SEC Reaches Proposed Settlement with WorldCom

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a proposed settlement requiring WorldCom to pay a civil penalty of $1.51 billion for its fraudulent conduct. As a result of the company's pending bankruptcy case, the proposed settlement provides for satisfaction of the Commission's judgment by WorldCom's payment, after review and approval of the terms of the settlement by the bankruptcy court, of $500 million. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the funds paid by WorldCom in satisfaction of the Commission's judgment will be distributed to victims of the company's fraud. WorldCom is charged with misleading investors by overstating its income from at least as early as 1999 through Q1 2002.
http://www.sec.gov

• The SEC has already filed civil charges against four former employees of WorldCom: WorldCom Controller David F. Myers; former WorldCom Director of General Accounting Buford "Buddy" Yates, Jr., and Betty L. Vinson and Troy M. Normand, former accountants in WorldCom's General Accounting Department

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Singapore's 2nd largest mobile carrier Selects Veraz

M1, Singapore's 2nd largest mobile carrier, selected Veraz Networks' I-Gate 4000 media gateway to support growing demand for international bilateral traffic exchange. The deployment of the I-Gate 4000 in the Static Trunking mode comes after many months of tests, including live traffic exchanges using G.729, that were concluded successfully. As part of this examination, the quality of the telephony calls was compared with those of TDM based DCME systems. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.veraznetworks.com
http://www.m1.com.sg

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Marconi Emerges from Restructuring, New Shares Begin Trading

Marking the successful completion of its financial restructuring, shares, new notes and warrants for Marconi began trading on the London Stock Exchange. Under the terms of the restructuring, £340 million in cash, an aggregate of £756 million (sterling equivalent) of senior and junior notes and £995 million shares in Marconi Corporation plc are being distributed to the company's creditors.
http://www.marconi.com

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Alvarion Supplies its 3.5 GHz Wireless DSL to Telmex

TELMEX, the leading carrier in Mexico, has placed a new order for Alvarion's 3.5 GHz wireless platform. Under the contract, Alvarion will expand Telmex's wireless local loop network with both copper-like lines for voice, fax, and dial-up Internet access services, and wireless DSL lines for voice and broadband Internet access. Financial terms were not disclosed. TELMEX currently has more than 14.4 million telephone lines in service and more than 2 million line equivalents for data transmission.
http://www.alvarion.com
http://www.telmex.com.mx

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Extreme Debuts New Modules Boosting Density of its Alpine Switches

Extreme Networks introduced third generation "Triumph" modules that provide scalable Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, advanced traffic management and integrated copper diagnostics for its Alpine modular switching platform. The new modules deliver a 400% increase in Gigabit port density compared to previous generation technology. Traffic management capabilities support eight ingress and eight egress queues, and one egress super-queue per port so that each port can be individually configured to accurately and flexibly rate shape traffic. Bandwidth can be configured in 1Kbps increments. Detailed statistics can be used to implement usage-based billing. Two versions are available: 16-port auto-sensing 10/100/1000 copper ports ($4,495) or 16 port fiber 1000BASE-X ports ($5,995).
http://www.extremenetworks.com

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LSI Logic Supplies ASICs for Extreme's Next Gen Switch

LSI Logic is supplying the ASIC chipset for Extreme Networks' Fourth Generation Silicon System (4GNSS) for Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet applications. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.lsilogic.com
http://www.extremenetworks.com

• In April 2003, Extreme Networks unveiled its fourth generation silicon, designed for scalable core networks with dense, wire-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet performance. Extreme's 4GNSS silicon architecture promises wire-speed IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, HVPLS and NAT services for metro and regional networks. The new silicon also includes a new feature, called T-Flex, that uses ASIC-based programmable packet parsers and editors to allow new protocols and services to be deployed without hardware upgrades. Extreme's first incarnation of the new 4GNSS architecture, code named "Mariner," delivers six 10 Gigabit ports or 60 Gigabit Ethernet ports per blade for a total of 48 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 480 Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single chassis. Additionally, the "Mariner" switch provides hitless failover, hitless upgrades and self-healing capabilities.

