PMC-Sierra Evolves MIPS-based Microprocessor Architectures

PMC-Sierra introduced new Clock Management products designed to handle the higher frequencies in newer MIPS-based open architecture systems, such as printers, set-top boxes, advanced consumer applications and routers. PMC-Sierra's CLK family includes two categories - Flexible Clock Generators and Low-Skew Buffers. Flexible Clock Generators include spread spectrum technology and provide clocking for a broad set of applications by allowing selection of multiple clock frequencies. Low-Skew Buffers provide buffering of outputs for applications that...

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Huawei-3Com Joint Venture Begins Operations

3Com and Huawei Technologies secured the final approvals from the Chinese government to begin operations at their joint venture company. The new Huawei-3Com Co. Ltd. will sell enterprise networking solutions including routers and LAN switches. 3Com has the rights to market and support the Huawei-3Com products under the 3Com brand in all countries except China and Japan. In China and Japan, Huawei-3Com will sell products sourced internally as well as from 3Com. The new company is composed of enterprise networking business assets, including LAN...

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Broadcom's InConcert Technology Balances Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Contention

Broadcom introduced a new technology designed to allow wireless devices to collaboratively co-exist within the same radio frequency. The "InConcert" technology enables products with Broadcom Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips to intelligently share the 2.4 GHz frequency range, synchronizing transmissions to maximize throughput and performance for both standards. The software required to enable InConcert Technology resides within Broadcom's BlutoniumBluetooth system firmware and OneDriver unified wireless LAN driver. Broadcom will begin shipping InConcert...

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8x8 Offers Unlimited Calling to Europe and Asia for $30/Month

8x8 began offering its VoIP subscribers unlimited international calls to major countries in Europe or Asia for $29.99 per month. The company's Packet8 Freedom Unlimited Plan provides subscribers with unlimited calling within U.S. and Canada for $19.95 per month. 8x8 recently announced the addition of advanced calling features, including call waiting, call waiting caller ID, hold, call alternate and 3-way conferencing to the Packet8 Freedom Unlimited plan. http://www.packet8....

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FutureSoft Names New President and COO

FutureSoft, a developer of embedded software, announced that Sarbpreet Singh has been appointed President & COO. Singh previously served as the company's chief sales and marketing officer. K.V. Ramani remains as FutureSoft's founder and chairman, focusing on growth strategy, partnerships, and external investors. http://www.futsoft....

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XO Raises $161 Million in Initial Stage of Rights Offering

XO Communications received approximately $161 million for approximately 32.2 million shares of its new common stock in the initial stage of a rights offering at $5.00 per share. XO will offer the balance of approximately 7.8 million shares remaining from the 40 million shares offered pursuant to the rights offering at the same price through transferable rights in the second stage of the offering in early December. http://www.xo....

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Motorola Unveils FTTP Chip Solution

Motorola introduced an industry-standard BPON chipset solution aimed at optical network termination (ONT) equipment for FTTP rollouts. BPON technology (ITU-T G.983 ) supports 622 Mbps downstream and 155 Mbps upstream rates. The new BPON device works in tandem with Motorola's PowerQUICC I and PowerQUICC II communications processors for ONT systems. http://www.motorola.com/semiconductors/...

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Xilinx Announces First FPGA with 10 Gbps Transceivers

Xilinx released its first Virtex-II Pro FPGAs with integrated multi-gigabit transceivers (MGTs), each supporting up to 10.3125 Gbps. The company described the transceivers as the first programmable ICs that can directly drive optical transceiver OC-48 SONET compliant systems and simplify SONET implementation for OC-192 data rates and above. Xilinx said its new Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs would also enable new applications, which require multiple high-speed serial channels each running in speeds up 10 Gbps, including bandwidth nodes such as 4.25 Gbps,...

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Sylantro Systems Raises Additional $4.5 Million

Sylantro Systems raised an additional $4.5 million in Series D funding from Argo Global Capital, bringing the total amount raised in this round to $19 million. Argo's limited partner investors include a number of carrier companies such as Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, and Singapore Telecom. Sylantro's Series D funding round is being led by BCE Capital, the venture capital subsidiary of Bell Canada Enterprises. http://www.sylantro....

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Force10 Introduces Small Form Factor Gig and 10 GigE Switch/Router

Force10 Networks introduced a new switch/router supporting small form factor Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The E300 is a six slot chassis supporting as many as 72 Gigabit Ethernet ports or six 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for use in high density computing clusters. http://www.force10networks....

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Russia's Golden Telecom Deploys Nortel's Optical Ethernet

Golden Telecom is deploying Nortel Networks' Optical Ethernet equipment to support major business centers and customers around Moscow. Specifically, Golden Telecom is using Nortel Networks' OPTera Metro 1200 Ethernet Service Modules to expand its existing network of Passport 8600 Multiservice Switches. The deployment supports Ethernet VPNs for LAN-to-LAN interconnection, Internet access and TV multicasting. Golden Telecom has also deployed Nortel Networks' Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN) to deliver customized IP services. Financial terms...

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Ixia Ships its Advanced Network Test Platform

Ixia announced commercial shipments of its Optixia advanced network test platform to Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks and Force10 Networks. The high-density test platform integrates up to 240 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet ports. It provides verification of complex networking protocols, such as IPv4 and IPv6 versions of multicast and routing protocols (BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, RIP), as well as LDP, Layer 2 VPNs, Layer 3 VPNs, VPLS, and MPLS RSVP-TE. http://www.ixiacom....

