Billing Concepts Offers Independent Clearinghouse Model for Wi-Fi

Billing Concepts, a leading provider of payphone clearinghouse services, introduced a new, independent public wireless LAN clearing and settlement service. The "eZ-Wi" clearinghouse and settlement service will connect the customers of ISPs with Wi-Fi venue operators, mediating compensation agreements between the parties. The service would enable ISPs to bill the customer directly for time spent on other Wi-Fi networks.


Billing Concepts said its model would benefit the entire value chain in the public Wi-Fi market: consumers would gain the ability to roam onto various Wi-Fi services using a single ISP account; ISPs would benefit from a wholesale access model at no net cost to them; and hotspot owners would gain by having a broader customer base. The "eZ-Wi" model differs from that of other Wi-Fi aggregators in that there are no branding requirements to participate, the pricing is not dictated by the aggregator, and the ISP retains control of the customer. Billing Concepts described the model as a natural extension of its telecom clearinghouse model. The service is currently in beta testing.


Grande Communications plans to use the eZ-Wi public wireless LAN clearing and settlement service, potentially benefiting on both ends of a Wi-Fi service. As an ISP, Grande Communications plans to offer its retail subscribers the ability to roam at hotspot locations. In addition, Grande Communications will be an aggregator for venue owners, enabling them to provide wireless Internet access.
http://www.billingconcepts.com

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RF Magic Raises $24 million for Consumer Electronics ICs

RF Magic, a start-up based in San Diego, raised $24 million in series-C funding for its development of highly integrated radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) for consumer broadband and digital entertainment markets. Its products include multi-tuner and transceiver RFICs that enable next generation consumer electronics. New funding was received from strategic investors Conexant Systems, Inc., EchoStar Communications Corporation, and STMicroelectronics, and financial investors HamiltonApex Technology Ventures, Finaventures, and Waypoint Ventures. The new series-C participants join existing investors Texas Instruments, CMEA Ventures, Granite Ventures, Anthem Venture Partners, and Revolution Ventures, all of whom also participated in this round.
http://www.rfmagic.com

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Mobileway Secures $17 Million for Mobile Messaging

Mobileway, a provider of marketing services for mobile phones, secured $17 million in its third round of funding. Through its application platforms, Mobileway offers companies ways to build marketing campaigns for mobile handsets. Its customer portfolio now includes more than 400 local and global brands. The new investment was led by Mayfield and included new, strategic investments from CDP Capital Technology Ventures, Intel Capital and others.
http://www.mobileway.com

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Redback Networks Receives Financing Commitment

Redback Networks entered into a commitment letter with Ableco Finance LLC for a Senior Secured Credit Facility for borrowings up to $30 million. Redback also received an extension allowing its shares to remain listed on the NASDAQ National Market until at least November 4, 2003, in order to allow Redback to obtain stockholder approval of a proposed reverse stock split.
http://www.redback.com

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Corning Reports Rise in Telecom Sales

Corning reported Q3 telecommunications segment sales of $370 million, an increase of $23 million over second-quarter sales of $347 million. The gain was due to a sequential increase in fiber volume of almost 20%, driven primarily by seasonal strength in North America and Europe, along with continued demand in Japan and China. Fiber pricing for the quarter was down less than 5%. The company said it also benefited from several submarine cable project sales in the third quarter.
http://www.corning.com

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Comcast Launches Teleworker Broadband Service

Comcast announced a new broadband service specifically for organizations with large numbers of employees who work remotely. Comcast Teleworker offers a standard set of features for accessing a corporate VPN. Comcast is also promising business-class customer support including dedicated support representatives specially trained to support business services. Comcast also offers Comcast Pro, an Internet service geared toward individual teleworkers and power users who want even higher connection speeds and additional IP addresses.
http://www.comcast.com

• Earlier this month, Comcast, the largest MSO in the U.S., doubled the downstream speed of its residential cable modem service to 3 Mbps from 1.5 Mbps. The upgrade is provided at no additional cost to the end user. Upstream speeds will remain the same at 256 Kbps. The upgrade has occurred in 14 U.S. markets and will be expanded to all Comcast markets based on technical readiness. Comcast currently provides high-speed Internet service to nearly 4.4 million customers.

