Judge Orders Verizon to Disclose Identity of Internet Subscriber

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ordered Verizon Communications to reveal the identity of an Internet subscriber accused of music piracy. In response, Verizon vowed to seek a stay from the U.S. Court of Appeals, saying the ruling goes beyond the interests of the music industry and "exposes anyone who uses the Internet to potential predators, scam artists and crooks, including identity thieves and stalkers." The case stems from a subpoena filed last summer by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) demanding that Verizon Online...

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NTT Outlines Three-Year Business Plan

Japan's NTT Group outlined its three-year business plan (FY2003-2005), including its vision for a new optical generation of broadband services. Some key trends and strategies highlighted in the announcement include:with the proliferation of competition and increased penetration of various DSL services, Japan is poised to enter "the full scale broadband era" the expansion of flat-rate access services and the full-fledged penetration of IP telephones and IP-VPN are accelerating the shift in traffic from fixed-line telephones to IP networksgrowth...

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Ample Communications and Big Bear Test 40 Gbps Technology

Ample Communications, a start-up based in Fremont, California, completed interoperability testing of its Blackbird 40 Gbps frame processor and Big Bear Networks' Kodiak 40 Gbps transponder. Ample Communications' Blackbird 40 Gbps frame processor is a single-chip 40 Gbps packet over SONET framer targeted for single port STS-768/STM-256 and four port STS-192/STM-64 SONET/SDH applications. It combines multiple functional blocks including framer, overhead processor, pointer processor and data link logic into a chip. Big Bear Network's Kodiak 40 Gbps...

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Level 3 Announces Dial-Up Program for Mid-Market ISPs

Level 3 Communications launched a dial-up program for mid-market ISPs serving between 10,000 and 50,000 customers in the US. Level 3's mid-market pricing options include a fixed port, fixed port with bursting, usage-based (per hour), subscriber-based and 800 nationwide access plans. Service is available in all 50 states and covers more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. http://www.Level3.comIn January, Level 3 surpassed the 20 billion minute per month milestone on its softswitch platfo...

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iBasis Carries 792 million VoIP Minutes, up 6% Sequentially

The iBasis network carried 792 million minutes of voice traffic in Q1, a 43% increase over the 555 million minutes carried in Q1 2002, and a 6% sequential increase over the 748 million minutes in Q4 2002. Average revenue per minute was 5.3 cents per minute in the first quarter of 2003, compared to 5.7 cents per minute in Q4 2002. Some other highlights for Q1:iBasis generated revenue of $41.8 million. Net income was $4.0 million, or $0.09 per share. Net income included a gain of $12.9 million on the exchange of convertible subordinated notes....

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GlobespanVirata Offers ADSL USB modem

GlobespanVirata announced the availability of a new ADSL USB modem offering speeds greater than 8 Mbps. GlobespanVirata's Centragate USB chip set is a fully programmable multimode chip set that supports all standard compliant versions of ADSL. The device integrates line driver and filters, while the digital chip integrates a USB 1.1 compliant interface and memory. http://www.globespanvirata....

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Foundry Reports Q1 Revenue of $91 Million

Foundry Networks reported Q1 revenue of $91.1 million, compared to $86.7 million in the previous quarter, and to $62.4 million in the same period last year. Foundry earned net income of $13.4 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, in the March 2003 quarter, compared with net income of $10.5 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, in the prior quarter, and net income of $1.0 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, for the same period in 2002. Foundry said sales to the U.S. federal government were strong during the quarter and added unusual strength to...

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Fujitsu Introduces IP-Phone for SOHO Devices

Fujitsu Microelectronics America introduced an IP-Phone VoIP chip designed for Internet telephony and Multimedia Terminal Adapter (MTA) applications in SOHO environments. The chip incorporates a DSP engine based on a customized ARC core and a tightly coupled custom-designed DSP hardware accelerator. It also incorporates a RISC host processor, an Ethernet switch and memory controller, along with a rich set of peripheral functions. Pricing starts at $12 in 10,000-unit quantities. http://www.fma.fujitsu.com/as...

