Centillium's Maximus ADSL2 Chipset Claims 50 Mbps

Centillium Communications unveiled its "Maximus" 12-channel, central office (CO) chipset compliant with the ITU-T G.992.1 (G.dmt), G.992.2 (G.lite), G.992.3 (G.adsl2) and G.992.5 (G.adsl2plus) standards. The company claims its eXtremeDSLMAX technology is able to deliver up to 50 Mbps of downstream bandwidth for short loops, or reach customers at distances up to 22,000 feet from the central office, while maintaining full backward compatibility with over 30 million deployed ADSL modems. ADSL2plus standard offers downstream data rates of up 24 Mbps over short-to-medium length loops. Centillium's Maximus delivers up to 50 Mbps by leveraging a "quad stream" feature that uses frequency spectrum from 138 Khz to 3.75 MHz. The Maximus chipset supports upstream rates of up to 3 Mbps using frequency spectrum from 25 Khz to 276 Khz.
http://www.centillium.com

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HP Introduces Mid-Range Enterprise Ethernet Switch

HP unveiled a new, more cost-effective Ethernet switch designed for mid-size enterprises. The HP ProCurve Switch 2626 is a stackable, multi-layer, managed 26-port switch with wire-speed performance, 24 auto-sensing 10/100 ports and 2 dual personality ports for 10/100/1000 or mini-GBIC SX, LX and LH connectivity. The switch provides layer 3 static routing, which enables VLAN-to-VLAN communication between the wiring closet and data center. Extensive access and management security capabilities include IEEE 802.1x port-based access control with RADIUS network login for secure dynamic access to network services. List pricing starts at $799.
http://www.hp.com/go/hpprocurve

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India's Data Access Enters North American VoIP Business

Data Access, a fast growing international long distance carrier in India, activated a New York VoIP switching facility. The company was granted a facility-based 214 carrier license in December 2002. The New York switch is interconnected with Data Access' global network and is delivering traffic to 230 countries around the world. All nine nodal switches across the Data Access Network are managed and controlled from the Data Access Super NOC in New Delhi, India. Data Access said this off-shore operational model would give it a cost-advantage compared to most of the international carriers located in North America. Data Access anticipates further expansion to Mexico, Latin American countries, the Philippines and Japan.
http://www.da-america.com

• In January 2003, VocalTec announced that Data Access, Ltd., one of India's leading long distance carriers, agreed to purchase $8 million in VocalTec equipment and related services over the next 15 months as part of a major VoIP network expansion. Data Access' planned expansion will support up to 20 million minutes per day, a significant increase from the network's current capacity of four million minutes per day.

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PCTEL Files Modem Lawsuits Against Agere, Broadcom, Lucent, USR

PCTEL, a provider of 802.11 mobility software and software-defined radio products, filed patent infringement lawsuits against modem manufacturers Agere Systems, Broadcom, Lucent, and U.S. Robotics Corporation. The suits allege infringement of modem technology developed or acquired by PCTEL. A similar complaint was filed against 3Com in March 2003.
http://www.pctel.com

• PCTEL recently divested its modem product line to Conexant Systems. In addition to cash consideration, Conexant granted PCTEL ownership of approximately 50 modem related patents.
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  Earlier this month, PCTEL announced a software package that permits a Wi-Fi enabled notebook or desktop PC to function as a Wi-Fi access point and router using a wired Ethernet connection to the Internet.

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Northrop Grumman Petitions for More Spectrum for Emergency Services

Northrop Grumman is petitioning the FCC for an additional 10 MHz of public safety spectrum that will permit deployment of advanced broadband wireless applications needed by first responders. Specifically, Northrop Grumman is asking the FCC to set aside 10 MHz located below three GHz, preferably at 747-752 and 777-782 MHz or elsewhere in the 700 MHz Band.
http://www.northropgrumman.com

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Lufthansa to Install Connexion by Boeing on Long-haul Fleet

Lufthansa signed an agreement for the installation of the Connexion by Boeing service on its fleet of approximately 80 long-haul aircraft, beginning in 2004. The companies are working on payment options that would allow passengers to use Lufthansa's Miles and More mileage credits or payment of a nominal service access fee.
http://www.boeing.com/connexion

• In addition to Lufthansa, British Airways, Japan Airlines and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) have announced their intent to install the Connexion by Boeing satellite-based broadband service on their long-haul aircraft.

