Alcatel Returns to Profitability, Upgrades Outlook

Alcatel reported a net profit in Q1 of EUR 80 million, with all business segments positive -- it's first quarterly profit in three years. The company also upgraded its financial outlook for the rest of 2004, noting that the prolonged decline in sales is now ending and that operating margins are improving due to the restructuring steps it has taken. Alcatel's overall sales for Q1 2004 were EUR 2.740 billion, compared with EUR 2.828 billion in Q1 2003, down 3% at actual exchange rate and up 2% at a constant rate. Income from operations amounted...

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Primal Offers Flow-based Management for VoIP

Primal Solutions announced a new release of its usage management solution for MSOs. The Connect IXC platform supports flow-based usage accounting for high speed data services and usage based billing for VOIP services on the same platform. Primal said its system enables MSOs to apply charges to specific service flows that were previously difficult to track, such as peer-to-peer traffic, through their network. MSOs can utilize flow-based accounting and rating for cable modem using a standards-based interface. The streaming delivery of usage data...

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nCUBE and Digeo Collaborate for On-Demand Solution for Moxi

nCUBE and Digeo announced an agreement to integrate nCUBE's nABLE interactive management software and video server with Digeo's Moxi software platform for deployment on Motorola's Broadband Media Center (BMC) 9000 Series media centers. The Moxi interface delivers consistent navigation features that provide viewers with access to thousands of VOD titles in the same way as they access the rest of their digital cable services. Throughout the Moxi Menu, VOD titles have prominent multiple placements alongside live broadcast and show listings making...

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Carlos Slim Steps Down at Telmex, Son Takes Over

Carlos Slim Helú resigned as chairman of Teléfonos de Mexico (Telmex). He will be succeeded by his son, Carlos Slim Domit, who has been serving as co-chairman of the company. Telmex is Mexico's incumbent carrier and has 15.1 million telephone lines in service and 74,000 km of fiber. The company was privatized in December 1990. http://www.telmex.comIn March, Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) agreed to acquire MCI's 19% equity stake in Embratel for $360 million in cash. MCI's share in Embratel is a 19.26% economic interest and a 51.79% voting interest....

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Cox Launches VOD Services with Concurrent's 4G MediaHawk

Cox Communications has launched VOD in two of its metro markets (New Orleans and Omaha) using Concurrent's 4th Generation (4G) MediaHawk On-Demand Platform. This represents the most recent launch of Cox Entertainment on Demand service for Cox Motorola-based cable systems. Concurrent's platform supports Movies-On-Demand (MOD), Subscription VOD (SVOD), Free-On-Demand (FOD), Long-Format Advertising (LFA), network-basked Digital Video Recording (NDVR) and high-definition VOD (HDVOD), as well other new applications and services. http://www.ccur....

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PointOne Debuts Wholesale Residential and SOHO VoIP

PointOne is launching new VoIP services for the residential and SOHO (small office/home office markets) markets. PointOne will make the StarPoint IP service immediately available to cable operators throughout the U.S. PointOne has been conducting service trials since October. Since September 2000, PointOne has built out an advanced converged voice and data network that covers 75% of the U.S. population. The residential broadband telephony service provides long distance and local voice, including e911, directory assistance and operator services...

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RAD Introduces TDMoIP Solution for MSOs

RAD Data Communications introduced a unique IPMux product that provides voice and T1/E1 circuit emulation services over cable HFC/metro infrastructures. A second Vmux product combines TDMoIP with voice compression to very efficiently deliver T1/E1 commercial voice services over DOCSIS cable modems with greater resiliency to packet loss and significantly better bandwidth utilization than VoIP. RAD said its TDMoIP is transparent to signaling protocols, ensuring support for existing, rich PBX features sets, as well as carrier class 5 telephony features,...

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Finisar to Acquire Infineon Fiber Optics Business

Finisar agreed to acquire Infineon's fiber optics business unit 135 million shares of Finisar common stock. The acquisition transaction implies a valuation of US$263 million based on the closing share price as of 28-April-2004. Following the transaction, Infineon will hold a 38% equity interest in Finisar. Infineon's fiber business is based in Munich, Germany. Finisar is based in Sunnyvale, California. The acquisition involves the transfer of Infineon's fiber optic development, manufacturing, and certain marketing activities and approximately...

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Corvis Reports $146.8 Million in Revenue

Corvis Corporation reported Q1 revenues of $146.8 million, generated primarily from communications services revenues recorded by its subsidiary, Broadwing Communications, as well as from equipment sales to the U.S. government and Qwest Communications. The Broadwing Communications services division contributed $141.7 million in recorded revenues in the first quarter. The remaining $5.1 million was generated from the company's equipment and equipment service contracts. Reported net loss for the quarter was $33.9 million, or $0.07 loss per share,...

