MCI Cuts 2003-2005 Revenue Forecasts

In a supplementary filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, MCI said its 2003-2005 revenue is now projected to be $24.5 billion, $24.6 billion and $25.0 billion respectively. This compares to previously projected 2003-2005 revenue of $24.7 billion, $25.8 billion and $27.8 billion respectively. MCI predicted that the revenue reductions would be primarily in its consumer and small business segments, reflecting intense pricing competition fueled by new entries of unlimited bundles, aggressive new DSL offerings and rapid adoption of national Do Not Call legislation. MCI said these impacts have reduced consumer and small business effective rates in key markets by as much as 40% since April 2003.
http://www.mci.com

Read More

Alcatel Receives Orders for 1 Million More DSL Lines in China

China Telecom awarded contracts to Alcatel to supply equipment for 920,000 new DSL lines. Under the contracts, Alcatel will provide the DSL lines to China Telecom subsidiaries in 18 provinces and municipalities in southern China including Shanghai, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Anhui by the end of the year. The installation includes the Alcatel 7300 Advanced Services Access Manager (ASAM) and the 5523 Alcatel ADSL Workstation (AWS) Element Management System. China Telecom is already using Alcatel equipment in its existing DSL network. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Along with other new contracts, Alcatel said it has now booked orders for more than one million new DSL lines in China this month. The contracts were won through Alcatel Shanghai Bellhttp://www.alcatel.com
http://www.chinatelecom.com.cn/english/

• Networking News from China: http://www.convergedigest.com/regionalnews/china.asp

Read More

KPN Selects Nortel Networks for Ethernet VPNs

KPN began offering an "Ethernet VPN" service that allows enterprises to integrate LANs at various locations using connections from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. The service is based on Nortel Networks' Optical Ethernet portfolio, including its Passport 8600 Intelligent Routing Switch and Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 1400 Ethernet Service Module. The Passport 8600 provides Layer 2-7 switching, routing and traffic classification. The OPTera 1400 provides two customer facing Gigabit Ethernet access ports in addition to 12 100 BASE-TX access ports and Gigabit Ethernet uplinks.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com
http://www.kpn.com

Read More

Taiwan Cellular Deploys Nortel's Passport Switches

Taiwan Cellular Corporation is using Nortel Networks' Passport 7000 Multiservice Switches for an island-wide data network supporting its UMTS Radio Access Network (RAN). The deployment is the first UMTS RAN aggregation application in Asia for Nortel Networks. TCC is using the ATM services of Passport 7000 for traffic aggregation and statistical multiplexing. In addition, Passport's ability to support multiple services on the same hardware also offers flexibility for other applications. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com
http://www.tcc.net.tw/main/

Read More

Optibase Announces First Deployment of its TV over IP Streaming

Optibase announced the first two commercial deployments of its carrier-grade TV streaming platform. Two North American telecom operators (unnamed) are now using the Optibase platform to deliver Triple Play services over their DSL networks. The two installations add a total of $800,000 to Optibase's revenue.
http://www.optibase.com

• Optibase's MGW 5100 is a chassis-based system that lets carriers stream live TV over broadband IP or ATM networks such as xDSL, LMDS and FTTx. The platform encodes, transcodes, transmits and recasts up to 36 MPEG- 1, MPEG- 2, MPEG- 4 or Windows Media video channels in real- time. It also offers provisioning, monitoring, alarming and control and enables smooth integration into a variety of networks and access management applications.

