Cogent Announces Restructuring and $41 Million in New Funding

Cogent Communications has nearly completed the restructuring of its debt and has raised $41 million in cash equity from investors to fund its operations. Over the last six months, Cogent has reduced its total debt from a face amount of over $380 million to $27 million and extended repayment terms, with the company's first principal payment due in 2006. The equity financing will be provided by JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners), Oak Investment Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, Broadview Capital Partners, Boulder Ventures, and Nassau Capital....

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Unions to Begin Bargaining with Verizon for New Contract

The Communications Workers of America , a union representing 60,000 employees at Verizon Communications, said it is optimistic on reaching a "fair agreement" with Verizon before its current contract expires on 02-August-2003. In a press statement, CWA President Morton Bahr pointed out that Verizon brought in revenues of $67.6 billion and reported profits of $4.1 billion in 2002, despite the telecom slump. While the U.S. productivity rate grew 5.9% between 2000-2002, in that same period, Verizon's productivity, measured in revenue per employee,...

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Telecom Developpement selects Alcatel for DSL Rollout

Telecom Developpement (TD), a competitive carrier in France, selected Alcatel as its sole supplier for a mass network rollout in all the major cities in France. Under the multi-year contract, TD will deploy the Alcatel 7301 ASAM, which can be used to deliver broadband Internet access services to residential subscribers as well as to offer high speed data services to business and corporate customers, in particular for Cegetel. Financial terms were not disclosed. Alcatel has also been a supplier of networking gear for Telecom Developpement's backbone....

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Qwest Launches its Own "Migrate to Stability" Program

Qwest Communications launched a "Migrate to Stability" marketing campaign seeking to attract enterprise customers stranded by the recent decisions from Sprint and Cable & Wireless to exit the U.S. web hosting business. Qwest, which operates hosting centers in Burbank (California), Chicago, Denver, Sacramento, Sterling (Virginia) and Tampa, Florida, is offering two months of free service. http://www.qwest....

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CIENA Unifies Management of Optical And Data Layers

CIENA, which completed its acquisition of WaveSmith Networks earlier this week, announced the availability of integrated optical and data network management with its LightWorks ON-Center Management Suite, extending CIENA's point-and-click service provisioning and other management functions into the data layer. CIENA's ON-Center software now provides management of the Distributed Node (DN) multiservice switches from WaveSmith, as well as multiservice core switches from Equipe Communications. The integration enables end-to-end service provisioning,...

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Alcatel Joins in SATLYNX for European 2-way Broadband Satellite

Alcatel will acquire a 17.9% stake in SATLYNX, a venture that aims to provide two-way satellite broadband services across Europe. Satlynx was established in May 2002 by SES GLOBAL and Gilat Satellite Networks. With the new investment, the value of SATLYNX exceeds EUR 200 million and includes cash of more than EUR 50 million with additional contributions from each of the partners. The new company will also acquire Gilat Europe, which operates a pan-European VSAT network with 25,000 installed nodes. The new company, which will be based in Luxembourg,...

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UTStarcom Announces China Netcom Contact for Henan Province

UTStarcom announced a new $28.7 million contract from China Netcom for new deployments of its IP-based PAS (Personal Access System) equipment in 28 throughout the Henan Province. UTStarcom said it is now seeing a trend in the deployment of its iPAS platform in small cities and more suburban areas, following earlier deployment in bigger cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou. http://www.utstar....

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Level 3 Bondholders Convert Debt into New Shares

Longleaf Partners Funds, Berkshire Hathaway, and Legg Mason converted all of their outstanding 9% junior convertible subordinated notes due 2012 into shares of Level 3 common stock. Level 3 raised $500 million from the three institutional investors last year, in part to pursue acquisition opportunities in the communications industry. Level 3 said the conversion reduces its long-term debt by $457 million and generates cash interest savings for the company of approximately $41 million per year. In connection with the conversion, Level 3 is issuing...

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China's Hunan Unicom Selects Lucent for Optical Backbone

Hunan Unicom, a subsidiary of China Unicom, selected Lucent Technologies to supply SDH optical transport systems for its provincial backbone. Under the contract, Lucent will supply its new Metropolis ADM MultiService Mux, LambdaUnite MultiService Switch (MSS) and the WaveStar ADM 16/1. Lucent will also deploy network management systems including the Navis Optical Element Management System (EMS) and the WaveStar ITM-SC to help Hunan Unicom integrate the new hardware into its existing SDH network. The LambdaUnite MSSs will be deployed to form the...

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AT&T Stages Network Disaster Recovery Drill in Chicago

AT&T will conduct a five-day network disaster recovery (NDR) exercise beginning tomorrow in Chicago to evaluate how well it can respond to a simulated disaster that destroys a telephone switching center. The exercises begin with an initial call-out to NDR team members to assemble at the disaster site to prepare for the arrival of AT&T semi-trailers containing switching equipment and self-contained or dedicated power and environmental systems. Once the trailers arrive at the exercise site, the team can roll out up to 15 miles of coaxial...

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Acterna Receives Approval for $30 Million Bankruptcy Financing Package

Acterna received bankruptcy court approval for a $30 million debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing package arranged by a group of banks led by JP Morgan Chase Bank and General Electric Capital Corporation. The company said the new funding ensures its ability to continue with its business plan, with a substantial investment in research and development to deliver optical, access and cable communications test solutions. http://www.acterna.comOn 06-May-2003, Acterna voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection after negotiating a term...

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Siemens Mobile Acceleration invests in Realeyes3D

Siemens Mobile Acceleration has made an equity investment in Realeyes3D, a start-up based in Paris, France that specializes in advanced image processing software for mobile communicationdevices. The Realeyes technology allows users to capture any sort of textual or graphical content with their camera phone for use in messaging or imaging applications. Siemens said the Realeyes3D applications would broaden the wireless market, bringing clear benefits to end users and new revenue sources for network operators. After the now finalized investment...

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AT&T Reaches Agreement with Unions, Wages & Pensions Increase

AT&T reached tentative agreements with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) on a contract extension covering about 22,000 employees. Main points of the tentative contracts include wage increases (1.5% in November 2003, 1.5% in May 2004, 1.5% in November 2004 and 1.25% in May 2005) and a pension increase of 5% plus a 4.5% interest credit on cash balance retirement accounts. All other provisions of the current contract agreements remain intact, including medical plans for...

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