RealNetworks Reaches One Million Internet Media Subscribers

RealNetworks became the first company to reach one million subscribers for a paid Internet media content subscription service. The company said its RealOne SuperPass, which featured live video of the war in Iraq, became one of the most popular news sources during April. News content delivered grew five fold in the first several days of the conflict.
http://www.realnetworks.com

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Microsoft Targets Web Services, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for Cars

At the second annual Microsoft European Automotive & Telematics Conference held this week in Munich, Microsoft outlined plans for Web services, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity in cars. The Windows Automotive software platform is already being used in the BMW 7 Series for controlling the GPS-enabled navigation system, electronic and entertainment systems, mobile phones and vehicle diagnostics. The Windows operating system will appear in new cars from Honda, Volvo, Fiat and Citroën. In Japan, Toyota is using Microsoft's Windows Automotive for its G-BOOK telematics system, which will be a standard feature even for cars priced at about US$10,000. Microsoft predicts three trends that will drive telematics to mass adoption. First, interoperability between consumer electronics system and Bluetooth connectivity will enable the car to automatically detect mobile phones and share information with PDAs and Pocket PCs. Tablet PCs could be used in the car as a "no compromise" navigation screen. Wi-Fi connected gas stations or a home garage might download music to the stereo. The second need for telematics that Microsoft sees is safety -- potentially, speech recognition applications could aid the driver without causing too much of a distraction. The third trend is cost reduction. Microsoft argues that a common OS for all the vehicle systems will eventually lower the cost of the whole car.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2003/apr03/04-30telematics.asp

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Tekelec and Santera Combine their Next Gen Switching Businesses

Tekelec and Santera Systems agreed to combine their next-generation switching businesses. Tekelec is a developer of telecommunications signaling solutions, packet-telephony infrastructure, network monitoring technology, and value-added applications. Santera Systems offers an integrated voice and data switching platform for delivering Class 4/5 services, PRI offload, packet/cell switching and voice over broadband services. The SanterOne platform features both TDM and packet switching fabrics. The combined company's product portfolio will also include media gateways, media gateway controllers, signaling gateways and element management systems for migrating from circuit to packet networks. Under the deal, Tekelec will contribute $28 million in cash and its existing packet telephony business. Santera's current investors will contribute its assets and an additional $12 million in cash. Initially, the division will be 52% owned by Tekelec. Tekelec will also have the ability to increase its ownership percentage in the new subsidiary up to 62.5% and has the option to purchase the entire remaining interest from 01-July-2005 through 31-December-2007. The new business will be called Santera, a Tekelec company. David Heard, CEO of Santera Systems will serve as president of the new subsidiary. The transaction is expected to close before the end of Q2.
http://www.tekelec.com
http://www.santera.com

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Nortel Networks, Redback Networks Settle Lawsuit

Nortel Networks and Redback Networks reached a settlement in their pending lawsuits. The case goes back to December 2001, when Redback sued Nortel Networks seeking to invalidate five patents. As part of the settlement, Nortel Networks and Redback entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement and Redback agreed to pay Nortel an undisclosed fee.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com
http://www.redback.com

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Hutchison Withdraws its Proposed Global Crossing Acquisition

In light of a new probe by the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment, Hutchison Telecommunications decided to withdraw its proposed acquisition of a 30.75% stake in Global Crossing. Singapore Technologies Telemedia will exercise its rights to acquire Hutchison Telecommunications' planned stake in a newly constituted Global Crossing. Specifically, ST Telemedia will increase its original investment from $125 million to a total $250 million for 61.5% ownership interest in the reorganized Global Crossing upon its emergence from Chapter 11. Global Crossing said the new arrangement would not change distributions to creditors under its existing Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization filed with the courts.


Hutchison Telecommunications is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, a multinational conglomerate based in Hong Kong. ST Telemedia is a major shareholder in Singapore's second largest telecommunications company, StarHub; Indonesia's second largest telecommunications operator, PT Indosat; and Equinix, which provides Internet exchange and infrastructure services in the US and the Asia-Pacific region.