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Nokia Powers Orange 3G Launch in Toulouse

Orange France has launched its first pre-commercial 3G network in Toulouse using a complete Nokia radio-access network solution. This is the first pre-commercial launch of 3G in France. In addition to Toulouse, Nokia is also supplying its WCDMA 3G network to the north, east and southwest regions of France. In coming weeks, launches of Nokia-supplied networks will take place in these regions and in the UK. Nokia is also providing its professional services for the project. To date, Nokia is a supplier to nine of the 21 commercial WCDMA networks...

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Cox Continues Circuit-Switched Telephony Rollout

Cox Communications is preparing to launch its Digital Telephone in Northern Virginia beginning next month to compete with the incumbent local carrier, Verizon. Cox will be using circuit-switched technology in Northern Virginia. Cox's Northern Virginia cable system includes franchises in Fairfax County and Fredericksburg. Cox said it is already the third largest local exchange carrier in Virginia, with existing service in two other Cox markets - Hampton Roads and Roanoke. This marks the 13th telephony market nationwide for Cox. Cox Digital Telephone...

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ClearPath Delivers Enterprise VPN Appliance / Service

ClearPath Networks introduced the first in a line of enterprise-class network security appliances for the small and medium business (SMB) market. ClearPath, which operates a nationwide MPLS/ATM backbone, offers managed network services that can integrate access links from various third-party carriers and provide an end-to-end QoS environment. The company's new Secure Network Access Platform "SNAP" provides a range of capabilities, including: Secure Site-to-Site VPN connectivity, remote access VPN, firewall protection, Intrusion Detection &...

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France Telecom Adds 770,000 DSL Lines in Q1

As of 31-March-2004, France Telecom was serving over 4.1 million ADSL lines, up from 3.3 million at 31-Dec-2003 and up from 1.8 million at the same time in 2003. This represents nearly 770,000 additional ADSL lines activated during Q1 2004. Of the 4.1 million total ADSL lines, Wanadoo was serving 2.042 million lines; third party ISPs were serving 1.618 million lines, and 456,000 were being delivered over unbundled local loops. France Telecom's consolidated Q1 2004 revenues were EUR 11.45 billion, compared to EUR 11.4 billion for Q1 2003 on a...

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Siemens SURPASS Softswitch Gains PacketCable Status

Siemens' Surpass hiQ 8000 softswitch was awarded the PacketCable 1.0 qualification by CableLabs. The Siemens Surpass hiQ 8000 softswitch successfully completed an extensive series of interoperability tests as a Call Management Server (CMS). The CMS functions as a softswitch in the PacketCable architecture and performs many critical functions necessary for voice communications, including connection management, implementation of subscriber features, and call accounting. http://www.siemens....

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Scientific-Atlanta Adds Viewership Measurement to Set-tops

Scientific-Atlanta introduced new Operations Support System (OSS) featuring tools to help cable operators insight into consumers' viewership habits and for proactive monitoring of set-top and network performance at the subscriber's TV set. The new "Retriever" application also includes automated backup, disaster recovery, revenue assurance and VoIP launch applications. The viewership measurement tool collects data based on the consumer's "clicks" of the set-top remote - every time a new channel is selected, the activity is logged at the set-top...

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New Specifications Support ATM at Edge of MPLS Cores

The ATM Forum has released two new specifications to help service providers leverage the benefits of ATM at the edge of their networks while deploying MPLS as part of their core network consolidation. The new specifications enable ATM routing and signaling (PNNI and AINI) to be extended among ATM networks attached to an MPLS core, thus maintaining the availability and resource efficiency of ATM services. MPLS can thereby be used as a transport for the existing ATM traffic without potentially costly changes being made to the network edge. The new...

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Extreme and Avaya Meet DoD Interoperability Requirements

Extreme Networks and Avaya demonstrated an IP telephony solution that was rigorously tested by the DoD's Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC). Testing by the U.S. Department of Defenses' Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) have determined that Extreme Networks' switching solutions, when combined with Avaya's media servers, gateways and the Avaya Communication Manager, met the critical interoperability requirements for certification and use by national defense agencies. JITC certification is required for all products that support...

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CWA Union Members Vote SBC Strike Authorization

Members of the Communications Workers of America working at SBC Communications voted overwhelmingly to give CWA leaders authorization to call a strike if they deem it necessary. The union reported that 90% of the 100,000 CWA-represented workers at SBC voted in favor of the strike authorization. Contract negotiations currently are underway covering SBC operations in 13 states: Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada. For a strike to take place, the next step would...