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Telecom Namibia selects Alcatel's LMDS

Telecom Namibia will deploy Alcatel's Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS) broadband wireless solution and high-capacity urban microwave radio systems to deliver broadband services. The deployment will use Alcatel's 9600 USY microwave systems, which cover the frequency range 6GHz to 38GHz, and provide interconnections with SDH fiber facilities. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Alcatel wins 10 Gbps DWDM Contract with China Telecom

China Telecom awarded a multimillion dollar contract to Alcatel Shanghai Bell for the construction of a new 10 Gbps DWDM network linking western and southern China. Specifically, Alcatel will deliver its 1686 DWDM platform together with its end-to-end 1300 NM network management platform. The new network will span 2,177 km from Sichuan in western China to Yunnan and Guizhou in southern China.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Marconi to Outsource IT Operations to CSC

Marconi signed a ten year outsourcing agreement for the management of its internal Information Technology (IT) systems to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). The deal was valued at £450 million (US$735 million) over the ten year term. As part of the deal, CSC will acquire Marconi's IT assets worldwide, with the exception of its Asia Pacific and the Middle East regions and the company's UK-based Interactive Systems business, for £26.3 million (approximately US$43 million) in cash.
http://www.marconi.com

• In April, Ericsson announced plans to outsource its entire IT operations worldwide to HP. Ericsson said the move will give it greater flexibility to adjust resources and expertise to meet fluctuations in its business and in the industry. The contract will include transfer of personnel at Ericsson Global IT Services (EGIS) to HP.

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Vivace Adds Redundancy Features to Multi-Service IP Switch

Vivace Networks announced new redundancy features for its ASIC-driven Viva5100 Multi-Service IP switch, including several unique Layer 3 capabilities. These include:

• Hitless IP forwarding during switch over of route processor and management processor for connected, static and dynamic routing for true non-stop forwarding to protect mission critical traffic.
  
  
• Layer 2 redundancy for Ethernet, ATM, Frame Relay, and HDLC services on an IP Switch.
  
  
• Graceful and Hitless online software upgrades
  
  
• Static and Dynamic ARP redundancy for growing IP/Ethernet services offered over 10/100, GE and 10GE interfaces
  
  
• Redundant OSPF, OSPF-TE, ISIS, ISIS-TE, RSVP, LDP, Martini, and management databases while preserving per-interface, connection statistics and alarms across switchovers.
  
  
• VPN circuit redundancy protecting both Layer 2 and Layer 3 services, enabling service providers to offer stringent Service Level Agreements even for IP VPNs.

Vivace's Viva5100 already provides redundant hardware elements, such as the route processor, management processor and switch fabric.
http://www.vivacenetworks.com

• Earlier this month, Tellabs announced plans to acquire Vivace Networks, a start-up building multiservice edge switches, for $135 million in cash and employee stock options.
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  Vivace Networks' Multiservice IP switches are designed for delivering native Frame Relay, ATM, Ethernet and IP services. The Vivace platform, which is already in deployment by a Tier 1 US carrier, uses five custom ASICs to provide deterministic Layer 2 switching and “hard�? QoS with Layer 3 routing at 10 Gbps rates. The system's deep packet processing tracks millions of carrier-defined customer flows and provides service differentiation down to the application layer.
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  Vivace's flagship Viva5100 switch scales to 320 Gbps of full-duplex switching in half of a 7 foot rack. A multi-chassis system could scale up to 256 customer ports at 10 Gbps. The company is also shipping a Viva1050 model with 16 Gbps of port density and measuring 3 rack units in height.

