CableLabs Completes Certification Wave 25, More DOCSIS 2.0 Modems

CableLabs certified another 12 DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems from Ambit, Arris, Castlenet, Com21, Hitron, LinkSys, Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, Terayon, and Thomson. CableLabs also announced that eight companies gained certified status for DOCSIS 1.1 products and one gained DOCSIS 1.1 qualified status for headend equipment.
http://www.cablelabs.com

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MetaSwitch VP3500 Completes CALEA Review with FBI

MetaSwitch has completed an extensive review with the FBI demonstrating that its VP3500 Next Generation Class 5 Switch meets CALEA requirements for circuit switching equipment. Metaswitch said the CALEA functionality is incorporated on-board its MetaSwitch VP3500 platform, rather than requiring service providers to deploy additional external equipment to meet CALEA requirements. In particular, the MetaSwitch CALEA capability meets the J-STD-025A standard for circuit switching equipment. CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires that U.S. carriers provide Law Enforcement Agencies with the continued ability to perform electronic surveillance with existing and new telecommunications switching equipment. Technical requirements or standards for CALEA capabilities have been established for several categories of telecommunications by industry associations or standard-setting organizations, in consultation with representatives of the law enforcement community. The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and Committee T1, standards organizations, are currently working on a further revision, J-STD-025B to cover packet based networks.
http://www.metaswitch.com

• The MetaSwitch VP3500 platform integrates softswitch, media and signaling gateway components for delivering over 80 Class 5 services over legacy and broadband IP/ATM networks. The platform scales from 400 to over 250,000 subscribers per rack. MetaSwitch is a division of Data Connection.

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Ariane 5 Successfully Launches Two Communications Satellites

An Ariane 5 rocket orbited two communications satellites: Insat 3A for ISRO, the Indian space agency, and Galaxy XII for PanAmSat. The flight marked the eleventh successful launch of the Ariane 5 "Generic" launcher. The Insat 3A satellite is fitted with 18 C-band and extended C-band transponders and 6 Ku-band transponders. It will provide telecommunications and TV transmission services for the Indian sub-continent, while also carrying out a meteorological observation mission. The Galaxy XII satellite will provide C-band links between the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii.
http://www.arianespace.com

• In December 2002, Arianespace's first flight of a new Ariane 5 rocket designed carrying a 10-ton payload for Eutelsat and the French space agency CNES failed soon after launch from Kourou, French Guinea. The Ariane 5 rocket and its Hotbird 7 satellite were purposefully destroyed.

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House Subcommittee Advances Funding Bill for Federal Spectrum Reallocation

The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy, Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet approved for full Committee consideration The Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act (H.R.1320). The proposed legislation provides funds to federal agencies that incur costs for the reallocation of frequencies from federal use to commercial use. The bands of eligible frequencies for this purpose includes the 1710-1755 megahertz band and any other frequencies reallocated from federal use to commercial use after 01-January-1995 that is assigned by competitive bidding.http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/action/H.R.1320.htm

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Ronald T. LeMay Leaves Sprint

Ronald T. LeMay, Sprint's president and chief operating officer, has left the company. LeMay, who joined Sprint in 1985, has entered into a separation agreement with Sprint and will provide consulting services to the company for one year.
http://www.sprint.com

• On 19-March-2003, 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.

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Verizon Signs 1 Million Small/Medium-Sized Businesses for Long Distance

Verizon is now providing more than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses with long distance service. Verizon ranks as the nation's third-largest long-distance provider.
http://www.verizon.com

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Net6 Secures $6 Million for its “Transformation Gateways�?