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BellSouth Rejects AT&T Proposal

BellSouth quickly rejected AT&T's UNE-p proposal, describing it as "a desperate attempt to perpetuate the regulatory scheme that was vacated by the D.C. Circuit Court on March 2, 2004." BellSouth also announced the signing of long-term commercial agreements with three carriers including Dialogica Communications Inc., International Telnet and CI2 for the provisioning of wholesale local phone services throughout the nine-state BellSouth region. BellSouth further noted that since the FCC's call for the negotiation of commercial agreements, it...

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Foundry Networks Reports Revenue of $104 Million

Foundry Networks reported Q1 revenue of $104.0 million, compared to $91.1 million in the first quarter of 2003. Foundry earned net income of $19.9 million, or $0.14 per diluted share in the first quarter, compared to net income of $13.4 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2003. "We saw several positive signs during the quarter. Our domestic business improved, sales to the Federal Government remained strong and continued to represent more than 30% of our revenues, and most regions performed to our expectations. However,...

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MCI Trims 2004 Earnings Guidance

MCI issued new financial guidance for 2004, saying it now expects to generate revenue at the lower end of previous guidance of $21 billion to $22 billion. In 2003, the company reported revenue of $27.3 billion, which included $3.0 billion from Embratel. MCI announced in March 2004 its plans to sell its Embratel interest and, accordingly, will classify Embratel as a discontinued operation in the second quarter of 2004. The projections for 2004 exclude the operations of Embratel. Some main points:revenue from the company's global, high-end enterprise...

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Level 3 Reaffirms 2004 Business Outlook

Level 3 reported Q1 revenue of $899 million, compared to $988 million for Q4 2003. Communications revenue was $389 million versus $399 million for the previous quarter, and information services revenue was $494 million compared to the seasonally strong fourth quarter revenue of $565 million. The net loss for Q1 2004 increased to $147 million or $0.22 per share compared to a net loss for the previous quarter of $121 million or $0.18 per share. Included in the net loss for Q1 2004 was a $23 million gain on the sale of the company's remaining investment...

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AT&T Proposes Roadmap to Facilities-based Competition

AT&T issued a public proposal to the each of the four Bell companies offering a new roadmap to facilities-based local competition. AT&T is proposing increases in the price of UNE-P by at least $3 in phases over the next 2 1/2 years so as to impose a financial penalty on competitors that continue to rely on UNE-P. In exchange, however, competitors would be able to obtain operational and economic access to "last-mile" loop facilities on terms that are reasonable and fair. AT&T said it would support UNE-P price increases in exchange...

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Spirit Telecom Selects Alcatel IP Service Router

South Carolina-based Spirit Telecom will migrate its data network to an IP/MPLS backbone using Alcatel's IP service router. Specifically, Spirit will use the Alcatel 7750 Service Router (SR) and the Alcatel 5620 network management portfolio to converge the carrier's national network onto a single network. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.spirittelecom.comEarlier this month, Alcatel unveiled a number of hardware and software enhancements for its Alcatel 7750 IP/MPLS edge routing platform, including a new hierarchical...

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Verilink to Acquire Larscom

Verilink Corporation agreed to acquire Larscom for approximately 6 million shares of Verilink common stock, with each Larscom share being converted into 1.166 Verilink shares, subject to certain adjustments. The deal is valued at about $26.5 million. Larscom offers a range of metro access products, including optical edge access multiplexers for both TDM and Ethernet over SONET, integrated access devices (IADs), inverse multiplexers and CSU/DSUs. Larscom is based in Newark, California. Verilink provides customer premises voice and data access...

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Multiservice Switching Forum Gains Members, Elects Officers

Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC), Cable & Wireless, Ericsson and Nortel Networks have joined the Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF), a global association of service providers and system suppliers committed to developing and promoting open-architecture, multiservice switching systems. Applied Innovation, a network management solutions company and Holland's Teledata Networks, also joined the MSF this year. The MSF also announced its board of directors for 2004 -- 2005:Byung-Sun Lee, Core Technology Group director at ETRI James McEachern, Succession...

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Lessons from Telecom Act of '96 -- Part II

"If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1994 and woke up in 2004, he wouldn't think he'd missed a beat if telecom regulation was any guide," wrote Adam Thierer, Director or Telecommunications Studies at The Cato Institute, in testimony presented at the second day of hearing by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The good news, according to Thierer, is that, over this same time period, we have witnessed amazing strides in terms of technological progress, benefiting consumers in countless ways. The three highest priorities...

