Alcatel and Draka to Combine Optical Fiber Businesses

Alcatel and Draka agreed to combine their global optical fiber and communication cable businesses into a jointly owned company. Through the combination of Alcatel's assets with Draka's interest in YOFC, the leading Chinese optical fiber and fiber cable manufacturer, the new company would hold the leading market position for optical fiber and fiber cables in the Chinese market. The new company would also be a leader in Europe and a major player in North America. Draka would own 50.1% of the new company and Alcatel 49.9%.


The new company would have a full product portfolio of optical fiber and fiber cable for telecom and data applications. The product portfolio would also include copper telecom and datacom cables. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.draka.com

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NYC's Microwave Satellite Launches Vonage Service

Microwave Satellite Technologies (MST) has launched a private-label version of the Vonage broadband phone service to its broadband Internet subscribers within New York City and across the U.S.. MST's NuVisions Digital Voice service powered by Vonage provides an alternative to traditional phone service.


MST's NuVisions Broadband services offer cable television, cable modem Internet access, and telephone services to multi-family residences, commercial buildings, and institution owners throughout the United States. MST delivers its services using microwave and fiber optic technology. http://www.vonage.comhttp://www.nuvisions.net

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Westell Introduces New TriLink Portfolio of VoIP Products

In a strategic step beyond its core DSL modem technology roots, Westell Technologies unveiled a new family of VoIP products targeted at both the residential and small-to-medium size enterprise markets. Westell's TriLink portfolio will initially include two product offerings, TriLink DSL and TriLink Ethernet. TriLink DSL supports a built-in ADSL router with two VoIP enabled analog voice ports. TriLink Ethernet also offers two voice ports and is designed to support Ethernet WAN interface devices. TriLink offers a software programmable codec to ensure optimal voice quality. The company plans to offer further VoIP product variations to be announced later this year.


The new products leverage the licensed VoIP intellectual property that Westell acquired from Hughes Electronics Corporation ("Hughes") DIRECTV Broadband. http://www.westell.com

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EarthLink and Verizon Sign DSL Access Agreement

EarthLink signed a joint marketing agreement with Verizon that enables it to expand its broadband footprint to an additional 6.5 million households, extending its market presence to 73 cities within Verizon's territory. Verizon will provide IP access into its local DSL networks, enabling Earthlink to utilize Verizon's broadband infrastructure to offer its own high-speed service. EarthLink expects to begin widening its coverage in existing markets such as New York, Boston and Washington, DC, and introducing service in new markets including Buffalo and Poughkeepsie, NY and Scranton, PA during Q2 and Q3 2004. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Peter Castleton, executive director -- broadband services for Verizon said, "EarthLink is the first Internet service provider to benefit from a broadband traffic aggregator service that Verizon is using to provide end-to- end broadband service. This allows EarthLink to leave the task of assembling individual network components to Verizon."http://www.verizon.comhttp://www.earthlink.com

• EarthLink added 248,000 net subscribers in Q4 2003 and ended the year with approximately 5.2 million paying subscribers, an increase of 219,000 subscribers, or 4.4%, from a year ago. During the quarter, the company added 108,000 broadband subscribers, giving it a total of approximately 1.1 million broadband customers, up 36.2% from a year ago.

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MetaSwitch Displaces Legacy Class 5 Switches for Two IOCs

MetaSwitch announced two new independent telephone customers for its next generation Class 5 switch. Idaho' Project Mutual Telephone selected the MetaSwitch VP3500 to avoid the cost of ongoing maintenance and required software upgrades for its existing Nortel DMS-100 Class 5 switch and enable expansion of its service area. Similarly, Wyoming's Tri-County Telephone will use the MetaSwitch VP3500 as a replacement for its Lucent 5ESS central office Class 5 switch. Instead of pursuing a "cap and grow" strategy, Tri-County wanted to decommission its Lucent switch and cut across all its existing 8,000+ subscribers as soon as possible. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.metaswitch.com

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Flow-Based Routing Tested by NTT Labs, Univ. of Tokyo and Univ. of Illinois

NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the University of Tokyo, has tested flow-based routing technology from Caspian Networks. In a workshop hosted by the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), NTT showed its MaXimal Queuing (MXQ) algorithm to leading network academics, and demonstrated its effectiveness at preventing congestion in highly-utilized networks.


EVL's TeraVision was used to send three high-resolution video streams to a super-high-definition tiled display, while an Access Grid distributed video conferencing system also ran over the MXQ-enabled network. Attendees, some of whom participated via the Access Grid, were shown the signal degradation inherent in times of network congestion using conventional IP/MPLS routers, then the elimination of this congestion with new flow-based Caspian Apeiro routers incorporating NTT's MXQ algorithm.


In flow-based networking, packets are routed as whole flows, i.e. streams of related packets, rather than as individual packets as in current IP/MPLS networks. The unique level of data obtained in flow-based routing, such as flow length, rate, delay variation and other parameters, enable a number of new network benefits.