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OIF Agreement Focuses on Optical Protocol Security

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) approved a new implementation agreement defining security methods for management interfaces to Network Elements (NEs). The Implementation Agreement (IA) presents a model for securing Operations, Administration, Maintenance, & Provisioning (OAM&P) protocols at different layers, describes systems that are well-suited to secure these interfaces at various protocol layers and provides specifications for using these security systems appropriately.


Joe Berthold, president of the OIF, said this "IA extends the OIF's previous security work on signaling and goes a long way towards ensuring that 'back doors' to network elements are inaccessible to hackers."http://www.oiforum.com/public/impagreements.html#UNI

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Verizon to Offer McAfee Security for Broadband Users

Verizon will begin offering Network Associates' McAfee Online Security Services, including desktop anti-virus and desktop firewall, to its broadband users.
http://www.verizon.com
http://www.networkassociates.com/

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Network Physics Closes $8 Million for Performance Management Tools

Network Physics, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, closed $8 million in new funding for its work in network, server and application performance management. Network Physics applies physics methodologies to internal and external networks used by, but not completely controlled by or visible to networking staff. The company's products provide a network view based on business-level groupings of actual traffic flows. The new funding was led by Palomar Ventures and included Sofinnova Ventures, SunAmerica Ventures, the Intel Communications Fund, Lucent Venture Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners and InfoVista. Total funding in the company now stands at $40 million.
http://www.networkphysics.com

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UTStarcom Announces $32 Million Contract with China Netcom

UTStarcom announced a $32 million contract with China Netcom to expand deployments of its IP-based PAS (Personal Access System) equipment in several cities in the HeiLongJiang Province. This second expansion is launched just four months after a first expansion and just ten months after the original deployment in the Province. Subscribers in the Province have already exceeded 1 million.
http://www.utstar.com

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Net2Phone and Puerto Rico's Liberty Cablevision to Rollout VoIP

Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico will begin offering a commercial residential telephony service to its HFC cable customers using Net2Phone's end-to-end IP telephony service. Liberty Cablevision will offer its subscribers two billing plan options under its "Liberty Voice Links" telephony service: a variable, per minute 'Every Day' plan and a flat monthly rate 'Celebrity' plan. The commercial launch of these telephony services follows the completion of a 12-month market trial in several of Liberty Cablevision's service areas. Liberty Cablevision expects to begin marketing this service on a broader basis early next year.


Liberty Cablevision maintains ownership of the customer, service brand, and Tier I customer and technical support, while Net2Phone supports the back office platform, switching and transport, ongoing operations and Tier II+ technical supporthttp://www.net2phone.com

• In August 2003, Net2Phone and Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico (LCV) said beta customers of its VoIP service were generating about 1,100 minutes of use per month, on average. As of August, the companies have carried one million minutes of cumulative talk time to date. Features include call waiting, caller ID, directory assistance, e911, unlimited local calling and either per-minute or flat-rate long distance.

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Terayon Reports Spike in Quarterly Revenues

Terayon Communication Systems reported Q3 revenue of $37.6 million, an increase of 54% compared to $24.5 million for Q3 2002, and an increase of 23% from $30.6 million for Q2 2003.


Zaki Rakib, Terayon's Chief Executive Officer, said "cable operators continue to validate the economic and performance advantages of our DOCSIS 2.0 and digital video solutions in the face of increasing competition from telecom and satellite offerings."http://www.terayon.com

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Foundry Networks Sees Rise in Quarterly Revenue

Foundry Networks reported quarterly revenue of $101.7 million, compared to $95.7 million in the previous quarter, and $76.6 million in the same period last year. Foundry earned net income of $20.8 million, or $0.15 per diluted share in the third quarter, compared to net income of $16.8 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, in the prior quarter, and net income of $7.0 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, for the same period in 2002. Gross margins were at a record 67%.


Bobby Johnson, President and CEO of Foundry Networks, said "revenue strength was balanced across diverse verticals and geographies during the period." About 30% of the company's revenue comes from the federal government.
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

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Lucent Reports First Profitable Quarter since March 2000

Lucent Technologies reported its first profitable quarter since March 2000, posting revenues of $2.03 billion and net income of $99 million or 2 cents per share. Revenues increased 3% from the prior quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 43% of revenues as compared with 29% in the prior quarter. Lucent said it expects to sustain a margin rate of about 35% in 2004.


