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...

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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....

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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....

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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....

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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....

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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.comEarlier...

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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...

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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.c...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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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....

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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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.comIn...

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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...

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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....

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