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Terayon Announced DOCSIS 2.0 Deployment in Korea

Hanvit I&B, the second largest Korean cable operator with more than 2 million subscribers, is using Terayon Communication Systems' cable modem termination system to deliver DOCSIS 2.0 services. DOCSIS 2.0 in Korea has already begun. In addition to Terayon's DOCSIS 2.0 CMTS, Hanvit I&B is using Terayon's DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems at the broadband subscriber end. Terayon said its DOCSIS 2.0 system can deliver approximately 40 Mbps of content from the Internet to the subscriber, and allows the subscriber to transmit nearly 30 Mbps upstream to the Internethttp://www.terayon.com
http://www.hanvit.net

• Terayon's BW 3500 CMTS has a chassis-based design with 14 slots for switch/control and CMTS line cards. Advanced features include PDQ (Per-flow Dynamic Queuing) routing architecture, VIPR (Virtual ISP Private Routing) and Hierarchical ARP (Address Resolution Protocol).
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  Terayon's end-to-end DOCSIS 2.0-based solution features both the A-TDMA (Advanced Time Division Multiple Access) and S-CDMA (Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) advanced physical layer technologies that are included in the DOCSIS 2.0 specification.

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Irish Broadband Deploys Navini's Wireless Broadband

Irish Broadband is deploying Navini Networks' Ripwave wireless platform to deliver multi-megabit services to residential and business customers in Dublin beginning next month. Over the course of the next year, Irish Broadband plans to deploy Ripwave base stations in communities throughout the Dublin area. Financial terms were not disclosed. Navini said the contract represents its third European deployment.
http://www.navini.com

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Tellabs Adds Layer 2 Switching to its Next Gen SDH

As a second phase in its Ethernet-over-SDH strategy, Tellabs is adding Layer 2 switching and guaranteed QoS to its next-generation Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) portfolio. The new and enhanced Tellabs 6300 uses MPLS to deliver managed Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (VPN) services using SDH. The Tellabs 6300 also features Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCX) and Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) resiliency. Tellabs said the Layer 2 switching functionality enables network operators to build large Ethernet networks over long distances. Services could include Ethernet VPNs or Ethernet Private Lines for Internet access, business intranets, VoIP and video. Using LCAS in the Tellabs 6300 series, operators can resize the capacity of links in the transport network at any time without interrupting traffic, thereby allowing them to scale Ethernet service bandwidth instantly as required. LCAS also offers resiliency against network failure, and can enable network efficiency to be doubled by utilizing the redundant bandwidth reserved by traditional SDH protection. The Tellabs 6300 will be available this quarter.
http://www.tellabs.com

• In September 2002, Tellabs outlined a three phased, next generation Ethernet-over-SDH transport strategy. As a first step, Tellabs added Ethernet capabilities to its Tellabs 6300 product line. Specifically, Tellabs added Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to the Tellabs 6340 switch node and Fast Ethernet capabilities to the Tellabs 6310 edge node, the Tellabs 6320 edge node and the Tellabs 6340 switch node. These interfaces map Ethernet traffic into VC-12 or VC-4 containers in the SDH network using virtual concatenation. This enables carriers to offer virtual private leased lines scaling from 2 Mbps to 1 Gbps.
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  The third phase of Tellabs' next-gen SDH strategy will incorporate the functionality of GMPLS to engage SDH transport network resources in intelligent traffic engineering.