Read More

Navini Launches 3.5 GHz Broadband Wireless for International Markets

Navini Networks introduced a 3.5 GHz version of its Ripwave non-line-of-sight, broadband wireless platform designed for international deployments. Navini said it has now deployed commercial and trial systems for customers in more than 25 countries.
http://www.navini.com

Read More

Connexion by Boeing Cites ITU Approval for Mobile Broadband

The recently concluded World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) approved a new frequency allocation to the aeronautical mobile satellite service in the 14-14.5 GHz band, paving the way for greater availability of the Connexion by Boeing airborne broadband service. Boeing said the authorization follows three years of intensive effort within the ITU study groups, which concluded that aeronautical mobile-satellite services, such as Connexion by Boeing, can operate without causing harm to other users of the frequency band.
http://www.boeing.com/connexion

Read More

Vonage Offers Toll Free Numbers for its Broadband Phones

Vonage began offering its broadband phone subscribers the option of toll-free numbers for $4.99 per month, per line. The monthly fee includes 100 inbound minutes, with additional usage priced at $0.049 per minute. Subscribers purchase and activate Toll Free Plus themselves through Vonage's unique web Dashboard. Subscribers select an 8xx number based on availability and within minutes make it free for anyone to call from anywhere in the world. The service is available to both residential and small business customers.
http://www.vonage.com

Read More

Judge Approves MCI Settlement

A U.S. District Court approved the proposed settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and MCI (the former WorldCom). Under the settlement, MCI will pay $500 million in cash and $250 million in common stock to shareholders and bondholders upon emergence from Chapter 11 protection.
http://www.mci.com/

Read More

Redback and Bondholders to Exchange $467 Million in Debt for Equity

Redback Networks reached an agreement with a committee of its bondholders to exchange $467million in debt for new equity in the company. If all of the Notes are exchanged, the noteholders will receive approximately 95% of the issued and outstanding common stock immediately following completion of the transaction and the existing holders of common stock will initially retain approximately 5% of the issued and outstanding common stock of the company. In addition, Redback's existing common stockholders will receive the right to increase their ownership by approximately an additional 10% of the company's outstanding common stock through the issuance of two types of seven-year warrants: one for up to approximately 5% of the issued and outstanding common stock at an exercise price based on a company enterprise value of $250 million and one for up to approximately an additional 5% of the issued and outstanding common stock at an exercise price based on a company enterprise value of $500 million.


Redback Networks cited progress over the past year toward reducing operational costs, refocusing R&D efforts on next generation broadband and IP network development, and putting in place a long-term growth plan.
http://www.redback.com

Read More

Vietnam to Deploy Juniper's E-Series Edge Routers in DSL Network

The Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Corporation will deploy Juniper Networks E-series edge routing platform to support advanced services over the country's first broadband xDSL network. Siemens serves as prime contractor for the project. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.vnpt.com.vn

Read More

Spirent Offers Online Training for Service Providers

Spirent Communications launched an e-learning service that delivers on-demand telecommunications operations training to support operations management in large-scale telecommunications networks. The SpirentCampus.com service provides online training for Spirent products, and covers network fundamentals on topics such as advanced ATM, TCP/IP, SONET, MPLS and CDMA. The site was developed in collaboration with iLearning, a provider of web-based knowledge transfer services, and Telecommunications Research Associates (TRA), a provider advanced communications training.
http://www.spirentcampus.com

Read More

Ixia Acquires NetIQ's Chariot Product Line

Ixia has acquired the exclusive U.S. and Canadian distribution rights and a perpetual license to the source code for the Chariot product line from NetIQ. NetIQ's Chariot allows users to simulate full-scale enterprise networks with a mixture of traffic types, including VoIP, Multicast, Oracle, and SAP business transactions. It can be used for pre-deployment testing of networks with real-world application loads, and is designed for enterprise IT, hardware and software vendors, as well as service providers. Ixia will integrate the software into its Real World Traffic Suite, thereby providing a single chassis that can simulate full-scale enterprise networks and application-level traffic.