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Vitesse Offers Card for Migrating to XFP Modules

Vitesse Semiconductor announced the immediate availability of a 10 Gigabit small form-factor pluggable (XFP) interface card that allows for migration from 300-pin optical transponder modules to the emerging XFP optical transceiver module standard. The car plugs into a standard 300-pin connector and provides the electronics necessary to emulate a 300-pin MSA Transponder. The card is a stand-alone product containing five critical design elements: an industry standard XFP connector and cage, Vitesse's 10 Gbps serial to 16-bit transceiver integrated circuit, a 300-pin MSA connector interface, a reference clock clean-up phase locked loop, and supporting electronic circuitry.
http://www.vitesse.com

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MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance Completes Interoperability Testing

Twelve companies participated in an MPLS interoperability test "hot stage event" conducted last week at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). An MPLS core was created using RSVP-TE tunnels over a variety of transport technologies. The testing included the first proving of multi-vendor interoperability of Frame Relay, ATM and Ethernet encapsulation over an MPLS core using the IETF's PWE3 workgroup's latest drafts. The test also included the first-ever successful multi-vendor testing of Ethernet Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS). Several new participants in the MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance tests demonstrated Fast Re-Route (FRR) and Layer 3 RFC 2547-bis VPNs for the first time. Participants included Agilent Technologies, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Ixia, Juniper Networks, Laurel Networks, Marconi, Nortel Networks, RAD Data Communications, Riverstone Networks, TiMetra Networks and Vivace Networks. The MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance is planning a similar interoperability demonstration at SUPERCOMM 2003. Masergy Communications, a service provider, will also join the SuperComm event by demonstrating a multi-service enterprise connection over an MPLS network.
http://www.mplsforum.orghttp://www.frforum.com

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Texas Instruments Offers IP Phone Processor

Texas Instruments introduced a new IP phone processor that integrates a specialized dual-channel, 16-bit audio codec (including handset, headset and speaker drivers) and an Ethernet subsystem, which includes two Ethernet MACs and PHYs and a three-port line rate switch. TI's new TNETV1050 is based on an existing TI DSP and an enhanced high-speed MIPS 32 RISC core. It can also be used with TI's recently announced 802.3af-compliant power interface switch to support Power over Ethernet (PoE) phones. The solution incorporates TI's Telogy Software, including pre-integrated industry operating systems and protocol stacks, such as H.323 and SIP. Expected pricing for 100ku volumes is less than $15.
http://www.ti.com

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Mindspeed Announces DS3/E3/STS-1 "Line Card on a Chip''

Mindspeed Technologies introduced a DS3/E3/STS-1 "line card on a chip," integrating a 12-port line interface unit (LIU) with framers, mappers, and telecom application package (TAP) driver software. The 12-port chip, which is aimed at multiservice switches, ADMs and optical edge devices, incorporates functions to address DS3/E3 needs for efficient aggregation and channelization for transport applications. Mindspeed provides a low-power digital jitter attenuation technology with the chip.
http://www.mindspeed.com

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NetBotz Secures $7M for IP Physical Security Solutions

NetBotz, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, closed a $7 million mezzanine funding round for its IP-based intelligent physical security solutions. NetBotz monitoring appliances provide early warnings about physical conditions that threaten network gear. Rack mounted and wall-mounted models are also available featuring camera pods and various other sensor pods. Investors include Austin Ventures, CenterPoint Ventures, Hill Partners, Osprey Ventures, QuestMark Partners and SSM Venture Partners.
http://www.netbotz.com

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Cox Deploys Juniper Networks T-Series Routing Platforms

Cox Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the US, has deployed Juniper Networks T-series routing platforms in its national IP backbone. Juniper's T320 platforms serve as peering points in Cox's new IP backbone. The peering is used to manage bandwidth growth at regional data centers by re-directing IP traffic. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.cox.com

• Juniper Networks' T320 Router is a 320 Gbps platform designed for high density OC-3 ATM and SONET/SDH aggregation, and for transporting ATM and Frame Relay traffic over MPLS. It also supports dense Gigabit Ethernet aggregation for metro Ethernet and hosting applications. The T320 router supports 16 OC-192c/STM-64 ports in a chassis occupying one third of a rack. It also supports dense OC-48 and 10 Gigabit core applications.
• 
  
  During Q1 2003, Cox added 154,433 high-speed Internet customers, ending the quarter with 1.6 million high-speed Internet customers, representing year-over-year growth of 56%. Penetration in California is now 24%, despite heavy marketing of SBC's DSL service in the region. The company believes it is capturing 7 out of every 10 high speed Internet customers in the markets it serves. Cable modem service is available in 96% of the Cox footprint. The company also added 64,126 Cox Digital Telephone customers, ending the quarter with 782,546 telephone customers, representing year-over-year growth of 52%. Cox said it will continue to push its circuit-switched technology in the markets it serves, while continuing to evaluate VoIP for its expansion markets.