Net6, a start-up based in San Jose, California, secured $8.5 million in second round funding for its network-based application transformation gateways, which deliver business applications to wired and wireless user devices. The company's network-based appliance transforms application data to match the type of access client device, such as screen-based IP desk telephones, wireless PDAs, two-way pagers, and web-enabled cellular phones. The new funding was led by BA Venture Partners and included first round investors Sierra Venture Partners and OVP Venture Partners.
http://www.net6.com

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Capella Photonics Raises $7M for Optical Subsystems

Capella Photonics, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $7 million in Series B funding for its forthcoming line of optical subsystems targeted at metro and long-haul networks. Products specifics have not yet been disclosed. Major investors include Bay Partners, Vanguard Ventures, and BCE Capital, a unit of Bell Canada Enterprises.
http://www.capellaphotonics.com

• Capella Photonics was founded in December 2000 by Dr. Joseph Davis. Previously, Davis was co-founder and interim COO of Iolon, a Seagate spin-off that focused on optical switches and tunable lasers for telecommunications. Before that, he was co-founder and CTO of Quinta Corporation, where he co-invented a multi-disk data-storage architecture.

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Sonus Networks Reports Quarterly Revenue of $16 Million

Sonus Networks reported Q1 revenue of $16.0 million compared with $12.7 million in Q4 2002 and $21.2 million in Q1 2002. Net loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2003 was $4.4 million or $0.02 per share compared with a net loss for Q4 2002 of $12.8 million or $0.07 per share. The company characterized the quarter as "good progress" towards its business objectives. Sonus also announced that NuVox, an integrated communications provider serving the Midwestern and Southeastern states, selected its platform to develop a VoIP network that will carry all of NuVox's long distance voice traffic, as well as offload Internet traffic from its circuit switched network.
http://www.sonusnet.com

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Andrew and Lucent Sign RF Power Amplifier Deal

Andrew Corporation announced a new multiyear agreement to supply RF power amplifiers to Lucent Technologies. The deal replaces an existing arrangement originally entered into by Lucent and Celiant Corporation, which Andrew acquired in June 2002. As in the agreement with Celiant, Lucent will award Andrew a percentage of its requirements for its RF power amplifier business on an annual basis through September 2006.
http://www.andrew.com

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Boingo Wireless Joins Intel's Centrino Campaign

Boingo Wireless and Intel will begin a co-marketing campaign aimed at business W-Fi services. The companies will collaborate on a new signage program that will inform users they are in a Boingo hot spot that has been tested and verified to work together with Intel Centrino mobile technology. Boingo Wireless has currently signed 1,200 locations for its hotspot network.
http://www.boingo.com

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sentitO Networks' SIP Switch Deployed by Spain's OneNet

HiTec Networks and OneNet, a pan-European network service provider, have chosen sentitO Networks' New End Office (NEO) to provide SIP-based voice and data services to residential, resort, and enterprise customers of Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Marbella, and Malaga. The SIP-based voice and data services will also be resold by Spantel, EURfone and Intrasat, all of which have signed multi-year agreements with HiTec and OneNet. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.sentito.com
http://www.hitecnetworks.com

• sentitO's New End Office is comprised of three elements: an environmentally hardened switch that combines line gateway, trunk gateway, SMS, VoDSL gateway, DSLAM, and broadband DLC functionality; a SIP-based proxy for next-generation signaling, including full SS7 services; and a service management system delivering full FCAPS, pre-provisioning capabilities, and integration with third party operational support systems.

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Marconi and Riverstone Networks Announce Metro Ethernet Partnership

Marconi's Broadband Routing and Switching group and Riverstone Networks have formed a partnership focused on metro Ethernet solutions. The partnership combines Riverstone's IP-based metropolitan routers and carrier-class features with Marconi's multiservice switch-routers, optical transport and broadband access solutions, and its softswitch. Initially, the companies are collaborating on solutions for carriers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Recently, Marconi and Riverstone provided Jersey Telecom, a UK-based telecommunications provider, with a converged voice, video and data network.
http://www.marconi.com
http://www.riverstonenet.com

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AT&T Announces Organizational Streamlining

AT&T announced further management streamlining as part of its corporate restructuring following the spin-off of AT&T Broadband in November 2002 and the earlier spin-off of AT&T Wireless in July 2001. Key points include:

• elevating the customer care teams in AT&T Business and AT&T Consumer and building a new customer care organization directly supported by the head of each business unit;
• 
  
  bringing the Billing Operations team into the Customer Service organization;
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  centralizing all of AT&T's major retail channels under a unified customer-facing sales organization;
• 
  
  integrating all product management segments into a single organization;
• 
  
  Chris Rooney was named to lead the Sales organization (described above). Rooney previously was president of AT&T Government Solutions.
• 
  
  Reed Harrison was named to lead Network Engineering and Operations. Harrison previously led network engineering, maintenance, and field operations for AT&T's local, long distance and global networks and products. He succeeds Frank Ianna, who has indicated his desire to retire.

AT&T CEO David Dorman said the changes are aimed at reducing the layers of management inside the company.
http://www.att.com

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Embratel Outsources its Entire IT Infrastructure to IBM

Embratel, the incumbent telecommunications provider in Brazil, will outsource its entire IP infrastructure, ranging from e-mail to billing, to IBM. IBM's services will include Embratel's central and internal data processing operations, which currently encompass main frame computers, over 224 mid-range systems and 27,000 PCs, workstations and notebooks. During the first year, the services will continue to be operated within Embratel's facilities. From the second year on, the central site will move to IBM's Service Megacenter in Hortolandia, in the State of Sao Paulo. The 10-year contract is one of the largest ever closed for IBM in Brazil.
http://www.ibm.com
http://www.embratel.com.br

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EC Calls for Equal Treatment of Cable Broadband Services in France

The European Commission is calling on the French government to ensure the equal treatment for cable networks in the provision of telecommunications services in France. Noting that cable network operators in France account for less than 0.2 % of access to fixed telephony services, less than 15% of high-speed Internet access and less than 4% of Internet access markets as a whole, the EC is asking for the removal of restrictions on the provision of telecommunications services on cable networks. The Commission maintains that France has not complied with two previous directives on the issue. In particular, the EC believes French cable operators are unfairly burdened by requirements of prior consultation of all the municipalities concerned. These requirements, which do not apply to the other telecommunications operators, seriously handicap cable operators' business and discourage them from attempting to move into these fields. In addition, cable network operators do not enjoy the same rights to use public facilities as the operators of other telecommunications networks. In particular, the charges for use of public facilities are not subject to the same ceilings.http://europa.eu.int

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Murdoch's NEWS Corp. to Acquire 34% of Hughes Electronics for $6.6 Billion

News Corporation announced plans to acquire GM's 19.9% stake in Hughes Electronics and a further 14.1% of Hughes from public shareholders and GM's pension and other benefit plans, for $6.6 billion in cash and stock. The Hughes assets include DIRECTV, which has more than 11 million subscribers in the U.S.; an 81% equity holding in satellite operator PanAmSat; and Hughes Network Systems, the leading provider of broadband satellite network solutions. At closing, News Corp.'s 34% ownership interest will be transferred to Fox Entertainment Group, an 80.6%-owned News Corp. subsidiary. News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch will become Chairman of Hughes, while News Corp.'s former Co-Chief Operating Officer, Chase Carey, will be President and Chief Executive Officer of Hughes.


News Corp. and DIRECTV promised to abide by FCC program access regulations, for as long as those regulations are in place. Specifically, News Corp. promised to continue to make all of its national and regional programming available to all multi-channel distributors on a non-exclusive basis and on non-discriminatory prices, terms and conditions. The transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including approval by a majority of each class of GM shareholders and by regulatory authorities.
http://www.hughes.com

• In October 2001, Hughes Electronics and EchoStar Communications and announced plans to merge in a deal valued at $25.8 billion. In October 2002, The FCC voted unanimously not to approve the transfer of licenses from EchoStar and Hughes Electronics Corporation to a new entity, effectively blocking the proposed merger of the companies' direct satellite broadcast (DBS) services. FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the proposed merger was not in the public's interest because it would eliminate an existing viable competitor, which he said is especially significant in rural areas of the country not served by cable TV providers.