Lucent Chairman and CEO Patricia Russo said the company has essentially completed its restructuring initiatives, reduced its total expenses by about $5.6 billion year over year, and implemented plans to broaden its revenue base. She also stated "We are seeing signs of stability in the overall telecom market, with pockets of opportunity in areas like services, metro optical, voice over IP, broadband access and high-speed wireless data."http://www.lucent.com

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BellSouth Reports Stronger Revenue Growth and Profitability

Strong gains in long distance, DSL and service bundling led BellSouth to report consolidated Q3 revenue of $5.7 billion, up 5.4% from the same period last year. Earnings per share rose to $0.51, up 46% from the same period last year. Net income was $936 million compared to $640 million in the same quarter a year ago. The company also cited continued progress in service bundling, helping to blunt the effect of UNE-p line losses. Some operational highlights for Q3:

• added 654,000 net long distance customers, giving it a total of 3.4 million long distance customers, including approximately 24% of its residence and 34% of its mass-market small business accounts.



• data revenues of $1.1 billion, up 5.5% compared to the same quarter of 2002, driven by DSL



• added 111,000 net DSL customers, giving the company a total of 1.3 million



• total access lines declined to 23.9 million at the end of the quarter, down 4.0% compared to a year earlier, impacted by the economy, competition and technology substitution. Overall, BellSouth lost 393,000 access lines in the quarter.



• UNE-P lines increased by 188,000, the smallest increase since Q4 2001. The UNE-P line loss in Q2 was 249,000.



• the ratio of CAPEX to normalized revenue was 13.4%. Year-to-date this ratio is 12.7%.



• ended the quarter with $15 billion in overall debt and $10 billion in net debt.

Regarding the decision from the Georgia Public Service Commission, BellSouth executives said on a conference call that the issue may have to be addressed at the federal regulatory level. They did note that the Georgia ruling acknowledges that a standalone DSL service should be priced higher than a UNE-p line, so they do not expect an "economic penalty."http://www.bellsouth.com

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BellSouth is Required to Provide Standalone DSL in Georgia

In a 3-to-2 vote, the Georgia Public Service Commission ruled that BellSouth must offer DSL as a standalone service, even to consumers who do not subscribe to BellSouth's voice services. The order is expected to be appealed to the federal courts.
http://www.psc.state.ga.us

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Marconi Provides Virtual Presence for Transatlantic Conference

Marconi will provide its "ViPr" Virtual Presence System for use at next week's British American Business Council's Transatlantic Business Conference -- marking the first time Marconi's personal communications platform will be used in a public commercial setting. Technology partners for the event include AT&T, Penn Telecom and Actelis Networks. Marconi's ViPr connects up to 15 users at a time into a single virtual meeting room using high-quality video. The system is currently in use by high-level government and military decision makers.
http://www.marconi.com

• In June 2003, Marconi announced product enhancements to its ViPr Virtual Presence System for high-resolution, real-time, multimedia communications between geographically dispersed locations. The ViPr System merges video-conferencing and IP-based voice services to deliver DVD-quality video and CD-sharp sound on a platform optimized for point-to- multi-point desktop communications. The ViPr Series II integrates a touch screen, camera, speakers, and other components into a compact, desktop platform. In addition, the enhancements include several SIP-based gateways to simplify ViPr's integration with legacy telephone networks and WANs. Marconi also announced that it would extend its ViPr market reach from the U.S. federal government to European national governments and to state and local government markets in the U.S. for use in real-time multimedia intelligence briefings, command and control communications and telejustice applications.

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BT Announces FREEVIEW Digital TV Service

BT began offering its customers a "Freeview," over-the-air digital TV service featuring 30 digital TV and radio channels delivered via a set-top box. The service features a "pay as you go" web surfing and emailing option that can be accessed via the TV monitor. There is a one-time fee of £129 for the interactive set-top box. A basic version of the digital TV box has a one-time price of £89. There are no other service charges. BT has chosen Netgem to supply the interactive adapter and Dijam (SetPal) to supply the standard version of the Freeview offerings.


Fergus Crockett, managing director of BT's Consumer division, said the service was developed to "take on the cable operators directly."http://www.bt.com/btdigitaltv/

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BT to Offer Faster Wholesale ADSL Speeds

BT will begin offering a 1 Mbps ADSL broadband service to its wholesale customers beginning next month. BT currently offer a 512 kbps wholesale service. The new, self-install, residential service - BT IPStream Home 1000 - will have a wholesale connection charge of £50 and a monthly wholesale rental fee of £23. BT said it has already received more than 4,000 orders in less than three weeks from more than 50 ISPs.
http://www.bt.com

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