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Chiaro Unveils its Core IP Router

Chiaro Networks, a start-up based in Richardson, Texas, introduced its network core, multi-chassis, IP routing platform. Chiaro's design leverages a gallium arsenide (GaAs) optical switch fabric for scalability from 10 slots to a multi-chassis with 315 slots. The company claims that the scalability and flexibility provided by its optical backplane, along with network-processor based line-cards, will lead to a 7 to 10 year lifecycle for the platform. Key features of the Chiaro platform include:

• an Optical Phased Array (OPA) switch fabric coupled with a Global Scheduler providing a single-hop optical crossbar architecture,
• 
  
  a STateful Assured Routing (STAR) mechanism that preserves the state of routing protocol sessions thereby maintaining peering and forwarding through software upgrades, system capacity expansions, and control plane failures. Chiaro claims 99.999% availability
• 
  
  protection of every system element to ensure no single point of failure
• 
  
  "smart" line cards with programmable network processors
• 
  
  Interfaces from OC-3 to OC-192 with software selection for SONET or SDH, and 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet

BTexact has validated Chiaro's routing protocols with support for unicast (BGP, ISIS, OSPF), multicast (PIM-SM/DM, MBGP, MSDP) and MPLS (RSVP-TE, LDP). IP Networks (IPN), a facilities-based CLEC serving the San Francisco Bay region, will deploy the Chiaro platform at the Ames Internet Exchange, which serves as a major node on its network. IPN currently provides the Ames Internet Exchange with multi-Gigabit connectivity to other peering exchanges and operates five off-site expansion exchanges currently hosted at NASA Ames Research Center.
http://www.chiaro.com

• In January 2003, Fujitsu Microelectronics America completed a set of seven ASICs that will form the basis for Chiaro Networks' new routing platform. The new ASICs range from more than 300,000 gates to 8.8 million gates and incorporate very high-speed interfaces from 622 Mbps to 2.5 Gbps. One typical device delivers 28 channels of 1.25 Gbps clock/data recovery.
• 
  
  In November 2002, Chiaro Networks and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)2) announced a partnership to develop an optical networking Grid to support data-intensive scientific research and collaboration, especially in earth and biomedical sciences. The OptIPuter will leverage Grid middleware and multiple wavelengths of light to provide a better means of accessing and processing large, remote databases. Chiaro Networks is supplying its Enstara optical routing platform for the project. Chiaro said its platform employs several innovative technologies such as nanosecond optical packet switching, centralized switch fabric scheduling, and the use of programmable network processors.
• 
  
  Chiaro has secured $210 million to date from backers such as Intel Capital, Siemens Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds, and STAR Ventures.
• 
  
  Chiaro is headed by Ken Lewis, who previously served as Alcatel's senior vice-president of strategic planning and senior vice-president of the Transmission Products division. Chiaro was founded by Dr. Eyal Shekel, who formerly served as a project manager in the Space and Imaging division of EL-OP Electro-optical Industries in Israel.

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Ikanos' VDSL Chipset Selected by Korea' Woojyun Systec

Woojyun Systec, a Korean telecom equipment supplier, is using Ikanos Communications' VDSL chipset for an IP-based concentrator. Woojyun Systec's equipment is the first to pass Hanaro Telecom's VDSL benchmark test for 50 Mbps. Ikanos said its use of DMT line coding in the VDSL chipset was a critical factor in reaching Hanaro's performance benchmark.
http://www.ikanos.com
http://www.woojyun.co.kr

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ICG Completes National Rollout of Hosted IP PBX Service

ICG Communications announced availability of a hosted IP PBX service throughout California, Colorado, Texas, the Ohio Valley and the southeastern US. ICG's VoicePipe service has the feature functionality of a PBX, Key System or Centrex. Users of ICG's VoicePipe service can personalize dozens of call features via a Web portal and administrators can make adds/deletes/changes online. ICG is using VocalData's VOISS platform to support the service.
http://www.voicepipe.com
http://www.icgcom.com

