Sunday, August 24, 2003

McDATA Agrees to Acquire Nishan Systems and Sanera Systems

McData announced separate agreements to acquire Nishan Systems and Sanera Systems, both start-ups targeting storage area networks (SANs). McDATA said that as a result of these acquisitions its expanded portfolio would allow its customers to seamlessly build and grow their storage services infrastructure in several dimensions simultaneously.


Nishan Systems, which is based in San Jose, California, offers a line of IP storage switching products that enable enterprises to leverage their Fibre Channel storage network infrastructure and their IP networks to consolidate storage infrastructures across the campus and enterprise. Nishan switches are qualified with all major storage platforms and replication applications, including those of EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, XIOtech, Sun, StorageTek and LSI Logic. McDATA has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of Nishan Systems for $83 million in cash and will also assume approximately $2 million in debt.


Sanera Systems, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, offers terabit, protocol transparent SAN switches. Sanera's DS10000 datacenter-class director, introduced in April 2003, scales to as many as 256 non-blocking 2 Gbps ports or up to 64 10 Gbps ports per chassis. The platform can be used for SAN consolidation, large fabric deployment and in-network storage services integration. McDATA has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of Sanera Systems for approximately $102 million in cash, net of debt and cash on hand.


Both acquisitions are expected to close within one to two months, pending regulatory approvals.


Separately, McDATA announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Aarohi Communications to provide technology for McDATA's intelligent switch platforms.
http://www.mcdata.com
http://www.nishansystems.com/
  • Sanera Systems is headed by Alex Mendez, who is a founding partner of Storm Ventures, and was previously VP & General Manager of Cisco's Multiservice Access Business Unit.


  • In July 2003, Sanera Systems received $35 million in third round financing to support the development of its terabit, protocol transparent SAN switch.


  • Nishan Systems was founded in October 1998 and is led by Aamer Latif, who previously was President and CEO of Amati Communications, an early developer of ADSL. In October 2000, the company announced the closing of $50 million in third round funding.

California Town Plans Municipal FTTH Network

The town of Truckee, California, plans to begin construction this Fall of a municipal FTTH network serving 12,000 subscribers. The Truckee Donner Public Utility District ("TDPUD") recently sold a 16.5 mile conduit that runs through the town to Sierra Pacific Communications (SPC). Proceeds will be used for construction of the new FTTH network. The conduit will assist SPC in completing its Salt Lake City to Sacramento fiber optic network. The deal also provides TDPUD with the rights to four strands of dark fiber running from Reno to Sacramento. The dark fiber will be used to fulfill programming requirements of the municipal FTTH network.


Aggregate Networks was hired by TDPUD to assist it in the valuation of the conduit, dark fiber route, related network assets, as well as negotiation and disposition of the asset. Aggregate Networks is also representing TDPUD in procuring financing for the construction and roll-out of services for its broadband network.
http://www.aggregatenetworks.net

Lucent Selected for Telecom Rebuilding in Iraq

Bechtel has awarded a $25 million subcontract to Lucent Technologies to carry out emergency repair and rehabilitation of the communications network in Iraq. Under the contract, Lucent will provide 13 5ESS and 5ESS Very Compact Digital Exchange (VCDX) central office switches, the Lucent Metropolis ADM Multiservice Mux, and its Navis Network management system. Deployment will begin next month.


Prior to the war, approximately 1.1 million Iraqis subscribed to the Iraqi Telephone and Post Company (ITPC) for landline telephone service. Much of the communications network was centralized in Baghdad. Currently in Baghdad, 240,000 out of 540,000 telephone lines are out of service. Bechtel estimates that as much as 80% of the actual deployment work for restoring these lines will be done by Iraqi workers and engineers. Lucent will also help establish a training program to facilitate the installation and maintenance of its equipment.
http://www.lucent.com

General Bandwidth Adds SIP-Based IP Centrex to G6 Gateway

General Bandwidth has added full SIP and PRI support within its G6 Packet Telephony Migration Platform. The G6 platform can now be used in conjunction with a SIP feature server to provide a wide range of traditional Centrex and other messaging capabilities. New features can include advanced call screening, single number service, click-to-call, dial from directories, voice & email integration, as well as legacy Class 5 and other new services.


General Bandwidth's G6 platform already offered support for derived voice services from legacy Class 5 switches through GR-303/TR-008 and V5.2 interfaces. Carriers now have the capability to simultaneously deploy VoIP services from the same G6 platform while supporting calls from multiple softswitches and features servers. The G6 software also includes support for RFC2833 with Named Telephony Events (NTE) enabling full Class 5 feature capabilities over VoIP such as voice mail indicator and flash hook-based features as well as support for low bit rate codecs such as G.729e to provide better bandwidth utilization across the carrier's network.
http://www.genband.com

Alaska's Matanuska Telephone Deploys Minerva's IP Headend

Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA), an independent operating company (IOC) serving 38,000 member-owners in Alaska, has deployed Minerva Networks IP television headend for its triple play network. This fall, MTA will begin offering live next-generation digital television, video on demand (VOD) and pay-per-view bundled with voice and data services over an ADSL network. The MTA service includes 195 channels of high-quality digital TV including local channels, VOD, pay-per-view and later this fall, MTA will offer TV-based Caller-ID bundled together with its existing telephony and high-speed Internet access.


