Cable & Wireless to Stream Online Video Ads for MSN

Cable & Wireless America will deliver the online streaming video advertising for MSN Video, MSN's new high-quality broadband video player that will be broadly available this winter across the MSN network. Cable & Wireless is providing an end-to-end streaming media solution encompassing content encoding, content and campaign management and streaming media delivery services. Encoding services will be provided for advertisers, enabling advertisers to put advertisements in Windows Media 9 Format. All video advertisements will be streamed over the global content delivery network of Cable & Wireless America, which consists of numerous streaming servers at the edge of the Internet.
http://www.cwusa.com

• In October, Microsoft announced that its MSN Network will offer a wide variety of high-resolution, on-demand broadband video content for free. Special programming from NBC News and MSNBC.com is available now in a Beta version of MSN Video. Additional content from multiple providers and custom programming choices will be added to the service for the full consumer launch this winter in the United States only. The free service will be supported by advertising. MSN Video will include 15-second video ads for every five to six minutes of content as well as contextual stationary ads displayed within the video player between motion ads. Microsoft said that “consumers are increasingly turning off their televisions to go online,�? making its MSN Video offering an ideal way for advertisers to reach the Internet demographic.
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  MSN Video is based on Windows Media 9 Series technology, and offers up to 300 Kbps playback speeds. MSN developed the new service with the brand communications firm Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), which helped create the media-buying components of MSN Video.
  

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Alloptic Signs Asia-Pac Distribution Deal with Ericsson

Ericsson agreed to market and resell Alloptic's optical access platform to telecommunications carriers throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Alloptic's EPON products provide a point-to-multipoint, passive fiber optic solution. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.alloptic.com

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Marvell Introduces 10 GigE Switch Processor

Marvell introduced a 10 GigE silicon solution for enterprise aggregation switches. The new Prestera-98EX135 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) packet processor integrates a 10 GbE MAC/PHY and a 10 Gbps uplink bus. The multi-layer switching features include line rate Layer-2 bridging, Layer-3 routing, Layer 1-4 filtering and QoS. On the line side, the device integrates 10GbE Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI) SerDes for interfacing with XENPAK, XFP and CX-4 modules.
http://www.marvell.com

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Nortel Introduces Usage-Based Internet Access Solution

Nortel Networks introduced a Usage-Based Internet Access application that enables its Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN) to be used to offer pre-paid Internet access. Service providers could use the solution to offer residential and business customers a choice between unlimited access at a fixed price and flexibly priced access based on time and bandwidth used. Customers would also be able to choose their own access bandwidth, view daily updates of service use and control Internet access in real time. Once pre-paid service is used, customers can automatically be directed to the service portal to select a new service package. Through IP traffic shaping and policing, service providers can guarantee the subscriber's selected Internet access bandwidth on a per-session basis.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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Chile's VTR Leverages Nortel's Shasta for Broadband Flex

VTR, a broadband service provider in Chile, is using Nortel Networks' Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN) platform for a new Broadband Flex service that allows customers to decide their connection speed (64, 300 or 600 kbps) every time they log on, and enable them to pay for only the time that they are connected. VTR is believed to be the first carrier offering such a broadband access speed choice. The Shasta cable solution VTR also supports additional, on-demand services like firewalls, VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), and content management.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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Movielink Announces Partnership for SBC Yahoo! DSL Customers

Movielink, a broadband movie download service, signed an agreement with SBC Internet Services to offer a customized version of Movielink's movie rental website as part of a promotional trial of services to SBC Yahoo! DSL members. During the promotional trial, SBC Yahoo! DSL members can go to sbc.movielink.com to browse, rent, and download their favorite movies from the special, co-branded site. Movies on the service currently range between $1.99 and $4.99 for a 24-hour viewing period and can be stored on a member's hard drive for up to 30 days.
http://www.movielink.com

• In August, Movielink announced a similar partnership with BellSouth.
  

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Andrew Acquires Channel Master for Satellite Antennas

Andrew Corporation has acquired selected assets of Channel Master, privately held designer and manufacturer of high volume antenna and antenna related products for professional VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal), consumer DBS and television accessory markets, for $18 million in cash.
http://www.andrew.com

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WildBlue Announces Appointment of New President

WildBlue Communications announced the appointment of Ken Carroll to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. He previously served as president and CFO at Liberty Satellite & Technology and before that as CFO of PRIMESTAR, a satellite TV service purchased by DirecTV in 2000.


Separately, WildBlue named Jim Elliot as Vice President of Infrastructure, responsible for meeting WildBlue's system procurement and implementation goals through contractual and technical management of the space segment, ground segment gateways and customer premise equipment. Elliot comes to WildBlue from Ball Aerospace's Commercial Space Operations business unit.


WildBlue named Thad Mazurczyk as Vice President of Engineering. Mazurczyk was previously Senior Vice President of Technology for High Speed Access Corp. and before that spent more than nine years as the Vice President of Engineering at PRIMESTAR.