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Metrobility Introduces Ethernet in the First Mile Device

Metrobility Optical Systems introduced an Optical Network Unit (ONU) designed for Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) services delivered over a point-to-point fiber-based network. Metrobility's RA21 ONU is a customer premise device that provides a 100Mbps fiber connection from the service provider's network to a 10/100Mbps auto-negotiating connection for the enterprise network. The device is described as "EFM OAM Feature Ready," meaning that it supports operation, administration and maintenance (OAM) recommendations outlined in the draft IEEE 802.3ah standard. The device can be managed from the central office using Metrobility's NetBeacon Element Manager, which provides remote failure indication (including Dying Gasp), remote loopback and link monitoring. List pricing ranges from $899 for 10/100Mbps copper/multimode fiber to $3,199 for extended long haul singlemode versions.
http://www.metrobility.com

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IP Unity Enhances its Media Server and Unified Messaging Suite

IP Unity, a provider of carrier grade media server platforms, announced general availability of its second-generation media server, featuring VoiceXML 2.0 and SIP capabilities. With the addition of VoiceXML 2.0 on the media server platform, developers can create voice and multimedia applications using standard development tools. The new IP Unity Harmony6000 media server adds speech recognition capabilities via software integrated onto a dedicated blade of the server. This enables service providers to offer speech applications that require intensive processing. The newly enhanced Harmony6000 enables the implementation of encryption algorithms and security mechanisms (IPSec, IKE, PKINIT). The IP Unity media server can also can be dynamically partitioned, allowing the media processing resources to be divided between multiple applications and/or multiple organizations.


IP Unity also released several enhancements to help carriers integrate its unified messaging suite into existing legacy voicemail systems. The IP Unity Unified Messaging 2.0 application also adds FAX messaging, enhanced auto attendant features with multilingual support, and integrated messaging to provide a single interface for collecting messages from multiple email systems. Administrators of IP Unity's messaging suite can also choose to activate message waiting indicators via an SMDI, SIP or SMPP interface -- enabling the service provider to signal end users that they have a message waiting whether they are on an IP phone, a TDM phone or via SMS. The company said many service providers are likely to move to next generation media servers to add new revenue streams and to replace existing voicemail systems as manufacturers discontinue support for legacy platforms.
http://www.ip-unity.com

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FutureSoft Offers Spanning Tree Protocol Enhancements for L2/3 Switches

FutureSoft announced support for the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) and Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) in its source code solution for network equipment manufacturers. With RSTP (based on the IEEE 802.1W standard), the time for convergence of the network after a change is reduced significantly -- providing rapid stabilization of the network after failure or reconfiguration. FutureSoft said the time taken for restoring the connectivity in a large network can be reduced from approximately 30 seconds to a couple of seconds using its software. With MSTP (based on the IEEE 802.1S standard), devices can support more than one VLAN without any network loop problems. This enhances the number of forwarding paths for data traffic, while ensuring a more optimal use of LAN resources in a VLAN environment. Load balancing is enabled via this feature, which also reduces the impact of failure in the overall network. These features were demonstrated last month at Networld+Interop using the Broadcom 5690 reference board.
http://www.futsoft.com

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SBC Reports a 63% Increase in California Calls for American Idol

SBC processed close to 41.3 million phone calls in a span of just two hours by its California and Northern Nevada customers - many of whom were participating in the semi-finals voting for Fox's hit reality TV show, American Idol. SBC estimates that about 16 million of these calls were for voting on the TV show because on a typical weekday evening about 25.3 million calls are placed in that same two hour period from 9pm to 11pm. American Idol provides a toll-free number for viewers to vote on their favorite singer. Nationally, SBC processed close to 213 million phone calls during last Tuesday's two-hour span, compared to just over 160 million calls on a typical weekday evening. SBC warns that a huge surge in phone voting after the final episode on Tuesday, 19-May-03, could overwhelm the network and cause some callers to experience a "fast busy" signal.
http://www.sbc.com

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ClearPath Upgrades its MPLS-based VPN Service

ClearPath Networks, a provider of MPLS network-based VPN services, introduced the latest version of its fully integrated network management platform, giving customer the ability to monitor and configure key WAN parameters. The new version 4.0 of ClearPath's network management panel provides features such as jitter reporting,for measuring and monitoring QoS applications; queue monitoring and dynamic queue adjustment capabilities, for increased visibility into bandwidth utilization and control to make real-time adjustments; and customer device monitoring, which provides measurement and reporting of equipment performance within the local or wide area network environment. The customer control panel can also provide realt-time network status, including data on packet delivery, latency, bandwidth utilization and other indicators. The same customer control panel provide management of additional services, such as network-based firewalls, corporate email management and web hosting.