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MCNC Researchers Develop Just-In-Time Optical Protocol

Researchers at MCNC and North Carolina State University have developed a Just-in-Time (JIT) optical networking protocol for ultra-fast provisioning and management of all-optical network connections. The JIT protocol provides out-of-band control signal processing to maximize set up time and optical switch bandwidth efficiency. Signal messages travel in advance of the data they are describing and undergo electro-optical conversion at each intermediate node. Switching elements inside the switches are configured for the incoming data (a tell-and-go...

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Cisco and Ericsson Sign Strategic Alliance

Cisco Systems and Ericsson announced a strategic alliance agreement to offer joint solutions for the wireline communications market. As a part of the multi-year agreement, the two companies will jointly define, integrate and offer multi-service network solutions. Core network solutions offered under the alliance will be built around Ericsson's ENGINE softswitch portfolio and Cisco's core routing products. A broadband access offering will be based around Public Ethernet over DSL, using Ericsson's IP-based DSLAM, Ericsson's IP Service Engine and...

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Russia Launched its Second Express AM11 Satellite

The Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) successfully launched its second "Express AM11" satellite this week on a Proton launch vehicle from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. The satellite is equipped with 32 C-band transponders (including 6 onboard spares) and 6 Ku-band transponders (2 spares), along with a fixed antenna and two mobile spotbeam antennas. It will be used for television, telephone and data transmission services over an area spanning Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia. Two additional Express AM satellites...

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Alcatel Launches VoIP-based Push To Talk Application

Alcatel introduced a Push To Talk (PTT) application as part of its IP multimedia communication portfolio. The Alcatel Push To Talk is a VoIP streaming service that turns a mobile phone into a Walkie-Talkie in GPRS and UMTS networks. Alcatel said its PTT solution can run on a wide variety of handsets already commercialized and equipped with this function. It is based on industry standards such as SIP for signaling and RTP for voice broadcasting. This follows the early specifications of the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) and uses the capabilities of...

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France's Cegetal Tests Alcatel's 8 Mbps SHDSL

Cegetel, France's first alternative national fixed telecommunications operator, has activated an 8 Mbps DSL link between two pilot sites located in Paris and Lyon. The rate is four times the market standard DSL service. The deployment uses Alcatel's SHDSL technology, aggregating 4 copper pairs (2 Mbps each) into a single 8 Mbps link. The aggregation ability is made possible by the simultaneous use of SHDSL technology and inverse multiplexing ATM. The first 8 Mbps SHDSL link allows Cegetel and Alcatel to confirm high network performance, in particular...

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Foundry Hires Force10 Sales Exec

Foundry Networks appointed James F. Brear as vice president of U.S. sales, western area. Brear joins Foundry from Force10 Networks, where he served as vice president of worldwide sales. Prior to his tenure at Force10, Brear spent five years at Cisco Systems, including serving as operations director for Service Provider sales in the UK. http://www.foundrynetworks....

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AFC Reports Q1 Revenue of $92.8 Million

AFC reported quarterly revenue (GAAP) of $92.8 million. Revenues generated by North American Access (NAA), a business unit of Marconi Communications, were included in the results from the 20-Feb-2004 acquisition date through quarter end. Revenues in Q4 2003 were $84.8 million. Revenues for the first quarter of 2003 were $80.5 million. Net loss for Q1 2004 was $2.7 million, or $0.03 loss per share. The first quarter of 2004 included costs associated with the acquisition of NAA. Net income in the fourth quarter of 2003 was $5.7 million, or $0.06...

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Level 3 Provides MPLS Backbone for Teliris' Virtual Meetings

Level 3 Communications will provide MPLS-based data networking and other services to Teliris Ltd., a leading provider of virtual meeting solutions to corporate customers. Level 3 is supporting Teliris' "GlobalTable" service in both North America and Europe. GlobalTable is a multi-screen, multi-location conferencing solution that offers DVD-quality video and audio, signal delay below perceptible thresholds, and real-time collaboration tools. Specifically, Teliris is using (3)Flex, a high-performance data networking service from Level 3 that delivers...

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Time Warner Telecom Cites Challenging Environment

Time Warner Telecom reported $161.6 million in Q1 revenue and a net loss of $(38.8) million compared with revenue of $165.0 million and a net loss of $(33.3) million or $(.29) per share for the same period last year. During the quarter, the company grew its enterprise revenue by $12 million, which was offset by a reduction in carrier and related party revenue of $12 million and a reduction in intercarrier compensation of $3 million. There was a $9.9 million net decrease from carriers and ISPs. The company said it continues to experience a high...