The Committee on Foreign Investment is managed by the Treasury Department and includes input from a number of Defense Department and Justice Department agencies.
http://www.hutchison-whampoa.com

• In February, IDT, a multinational carrier, announced a bid to acquire Global Crossing, arguing that national security issues were raised by the proposed deal with Hutchinson and Singapore Telemedia.
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  On 17 December 2002, a U.S. bankruptcy court confirmed Global Crossing's Chapter 11 plan of reorganization. Global Crossing said that it expected to emerge from Chapter 11 as a reorganized company during the first half of 2003. Various regulatory agencies need to review and approve the transaction for it to take effect.
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  In August 2002, Hutchison Telecommunications (Hutchison) and Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte. Ltd. (ST Telemedia) announced plans to invest a total of $250 million for a 61.5% majority interest in a newly constituted Global Crossing. The agreement was approved by the bankruptcy court in New York and has the support of Global Crossing's major creditor groups. Global Crossing's banks and creditors would receive 38.5% of the common equity in the newly constituted Global Crossing, $300 million in cash and $200 million of new debt in the form of senior notes. In January 2002, Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia had initially bid a total of $750 million cash for a joint majority stake in Global Crossing's equity.

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Alcatel Integrates iMagicTV for TV over DSL

Alcatel completed its acquisition of iMagicTV, a developer of software for delivering multi-channel digital television over broadband networks. Alcatel said the acquisition provides it with a ready-to-deploy solution for triple play (TV, Internet and Telephone) broadband services. iMagic also provides back-end service provisioning capabilities. iMagicTV will be marketed under the name Alcatel 5950 Media Manager. The final exchange ratio used to exchange iMagicTV shares for Alcatel ADS shares was 0.158517 which equates to a value of US$1.30 per iMagicTV share. Alcatel acquired 20,826,362 of common shares, representing 84% of the capital. It now holds 100% of the company.
http://www.alcatel.com

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EC Approves Some Network Sharing for 3G Licensees

The European Commission approved 3G mobile network infrastructure sharing in the UK, ruling that site sharing in itself does not raise competition concerns. More specifically, 3G site sharing between operators does not restrict competition if such agreements are limited to sharing basic network infrastructure such as masts, power supply, racking and cooling. The EC investigation into the infrastructure sharing also found that national roaming between licensed network operators benefits consumers by allowing the operators involved to offer better and quicker coverage, especially in less built-up and more remote areas. Roaming will not include the top ten cities in the UK and is limited to smaller cities and rural areas. National roaming in smaller cities can benefit from an exemption form the antitrust rules until 31-December-2007. For rural areas the exemption expires on 31-December-2008. The case arose following an infrastructure sharing agreement between T-Mobile and mmO2.http://europa.eu.int

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MCI Adds Windows Messenger to its Converged Communications Service

MCI is adding Microsoft Windows Messenger to its MCI Advantage (formerly known as the WorldCom Connection) converged communications service. Both Windows Messenger and the MCI Advantage support SIP. With the new Windows Messenger capability, MCI Advantage business users can complete and receive voice calls, participate in real-time chat sessions and share information with colleagues directly from their desktop or any SIP enabled device. Users can also take their MCI Advantage service and calling features with them to any location by connecting to an MCI IP network.
http://www.mci.com

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AOL Blocks 2.37 Billion Spam Messages per Day

America Online blocked 2.37 billion spam emails in one day this week. At this rate, AOL's anti-spam filters are preventing more than 24,000 spam emails from going to each of its members' accounts each year. Only one week ago, AOL announced it was preventing over 1 billion spam emails from getting into its members' email inboxes daily. AOL attributed the surge in its spam blocking to a variety of factors: members systematically reporting more spam; the tightening and strengthening of AOL's spam blocking filters; the continuing surge of spam sent across the Internet using fraudulent, evasive and egregious methods; and the fact that AOL is actively working with other providers to target and block specific ranges of IP addresses known to be used by spammers. This last point has successfully resulted in a direct reduction of spam from specific providers by over 99% through provider-to-provider cooperation.
http://www.aol.com