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ADTRAN Boosts its DSLAM to 3,000 Ports

ADTRAN announced several enhancements to its Total Access 3000 DSLAM including new network interfaces that add OC-3c and global STM-1 capability. Additionally, the expanded ATM multiplexer architecture allows ADTRAN to deliver over 3000 ports of ADSL in two 7-foot racks.
http://www.adtran.com

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Sprint Begins its Migration from Circuit to Packet-Switched Voice Network

Sprint launched its migration from a circuit-switched telephone network to a packet network with the replacement of its entire local switching infrastructure in Gardner, Kansas. Sprint will be capable of combining three separate "overlay" networks into a single, ATM network for voice, data and private-line services. Class 5 circuit switches will be replaced using Nortel Networks' Succession Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches, Succession Multiservice Gateway 4000, Succession Media Gateway 9000, and Nortel Networks Passport 15000 Multiservice Switches. Nortel Networks will be responsible for all delivery, installation and testing of the new packet equipment. Financial terms were not disclosed. In addition to Gardner, Kansas, the locations that are scheduled for conversion to packet switching in 2003 include five towns in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida and Ohio. Sprint estimates a 75% consolidation of host central offices.
http://www.sprint.com
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

• In November 2001, Sprint first announced that Nortel Networks would provide products and services for the conversion of Sprint's Local Telecommunications Division network from digital circuit-switched to next generation packet-switching. At the time, the companies valued the project at US$1.1 billion over a projected four year period. The conversion was expected to consist of an entire network evolution including both Class 4 and Class 5 components to packet utilizing subscriber line over ATM (SloA) technology. A target date of January 2003 was given for the first network conversions.

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Luminous Networks Launches PacketWave Metro Edge RPR Platform

Luminous Networks, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, expanded its portfolio of resilient packet ring (RPR) metro optical transport products with the launch of a new, low-cost multiservice transport platform for 1 Gbps or 2.5 Gbps rings. Like Luminous Networks' existing M-series (metro core) and C-Series (metro access) platforms, the new PacketWave E500 leverages RPR layer 2 technology to integrate Ethernet and TDM services using ring architectures that are cheaper and more bandwidth-efficient than SONET/SDH. RPR is being standardized in the IEEE 802.17 working group. The standard is now in the final stages of ratification. Luminous Networks' new E500 platform (list price starts at $15K) provides eight 10/100 ports plus two expansion slots for customer-facing Gigabit Ethernet ($3K) or 24-port T1 / 21-port E1 modules ($3.5k). Applications for the E500 include T1/E1 TDM services, Ethernet-based private line or VLAN services, or MPLS-based Ethernet and IP VPNs.


Luminous Networks said it just completed its third consecutive quarter of sequential growth and that it is on track to reach profitability in 2004. The company has shipped over 900 boxes and 30,000 ports to date. Sales traction has been especially strong in China, where the company has announced deployments with China Netcom among others. China Netcom is deploying Luminous' metro platform in nine cities, including Shanghai, Dalian, Guangzhou, Foshan, Shunde, Mianyang, Quanzhou, Shaoxing, and Jiaxing.
http://www.luminous.com

• Scientific-Atlanta and Luminous Networks offer a joint RPR solution targeted at cable operators. Scientific-Atlanta OEMs the Luminous platform and provides Asynchronous Serial Interface (ASI) and Intermediate Frequency (IF) video cards that plug into the metro optical access platform. This enables operators to centralize MPEG management, modulation and encryption functions for broadcast digital video applications at the headend. The ASI digital video broadcast (DVB) card, based on the ASI standard, supports the transport and interconnection of MPEG-2 transport streams. The Intermediate Frequency (IF) card provides transparent regional distribution of analog or digital video service over long distances.




• Luminous Networks has raised over $148 million in funding to date. Strategic investors include Scientific Atlanta, Samsung, Hakuto, CiT, MorganStanley, Vanguard Ventures and others.




• Luminous Networks was founded in June 1998. The company is led by Alex Naqvi, formerly VP and General Manager at Chips and Technologies.

