Microsoft Sees Professional Broadcasters Move to Windows Media 9 over IP

At this week's National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB2003) in Las Vegas, Microsoft said more professional broadcast editing suites are moving to desktop PCs and its Windows Media 9 series encoding. For example, The Associated Press is unveiling a software application that allows journalists in the field to transmit news video via satellite phone or the Internet using Windows Media 9. For its part, Microsoft announced a series of partnership agreements with broadcast equipment vendors, including:BBC Technology, which will integrate...

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European Commission Orders France to Comply with Universal Service Requirements

The European Commission served formal notice on French authorities to comply with a court order requiring remedial action in the system for financing universal service in telecommunications. A European Commission directive in 1996 established mechanisms for sharing the net cost of universal service when providing this service represents an unfair burden on the operator in question. Member States must comply with various provisions designed to ensure that the cost of universal service is assessed in a transparent, proportionate way. The EU said...

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Broadmargin Secures $21 Million for Telecom Cost Management Software/Services

Broadmargin, a start-up based in Fairfax, Virginia, raised $21 million in private equity investment for its software and services for telecom cost management. Broadmargin's proprietary BillTamer Cost Management software application helps large corporations and competitive telecom carriers to manage interconnect costs. The investment was led by ABS Capital Partners with participation from Concert Capital Partners. http://www.broadmargin....

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Broadcom Reprices Employee Stock Options

Broadcom announced a voluntary stock option exchange for its employees as means to retain and provide an incentive to key employees. Under the program, eligible employees holding options to purchase Broadcom common stock with exercise prices per share of $23.58 or more will be given the opportunity to exchange those options for a number of new shares or new options based on certain formulas. In general, the higher the exercise price of the old options, the fewer new shares that will be issued and the fewer new options that will be granted. In...

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Extreme Networks Reports Quarterly Revenue of $85.2 million

Extreme Networks reported quarterly revenue of $85.2 million, compared to $90.2 million for the preceding quarter. Including deferred compensation totaling $1.6 million, the company reported a net loss of $7.6 million or $.07 per share. Extreme Networks said it is beginning a major new product cycle for its switching portfolio. http://www.extremenetworks....

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Wi-Fi Alliance Expands List of Certified Products to 677

The Wi-Fi Alliance has now certified 677 products from 113 companies for Wi-Fi compatibility. Certification testing began in March 2000. http://www.wi-fi....

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Navini Raises $25 Million for its 2.4, 2.6 and 3.5 GHz Wireless Broadband

Navini Networks, a start-up based in Richardson, Texas, raised an additional $25 million in Series C funding for its non-line-of-sight, wireless broadband technology. Over the past several months, Navini has announced deployments and trials of its Ripwave products with the following companies: BellSouth (Daytona, Florida); IBAX (Italy); IntroWeb (The Netherlands); Liberty Technologies (Panama); Rioplex Wireless (Rio Grande Valley, Texas); Sprint (Houston, Texas); WINTEL (Trinidad and Tobago); and YourInter.Net (Indiana, Pennsylvania). Austin...

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Vitesse Chip Selected for Lucent's Metropolis Access Mux

Vitesse Semiconductor is supplying its Timestream chips for use in Lucent's Metropolis DMX SONET Access Multiplexer. Vitesse's Timestream chips include an OC-192/STM-64, 4X OC-48/STM-16 pointer processor plus section and line terminator, featuring hardware based APS switching, B1, B2 and B3 error accumulation and BER calculation, and POH monitoring. Vitesse also offers a 5 Gbps VT1.5 TSI switch and a 2.5 Gbps column aligner and pointer processor. http://www.vitesse....

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Alcatel Offers Enterprise VLAN Management Tool

Alcatel released two enhancements for its enterprise OmniVista network management data solution. A new OmniVista Locator tool enables a network operator to find the current location of any network-attached device, eliminating the need to query each individual switch in the network. OmniVista Locator can access cached information to give historical results to a query, or do a real-time search to give up-to-the-minute results. Alcatel is also extending its PolicyView management application to its OmniCore switch family, enabling point-and click...

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Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Cuts ADSL Prices

Chunghwa Telecom announced an ADSL promotion aimed at helping the government of Taiwan achieve its target of 6 million broadband users by the end of the year. Chunghwa Telecom ADSL Plans & Rates (all prices in US Dollars) Download rate (bps) 512K 512K 1.5M 1.5M 3.0M Upload rate (bps) 64K 512K 64K 384K 512K Monthly circuit leasing fee $17.15 $25.90 $20.02 $25.90 ...

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One million UK Consumers Now Using Alternative Carriers

Over one million UK consumers are now using carrier pre-selection, a service that enables them to use an alternative phone company to BT without changing their phone line and without dialing extra numbers. Carrier pre-selection enables different phone companies to carry different calls. http://www.oftel.gov...