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AT&T to Begin Testing Siemens Optical Transport

AT&T Labs will begin testing Siemens' next-generation optical transport solution for use on high-capacity routes in its network. The test marks the first Siemens deployment in the AT&T transport network. AT&T has expressed its intent to evolve to one global network using MPLS on an optical backbone.The Siemens SURPASS hiT 7500 offers full-channel optical add/drop multiplexer capabilities, enabling remote configuration of a path without the need to touch the network while staying all-optical through multiple add/drop nodes. The Siemens...

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NETGEAR Offers Layer 3 Managed Switch with POE

NETGEAR introduced a Layer 3 Managed Switch featuring 24 10/100 Mbps ports, two copper gigabit ports and Power-Over-Ethernet functionality for a list price of $1,750. The Layer 3 dynamic routing capabilities could be used by small and medium businesses to off-load expensive routers and increase performance across network subnets. The switch delivers IPv4 routing at wire speed with up to 512 routes per unit, VRRP (IP redundancy), ICMP, RIP I and RIP II, OSPF2, DHCP/BOOTP relay, port trunking, broadcast storm protection, extensive VLAN support,...

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Nortel Networks' Frank Dunn Sees Evolution to Converged Networks

"Telecom is once again a great industry," said Frank Dunn, CEO of Nortel Networks, "because it is clear that there is significant continued subscriber growth globally and that this growth can be tied into GDP growth worldwide." Still, Dunn recognized that carriers are financially stressed for a variety of reasons, not least of which because voice services have become a commodity. Dunn believes the price leaders will continue to be the wireless carriers, carrying larger amounts of traffic and driving down the cost per minute. Margins are being...

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Veraz and Broadsoft Partner on Hosted IP Services

Veraz Networks and Broadsoft completed interoperability testing to provide an end-to-end hosted PBX and IP Centrex solution. For the interoperability testing, Veraz provided its carrier-class ControlSwitch, which is its open softswitch platform, along with its I-Gate 4000 line of high-density media gateways. BroadSoft provided its BroadWorks hosted communications platform. The interoperability was completed using the SIP interface between these products. http://www.veraznetworks.com http://www.broadsoft....

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Wave7 Announces FTTU Deployment in California

Wave7 Optics will supply its Last Mile Link optical access system to the Truckee Donner Public Utility District (TDPUD), a municipal utility company in California that plans to deploy a Fiber-to-the-User network beginning in Q1 2004. This new FTTU network will deliver IPTV service, including video-on-demand, interactive games and pay-per-view services. Wave7 is working with Eagle Broadband, which was selected by the TDPUD as their IP video content and services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.wave7optics....

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Verizon Plans Consumer VoIP Service in Q2 2004

Verizon Communications plans to begin rolling out VoIP services in Q2 2004, targeting DSL users and the consumer market, said Lawrence T. Babbio Jr., Verizon's Vice Chairman and Domestic Telecom President, speaking at the UBS global communications conference in New York. "VoIP for the mass market is coming," said Babbio, "and just like with LNP (local number portability) there is nothing anybody can do to stop it." Babbio said Verizon would be very aggressive in meeting or beating the pricing of any consumer VoIP service. The company is currently...

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Verizon Selects FTTP Vendors

Verizon has selected Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC) to provide the central office and premises optical electronics for its fiber-to-the-home project. Verizon has selected Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, Pirelli Communications Cables and Systems North America, and Fiber Optic Network Solutions (FONS) to provide the fiber-optic cabling and other outside plant equipment for the project. Verizon said it is continuing contract negotiations with several other passive element vendors. Babbio said the RFP process resulted in prices lower than its expectations.In...

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AFC Comments on Verizon's FTTP Agreement

Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC) confirmed that it has signed a Letter of Agreement with Verizon which outlines key terms of a pending contract for Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) equipment. The project will use AFC's AccessMAX platform, which can be converted into an optical line terminal with the addition of a passive optical networking (PON) plug-in card.Verizon and AFC have also entered into a separate lab trial agreement. AFC and Verizon intend to begin lab trials immediately followed by field trials of AFC's FiberDirect solution. Financial...

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Avaya Eyes PBX Replacement Market

Aging PBXs are currently supporting some 400 million installed telephone lines for businesses worldwide, said Garry K. McGuire, Avaya's CFO & SVP Corporate Development, speaking at the UBS global communications conference in New York. In contrast, there have been about 7 million installed IP lines so far, leaving a sizable upgrade market to capture. Avaya estimates the average age of a corporate PBX is currently about 9 years, whereas the expected lifespan of such equipment is 7 to 10 years. McGuire said the U.S. market has been an early...

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French City Deploys Optical Ethernet for Triple Play Services

The City of Pau, France plans to build an open-access, municipal Optical Ethernet network that will allow end users to subscribe to voice, data, and video services. The network will deliver Pau's residents 100Mbps speed access to advanced triple-play services including lnternet access, Voice over IP, 100+ TV channels, and VOD. The city will own the network and rent access to other service providers. The project, which is described as one of the largest residential Ethernet deployments in the world, will initially serve 21,000 homes, with plans...

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Netli Launches SSL Acceleration Service, Announces New Contracts

Netli, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, launched a new service that provides accelerated transport and application level optimization for SSL applications while maintaining end-to-end security. NetLightning SSL increases speed and availability of applications by applying a variety of transport and application level optimization techniques while requiring no changes to server, client or application. Acting as an HTTPS proxy, NetLightning SSL securely delivers applications end-to-end while ensuring that no traffic in the clear is transmitted...

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