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Atrica Expands its Carrier Optical Ethernet Portfolio, Ramps Shipments

Atrica, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced three additions to its portfolio of carrier optical Ethernet products. Atrica's Optical Ethernet Systems -- including 10 Gigabit Ethernet and integrated WDM -- are positioned as an alternative to SONET/SDH-based equipment or RPR architectures. Key features of the Atrica optical Ethernet platform include high port densities in NEBS-compliant chassis, an MPLS architecture capable of supporting large numbers of flows, SLAs, sub-50 millisecond resiliency, integration with circuit switched networks, Ethernet CES for support of TDM traffic, and point and click OAM&P. Atrica's existing A-8000 chassis scales up to 320 Gbps and is designed for core network deployments. The new products include the A-4100 optical Ethernet aggregation switch and the A-2140 edge switch. The A-4100, which is designed for small POP environments, is an eight-slot chassis that scales up to 80 Gbps. It supports MPLS over Gigabit and 10 GigE links. The smaller, A-2140 optical Ethernet Edge switch is a customer premise device supporting a variety of 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Circuit Emulation Services (CES) of T1/E1, OC-3/STM-1 ports.


Atrica expects to ship over 50,000 optical Ethernet ports in Q2 2003. The company said over ten carrier worldwide are either testing or deploying its systems. Announced customers include: France Telecom, Al-Pi Telecomunicacions of Spain and Hokkaido Telecom Network in Japan.
http://www.atrica.com

• In February 2002, Atrica closed $75 million in third round venture funding for its optical Ethernet platforms. Total equity funding in the company now stands at over $117 million. Strategic investors include SBC Communications, BellSouth, France Telecom, Telia, Telecom Italia, Bezeq, 3Com, St. Paul Venture Capital JK&B Capital, Investor Growth Capital, Saturn Venture Partners (an affiliated fund of Telecom Italia), Gemini Israel Funds L.P. Limited, Lehman Brothers, Part'com, Challenge Fund, Young Associates, Triton Ventures, CDIB and Hotung.

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ADC to Support Internet Photonics' Optical Ethernet and WDM

ADC will provide installation, commissioning and integration services for Internet Photonics' LightStack family of products, which are used as optical transport platforms for carriers and cable operators. ADC Systems Integration will support the Internet Photonics platform across customers segments throughout North America.
http://www.internetphotonics.com
http://www.adc.com

• In March 2003, Internet Photonics introduced a new LightStack Gigabit Services Line Access Multiplexer (GSLAM) designed to aggregate, switch and multiplex multiple services (including managed services) in major cable headends or service provider POPs. The new GLSAM platform, which complements existing LightStack products for remote hub sites or premises, scales to handle 64 Gigabit Ethernet connections. The platform uses Internet Photonics' “SONET WrapAround�? capability in order to preserve existing traffic on a ring without interrupting the service. Optical Ethernet services are inserted onto the fiber using different wavelengths so as not to disrupt the existing traffic. The LightStack also features a VirtualWire capability by which eight GbE services, each with its own circuit-like sub-channel, are multiplexed onto a single 10 Gbps wavelength. Internet Photonics said the LightStack GSLAM is already deployed in a “top five�? cable operator network and is in trials with another operator.




• In July 2002, Internet Photonics closed $31 million in third round venture financing for its optical Ethernet platform. The new funding was led by ComVentures and included TeleSoft Partners as well as previous investors Sprout Group and New Venture Partners LLC. Internet Photonics has raised $63M since its inception in October of 2000.




• Internet Photonics is headed by Gregory Koss, who was previously CEO of Sonoma Systems, a developer of ATM access equipment that was acquired by Nortel Networks in 2000. Its technical team is led by Dr. Martin Nuss, who was previously the Director of the Optical Data Networks Research Department at Lucent Technologies.




• Earlier this month, Appian Communications also disclosed a multiyear, non-exclusive partnership under which ADC will resell Appian's full metro access product line to cable network operators worldwide, representing a new market segment for the company. Appian's metro access solution will be matched with ADC's Cuda 12000 IP Access Switch, Cuda 1000 CMTS and FastFlow Broadband Provisioning Manager to enable cable operators to deliver voice and Ethernet services to business customers.

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