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Sprint Expands its Metro Network Presence to 20 Cities

Sprint completed construction of three large metropolitan area network (MAN) rings in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. The rings connect the Sprint network to several local telecom exchange facilities and a Sprint mobile switching center (MSC) in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. The MSC routes wireless calls for local PCS customers of Sprint. The company has now deployed metro networks in 20 markets and intends to drive its fiber-optic network deeper into the metro areas of 30 U.S. cities before mid- 2004.
http://www.sprint.com

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America Online Offers Premium Virus Protection Service

America Online and Network Associates announced a premium virus protection service for AOL members. The service is provided through a desktop client that is constantly updated on new threats. The virus protection guards against infection from peer-to-peer file sharing, Web site downloads, infected CD-ROMs and disks, multi-media files, and other modes of attack. AOL will charge $2.95 a month for the service.
http://www.aol.com

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New Edge Networks to Provide Local FR and ATM for WilTel

New Edge Networks signed an agreement to provide local Frame Relay and ATM services to WilTel Communications at competitive price points. New Edge Networks has more than 600 central office locations with multi-services switches in small and midsize cities across the US. To support this agreement, New Edge Networks and WilTel will establish multiple broadband interconnection points across the country.
http://www.newedgenetworks.com
http://www.wiltelcommunications.com

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Network Processing Forum Completes IPv4 Software Agreement

The Network Processing Forum (NPF) released an IPv4 Unicast Forwarding Service Application Programming Interface (API) Implementation Agreement (IA) intended to help enable the development of IPv4 forwarding software solutions from independent software and network processor vendors. The specification will also simplify the task System OEMs face in migrating their existing control-plane software to network processor-based systems. The IPv4 Unicast Forwarding Service API Implementation Agreement is available for free online.
http://www.npforum.org/techinfo/approved.shtml

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Broadcom Supplies Transceiver Chipset for Foundry's Terabit Switch

Broadcom is supplying a custom three-chip serial backplane transceiver chipset for Foundry Networks' new terabit-capacity enterprise switch and metro/service provider router architecture. The custom serial backplane transceiver chipset was developed using Broadcom's third generation of low-power, mixed-signal CMOS SerDes technology. Broadcom said a key advantage of the technology is multi-rate operation, which allows cores to transmit serial data from 622-Mbps up through 5-Gbps and 10-Gbps over a variety of links including fiber optics, copper cables, backplanes, and chip- to-chip printed circuit board (PCB) connections.
http://www.broadcom.com

• Earlier this week, Foundry Networks introduced a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet Router with up to four Terabits of switching capacity and 1.5 billion packets per second of routing performance per rack. Read our story at: http://www.convergedigest.com/PacketSystems/packetsysarticle.asp?ID=7250
  

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TiVo Names an NBC Executive as President

TiVo named Martin J. Yudkovitz as its new president. Yudkovitz previously was Executive Vice President at NBC, where he played leading roles in the creation of CNBC, MSNBC Cable and MSNBC.com. He also led the business side of NBC's two largest television endeavors, the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. TiVo said it plans to focus on aggressively deploying its digital video recorder service through industry partnerships with satellite and cable companies and other licensing opportunities.
http://www.tivo.com

• TiVo has a subscription base of approximately 624,000 users.