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Comcast Reports Continued Growth

Comcast reported "robust demand" for its services in Q1, as evidenced by the addition of 35,000 basic cable subscribers in the quarter, continuing the trend of steady growth in its core business for the fifth quarter in a row, and growth of 192,000 in the number of digital cable subscribers. The company said its revenue growth is being driven by consumers' increasing demand for new digital features and services, including VOD, HDTV and digital video recorders (DVRs). Financially, Comcast Cable reported revenue of $4.647 billion for the quarter,...

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British Government Considers Future of Telecom Sector

Ofcom, the official telecom market regulator for the UK, is launching a wide ranging Strategic Review of the UK telecommunications sector. The Review will assess the options for enhancing value and choice in the sector and will have a particular focus on assessing the prospects for maintaining and developing effective competition in UK telecommunications markets, while having regard for investment and innovation. The Review is expected to consider whether and how BT might be required to open up its network, as well as rules for VoIP. The UK government...

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Nortel Networks Replaces Executive Team

Nortel Networks named William Owens as its new president and CEO, replacing Frank Dunn, who was dismissed "for cause." Nortel Networks also fired its former chief financial officer, Douglas Beatty, and former controller, Michael Gollogly, both of whom had been placed on paid leave of absence by Nortel Networks on 15-March-2004. Four other individuals who were senior line of business finance executives have also been placed on leave of absence. Nortel Networks Audit Committee has been undertaking an independent review of the circumstances leading...

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BT Reduces Wholesale Broadband Migration Costs

BT is reducing the prices it charges other service providers when they sign up broadband customers from other suppliers. BT is also making it cheaper for service providers to move their existing customer base from a BT IPStream based service to one based on BT DataStream. Migration prices will fall to £11 per end user from May 1. The cost of switching a customer from one BT IPStream based supplier to another has fallen from £35 per end user, whereas the cost of moving a customer from a BT IPStream based service to one based on BT DataStream has...

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Broadcom Ships 2nd Generation DOCSIS 2.0 Chip

Broadcom introduced its next generation single-chip cable modem solution -- a DOCSIS 2.0-based cable modem chip that addresses the increased performance and reliability demands of data, voice and gateway modem designs. The device is Broadcom's second generation DOCSIS 2.0 chip. Broadcom said cable modems using its new BCM3349 will operate 25% faster than modems using previous solutions, due to a new integrated processor performing at 250 MIPS, and will support individual modem throughput at the full-channel capacity of the DOCSIS 2.0 specification....

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BT Exact Names Former Qwest Exec as CEO

BT announced the appointment of Al-Noor Ramji as chief information officer of BT Group and chief executive officer of BT Exact. Ramji joins BT from Qwest Communications, where he held the position of executive vice president, chief information officer and chief e-commerce officer. BT Exact is the carrier's research, technology and IT operations business. http://www.btplc....

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WilTel Carries 4 Billion Voice Minutes per Month

WilTel Communications has enhanced its On-Net voice capabilities to enable its carrier customers to and terminate on-net voice traffic to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. WilTel said its network is delivering nearly 4 billion minutes each month -- double the traffic volume delivered by WilTel just one year ago -- for CLECs, IXCs, resellers and UNE-P carriers. WilTel's nationwide domestic voice network using Feature Group-D (FG-D) facilities originates and terminates 100% of all domestic traffic on-net, and is not dependent on third party network providers.In...

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Verizon Wireless Spends $1 Billion in Q1 CAPEX

Verizon Wireless has invested more than $1 billion in the first quarter to install new cell sites, grow the network's capacity and engineer countless other service improvements. Verizon Wireless serves some 39 million customers, operating more than 150 switching facilities and 20,500 cell sites. http://www.verizonwireless.comIn March 2004, Verizon Wireless announced equipment contracts with Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies for the expansion of its BroadbandAccess 3G service across the U.S. The company also announced agreements with SK Telecom,...

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Agere Reports Sales of $462 Million

Agere Systems reported quarterly sales of $462 million, up 4% over the year-ago quarter, and down 10% sequentially. The sequential decline was due primarily to the forecasted decrease in sales of 3G chipsets for mobile phones related to delays in 3G deployment. Net income (GAAP) was $74 million or $0.04 per share, compared to the year-ago net loss of $125 million or $0.08 per share, and a net loss of $39 million, or $0.02 per share, in the preceding quarter. The quarter marked Agere's third consecutive quarter of positive cash flow from operations...

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Scientific-Atlanta Offers VoIP Launch Service to MSOs

Scientific-Atlanta is launching a new "SciCare Broadband Service" to assist cable operators in areas that are critical to a successful VoIP rollout -- speed to market, quality of voice service and infrastructure assessment. The program includes:Project Planning -- Business process and network consulting, VoIP service implementation process review, site evaluation and survey, and project planning workshopAssessment Services -- Includes assessments of data network, voice network, security, HFC network, facilities and OSS integrationDesign Services...