MTA is using the Minerva iTVManager service management software and the Minerva VC8000 video processing platform. The iTVManager administration module manages business functions and monitors customer preferences while the iTVManager client module, running on the subscriber's set-top box, creates the interactive user experience.
http://www.minervanetworks.com
http://www.mtasolutions.com
  • Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA) is using Net Insight's Ethernet-based transport platform to support is triple play DSL network. The Net Insight system is a transport switch used for carrying video from the satellite-fed headend to IGMP-enabled DSLAMs. Net Insight uses DTM (Dynamic synchronous Transfer Mode) multiplexing technology to guarantee QoS and no jitter or packet loss for the video streams. Matanuska's network uses Allied Telesyn's DSLAMs.

Optibase Encoding Selected for Live TV over DSL

Venus Telephone Corporation, an independent operator serving rural Pennsylvania, selected Optibase's TV streaming platform to deliver over 130 live TV and music channels over telephone lines to its subscribers over ADSL. Located in the digital head-end, a single Optibase MGW 5100 unit can transmit up to 64 video channels received from various live or pre-encoded sources. The TV content is encoded in low bitrate MPEG-2 format. The platform is designed to support MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and Windows Media video formats. Venus Telephone is using Next Level's ADSL platform.
http://www.optibase.com

SBC Extends its Dial-Up Internet Contract with Level 3

SBC Communications has extended an existing agreement with Level 3 for dial-up Internet access service for an additional two years. The contract will now run through 2006. The agreement also includes an increased revenue commitment of approximately $11 million from SBC over the contract's duration.
http://www.Level3.com

T-Systems Partners with VocalTec for VoIP in Africa

Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems is partnering with VocalTec Communications in a series of joint sales and marketing initiatives in Africa aimed at offering competitive carriers new service opportunities. T-Systems' International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS) division aims to secure new bilateral agreements with incumbent African carriers for connection to the Jules Platform, which is T-Systems' wholesale VoIP network. The Jules Platform is based on VocalTec's technology.
http://www.t-systems.com/icsshttp://www.vocaltec.com
  • In March 2003, VocalTec Communications introduced its “Essentra�? SIP-based softswitch architecture for the international long distance (ILD) and national long distance (NLD) markets. VocalTec's Essentra platform integrates high-density media gateways, delivers SIP-based services (such as IP Centrex), and supports legacy PSTN and H.323 networks. The architecture uses a unique SIP-based service integration layer that is transparent to the call control layer and is responsible for maintaining all service and routing logic. Essentra's distributed architecture utilizes advanced fail-over and redundancy mechanisms and runs on Sun Netra servers with Solaris operating systems.


  • In January 2003, VocalTec Communications announced a new $6.2 million deal to supply additional VoIP equipment and maintenance services to T-Systems International Carrier Sales and Services (ICSS), a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG. The contract represents the second major expansion of T-Systems ICSS' Jules VoIP Platform and reflects an ongoing commitment to meet increasing market demand for wholesale international services.

PingTone Releases Real-Time IP Telephony Call Quality System

PingTone Communications introduced a proactive, IP telephony call quality monitoring system. PingTone's CADIUS system pulls information from the real-time transport protocol (RTP) information packet of the call and uses this information to score calls. If the call's score is outside PingTone predetermined acceptable limits, proactive measures can be taken to improve call quality before any loss of performance is detected by a listener.
http://www.pingtone.com

Agere Acquires Massana for Gigabit Ethernet PHYs

Agere Systems has acquired Massana, a start-up developing Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper physical layer device (PHY) technologies, for approximately 9.1 million shares of Agere Class A common stock, valued at about $26.2 million, based on the closing price on 22-August-2003. Agere said the acquisition enables it to deliver GbE PHYs to Ethernet switch providers as well as PC and server OEMs. With the acquisition, Agere plans to deliver a next-generation 0.13 micron single PHY product in early 2004 and an octal in mid-2004. Approximately 45 Massana employees will join Agere.
http://www.agere.com
  • Massana is based in Palo Alto, California, with design centers in Dublin, Ireland and in Madrid, Spain.

Motive Introduces Broadband Usage Policy Manager

Motive introduced a Usage Policy Manager designed to help DSL and cable operators model the network-subscriber-bandwidth capacity ratio of their networks, correlate bandwidth consumption with specific subscriber services, and automate service policies. Motive said it developed the software to address business issues such as subscriber churn and excessive use or misuse of bandwidth. With access to network data only, traditional management vendors lack context of the service at the subscriber and application level, making their solutions unable to automate policies beyond packet management at the aggregate level. Motive software gathers data from multiple "collectors," -- including email servers, network provisioning systems, CRM applications, operational support systems (OSS), and security systems -- identifies subscriber usage patterns, and automates policy actions to help providers take proactive steps to address subscriber or service issues.