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Verizon Looks Toward Broadband Fixed Wireless

Verizon Communications believes broadband fixed wireless (BFW) technologies are nearly ready to move from trial to commercial deployment, said Brian Whitton, Executive Director, Network Platform Evaluation and Access Technology, Verizon Communications. Speaking in a keynote address at the Broadband Wireless World 2003 conference in San Jose, California, Whitton said BFW will provide a new access option to residential customers not easily or economically served by ADSL. He expects BFW to have the greatest impact in rural areas across the Verizon territory or where remote terminals or the local loop carriers require extensive upgrading to serve a small pool of potential users. Whitton noted positive results from a BFW trial in Northern Virginia launched by Verizon during the summer of 2002. The trial, which covered a topographically difficult terrain using Verizon's WCS licensed spectrum, successfully "validated the physics" of non-line-of-sight, spectrally-efficient technology. Over 90% of homes in the expected service area were able to receive broadband access at rates from 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps. The furthest trial participant was located over 9 miles from the nearest of two towers. Verizon has now ended this trial and issued an RFP to vendors. Final selection of a fixed wireless network supplier is expected in the coming weeks. Whitton expects Verizon will launch a commercial BFW residential service before the end of the year. One issue that remains is that most cellular towers were deployed along highways to maximize convenience to drivers. BFW systems need to target neighborhoods. Whitton's wish list for the industry includes: design base stations that are modular, enabling quick scaling of the network; provide solutions for integrating the customer and loop qualification process into the carrier OSS; do more to push reliability of equipment to five 9s reliability; drive down CPE pricing to fit the consumer price points that are driving the Wi-Fi phenomenon.
http://www.verizon.com

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CIENA to Acquire WaveSmith Networks for $158 million

CIENA will acquire WaveSmith Networks, a start-up based in Acton, Massachusetts, for its multiservice edge switching systems. The WaveSmith platform is designed for central office switching and applications such as DSL aggregation. CIENA was an investor in WaveSmith's third round of financing in October 2002, at which time it also entered into an agreement to resell WaveSmith's equipment worldwide. Under the terms of the acquisition, all shares of WaveSmith stock will be exchanged for approximately 36 million shares of CIENA common stock. WaveSmith's employee stock options will be converted into options to purchase CIENA shares. CIENA valued the transaction at approximately $158 million, which is net of the return it will recognize on its earlier investment in WaveSmith. CIENA anticipates that the acquisition will close during its third fiscal quarter, which ends 31-July-2003. CIENA said that WaveSmith would continue to operate from its existing Massachusetts headquarters.
http://www.wavesmithnetworks.com
http://www.ciena.com

• Last month, Wavesmith Networks announced a major contract with SBC, which is deploying WaveSmith's DN 7100 multiservice switch to provide DSL aggregation across 200 sites nationwide. The multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract is the largest announced to date by WaveSmith.
• 
  
  In October 2002, WaveSmith closed $30 million in third round financing for its DN multiservice switching product family. WaveSmith raised a total of $84.5 million since its founding in 2000.
• 
  
  Two weeks ago, WaveSmith announced three additions to its Distributed Node (DN) multiservice switching platform: MPLS support, a new Multiservice Forwarding Module and a higher capacity switch for larger central office (CO) deployments.
• 
  
  In November 2002, WaveSmith Networks named Thomas Burkardt as its new Chairman and CEO, succeeding founding President and CEO, Robert Dalias. Prior to joining WaveSmith, Burkardt was chief operating officer and executive vice president of Unisphere Networks, which was acquired by Juniper Networks. Before Unisphere, he was co-founder and president of Castle Networks.
• 
  
  CIENA also sells and supports the Equipe Communications' Equipe 3200 ATM/MPLS multiservice core switch into targeted Tier One service provider accounts, which it agreed to do in June 2002.
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  In February 2002, CIENA agreed to acquire ONI Systems for $900 million in stock.

