FCC Joins FTC on Do Not Call List

The FCC will coordinate with the Federal Trade Commission on the implementation of a national do-not-call registry for consumers who wish to avoid telemarketing calls. The registry is nationwide in scope, includes all telemarketers (with the exception of certain non-profit organizations), and covers both interstate and intrastate telemarketing calls. Calls regarding political and religious speech will not be subject to the do-not call requirements.


The national database will be administered by the FTC. The FCC will not require states to discontinue the use of their own do-not-call lists once the national do-not-call registry goes into effect. A state may choose to implement a more restrictive do-not-call list for in-state telemarketing, but any names on the national list must also be included on the state-level do-not-call-list.
http://www.fcc.gov

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Department of Defense (DoD) Sets Sights on IPv6

The Department of Defense is ready to begin trials of equipment and applications based on IPv6 protocol within 30 days, said John Osterholz, director of architecture and interoperability for the Department of Defense, in a keynote address at the IPv6 Summit in San Diego. The DoD, which has an annual IT budget exceeding $30 billion, will focus its information resources to create "predictive battlespace awareness" that combines intelligence and operations technologies in a connected, real-time environment.


In a memorandum issued earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense adopted a new policy for the enterprise-wide deployment of IPv6. John Stenbit, the DoD's Chief Information Officer, stated that the achievement of net-centric operations and warfare, envisioned as a Global Information Grid of interconnected sensors and systems, depends on the effective implementation of IPv6. The DoD is planning for a complete transition from IPv4 to IPv6 by FY 2008. The memorandum orders that as of 01-October-2003 all equipment developed, procured or acquired be IPv6 capable. The memo is online.
http://www.defenselink.mil/nii/org/cio/doc/IPV6.pdf

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XO Offers 'Insurance' Policy for Global Crossing Restructuring

XO Communications issued a revised proposal for a bankruptcy restructuring of Global Crossing that would run in parallel with the company's current efforts to emerge from bankruptcy under the terms of its current Purchase Agreement with Singapore Technologies Telemedia. XO said it is making the new offer because of Global Crossing's deteriorating financial condition coupled with its pending request to extend, until mid-October, STT's exclusive rights to close a deal with Global Crossing. If approved, Global Crossing's request would prevent the bankrupt company from soliciting other potential offers - a circumstance that would likely prevent an alternative plan from being presented, approved, and consummated until the first quarter of 2004, at the earliest. XO worries that Global Crossing might run out of cash by that point. XO's new offer would provide Global Crossing with an alternative plan should the STT acquisition fail. Financial details are posted online.
http://www.xo.com

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Secure Optical Ethernet Connections Multiply into NYSE, AMEX

The Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), the technology subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), has signed over 100 enterprise customers to access its Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) network. The milestone was reached less than two years after the events of September 11, 2001. SFTI uses designated access centers and a highly redundant infrastructure to offer firms physically and geographically diverse routing, thus reducing the likelihood of service-impacting outages. There are multiple data centers and numerous access centers in the New York, Boston and Chicago areas, interconnected by a fiber optic backbone comprised of Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 3500 Multiservice Platform devices. SIAC uses Nortel Networks' Optical Ethernet solution for access and its Passport 8600 Routing Switch to provide Layer 3 switching capabilities to both NYSE and AMEX. Network planners envision having 1,000 customers transferred to the new network by 2004. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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Broadcom Expands Wi-Fi Chip Portfolio

Broadcom announced three additions to its wireless LAN product portfolio: 802.11g and 802.11a/g USB 2.0 adapters, and a new wireless networking processor for secure 802.11a/g enterprise access point and router applications. Broadcom said the USB interface gives users the ability to easily add standards-compliant 802.11g and 802.11a/g to desktop systems without removing the PC chassis cover. USB 2.0 technology delivers 480 Mbps of bandwidth, which is necessary to support 54 Mbps wireless connections, while legacy USB 1.1 systems are capable of only 12 Mbps.


