NEC Develops Phone with Digital TV Receiver

NEC showed a mobile phone equipped with a receiver for terrestrial broadcasts of digital TV. The prototype phone, which is based on NEC's W-CDMA silicon, uses the same antenna for digital TV broadcasting, UHF tuning and OFDM. In Japan, terrestrial digital TV broadcasting service will commence from December 2003 in major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka districts. http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0307/1001.h...

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Motorola Invests in Appairent Tech. for UltraWideband

Motorola Ventures, the venture capital arm of Motorola, has made a strategic investment in Appairent Technologies, a developer of wireless multimedia semiconductors based in Rochester, New York. Appairent Technologies was spun out from Eastman Kodak Company in January 2002. The company is working on embedded high-speed radio systems that take advantage of the IEEE 802.15.3 standard and work underway in Task Group 3a to enable wireless multimedia communication in consumer electronic and PC products. The strategic relationship with Motorola centers...

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Vonage Adds Call Hunting to Broadband Service

Vonage introduced a Call Hunt feature for residential and business subscribers with multiple Vonage lines. Call hunting transfers the caller to another line in the account if the subscriber is on the phone. The call can be routed to another Vonage phone in the same residence or office, or to one on the other side of the globe. Customers can program up to 10 Vonage phone lines and can select the sequence of lines for the call to ring, or "hunt" through. http://www.vonage....

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Global Crossing Creditors Insist on Singapore Deal Only

The official committee of unsecured creditors in the Global Crossing Chapter 11 bankruptcy case issued a public statement reaffirming its support for the reorganization plan under which Singapore Technologies Telemedia will acquire a majority stake in the company. The Creditors' Committee said it remains optimistic that the transaction will be approved on a timely basis by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and other federal regulatory authorities. The creditors also insist that only the Singapore bid could deliver a maximum...

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Verizon Must Rehire Laid Off Workers in New York

A court appointed arbitrator ruled that Verizon Communications must rehire 2,312 workers that it laid-off in December 2002 because the cutbacks were not permitted under the labor agreement between the company and its union, the Communications Workers of America. There are 1,129 employees who were laid off in other states, and those layoffs are pending arbitration in those states. In response, Verizon said it would abide by the ruling but that the decision does not change the difficult business conditions facing the company -- the same conditions...

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Singapore's StarHub Selects Thompson for Video Hub

StarHub, Singapore's only cable TV operator, selected Thompson to provide professional equipment and integration services to enable StarHub to convert its nearly 400,000 cable TV subscribers to digital in the year ahead. The $16 million deal includes the installation of a full range of Grass Valley router, router control and modular products from Thomson as well as Nextream encoders and multiplexing technology, also from Thomson. Additionally, StarHub has appointed Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions as the prime contractor and overall systems...

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VocalData Secures $12.5 Million for Hosted IP Telephony Apps

VocalData, a start-up headquartered in Richardson, Texas, secured $12.5 million in Series C funding for its development of hosted IP telephony services. VocalData's flagship VOISS is a feature-rich, standards-based voice application server that enables service providers to supply businesses with IP Centrex, hosted PBX, VoIP VPN, and enhanced services such as conferencing and unified messaging. The company plans to use the new funding to expand existing sales efforts, build up additional international distribution channels, and strengthen customer-engineering...

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Cypress Samples Highest-Density Sync SRAMs

Cypress Semiconductor began sampling the highest-density synchronous SRAMs produced so far. The 72-Mbit, six-transistor (6T) devices, supporting standard synchronous and NoBL (No Bus Latency) architectures, are designed for high-data-throughput, low-latency applications, including switching, routing, basestations and data storage. Cypress said the new SRAMs deliver data five to seven times faster than competing high-speed DRAMshttp://www.cypress....

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