WildBlue also hired Randy Thompson as Vice President of Space Systems, responsible for WildBlue's satellites, satellite launch services and satellite management systems. Thompson comes to WildBlue from Liberty Satellite, where he held the position of Vice President of Advanced Technology.
http://www.wildblue.com

• WildBlue is preparing to launch its two-way satellite broadband service in the continental United States in 2004.
  

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BellSouth Increases Dividend For Third Time In 2003

BellSouth approved a dividend of $0.25 per common share, an 8.7% percent increase from the previous level of 23 cents per common share. Over the last seven quarters, BellSouth has increased its quarterly dividend 31.6% from $0.19 per common share to $0.25 per common share.
http://www.bellsouth.com

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SIP Forum Names Pingtel Exec as Chairman

Jay Batson, chairman and founder of Pingtel, has been elected chairman of the board of directors of the SIP Forum. During 2004, the SIP Forum plans to conduct major interoperability activities, such as the SIPit events and its own SIP phone testing service. The SIP Forum also announced that Eric Burger, chief technology officer, SnowShore Networks Inc., has joined the organization's board of directors.
http://www.sipforum.org/

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Vonage Raises $35 Million for its Broadband Phone Service

Vonage closed $35.0 million in new financing round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which invested $12 million. The money will be used to further the build out of the service, enhance marketing programs and develop new offerings. Vonage senior management participated in the round; capital raised to date by the company now totals $65.3 million.


Vonage currently serves more than 70,000 broadband phone lines and continues to add more than 10,000 lines per month to its network. Traffic volume is over 3 million calls per week.
http://www.vonage.com
http://www.nea.com

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voiceglo Expands its VoIP Calling Across the U.S.

voiceglo, a provider of consumer and business VoIP services based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, announced the expansion of its free and low cost service into 42 additional area code markets. During the first two weeks of December, voiceglo will launch VoIP services in 29 additional area code markets. voiceglo provides free SIP-to-SIP calling to other voiceglo members and charges for calls off the network. voiceglo's full featured plans, which include voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding and caller ID, are available at rates below typical residential and business services.
By the end of Q1 2004, voiceglo said it plans to offer customers a choice of phone numbers in 120 of the nation's 177 area codes.
http://www.voiceglo.com

• voiceglo was founded by Michael Egan and Edward Cespedes. Egan is the Founder and former CEO of Alamo Rent A Car, which he directed to become one of the nation's largest car rental firms before selling it to Republic Industries. Cespedes is a former investment banker with JP Morgan and also serves as President of theglobe.com and voiceglo.
  

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RADVISION Expands Line of Videoconferencing Appliances

RADVISION announced new versions of its INVISION videoconferencing network appliance aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. The INVISION models support the full range of compression and communications protocols used in videoconferencing for both IP and ISDN end points. Supported standards include the new H.264 compression standard, H.239 for dual video, and G.722, G.722.1 for full audio transcoding. Additionally the INVISION devices support most communication protocols used today, including ISDN (H.320), traditional IP (H.323), and SIP (optional). Pricing starts at $44,500 (list) for a full network solution that supports ten concurrent users at 768 Kbps each, unified ISDN/IP conferencing, and a full suite of call and network management tools.
http://www.radvision.com

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DSL Forum Issues Interoperability Plan for SHDSL

The DSL Forum issued a new technical report (TR-060) that specifies the equipment interoperability testing plan for SHDSL, which supports speeds up to 2.3 Mbps and reach of up to 18,000 ft. SHDSL, which is being positioned as an access technology for small and medium-sized businesses and for remote offices of larger organizations, was ratified by the ITU in February 2001.


TR-060 builds on TR-048, the DSL Forum's testing plan for ADSL equipment interoperability that has become the international industry measure used by independent testing laboratories (ITLs) authorized by the DSL Forum.


Three further DSL Forum TRs published this month update existing core work on interfaces and system configurations for ADSL customer premises (TR-061), auto-configuration (TR-062) and VDSL network element management (TR-063).


All of the reports are available from the DSL Forum.http://dslforum.org/aboutdsl/tr_table.html

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Ixia Announces 8-Port GigE Module for Layer 4-7 Analysis

Ixia introduced an 8-port 10/100/1000 Ethernet load module for generating large amounts of Layer 4-7 traffic for network analysis. The blade features a dedicated high-speed processor on each port running the Linux operating system. The blade operates within the IXIA 1600T, IXIA 400T, IXIA 250 and IXIA 100 chassis and supports Ixia's full-line of layer 4-7 applications such as: IxChariot for application traffic simulation; IxWeb, for HTTP, SSL, and FTP testing; Radview's WebLOAD for web site stress testing; as well as Ixia's IPSEC security application, IxVPN.
http://www.ixiacom.com/

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