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Connexion by Boeing and NTT DoCoMo to Link

Connexion by Boeing will make its in-flight, high-speed Internet service available to NTT DoCoMo's mZone wireless LAN service users. Airline passengers who have an Mzone account will enter their user identification and password to access the Connexion by Boeing service, and they will be able to subsequently receive their billing for service access as an add-on to their existing Mzone bill. The companies will also consider jointly developing new in-flight wireless services for international passengers. http://www.connexionbyboeing.comhttp://w...

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UTStarcom Sees Record Revenues of $622.3 Million

UTStarcom reported Q1 sales of $622.3 million, an increase of 88% over net sales of $330.5 million reported in the first quarter of 2003. Net income for the first quarter of 2004 was $54.8 million, or $0.40 per share, compared to net income of $37.3 million, or $0.33 per share, for the first quarter of 2003, an increase in net income of 47% year-over-year. During Q1, UTStarcom announced over $500 million in new contracts in China and signed $100 million in new contracts outside of China. The number of UTStarcom PAS subscribers in China reached...

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Avaya Reports Revenue of $1.006 Billion

Avaya reported quarterly revenues of $1.006 billion, compared to $950 million in the same period last year. Income from continuing operations was $103 million, or 22 cents per diluted share, compared to a loss of $55 million, or a loss of 15 cents per diluted share, in the same period a year ago. "We grew revenues, expanded operating margins and increased cash flow. At the same time, we completed the integration of Expanets a full quarter ahead of schedule, reduced debt and took further steps to globalize our business with the announcement of...

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Atheros' Revenues Up 14% Sequentially

Atheros Communications $43.1 million, compared with $37.7 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 14%. Gross margin in the first quarter of fiscal 2004 was 44.2%. Net income (GAAP) in Q1 was $2.4 million, or earnings of $0.05 per diluted share on 48.2 million average shares outstanding. This compares with a net loss of $0.2 million, or a loss of $0.02 per diluted share on 13.1 million average shares outstanding in Q4 2003. http://www.atheros.comAtheros completed its initial public offering (IPO) in Februa...

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SBC Yahoo! DSL Returns $26.95 a Month

SBC Communications returned its DSL promotional pricing to $26.95 a month when ordered online or through retail outlets as part of an SBC Total Connections bundle (other monthly charges apply). SBC local service and one year term required. The basic package provides downlink speeds of 384 Kbps - 1.5 Mbps and uplink of 128 Kbps. An SBC Yahoo! DSL Pro package. With pricing starting at $36.99 a month, delivers up to twice the bandwidth with 1.5 - 3.0 Mbps x 384 - 416 Kbps. (other monthly charges apply). http://www.sbc....

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Marvell Ships 16 port- and 24 port- Managed GigE Devices

Marvell announced the availability of its high performance Prestera-DX160 and -DX240 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) packet processors with integrated SerDes interfaces. The new, Layer 2, managed-16 port and -24 port single-chip devices are targeted at the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) market. Marvell also announced today that NETGEAR has selected the new Prestera - DX240 for their currently shipping GSM7224, a Layer 2 managed, 24-port Gigabit Ethernet Switch. http://www.marvell....

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Force10 Networks Reports Accelerated Sales

Force10 Networks, a privately-held company based in Milpitas, California, reported that sales expanded at the fastest pace in the company's history during the first quarter, ending March 31. Force10 noted a diverse base of new customers, including service providers, educational institutions and companies in data intensive industries. Force10 also announced promoted Mark Cooper to vice president of sales. Most recently, Cooper led Force10's worldwide alliance team as vice president for global alliances. Prior to Force10, he spent four years at...

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Ikanos Closes over $15M Strategic Financing Round

Ikanos Communications, a start-up based in Fremont, California, the receipt of more than $15 million in Series E funding for its broadband silicon solutions. Ikanos recently announced that global shipments of its programmable chipsets surpassed two million ports since volume production began in Q4 2002, with orders more than doubling since October of last year. The company said its Fiber-over-Copper Extension technology now supports equipment in the world's most advanced carrier networks in Korea and Japan, with demand accelerating in Europe and...

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CableLabs Expands Lab To Assist Vendors

CableLabs has expanded its development laboratory facilities in order to accelerate product development for devices that are intended to interoperate under the CableLabs DOCSIS, PacketCable and CableHome specifications. CableLabs said its development lab concept is one that has been successful in support of CE Manufacturers that have worked aggressively to develop and to advance products intended to interoperate under the OpenCable and Plug-and-Play specifications. http://www.cablelabs....