The company said its software can identify the signature of subscribers on the verge of "churning" (canceling their service) and automatically act based on business rules set by the provider to prevent service cancellation. Motive also claims its product can detect inappropriate broadband usage -- such as subscribers who are exceeding bandwidth thresholds, running commercial Web sites from home, or sharing their connection through WiFi -- and automatically send warnings or upgrade options to them to enforce providers' policies.
http://www.motive.com

3Com Teams with Aspect for IP PBX Contact Center Solutions

3Com is teaming with Aspect Communications, a provider of enterprise customer contact solutions, to jointly develop and market IP-based telephony solutions for enterprise and contact center communications worldwide. The joint solution will combine an IP-private branch exchange (PBX) with contact center functionality, such as advanced call routing, multichannel support and centralized workflow development. More specifically, the 3Com-Aspect solution will combine the 3Com IP-PBX with Aspect's Uniphi solution suite for contact centers.
http://www.3com.com
http://www.aspect.com

Rural Carrier Selects Motorola and Quantum Bridge for FTTP

QCOL, an independent cable TV operator serving rural communities in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, selected Motorola Broadband Communications Sector and Quantum Bridge Communications to provide an FTTP network for triple play services. The companies said their FTTP solution was selected for the economics of their full ATM switching capabilities, the video return path, and the fact that they are compliant with the international APON standards. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.motorola.com
http://www.quantumbridge.com

NRTC to Offer WildBlue Satellite Broadband Services

The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) signed a distribution agreement whereby its members will be able to offer WildBlue's two-way satellite broadband service in the continental United States. NRTC membership includes over 1,100 rural telephone and electric companies.
http://www.wildblue.com
http://www.nrtc.org

Alereon to Develop UWB Chipsets

Alereon, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, unveiled plans to develop Ultra wideband (UWB) semiconductors for personal area networks. Alereon's first product, in development for commercial availability in late 2004, will be compatible with the emerging IEEE 802.15.3a standard for PAN communications. Eric Broockman, formerly with Austin-based semiconductor company Legerity, joins the company as CEO. Jim Baker and Jeff Ross, both former executives at UWB developer Time Domain Corporation, will serve as chief operating officer and executive vice president, respectively. Alereon currently has 27 employees. The company is being funded by Austin Ventures, Pharos Capital and other investors.
http://www.alereon.com

Westell Selects TI's ADSL Router-on-a-Chip

Westell Technologies is using Texas Instruments' (TI's) DSL router-on-a-chip to support the recently announced expansion of its family of WireSpeed modems. These two new distinct Westell WireSpeed modem product lines are based on the new ITU standards for ADSL2, ADSL2+ and Reach Extended ADSL2 (READSL).
http://www.ti.com

FTTH Council Applauds FCC's UNE Triennial Review Order

The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council praised the FCC's UNE Triennial Review Order as the "most significant and important regulatory document in the country's telecommunications history," according to Mike DiMauro, the FTTH Council's president. He predicts that "without a doubt, 2004 will be the year for FTTH."http://www.ftthcouncil.org
  • The Fiber-to-the-Home Council will host its FTTH Conference in New Orleans from 07-October-2003 through 09-October-2003.

Comcast Names Steve Silva to Head New Broadband Initiatives

Comcast Cable named Steve Silva to the newly created position of Executive Vice President, New Business Development, where he will be responsible for new initiatives that leverage Comcast's broadband infrastructure. In this role, he will work closely with the company's engineering, marketing and operating teams across all product lines, including video, data and telephone. Silva most recently served as Chief Technology Officer for Charter Communicationshttp://www.comcast.com

PMC-Sierra Extends SERDES for Gigabit Ethernet Backplane

PMC-Sierra introduced 6-channel HexPHY 1GR and 4-channel QuadPHY 1GR serializer/deserializer (SERDES) devices for high-speed serial backplanes and Gigabit Ethernet (GE) transceivers. The HexPHY 1GR and QuadPHY 1GR features support for the RGMII v2.0 industry standard parallel interface to enable low power, low cost and compact Ethernet-based system designs. RGMII (Reduced Gigabit Media Independent Interface) v2.0 simplifies board design by reducing the number of routing layers required which also lowers board manufacturing costs. PMC-Sierra said the new devices are ideal for a broad range of multi-gigabit serial connections including enterprise Ethernet switches, blade servers, access and metro transport network equipmenthttp://www.pmc-sierra.com/serdes

Mike McGrail Named President and CEO of ICTV

ICTV, a start-up offering a centralized platform for the delivery of interactive television services, announced the appointment of Mike McGrail as president and CEO. He replaces Wes Hoffman who is becoming COO of OpenTV, a strategic investor in ICTV. McGrail previously served as president of CableData, a global supplier of subscriber management and transaction-based billing software for the broadband cable industry.


ICTV's HeadendWare application servers enables interactive, revenue-generating programming to be accessed by any digital set-top. Investors include Adelphia, Liberty Media, Motorola, Shaw Communications, TV Guide, and Lauder Partners.
http://www.ictv.com