Global Crossing Reports Monthly Revenue of $236 million

In a monthly report required by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Global Crossing reported consolidated revenue of approximately $236 million for January. Consolidated access and maintenance costs were reported as $181 million, while other operating expenses were $66 million. There was a consolidated net loss of $93 million for the month. Consolidated EBITDA was posted at a loss of $11 million. Global Crossing said it has begun to increase its sales force again with the expectation this will contribute favorably to top line growth.
http://www.globalcrossing.com

Read More

Japan's IIJ and PoweredCom Discontinue Merger Talks

Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), Crosswave Communications, and PoweredCom have not reached an agreement on the potential integration of their businesses. In July 2002, the parties announced that they were exploring the possibility of merging. However, talks to this point have not been fruitful. The companies said they would continue to discuss ways of cooperating. IIJ operates one of the largest Internet backbones in Japan. Crosswave, which was formed in 1998 by IIJ, Sony and Toyota, operates a fiber network across Japan dedicated to data traffic. PoweredCom, which is a 32% owned affiliate of Tokyo Electric Power Company, provides data communications utilizing a 200,000 km nationwide fiber network owned and operated by PNJ Group, a consortium of ten regional electric power companies.
http://www.iij.ad.jphttp://www.cwc.co.jp

Read More

GSM Association Responds to Congressman Issa on Iraq

In response to Congressman Darrell Issa's request that the U.S. Armed Forces should adopt CDMA as the mobile standard for rebuilding post-war Iraq, Rob Conway, who heads the GSM Association, said the political pressure is "as ill-timed as it is misinformed." Conway pointed out that GSM is an open, worldwide standard (not a French or European standard) and GSM currently accounts for 72% of the world market. He also noted that GSM is already deployed in every country of the Middle East region (and has over 60 million customers), while CDMA is not deployed in single nation.
http://www.gsmworld.com

Read More

Enterasys Reports Q4 Revenue of $121 Million

Enterasys Networks reported Q4 revenue of $121.2 million, compared with net revenue of $122.7 million for Q3 2002. Net loss for the quarter was $30.6 million, or $0.15 per share. The company generated $34.5 million of cash from its Q4 operating activities, and ended fiscal year 2002 with $313.3 million of cash and marketable securities. Gross margin for the quarter was 35%, compared to a gross margin of 48% in Q3 2002. The fourth quarter decline in gross margin was due to a $17.6 million provision related to excess and obsolete inventory, which reduced gross margin by approximately 14.5%. William K. O'Brien, the company's CEO, said the focus in 2002 was on rightsizing the business, but that 2003 goals target modest revenue growth, market share gains, sustainable cash flow from operations, and profitability in Q4.
http://www.enterasys.com/corporate/ir/

Read More

SBC Raises its Regular Dividend by 5%

The board of directors of SBC Communications approved a 4.6% increase in its quarterly dividend from 27 cents to 28.25 cents a share, or 5 cents per share on an annual basis, from $1.08 to $1.13. The board also declared an additional one-time dividend of 5 cents per share, payable at the same time as the quarterly dividend. Edward E. Whitacre Jr., SBC chairman and CEO, noted that the company has raised its dividend every year in its history. In 2002, SBC paid its shareowners $3.6 billion in dividends. SBC had approximately 3.3 billion shares outstanding as of 28-February-2003.
http://www.sbc.com

Read More

Mpower Narrows Focus on Certain Markets

Mpower Communications, a facilities-based competitive carrier that emerged from Chapter 11 last year, closed the sale of its networks in Texas to Xpedius. On March 18, Mpower closed the sale of its operations in Ohio and Michigan to LDMI Telecommunications. Mpower also expects to close the sale of its Florida and Georgia markets to Florida Digital Networks by the end of April. The sales are part of the company's plan to eliminate nearly all of its long-term debt and concentrate its ongoing operations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Northern California and Chicago. Also, Mpower reported $38.0 million in revenue from continuing operations for Q4 2002, a 3.0% increase over Q3 2002 and a 19.3% increase over the previous year. Mpower's EBITDA loss from continuing operations in Q4 2002 was $5.4 million Also, Mpower's new auditor, Deloitte & Touche, has re-audited the company's financial statements for 2000 and 2001 and found that no adjustments to the statements are necessary.
http://www.mpowercom.com

Read More

Focal Files Amended Chapter 11 Reorganization Plan

Focal Communications, a CLEC serving 23 top U.S. markets, filed an amended reorganization plan with the bankruptcy court. As previously announced, Focal already has agreements in place to exchange approximately $110 million of its senior secured convertible notes into preferred equity, and has prepaid $15 million under its senior secured bank credit facility as part of its pre-negotiated Chapter 11 filing. The amended filing reflects an agreement in principal on the basic economic terms between the senior secured convertible noteholders and the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors. The plan, if confirmed, will eliminate approximately $375 million of debt. Moving forward, Focal intends to maintain its presence in all of its 23 markets and to continue to offer all of its current voice and data services, with the exception of its DSL service.
http://www.focal.com

Read More

Broadband Physics Awarded Patent for Sub-band Division Multiplexing

Broadband Physics, a fables semiconductor start-up based in Cupertino, California, was awarded a U.S. patent entitled "Method and Apparatus for Signal Transmission And Reception" for its novel approach of using wavelet mathematics for Sub-band Division Multiplexing, a new digital signal transmission 'modulation' method. The company said Sub-band Division Multiplexing (SDM) is suited for select physical environments that either need to "mine" more digital capacity from existing last mile networks. Examples include 180+Mbps digital channel speeds over cable networks, for the same costs as today's 30Mbps digital channels; or where dynamic software controlled use of RF passpands, notches, power, and digital capacity flexibility is needed to meet many different provisioning scenarios or changing environments, such as power line communications, select twisted pair applications, wireless, and potential future Ultra Wide Band (UWB) scenarios.
http://www.broadbandphysics.com

Read More

Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Servers Deliver 300 Terabytes of Streaming Audio/Video

Microsoft Windows Media 9 streaming servers around the world have collectively delivered 300 terabytes of streaming audio and video. Microsoft said major customers using Windows Media 9 Series and Windows Server 2003 include:

• CinemaNow, which is offering some 3,000 feature-length films. The site claims more that one million unique users per month.
• 
  
  Fox's American Idol site, which got more than 6.5 million page views in the first two days after its debut in January. Its content is hosted by Speedera.
• 
  
  FullAudio, a digital music subscription service with more than 200,000 songs from the five major labels. Its content is hosted by Akamai.
• 
  
  pressplay, another digital music service
• 
  
  MSNBC.com, which has delivered 125 million video streams using Windows Media 9 since last summer.
• 
  
  NHL.com, which offers a subscription video service for hockey games. Content is hosted by Speedera and Nine Systems

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/

Read More