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Lessons from Telecom Act of '96

"Today's uncertain telecommunications policy landscape, wrought largely by rapidly developing technology, an outdated statutory framework unable to keep pace, and federal regulations mired in litigation from their outset, requires us to reexamine the very assumptions under which the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was put into law," said Senator John McCain (R-AZ) at the opening of special hearings by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. McCain, who chairs the Senate Committee, described the Telecom Act as a "fatally...

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Verizon Adds 1.4 Million Wireless, 345,000 DSL Lines

Citing its highest year-over-year revenue growth in three years, Verizon Communications reported consolidated revenues of $17.1 billion, up 3.9% compared with $16.5 billion in Q1 2003. For the quarter, Verizon's reported earnings were $1.2 billion, or 43 cents per share."While Domestic Telecom revenues were down, we recognize that this is part of the evolution of our business model, and we are on track with where we want to be. It's significant that new growth businesses, such as wireless, data, long-distance and broadband, now account for more...

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U.S. Senate Looks for Lessons from Telecom Act of '96

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is holding two public hearings this week on "Lessons Learned from the Telecom Act of 1996." Senator McCain will preside. The tentative list of witnesses includes David Dorman, CEO of AT&T; Richard Notebaert, CEO of Qwest Communications; James Geiger, CEO of Cbeyond Communications; Adam Thierer, Director of Telecommunications Studies at The Cato Institute; Charles Ferguson, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; Reed E. Hundt, the former Chairman of the FCC during the Clinton...

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Bush Calls for Internet Access Tax Ban

Noting that the U.S. now ranks 10th amongst industrialized nations in broadband availability, President George Bush issued a call for Congress to permanently ban taxes on Internet access. His speech also included passing references to government policies that would encourage carriers to invest in broadband. He also mentioned a need for standards that encourage broadband-over-powerline deployments. Bush also affirmed his support Michael Powell's chairmanship of the FCC. http://www.whitehouse....

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David Juliano Named President of Comcast Online

David Juliano has been promoted to president of Comcast Online, which handles the company's residential and commercial High-Speed Internet services. Previously, Juliano served as the division's senior vice president and general manager. Since 1999, Comcast Online has grown under Juliano's leadership from 80 thousand customers to become the nation's number one broadband provider - with over 5.3 million customershttp://www.comcast....

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Conexant Reports $243.8 Million in Revenue, up 38%

In its first earnings report following the completion of its merger with GlobespanVirata, Conexant Systems reported quarterly revenues of $243.8 million, up 38% over the preceding quarter and up 74% over the same period in 2003. The net loss for the quarter was $143.4 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $68.0 million, or $0.26 per diluted share in the preceding period. The company cited strength in growth areas, which include products for DSL connectivity and wireless local area networking as well as digital set-top...

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Major Service Providers Join WiMAX Forum

The WiMAX Forum today announces that major service providers including BT, France Telecom Qwest Communications, Reliance Telecom and XO Communications have joined the organization. Service providers now make up nearly 25% of the WiMAX Forum membership. http://www.WiMAXForum....

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Net2Phone and Navini Combine VoIP with Wi-Fi

Net2Phone has adapted its broadband VoIP telephony service to operate over Navini Networks' wireless broadband infrastructure equipment. Under a partnership, Net2Phone will offer VoIP telephony solutions to Navini's wireless broadband customers. Net2Phone's wholesale VoiceLine service provides inbound and outbound calling with applications such as phone number selection, call waiting, caller ID and voice mail. Calls are routed over Navini's Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) solution to Net2Phone's SIP-based platform, which performs call...

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Telica Adds Voice Routing Engine to its Softswitch

Telica has enhanced its Plexus 9000 and PLUS second generation softswitch family with a new Advanced Multi-key Routing application that allows service providers to route calls based on hundreds of parameters, including least-cost routing, time-of-day routing, class/quality of service routing, switch ID routing, domestic and international routing, and other factors. Telica said carriers could use this capability to define multiple routing plans that support individualized handling of each customer's traffic. Some examples include:Route voice calls...

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Alcatel Invests $15 Million in General Bandwidth

Alcatel has invested US$15 million in General Bandwidth, a start-up based in Austin, Texas that has developed a VoIP Media Gateway. The investment further strengthens the three-year OEM relationship between the two companies and allows for additional development enhancements to their joint FTTP and VoIP offerings. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.genband.comIn December 2003, SBC Communications announced a four-year primary supplier agreement with Alcatel for SBC's FTTP initiative. As part of that supplier agreement, General Bandwidth provides...