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TIA to Create Standard for WLAN Telephony

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) initiated work on standards to address VoIP over wireless local area network (WLAN) mobile terminals and WLAN/LAN infrastructure. The work is undertaken by TIA's engineering committee TR-41, User Premises Telecommunications Equipment Requirements. The effort is based on the standard ANSI/TIA/EIA-810-A: "Telecommunications -- Telephone Terminal Equipment -- Transmission Requirements for Narrowband Voice over IP and Voice over PCM Digital Wireline Telephones." TIA is cooperating with the Internet...

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FCC Establishes Rules for 4.9 GHz Band

The FCC established licensing and service rules for the 50 megahertz of spectrum in the 4940-4990 MHz band (4.9 GHz band), saying the action promotes public safety communications and innovation in wireless broadband services. The new rules are intended to promote spectrum access for a variety of applications, such as high-speed digital technologies and WLANs for incident scene management, dispatch operations and vehicular operations. Some specifics include:eligibility for licensing in the 4.9 GHz band is limited to entities providing "public...

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FCC Updates Universal Service Fund for Schools

The FCC adopted new rules to streamline the operation of the schools and libraries program of the universal service fund (USF), which enables qualified applicants to receive discounts for eligible telecommunications services, Internet access, and internal connections. The USF has provided over $9.8 billion in funding to public schools and libraries since the program was launched in 1997. The USF is capped at $2.25 billion annually to provide eligible schools and libraries with discounts - ranging from 20% to 90% - for authorized services. The...

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FCC Rules Against Verizon in CLEC Interconnection Complaint

The FCC agreed with a complaint by Core Communications alleging that Verizon had violated the Communications Act and Commission rules by failing to interconnect with Core on reasonable terms. The FCC found that Verizon delayed for four months interconnecting with Core in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area, and also failed to provide Core with critical information about the delay and its expected duration. The delay occurred because Verizon allowed the capacity of certain crucial pieces of equipment within its network to exhaust and to remain...

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Nokia Signs Reseller Agreement for F5's Traffic Management Products

Nokia signed a new reseller agreement covering F5 Networks' Application Traffic Management products. As part of the agreement, F5 intends to complete custom development work by mid-year on its traffic management products to support integration with Nokia's NetAct, a solution for monitoring, measuring and configuring the wireless network. Nokia Networks is bundling F5's BIG-IP products for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) load balancing to build increased high availability, security and scalability into wireless customers' networkshttp://www.f5.com...

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Bell Canada Deploys Cramer Inventory/Provisioning Software

Bell Canada will deploy Cramer Systems' inventory and provisioning automation software tomanage and further modernize its inventory platform. Under the agreement, the Cramer4 suite of products will be deployed in a phased implementation that will commence with an initial implementation of 300 users in September of this year and subsequently grow to approximately 1500 users by mid-2004. Bell Canada currently serves about 25 million customer connections. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.cramer.com http://www.bell...

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BellSouth Reports Level Revenue and Customer Trends

BellSouth reported consolidated Q1 revenues of $5.52 billion, compared to $5.53 billion in Q1 2002. Net income was $1.2 billion, compared to a net loss of $154 million in Q1 2002. Some highlights of the quarter:CAPEX was $631 million, a reduction of 37.2% compared to $1.0 billion in Q1 2002. The CAPEX-to-revenue ration for the quarter was 11.5%, although the guidance for future spending remains 15%.Operating free cash flow (defined as cash flow from operations less capital expenditures) was $1.3 billion.total debt was reduced by $753 millionBellSouth...

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Lucent Reports 16% Sequential Revenue Increase

In what it described as significant progress toward a turnaround, Lucent Technologies reported quarterly revenue of $2.4 billion, which represents a 16% sequential increase over the previous quarter. The company recorded $3.52 billion in revenues in the year-ago quarter. Net loss for the quarter was $351 million or $0.14 per share, including charges associated with the global settlement of Lucent's shareowner litigation and the repurchase of convertible securities and certain debt obligations and special tax benefits. Some highlights:the company...

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AT&T Sees Growth in Managed Services, Overall Revenue Declines

AT&T reported Q1 revenue of $9.0 billion, which included $6.4 billion from AT&T Business Services and $2.5 billion from AT&T Consumer Services. This represents a decline of 5.9% versus Q1 2002, primarily due to continued declines in long distance (LD) voice services, partially offset by growth in several key segments of AT&T Business Services, as well as the continued success of AT&T Consumer Services' bundled local and LD offering. AT&T Business Services revenue declined by 1.4% compared with the prior year first quarter,...

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