Sunday, August 17, 2003

Michael Powell's Chief of Staff Steps Down

Marsha J. MacBride has resigned as Chief of Staff of the FCC. Michael Powell said MacBride has been his "most trusted and loyal advisor" for the past two and a half years. Prior to joining Powell's staff in January 2001, MacBride was Vice President, Government Relations, for the Walt Disney Company. A replacement has not yet been named. http://www.fcc....

Vonage Completes 50 Millionth SIP Call

Vonage, a provider of broadband telephony services, announced the completion of more than 50 million calls over its network. The company said call volumes have doubled in the last 90 days. Vonage currently has 44,000 lines in service and is completing about 2.5 million calls per week. http://www.vonage....

Cedar Point's Safari Media Switching System Receives PacketCable Qualification

Cedar Point Communications' SAFARI C(Cubed) Media Switching System received PacketCable 1.0 qualification from CableLabs for its call management server (CMS). The qualification CMS functionality that exists within Cedar Point's integrated voice switching system. http://www.cedarpointcom....

Airgo Networks Unveils its Multiple Antenna Wi-Fi

Airgo Networks, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, unveiled its multiple antenna system for extending existing Wi-Fi rates to 108 Mbps per channel while remaining compatible with all common Wi-Fi standards. Airgo also claims its chips can cover a range two to six times that of competing WLAN chipsets.Airgo's design uses smart signal processing to handle Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) from multiple antennas.Airgo Networks is now sampling a highly integrated two-chip set that includes a Baseband/MAC chip and an RF chip. The chipset...

SAVVIS Rolls Out Softswitched Managed Voice Services for Enterprises

SAVVIS Communications introduced a suite of fully-managed, network-based voice application services based on softswitching technology. The rollout enables enterprises to quickly layer a set of telephony services over any voice network, including legacy TDM/PBX-based and next generation IP/SIP-based environments, without purchasing new equipment or software. The new SAVVIS Voice Application Services line-up includes:Switched 800 Service - with advanced features such as on-the-fly "ring to" number changing.Conferencing Service - for both scheduled...

Avaya Introduces Multimode Fiber that Extends 10 Gbps Links to 550m

Avaya introduced a new LazrSPEED 550 cable that exceeds the 300 meter fiber standard for 10 Gbps connections by 250 meters, allowing users to extend 10 Gbps backbones to satellite communications rooms throughout large buildings and across campuses. The 50 micron LazrSPEED 550 fiber guarantees 10GBASE-S (10-Gigabit Ethernet) transmission up to 550-meters. http://www.avaya....

Terayon Reaches One Million Milestone for DOCSIS 2.0 Cable Modems

Terayon Communication Systems has shipped one million DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems to cable television operators worldwide. The company's DOCSIS 2.0 modems first began shipping in August 2002. Terayon's one millionth DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem was presented to Comcast, the world's largest cable operator and a user of Terayon's DOCSIS 2.0 modems since August 2002. http://www.terayon....

TCAST Deploys Telica Plexus 9000 for Class 4 LD and Class 5 Local Switching

TCAST Communications, a facilities-based long-distance carrier headquartered in Valencia, California, has deployed Telica's Plexus 9000 to provide Class 4 long-distance and Class 5 local switching functionality. The Plexus 9000 will gradually replace a legacy long-distance switch currently in the TCAST network. Telica's platform includes all the elements of a softswitch-based solution - media gateway, media gateway controller and signaling gateway. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.telica....

Net Insight Announces Order for Studio-Quality Video over IP

Net Insight was awarded a $1.7 million contract to supply video transport over IP equipment to a next generation service provider in the U.S. The new network will offer studio-quality video transport for the broadcast and production studio markets in addition to VPN and video conferencing for enterprise customers. The network will include a virtual head end for delivering over 100 channels of television. The virtual headend will help telcos to substantially reduce the cost of implementing a triple play solution. The customer's name was not disclosed.Net...

Taqua Announces Two CLEC Customers for its OCX

Taqua named Eagle Telecommunications and Maw Communications as two new competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) using its OCX next-generation Class 5 switch. Eagle Telecommunications serves the Florida counties of Polk, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee and Sarasota. MAW Communications is a facilities-based CLEC in Reading, Pennsylvania. http://www.taqua....

Nortel Networks Supplies CDMA2000 Network in Dominican Republic

Nortel Networks will supply a third generation (3G) wireless data network to Centennial Dominicana, a leading telecom service provider in the Dominican Republic. The carrier will replace an existing CDMA 3G network with a complete CDMA2000 1X 3G solution including access and core networking equipment. The new network is expected to significantly increase capacity and improve coverage and delivery of wireless data services. The agreement also includes Nortel Networks wireline switching solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www...

ITXC Deploys NexTone Session Controllers

ITXC has deployed NexTone Communications' Multiprotocol Session Controller in its global VoIP network. The NexTone equipment enables secure and flexible interconnection between VoIP networks regardless of a network's call control protocol, equipment vendor, or internal architecture. The Multiprotocol Session Controller on the border of ITXC.net serves as an intermediary to affiliate VoIP networks, providing dynamic call-admission control, SIP/H.323 signaling interworking and network address translation (NAT) capabilities. The NexTone solution...

Global Crossing Launches SLAs for Voice Services Portfolio

Global Crossing began offering end-to-end Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on dedicated voice services delivered over its global network as well as local access circuits. These voice SLAs support three key areas: end-to-end network availability of 99.9%, guaranteed time of installation, and mean time to restore (MTTR). Customers can exit contracts if performance, based on service level agreements or customer service metrics, falters. Global Crossing is also launching a customer loyalty program. http://www.globalcrossing.comEarlier this month,...

The ITU Approves ATM/MPLS Interworking Specifications

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approved new specifications for ATM - MPLS interworking:Recommendation Y.1411 deals with the user-plane network-interworking functions between ATM and MPLS for cell mode transport.Recommendation Y.1412 focuses on the user-plane interworking mechanism for AAL type 5 PDU and SDU.Recommendation Y.1712 provides user-plane fault-management solutions for both network and service interworking of ATM and MPLS OAM functionality.http://www.itu.int/newsroom/index.h...

Riverstone's New Ethernet Services Module Emulates FR, ATM

Riverstone Networks released a new two-port Gigabit Ethernet Advanced Services Module with traffic shaping capabilities that allows carriers to emulate Frame Relay and ATM services, such as guaranteed bandwidth for VoIP and burstable bandwidth for Internet access, extranets, and interoffice connectivity. The new module is designed for Riverstone's RS family of metro routers. The Advanced Services Module also provides scalable support for Riverstone's MPLS implementation. The module ensures that each label switch path in an MPLS network maintains...