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Allied Telesyn Goes Live with ADSL2+

Allied Telesyn announced the deployment of ADSL2+ technology in "Triple Play" networks at Vernon Telephone Cooperative in Westby, Wisconsin and Coon Valley Telephone Company in Coon Valley, Wisconsin. Allied Telesyn is delivering ADSL2+ in both its 9400 and 9700 Multiservice Access Platforms -- both of which use an "Any Service, Any Slot" architecture that simultaneously supports ADSL, ADSL2+ and FTTH. The platforms are complemented by Allied Telesyn's RG-634 residential gateway, which provides an ADSL2+ modem, VoIP ports, Layer 3 routing and...

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Qwest to Eliminate Access Charges on True VoIP Calls

Qwest Communications is adopting a new policy that makes all "true VoIP traffic" terminating on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) free from access charges. Additionally, Qwest also plans to begin offering local services to VoIP providers, including primary rate interface ISDN circuits (ISDN-PRI). ISDN-PRI is a local exchange service that uses "enhanced T-1" facilities and allows VoIP providers to serve multiple channels within a single broadband connection. Qwest said this would enable VoIP providers to have direct access to the PSTN...

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Charter Deploys Motorola's Broadband Media Center With Moxi

Charter Communications began offering the Motorola Broadband Media Center (BMC) with Digeo's Moxi Service in Charter's Rochester, Minnesota market. The Motorola BMC is an advanced digital set-top that integrates high- definition television (HDTV) with a dual-tuner digital video recorder (DVR), providing the ability to watch one channel while recording another. In July 2003, Charter made a commitment to purchase 100,000 Motorola BMC units. The companies said consumer trials of the BMC has been positive. Separately, Comcast announced a planned commercial...

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Atheros Ships Single-Chip 802.11g

Atheros Communications announced volume shipments of a single-chip IEEE 802.11g WLAN solution -- an industry first, according to the company. The CMOS device integrates a Media Access Controller (MAC), a baseband processor, a high-performance 2.4-GHz radio, and many of the discrete components used in earlier 802.11g designs, resulting in a 35% part count reduction from products based on two-chip solutions, and a similar reduction in BOM (bill-of-materials) costs. The new Atheros chip leverages better signal processing technology that extends...

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Connexion by Boeing Selected by Korean Air

Korean Airlines will install Connexion by Boeing mobile connectivity service on its long-haul fleet of 747-400s and 777ERs in early 2005, with service beginning shortly after that. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/Connexion by Boeing now has agreements with Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System, Japan Airlines, ANA and Kingdom Holding Co., to equip their long-haul aircraft with the mobile connectivity service. Singapore Airlines and China Airlines also have announced their intent to install...

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Dialpad Launches Broadband Phone Service

Dialpad Communications launched a broadband phone service. Dialpad is offering the Cisco ATA 186 and the Sipura SPA2000 gateways for use with this service. Dialpad has also announced that in the coming months it will be adding other broadband phone devices to its offerings and rolling out several special calling features for its broadband phone users. http://www.dialpad.c...

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Lucent Chooses Xilinx FPGAs for its Optical Translator Unit

Lucent Technologies has selected Xilinx FPGAs for a new 10 Gbps Tunable Optical Translator Unit, a key component in one of its DWDM metro optical systems. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro with embedded PowerPC processor running Linux is used for the control and communications functions in its OTU. http://www.xilinx.c...

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ARRIS Develops Edge Product for Digital Video and On-Demand Content

ARRIS introduced a new class of edge network device for cable operators that is designed for simultaneous delivery of MPEG- 2TS and DVB-C based digital video content and emerging DOCSIS-based IP digital multimedia content and signaling. The ARRIS Q5 Digital Multimedia Termination System (DMTS) couples QAM and DOCSIS/EUR-DOCSIS 2.0 CMTS technologies with integral multiplexing features. These capabilities enables the ARRIS Q5 DMTS to produce a dynamically allocated multiplex of digital video broadcast, Video on Demand (VoD), IP Multicast, IP Unicast...

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Greenfield Networks Unveils Ethernet Switch Silicon for IPv6, MPLS

Greenfield Networks, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, unveiled its silicon solutions designed for a new generation of enterprise and metro/ISP edge equipment. Greenfield, which has been operating in stealth mode since 2001, said today's Ethernet market is sharply divided between low-end, commodity switches with limited capabilities and high-end, ASIC driven platforms that are really only suited for core applications. It's ...

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telx Selects Turin's Multiservice Transport Platform

telx, which operates the "SuperNode" carrier-neutral interconnection facility at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, is using Turin Networks' Traverse Multiservice Transport Platform for two new network interconnection services. First, telx's "Brilliant Platform" provides international gateway services specifically tailored to international service providers and those wanting to extend their reach globally. This Platform provides seamless translation of a wide range of international synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) interfaces to the North American...

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