Thursday, June 26, 2003

Verizon Endorses Principles of Open Internet, No New Regulations

Verizon Communications endorsed the principle of the Open Internet. The company is encouraging the FCC to adopt national broadband policies that ensure consumers will continue to have unlimited or "boundless" access to the Internet, no matter what underlying wireline technology they are using, said Tom Tauke, senior vice president for Public Policy & External Affairs at Verizon. Speaking at the Net Neutrality Conference sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, Tauke warned against turning such principles into new regulations. Verizon believes the FCC should ensure that all new broadband services brought to the market are placed in a "regulatory-free zone." Tauke argued that a competitive market will ensure that all content providers will be able to reach any Internet-connected customer without interference from software, hardware or access providers, regardless of affiliation.
http://www.verizon.com/newshttp://www.pff.org

Support Grows for Advanced Switching Specification

Twenty more companies have joined the Arapahoe Work Group, an industry consortium developing the Advanced Switching specification. Advanced Switching is a switched interconnect and data fabric technology based on the PCI Express architecture for joining components and system boards in low-to-midrange communications and embedded applications. The PCI Express architecture, builds on the highly successful PCI standard, is designed as a general-purpose chip-to-chip interconnect technology.
It uses the same physical and link layers as the PCI Express architecture. However, at the transaction layer, Advanced Switching is optimized to provide an array of specialized communications features, including high-availability functions, peer-to-peer and multicast networking, congestion and system management, scalability, and support for virtually any networking protocol.


Intel said it plans to adopt the proposed Advanced Switching specification into a wide array of its communication products, including network and storage processors, Ethernet controllers and chipsets that support embedded Intel architecture.


New companies joining the Arapahoe Work Group include Agere Systems, Alcatel, Altera Corp., EMC Corp., Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi Ltd., Huawei Technologies, National Semiconductor, Nokia, Petalynx, OSE Systems, PMC-Sierra, Siemens AG, Sun Microsystems Inc., Synopsys Inc., TeraChip Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., Xyratex and ZettaCom..
http://www.intel.com
http://www.express-lane.org.

Dell Promotes T-Mobile HotSpots

Dell will offer 2,000 free minutes of the T-Mobile HotSpot service to customers purchasing its notebook computers. There are now 2,600 T-Mobile HotSpots across the US in Starbucks coffeehouses, numerous airports and airline clubs, Borders Books and Music stores, and other locations.
http://www.dell.com

Cisco Opens New Campus in Boxboro, Massachusetts

Cisco Systems opened a new campus in Boxborough, Massachusetts that will be used to consolidate various of its operations in New England, including its Development Engineering, Customer Advocacy, and other groups. The new Cisco facility comprises 350 acres of land in the Boxborough vicinity. It encompasses 430,000 square feet of office space and can accommodate up to 1,500 employees. In addition to the new facility, Cisco owns another 138-acre facility in Boxborough.
http://www.cisco.com

Alcatel Releases Enterprise VoIP Assessment Tool

Alcatel released a new tool to help enterprises assess, monitor, and troubleshoot VoIP in their networks. The Alcatel Assessment for VoIP Solution (AVISO) uses a PC-based server to generate "QoS tickets" at the end of each call to an IP phone. The tickets are logged in a detailed report. The AVISO tool is platform-agnostic and supports multi-vendor voice and data networks.http://eservice.ind.alcatel.com/profservhome/

Marvell Closes Acquisition of Radlan

Marvell closed its acquisition of Radlan Computer Communications, a provider of embedded communications software based in Israel. Marvell said its portfolio of networking chipsets combined with RADLAN's networking software uniquely positions the company to fuel the next wave of growth for its communications systems customers.
http://www.marvell.com
  • In February 2003, Marvell first announced plans to acquire Radlan. Marvell, which previously owned 9% of Radlan, offered a combination of cash and shares of Marvell common stock valued at $49.7 million based on the 05-Feb-03 closing price of Marvell in exchange for the remaining outstanding shares of Radlan capital stock and employee stock options.

Sun to Acquire Pixo for Java Content Server

Sun Microsystems will acquire Pixo, a start-up offering Java -based server software to manage the secure distribution and monetization of digital content for end users' mobile devices. Pixo's server software enables network operators and enterprises to centrally manage content, customize multiple subscriber interfaces and allow rapid downloads of secure digital content, including Java applications. It will also provide a consolidated platform to add, manage, market, download and bill for all types of wireless content regardless of where that content is physically located. The Pixo software will be offered in conjunction with Sun's recently announced mobility programs, which includes the Sun Developer Network Mobility Program, Business Mobility Initiative and Unified Testing Initiative for Wireless Java Applications. Financial terms of the all cash transaction were not disclosed.
http://www.sun.com
http://www.pixo.com/
  • Pixo was founded in 1996 and was funded by Altos Ventures, BayPartners, ComVentures, Conexant and Hikari Tsushin. The company is based in San Jose, California.


  • Pixo is headed by Dave Rothschild, an early employee of Netscape who served as Vice President of Netscape/AOL's Client Products.

City Düsseldorf Builds a Wi-Fi Net with a Municipal Model

The German city of Düsseldorf selected Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems division to build a municipal Wi-Fi network. T-Systems is assembling the network, and T-Com will be running the relay stations. Düsseldorf's citizens and visitors will be able to access the city's website for free. General web surfing and emailing will require an ISP account. The city is inviting multiple ISPs and mobile operators to participate in the network. T-Online customers use their accustomed log-in data to access the Düsseldorf net, and the bill for the service will then appear on their regular phone invoices. The first 50 public access points will be up this summer.
http://www.t-systems.de/

NTT Deploys Nortel Networks' OPTera for Fibre Channel Leased Lines

NTT Communications is deploying Nortel Networks' OPTera Metro 5200 DWDM systems to provide Fibre Channel leased lines and other services in metropolitan Tokyo. The NTT Com Gigaway service provides high-availability connectivity across a range of interfaces up to 10 Gbps. The service is used by ISPs, service providers and enterprises for private networks, remote back-up, disaster recovery, and other applications. The OPTera Metro 5200 is a protocol and bit-rate independent DWDM multiservice platform that delivers 32 wavelengths. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www..nortelnetworks.com