The sale was valued at $17.5 million, plus royalties on sales of existing Chariot products. Products developed by Ixia based on the Chariot source code will not be subject to royalty payments. Ixia has an option to purchase the remaining assets of the Chariot business after 18 months for $2.5 million.
http://www.ixiacom.com
http://www.netiq.com

Read More

NETGEAR Prices Layer 3 Gigabit Switch at $145 Per Port

NETGEAR introduced a 24-port Layer 3 managed Gigabit switch with an estimated street price of $3,399, which equates to under $142 per port. The switch combines both Layer 2 and Layer 3 managed switching functionality with QoS and access control capabilities, making it suitable as a backbone for 10/100 switches, GigE enabled servers or an all-Gigabit network. The switch features 24 10/100/1000 Mbps auto-sensing, auto-negotiating, and Auto Uplink copper Gigabit Ethernet ports. It also provides four optional hot-swappable small form-factor pluggable (SFP) modules for fiber connections.
http://www.netgear.com

Read More

UTStarcom Wins Largest IP-DSLAM Contract to Date With China Telecom

China Telecom plans to deploy more than 200,000 lines of UTStarcom's AN-2000 IB DSLAM in eight provinces. This marks the third and largest IP-DSLAM contract announcement between UTStarcom and China Telecom to date. Deployment is scheduled for Q3. UTStarcom said the order will effectively double its IP-DSLAM deployments in China from just over 200,000 lines at the end of the first quarter 2003 to more than 400,000 with this agreement. Overall China had an estimated two million ADSL lines installed at the end of 2002 and UTStarcom that the total market in China will increase to five to six million ADSL users this year.
http://www.utstarcom.com
http://www.chinatelecom.com.cn/english/

Read More

Infineon Introduces SONET/SDH Framer Chips

Infineon Technologies introduced new highly integrated multi-rate, multi-channel, high-data-rate SONET/SDH framer chips designed for add/drop multiplexers (ADMs) and digital cross-connect switches. Infineon said its new single-chip Tethys devices integrate functions previously requiring up to five separate components, including aggregation of up to 16 channels of traffic, serializing/deserializing, pointer processing, clock and data recovery, and transport overhead (TOH) and path overhead (POH) processing. The first two members of the new framer family, the Tethys 448 and Tethys 4192, support high-density aggregate throughputs while meeting SONET/SDH jitter requirements. The Tethys 448 fully supports 16 channels of OC-3/STM-1, 16 channels of OC-12/STM-4, or 16 channels of OC-48/STM-16, which can be mixed in any required combination. In addition to the Tethys 448 capabilities, the Tethys 4192 adds support for four channels of OC-192/STM-64.
http://www.infineon.com

Read More

Efficient Networks Rolls Out New DSL Gateways with 802.11g and Powerline

Efficient Networks introduced a new family of DSL gateways, including a model that combines a DSL modem with 802.11g in a single box, and a second model combining DSL access with 802.11g and powerline networking technology. The new gateways also feature Efficient Networks' new ControlNet embedded software, which enables a carrier to extend its portal directly to the customer premises by embedding service provider offerings within the advanced routing code of the gateway. Second, ControlNet features, such as Web site monitoring, parent-controlled content filtering and time-of-day Internet access controls, enable the service provider to offer a differentiated security service. The feature set of the ControlNet embedded software can be branded and customized to complement service providers' deployment goals and objectives.
http://www.efficient.com

Read More

Magnolia Broadband Raises $6 Million for RF Silicon

Magnolia Broadband, a developer of integrated, multi-transceiver, low-power RF chips for mobile phones, closed $6 million in third round funding. The company's forthcoming DiversityPlus based RFIC chipset, which is expected to ship in Q4 2003, aims to improve both transmission and reception capabilities in mobile terminals using dual antenna inputs and outputs to create more robust signals through its diversity algorithm processing. The company said cell phones powered by DiversityPlus would have better battery life and would enable carriers to improve coverage and data through-put, as well as serve twice as many subscribers with the same infrastructure. The funding was led by SCP Private Equity Partners and included DFJ Gotham Ventures, ECentury Capital, Selway Partners and others. This financing brings the total equity investment in Magnolia to approximately $15 million since April 2001. Magnolia Broadband is based in Clinton, New Jersey.
http://www.magnoliabroadband.com

Read More