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Japan's Yahoo! BB Adds 181,000 DSL Subscribers in March

Yahoo! BB, the Japanese broadband service provided by Softbank and Yahoo! Japan, issued its latest month progress report. Yahoo! BB Subscribers   Mar-03 Feb-03 Jan-03 Dec-02 Nov-02 Oct-02 Sep-02 Yahoo! BB lines installed 2,363k 2,181k 1,972k 1,691k 1,461k 1,208k 1,011k Yahoo! BB phone users 1,974k 1,806k ...

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Conversent, a CLEC, Reaches Profitability

Conversent Communications, a privately-held CLEC based in Marlboro, Massachusetts, announced that it has achieved "free cash flow" status. The company said it attained positive free cash flow in January 2003, three months earlier than it had anticipated. It had previously achieved positive EBITDA status in March 2002. Conversent currently provides voice and data services to more than 33,000 business customers and employs 570 sales, technical and support staff in 22 offices. The company plans to add 20 new sales associates to expand into new...

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Agere Delivers Low-K Dielectric, 0.13 Micron DSP, Outsources Fabrication to TSMC

Agere Systems delivered a production-qualified communications chip based on, low-k dielectric 130 nanometer (nm) (0.13 micron) technology that significantly accelerates chip speed and reduces power consumption for wireless base stations. The copper interconnect in the integrated circuit is separated by a thin layer of insulation dielectric film material. The new DSP16411 chip operates 20% faster (285 MHz) and with 20% less power (1.2volts) than competing solutions. It also has 66% more memory than Agere's previous generation device. Agere's...

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Riverstone Introduces 10 GbE Layer 3 Switches Priced at $9,995 Per Port

Riverstone Networks introduced a new line of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Layer 3 switches with wire-speed 10 Gigabit performance at less than $10,000 per port, including optics. Citing tests from The Tolly Group, Riverstone said the XGS switches provide wire-speed 10 Gigabit throughput across all packet sizes (64 to 1,518 bytes), with low jitter and latency. The XGS switches include a sixteen-slot chassis ($32,575) and an eight-slot chassis ($19,980). A 10 Gigabit Ethernet one-port line card (LAN PHY) is priced at $9,995; a 10-port Standard Copper 100/1000...

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Extreme Networks Launches its Next Gen BlackDiamond Switch

Extreme Networks launched its third-generation "Triumph" switching chipset to increase the port density of its BlackDiamond chassis-based switch by up to 275% while maintaining the performance and line-rate throughput with Layer 3 services. The new chipset is being delivered in two new BlackDiamond modules that can be used to scale a single BlackDiamond 6816 chassis switch to up to 360 Gigabit Ethernet connections. The module options are for either 24-port auto-sensing 10/100/1000 copper ports ($12,995 list) or 16 port fiber 10/100/1000 ports...

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P-Com Cancels Acquisition of Procera

P-Com has terminated its letter of intent to acquire Procera Networks, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California that offers Layer 7 switching technology. P-Com said it must remain focused on the fixed wireless market. http://www.p-com.com On 27-January-2003, P-Com, a provider of point-to-point, spread spectrum, and point-to-multipoint broadband wireless products, announced plans to acquire privately held Procera Networks, which designs and builds Layer 7 switches that provide wire-speed routing, switching, flow metering and packet shaping. Financial...

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Path 1 Reveals Video X-Y Routing Over IP

Path 1 Network Technologies announced a professional-grade video platform with X-Y routing capabilities designed for broadcasters and television service providers migrating their video transmissions to IP. The new multi-port Chameleon vidX product line offers mixing and routing of up to hundreds of streams of Standard Definition and High Definition video for use by broadcasters, Cable MSOs (for Video on Demand), and for DSL packet-based IP networks. http://www.path1....

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Octasic Offers Echo Cancellation and Voice Quality Enhancement Chips

Octasic, a fabless semiconductor vendor based in Montreal, Canada, announced commercial availability of its echo cancellation and voice quality enhancement (VQE) products. Octasic's OCT6100 Series is a family of voice chips with densities ranging from 128 to 672 channels, and power consumption of less than 3mW per channel. The feature set includes noise reduction, acoustic echo control, signaling tone detection, audio conferencing and other capabilities for use in the wireless, VoP, and TDM segments of the telecommunications industry. http://www.octasic.com...

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BeamReach Raises $15 Million for Beam-Forming Broadband Wireless

BeamReach Networks, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, raised $15 million in third round funding for its broadband wireless access systems based on adaptive beam-forming technology. BeamReach's BeamPlex system based on Adaptive MultiBeam OFDM technology has been involved in an extensive trial with Verizon in Virginia since July 2002. Investors in this series C financing include The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Sofinnova Ventures, Inc., Walden International, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, Inc., and London Pacific Life and Annuity Company....

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