Broadcom's new network processor is the next-generation of its BCM4702 chip, which it describes as the most popular wireless network processor in the industry. The new model adds a network processing core that is capable of wire-speed Ethernet routing/bridging, as well as VPN termination on an integrated IPSec security acceleration engine.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Orative Receives $6 Million for Enterprise Mobile Telephony

Orative, a start-up based in Menlo Park, California, raised $6 million in its first round of venture capital financing to support its development of enterprise mobile telephony software. Product plans have not been disclosed. The investment came from Mayfield and Diamondhead Ventures.
http://www.orative.com

• Orative is headed by Paul Fulton, who previously was Executive in Residence at Mayfield. Prior to joining Mayfield, Fulton was Vice President and General Manager of 3Com's Wireless Division.

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Argonne National Lab Deploys CIENA's ONLINE Metro DWDM

Argonne National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers, has deployed CIENA's ONLINE Metro DWDM platform in two separate networks. The first application is to provide OC-48 and OC-192 channels between the Laboratory located 25 miles southwest of Chicago, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Champaign, Illinois and several other research and education institutions in the state. The second application is to provide OC-48/OC-192 links between locations in the TeraGrid and Illinois Wired/Wireless Infrastructure for Research and Education (I-WIRE) networks, including StarLight, a global experimental optical network exchange facility. Argonne is also using the ONLINE Metro platform to test Fibre Channel over SONET, as well as for experimenting with extended Ethernet transport solutions.
http://www.ciena.com

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Sorrento Networks to Acquire LuxN

Sorrento Networks agreed to acquire LuxN, a start-up provider of optical access solutions, for a combination of stock, warrants, and cash, including some of the cash currently held by LuxN. LuxN claims 25 customers, including Time Warner Telecom, Hawaii I-Net, Yipes Enterprise Services, and numerous universities for its optical access products, which combine CWDM and DWDM on the same platform. Warrants to purchase 400,000 shares of Sorrento will be issued to the Series A-1 Preferred stockholders of LuxN upon the completion of the transaction, which is expected to occur on or before 08-August-2003. Shares in Sorrento are currently trading at $2.62. Sorrento said its merger with LuxN is merely the first step in a growth strategy that includes expanding its product line breadth, adding new customers, and penetrating new markets.
http://www.sorrentonet.com
http://www.luxn.com

• LuxN was founded in 1999 and raised over $159 million in funding. Investors included Azure Capital Partners, Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity, E-TEK Dynamics, CommVest, Storm Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, U.S. Venture Partners, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Siemens. LuxN is based in Sunnyvale, California.

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Twentieth Century Fox and Shaw Enter Long-Term VOD Agreement

Twentieth Century Fox signed a long-term agreement to provide movies and other programming content for Shaw's Video-on-Demand (VOD) and Pay-Per-View (PPV) services. Shaw serves 2.9 million customers in Canada. Twentieth Century Fox is one of the first major Hollywood studios to partner with Shaw on these new services.
http://www.shaw.ca

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SMC Pushes Gigabit to the Desktop at $50 per Connection

SMC Networks announced two new 10/100/1000 Gigabit switches and a new 32-bit Gigabit Ethernet PCI network card at new price points for the industry. SMC's five and eight port EZ Switch 10/100/1000 will be available in July, and carry MSRPs of $134.99 and $194.99, respectively. The new EZ Card 1000 PCI network card has an MSRP of $29.99. The new products bring Gigabit Ethernet prices to just over $50 per connection MSRP.
http://www.smc.com

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FCC Sees Very Healthy Competition in Wireless

In its just released Eighth Annual Report on Commercial Mobile Radio Services (CMRS), the FCC found the wireless industry is fundamentally competitive and delivering on the promise of greater service, more extensive coverage and lower prices. Highlights of the 2002 report include:

• the number mobile telephone subscribers in the U.S. rose from 128.5 million to 141.8 million, resulting in a nationwide penetration rate of roughly 49%
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  the mobile telephone sector generated more than $76 billion in revenue for 2002
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  more than 95% of the total U.S. population lives in counties with three or more different mobile telephone operators and 83% of the population has access to five or more mobile operators
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  digital mobile telephone services were used by approximately 88 percent of all mobile telephone subscribers at the end of 2002, up from 80 percent at the end of 2001
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  minutes-of-use per month averaged 427 between June and December 2002, an increase of 12 percent from 380 during the same period in 2001. Estimates for the decrease in the price of mobile telephone service during 2002 range from one to nine percent depending on the methodology employed.
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  while mobile data services generated only 1% percent of total industry revenue during 2002, an estimated 11.9 million, or 8%, of the 141.8 million mobile telephone subscribers at the end of 2002 subscribed to some type of mobile Internet service. An additional 2.3 million consumers subscribed to mobile Internet services on data-only mobile devices at the end of 2002. About 20% of all mobile telephone subscribers used text messaging services during Q4 2002.
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  As of March 2003, operators were offering services in at lease some parts of counties containing 265 million people, or 93% of the population

http://www.fcc.gov

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KT Tests Lucent's Universal Gateway for Circuit-to-Packet Migration

KT (formerly Korea Telecom) is testing Lucent Technologies' APX 8000 Universal Gateway system as a means of migrating traffic from circuit networks to an IP-based network. Lucent's APX 8000 Universal Gateway will be deployed at KT's Research Center in Daeduk by the end of July. The equipment will act as a trunk access media gateway accepting dial, VoIP and fax-over-IP traffic and then interfacing with KT's softswitch. Lucent's multi-protocol system supports H.248, IPDC, SIP, H.323, V.92, and Personal Handyphone System (PHS) protocols. It achieves toll quality voice that meets G.711, G.729, G.728, G.723.1 standards. Lucent supplied its AnyMedia Line Access Gateway for KT's access network build-out last October. In addition, Lucent has previously supplied KT with traditional voice switching systems, such as the 4ESS Toll Switch and 5ESS Switch, as well as optical transport and crossconnect gear since the 1980s.
http://www.lucent.com
http://www.kt.co.kr

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IPv6 Sets Internet2 Land Speed Records

Researchers from Caltech and CERN set a new Internet2 Land Speed Record by transmitting a single IPv6 stream at 983 Mbps for more than an hour from Geneva, Switzerland to Chicago, Illinois, a distance of 7,067 km (more than 4,000 miles). The new record was set through the efforts of the DataTAG project and CERN using a standard Linux TCP implementation. The researchers said the efficient use of long distance networks at gigabit per second speeds is critical to the future of the high energy and nuclear physics community. The Internet2 Land Speed Record is an open and ongoing competition. Details of the winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines and additional details are available online.http://lsr.internet2.edu

• Caltech and CERN also hold the current Internet2 Land Speed Record in the IPv4 class. The team transferred one terabyte of data across 10,037 km (Sunnyvale, California to Geneva, Switzerland) in less than one hour at a sustained TCP rate of 2.38 Gbps.
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  The DataTAG project, which is co-funded by the European Community and the US, is testing a large-scale intercontinental grid computing testbed. The project addresses a number of high-performance networking issues, including sustained and reliable high performance data replication, end-to-end advanced network services, and novel monitoring techniques. http://datatag.web.cern.ch/datatag/

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IEEE Selects VDSL DMT Line Coding for Ethernet in the First Mile

The IEEE's 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) Task Force selected DMT as its worldwide line-coding standard for VDSL. The selection of DMT by both the IEEE and the T1E1.4 Working Group (see below) paves the way for carriers to expand their deployments of VDSL. Ikanos Communications said that since its VDSL-DMT chipsets became available in Q4 of 2002, it has shipped more than 500,000 ports.
http://www.ikanos.com

• Last week, the T1E1.4 committee, which is part of The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), decided to specify only Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) line coding in its American National Standard (ANS) for VDSL. The DMT modulation method will be specified in the American National Standard, and the Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) method will be specified in a Committee T1 Technical Requirement (TRQ).
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  The decision follows the release of data from the "VDSL Olympics," a series of performance tests conducted by Telcordia Technologies and BT.

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