ClearPath Networks offers MPLS-based as well as IPSec-based VPN services nationally. The company partners with a variety of local access providers, such as Covad, New Edge Networks, WorldCom and others. ClearPath operates its own MPLS infrastructure over a backbone that leases capacity from Qwest, Level 3 and others. ClearPath is based in El Segundo, California.
http://www.clearpathnet.com

• ClearPath Networks is headed by Cliff Young, who previously was chairman and CEO of InternetConnect, Inc., a venture backed national provider of ATM/MPLS private network solutions that was acquired by Covad Communications.

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Larscom Unveils SONET Access platform Supporting GFP-based EoS

Larscom introduced a next generation SONET multi-service access platform supporting the new Generic Framing Prcedure (GFP)-based Ethernet over SONET (EoS) standards -- including both Low- (VT 1.5) and High- (STS-1) order Virtual Concatenation (VCAT). Larscom's new Orion 7400 platform is designed to economize the extension of metro rings to customers located in lower density areas or multi-tenant buildings while remaining interoperable with the carrier's existing SONET infrastructure including optical add/drop multiplexers (OADM) and management systems (OSS). The Orion 7400, which serves as customer location equipment (CLE) or as an adjunct to a legacy SONET ADM, can deliver a range of services, including 10/100 Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, T1 and T3. Initially, the network interface can be OC-3/OC-3c (OC-12/OC-12/c, or STS-1 will also be available before the end of the year) to SONET metro or regional rings. The platform measures one rack unit in height and offers up to 16 Fast Ethernet ports. The Orion 7400 supports Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCS) giving it thability to dynamically provision bandwidth on demand. It is NEBS Level 3 certified and currently undergoing OSMINE certificatn. List pricinis expected to be about $5,000 and general availability is slated for August. An SDH version is planned.

Larscom believes that carriers using the Orion 7400 would have a profitable business case for fiber extension with just a single business customer paying as little as $700/mo in service revenues.
http://www.larcom.com

• In March 2003, Larscom announced plans to acquire VINA Technologies, a supplier of integrated access devices. The deal is expected to close in June. VINA had 2002 revenues of approximately $25.1 million.




• Larscom had FY 2002 revenues of approximately $23.5 million.

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Alcatel Introduces its Fifth Generation DSLAM

Alcatel introduced its fifth generation DSLAM targeting greater subscriber density, more bandwidth intensive DSL services, and greater backhaul efficiencies in the "second mile" of carrier networks. The Alcatel 7301 Advanced Services Access Manager (ASAM) will allow service providers to quadruple the number of users while supporting bandwidth-heavy applications, such as business access and residential video services. Key attributes of the 7301 ASAM include a 5 Gbps network processor, a 170 Gbps backplane, and 1.4 Gbps of capacity to each slot on the chassis. The design supports high-speed downstream datalinks, enabling the 7301 ASAM to serve as a hub and to aggregate traffic from other downstream DSLAMs. Alcatel said that by supporting multiple ASAMs on one link back to a central switch/router, a greater efficiency is creating in the access network. Another advantage is that advanced services can be injected directly in the access network where most economical. Alcatel will also add support for Gigabit Ethernet trunks for carriers that do no have extensive ATM backbones. Like the predecessor 7300 ASAM, Alcatel's new DSLAM design offers a separate 622 Mbps broadcast video bus across its backplane, enabling the delivery of up to 250 channels from a video headend to each user without impacting other traffic on the DSLAM. The new network processor also provides advanced IGMP multicasting, freeing substantial amounts of bandwidth for other applications. Alcatel said these capabilities wouldl also be provided as an upgrade to existing 7300 ASAMs. The company expects carriers will deploy the 7301 ASAM alongside existing DSLAMs in their networks.
http://www.alcatel.com

• As of Q4 2002, Alcatel had shipped a total of 23.5 million DSL lines worldwide.

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