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Procket Networks Unveils Router Platform, Reports 20 Deployments/Trials

Procket Networks, a start-up based in Milpitas, California, announced commercial availability of its PRO/8801 router, its first product in a series. The Procket platforms are based on a customized chipset that includes a fully programmable 40 Gbps network processor and a Terabit Switch Engine. The scalable chipset can be used in platforms that range from 80 Gbps to 960 Gbps. The first PRO/8801 router features 80 Gbps of total capacity and can support up to 40 high speed interfaces in a chassis that takes up 1/8 of a rack. The PRO/8812 router, which will ship later this quarter, features 960 Gbps of total capacity and a forwarding rate of 1.2 billion packets per second. The routers support OC-3c, OC-12c, OC-48c, OC-192c, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. All Procket routers use common line cards and media adapters, and the company estimates that its systems offer a reduction in power consumption and floor space of up to 50%. Pricing for the PRO/8801 starts at US$65,000, while the PRO/8812 starts at US$237,000.


Procket's software is designed with self-monitoring, self-correcting, self-configuring, and self-protecting features. The company said its software is portable, platform- and processor-independent, and fully interoperable with existing IP routing software, including MPLS. Procket may license its PRO/1 software to partners and allow customers and/or third parties to add additional applications.


Procket said that its platform is deployed or in trials with more than 20 major service provider and enterprise customers worldwide. Service provider deployments include NTTPC Communications (part of the NTT Communications Group), which will use the routers in its core IP network, and PacketExchange, a U.K.-based network service provider. NTT/Verio is evaluating the Procket platform.
http://www.procket.com

• As of March 2002, Procket Networks had raised $272 million in funding.
• 
  
  Procket Networks was founded in March 1999 by Dr. Sharad Mehrotra and Dr. William Lynch, both of whom were lead designers of Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC processor designs; as well as Dr. Tony Li, who previously served as a Distinguished Engineer and Project Lead at Juniper Networks. Randall Kruep became CEO of Procket in February 2001. He was previously senior vice president of Worldwide Customer Operations for Redback Networks.

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Caspian Introduces its Apeiro Flow-based Router

Caspian Networks, a start-up based in San Jose, California, announced the general availability of its Apeiro flow-based router designed for delivering "ATM-equivalent" QoS using IP. Caspian Networks' core innovation is to examine each packet entering the router, identify flows, and then store to memory the flow's relevant routing information as well as its QoS, loss, delay and jitter characteristics. Subsequent packets in the flow are switched based on the "flow state" data already in memory. By tracking potentially tens of millions of microflows per 10 Gbps interface per second in hardware, Caspian said its Apeiro platform provides deterministic QoS for premium IP traffic that is equivalent to ATM. Caspian Networks said its ASIC-driven platform is capable of handling 500,000+ flow set-ups per second, scaling far beyond the circuit set-up rates typical of ATM and MPLS. The Apeiro platform interoperates with and supports standard network protocols such as BGP, IS-IS, IPv6, and MPLS. Caspian features a fully distributed and redundant hardware architecture in which switching, forwarding, routing and management are handled by the ASICs on each line card. The system scales to 120 Gbps full duplex I/O capacity per shelf, or 360 Gbps full duplex I/O capacity per rack. This could accommodate 36 OC-192c/STM-64c ports, 36 10 GigE ports, 144 OC-48c/STM-16c or OC-12c/STM-4c ports, 288 1 GigE ports, or 432 OC-3c/STM-1c ports. The Caspian design also provides a Logical Router capability with separate routing domains within a single router.


Caspian's Apeiro platform is currently in lab trials with a number of RBOCs, IXCs and international PTTs. The company is also offering a "Caspian CORE trade-up program" in which service providers receive credits for trading in existing routers or ATM switches.
http://www.caspian.com

• In February 2002, Caspian Networks closed $120 million in fourth round venture funding. Total investment in the company now stands at $262 million.
• 
  
  Caspian currently employs about 120 people.
• 
  
  Caspian Networks was founded by Dr. Lawrence Roberts, who is credited with the design, initiation, planning and development of the ARPANET, the world's first major packet network.

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