IP traffic. The companies said the Tellabs 6400 system enables remote monitoring of ITXC network conditions and provides the ability to quickly and dynamically re-route Internet voice traffic, even while a call is in place. The Tellabs 6400 is now carrying live traffic in ITXC's domestic network in New York City. Financial terms were not disclosed. In addition to using the Tellabs 6400 transport switch, ITXC also uses the Tellabs 5500 digital cross-connect system.
http://www.tellabs.com

• The Tellabs 6400 system currently has capacity for 18,816 VT1.5 cross-connects in a single shelf with future expansion capabilities. It enables service providers to generate new revenue streams including Ethernet-over-SONET (synchronous optical network) revenue, and dramatically lowers capital and operating costs.

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Time Warner Telecom Introduces New Metro Ethernet Services

Time Warner Telecom, a facilities-based carrier with operations in 44 US markets, unveiled its "Metro Ethernet Services -- Tomorrow's Network Today" strategy for business customers. Time Warner Telecom is offering native LAN services at rates from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps, with plans to expand up to 10 Gbps. Time Warner Telecom said it has signed more than a hundred customers so far. The Ethernet service is delivered using Cisco Catalyst switches at the customer site, coupled with the Cisco 7600 platform to aggregate service delivery. Time Warner Telecom is one of Cisco's largest ONS customers. The Time Warner Telecom network currently connects 3,500 commercial buildings over a national fiber footprint of 17,000 local and regional fiber miles. Its network also includes 41 Class 5 voice switches. Media gateways and softswitches have been deployed in 12 markets.
http://www.twtelecom.com

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Cisco Systems Authorizes Up To $5 Billion in Additional Stock Repurchases

The board of directors of Cisco Systems authorized up to $5 billion in additional repurchases of its common stock. The board had previously authorized up to $8 billion in stock repurchases. The new program is effective immediately and has no termination date.
http://www.cisco.com

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Cisco to Acquire SignalWorks for IP Telephony Software

Cisco Systems will acquire SignalWorks, a start-up developing high-performance audio capabilities for IP telephony systems, for $13.5 million in Cisco common stock. SignalWorks' Acoustic Echo Canceller (AEC) software is a digital full duplex, voice-processing algorithm that improves voice clarity. The audio feature set includes multiple microphone capabilities, stereo sound, and PC-based softphones. Cisco said the technology would drive continued product innovation and differentiation across its line of IP phones and IP softphones. The software is already in use on Cisco IP telephony systems deployed by several Fortune-500 companies. SignalWorks was founded in 1994 and is based in Mountain View, California.
http://www.cisco.com

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Verizon to Accelerate DSL Rollout, Sees Eventual Migration from Copper to Fiber

Saying that he is encouraged by preliminary analysis of the FCC's broadband decision, Verizon vice chairman Lawrence T. Babbio said "if the FCC's final order as it relates to broadband is written the way it's been advertised that will encourage us to speed our deployment of all broadband technologies." Verizon now plans to accelerate its broadband rollout with the goal of making high-speed Internet services available to 10 million more homes and businesses in 2003. This represents nearly a 30% increase to the 36 million Verizon access lines now equipped for DSL and would make DSL available to 80% of all Verizon lines. CAPEX spending plans were not disclosed, however Babbio suggested spending would shift from traditional voice technologies to broadband. Depending on the state of the overall economy and outcome of specific state regulations, Verizon plans to deploy DSL equipment in more than 3,000 remote terminals that are connected to the Verizon network with fiber-optic cables. Verizon also expects to deploy DSL equipment in approximately 1,000 additional neighborhood central offices. Babbio also said Verizon is now planning for the eventual migration of its copper loop access network to fiber. The company is exploring ways to advance its broadband deployment in 2004, including deploying fiber into neighborhoods and bringing fiber to the premises of an initial set of customers. He also noted favorable early results in a trial of broadband wireless access service in Virginia and Maryland.
http://www.verizon.com

• Immediately following last month's decision by the FCC, Verizon characterized it as “a recipe for continued disarray in the industry and more litigation.�? Several days later, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said that the company was “somewhere between confused, perplexed and very angry�? about the decision. He said that Verizon would challenge the ruling in court seeking a stay or a reversal of the new state-by-state policy. With regard to the broadband piece, Seidenberg said the FCC “appeared to be headed in the right direction�? but still managed to create greater regulatory confusion by ruling that state commissions should have a role in permitting ILECs to retire copper plant. See the full story at http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=6518
  
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  Prior to the ruling, Seidenberg had called on the FCC to adopt national standards that included the elimination of unbundling for high-speed, high-capacity data connections; removal of switching from the list of required unbundled elements; elimination of the requirement to provide business UNE-P; and a transition away from UNE-P in the residential market. See the full story at http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=6317
  
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  Read our full report on the FCC's decision at http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=6492.
• Industry reactions to the new rules can be found at http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=6493.
  

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