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Zarlink Develops 3.125 Gbps Optical Receiver

Zarlink announced an optical receiver operating at up to 3.125 Gbps. Traditionally, discrete photodiodes and amplifiers, linked by complex circuitry, have been required to reliably detect and pre-amplify high-speed optical pulses. Zarlink said its optical receiver integrates a highly sensitive PIN (positive- intrinsic-negative) photodiode in InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide), a low-noise transimpedance and limiting amplifier in SiGe (silicon germanium), and a photo current monitor. The device could be used for 2.5 Gbps SONET/SDH equipment, as well as Fiber Channel and Gigabit Ethernet applications.
http://www.zarlink.com

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JDS Uniphase Launches New CWDM Solutions

JDS Uniphase introduced a new WaveReady series of optical access products, including a coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) solution aimed at enterprise and metro networking applications. The new CWDM line cards for the WaveReady series include a bi-directional 1310 nm input / 15xx nm output regenerator, a bi-directional 850 nm input / 15xx nm output regenerator, and an 8-channel mux/demux. Other new line cards for WaveReady include a DWDM bi-directional ITU 1310 nm input / 15xx nm output regenerator and an optical protection switch. In addition to CWDM and DWDM, the WaveReady Series fits a variety of applications including wavelength services, amplification, protection switching, reach extension, 1310/1550 overlay and Gigabit Ethernet services. JDS Uniphase offers several WaveReady platforms, including a chassis that can be configured with up to 14 line cards, a smaller, 1U-sized, two line-card platform, and a fixed model optimized for Gigabit Ethernet extension, path protection switching or optical demarcation applications.
http://www.jdsu.com

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Allegiance Telecom Negotiates with Creditors on Recapitalization Plan

Allegiance Telecom, a facilities-based national CLEC headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is continuing negotiations with its creditors on a recapitalization plan. The creditors have agreed to forbear from accelerating their loans or exercising their remedies until 15-May-2003. In return, Allegiance will make a principal payment of $5 million to the consortium of banks that have loaned the Company approximately $471 million of senior secured credit facilities. Allegiance said it would continue business as usual in the 36 markets it servers across the US.
http://www.algx.com

• For Q4 200, Allegiance Telecom reported revenues of $204.9 million, a decrease of 6.7% compared with Q3 2002 and an increase of 35.0% compared with Q4 2001. There was a consolidated EBITDA loss of $15.7 million for Q4 2002.
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  In its quarterly financial report, Allegiance said it was pursuing financial and strategic negotiated alternatives to reduce its total indebtedness, which under the terms of the interim amendment must be reduced from the current $1.2 billion level to $645 million by 30-April-2003.
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  The company's capital expenditures for 2002 totaled $129.4 million versus $364.4 million in 2001, a reduction of 64.5%.
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  Allegiance Telecom is headed by company co-founder Royce Holland, who previously was president and one of several co-founders of MFS Communications (acquired by WorldCom).

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NTT DoCoMo Sells More than 10 Million Camera Phones

NTT DoCoMo has sold more than 10 million camera phones since launching the first model on 01-June-2002. The company currently offers 11 different handset models with integrated cameras. Users between the ages of 20 and 30 account for about 60% of total sales. DoCoMo recently announced new handset models offering higher resolution cameras of up to 1.3 megapixels.
http://www.nttdocomo.com

• According to a recent NTT DoCoMo report, Japan now has 78 million mobile phone subscribers, a figure equivalent to 58% of the nation's population.
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  DoCoMo's i-mode service has 38 million uses.
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  DoCoMo's network operations center processes up to 75,000 data transmissions per second for i-mode mail and web accesses . That translates to an average of 800 million i-mode transmissions every day.
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  Out of the 25.3 million mobile phones sold by DoCoMo in fiscal 2002, approximately 15.2 million, or 60%, were replacements.

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TIA Publishes Measurement Standard for Multimode Fiber

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) published a new test procedure standard (TIA-455-220-A) for characterizing the modal structure of a graded index multimode fiber. Differential Mode Delay (DMD) is the transmission delay between different modes of energy propagation in a multimode fiber. DMD contributes to the total dispersion (spreading) of a transmitted pulse and therefore can affect the system throughput. TIA said its new test method is commonly used in production and research facilities and is not easily accomplished in the field.
http://www.tiaonline.org

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