The demonstrations were part of the ON*VECTOR Advanced Networking Workshop, hosted at UIC/EVL, which focused on new flow-based networking techniques to improve QoS and enable better service models for IP-based telecommunications. Workshop participants included attendees from UIC, NTT Laboratories, NTT America, NTT Communications, the University of Tokyo, Caspian Networks, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Laboratory. Further work in this area is underway. http://www.caspian.com

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Broadcom Unveils Chips for Residential and SOHO IP Phones

Broadcom introduced two new IP phone engine chips that could be used to build feature-rich IP phones for the residential, small office home office (SOHO), and small-to-medium sized business (SMB) markets. The two devices (BCM1113R and BCM1115R) are highly integrated IP phone chips supporting advanced features, such as high fidelity voice quality; the integration of voice, instant messaging, email and video; the integration of landline, wireless LAN and cellular; on-line gaming with voice; etc. Both chips feature an 87 MHz MIPS32 RISC processor for advanced Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) applications, and an 87 MHz dual-MAC digital signal processor (DSP) to support voice signal processing. The DSP can support narrowband voice communication using G.711, G.729A, or BroadVoice16, or wideband using G.722 or BroadVoice32. Full- duplex speakerphone capability is supported in conjunction with any of these voice compression techniques. The BCM1113R's integrated Ethernet switch enables the office PC and IP phone to share a single LAN connection, and supports IEEE 802.1p packet prioritization and 802.1q VLAN identification. The BCM1115R is a single Ethernet port version of the BCM1113R. Both chips integrate analog CODECs capable of supporting both narrowband 8 Kilohertz (KHz) and wideband 16 KHz sampling.


"In recent months, AT&T, SBC, Verizon and several other service providers have made announcements about rolling out VoIP-enabled services to residential and small-to-medium sized business users," said Paul Shore, Director of Marketing for Broadcom's VoIP Client Products. "Now that VoIP is rapidly moving toward mass acceptance in large enterprises, we are leveraging our proven strengths in a variety of broadband technologies to ensure that cost- effective IP telephony devices are available for the small-to-medium sized business and residential markets."


Broadcom's VoIP technology is already deployed in several residential markets throughout the Asia-Pacific region in equipment from iCableSystem and Ambit Microsystems. Together, these companies have deployed over four million residential VoIP units using Broadcom chips and software, supplying equipment to many of the largest carriers of consumer VoIP services in Japan. http://www.broadcom.com

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UTStarcom Reports Further Contracts in China

China Netcom Corporation (CNC) awarded a contract to UTStarcom to deploy 110,000 lines of its AN 2000 IB IP-DSLAM solution. This contract is part of China Netcom's aggressive plans to extend broadband services to five million subscribers in 2004.


Separately, UTStarcom announced a contract with China Netcom Group (CNC) valued at $32 million to expand the carrier's IP-based PAS platform in nine cities in China's Henan province. http://www.utstar.com

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SBC Selects Siemens to Build Platform for Hosted VoIP Service

SBC Communications awarded a five year contract to Siemens Information and Communication Networks (Siemens ICN) to provide the next-generation delivery platform for the recently announced SBC PremierSERV Hosted IP Communication Service. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Siemens is providing an integrated solution which includes Siemens Surpass Softswitch, Sylantro's feature server and elements provided by other major name providers in the industry. The platform will enable multimedia communications, multiparty collaboration, unified voice-to-text and text-to- voice messaging, as well as click-to-dial, call management, and integration with Microsoft Outlook, and other multimedia applications.


Siemens' SURPASS portfolio of next-generation, standards-based IP solutions also includes the SURPASS hiQ softswitch and the SURPASS hiG media gateway. The company's worldwide center of competency for next-generation switching and applications is Siemens Network Convergence LLC, located in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. http://www.siemens.com/surpass

• In November 2003, in what it described as "perhaps the most substantial technological advance in telecommunications in 100 years," SBC Communications introduced a new range of enterprise IP services, including a hosted VoIP service aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. SBC's Hosted IP Communication Service will use a Web interface for managing a full suite of unified messaging features. These will include voice mail, e-mail, "find me, follow me," click-to-call, conferencing and other applications. Users can plug in their IP devices, including IP-enabled phones, from anywhere within a corporate network, or from any broadband connection. At the time of the announcement, SBC said the service was being launched in select markets across the country. SBC also promised to make the hosted service available in cities nationwide by the end of 2004.



• Also in November 2003, Randall Stephenson, Senior Executive VP & CFO of SBC Communications, confirmed that SBC was developing its own consumer VoIP service, which it will launch "when market demand develops."



• In September 2003, Level 3 Communications announced that it would be providing its new, wholesale (3)Tone hosted telephony service to SBC Communications (and to about 20 other carriers). The (3)Tone service is a version of the suite of services Level 3 obtained through its acquisition of Telverse Communications. It is aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises interested in replacing their PBX, IP PBX, and Centrex Systems with an outsourced service.

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AT&T Invested $1.9 Billion in New Jersey over 4 Years

AT&T calculates that it has invested $1.9 billion in New Jersey over the past four years. This includes significant investment since 2002, when the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) lowered the wholesale rates that Verizon can charge competing local phone companies to serve local New Jersey phone lines. Since then, according to FCC and BPU estimates, well over half a million New Jersey homes and small businesses have taken advantage of phone service options provided by companies other than Verizon.


AT&T said it continues to invest in its telecom infrastructure in New Jersey, including networking facilities that provide advanced telecommunications services to both businesses and consumers across the state. New Jersey is the site of AT&T's first large scale regional marketing trials of new VoIP consumer services, which began in 2003. New Jersey is also home to the AT&T Global Network Operations Center. http://www.att.com

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Alcatel Targets Unified Interaction Management Software

Alcatel launched a Unified Interaction Management strategic initiative aimed at leveraging technology from its enterprise communications offerings and Genesys subsidiary. The UIM initiative will deliver a new suite of software products - including applications and middleware - with ability to operate in TDM, IP-only and 'dual' network environments. Alcatel said its UIM products will be based on open standards, such as SIP, SOAP, VXML, J2EE and .NET. In 2004, the UIM initiative is focused on software designed to transfer attached data with a voice call to any location across the enterprise. Future UIM products will provide additional capabilities, including the ability to carry out 'real-time' notifications and escalations to speed business processes, and 'on-demand' conferencing that automatically locates conference attendees and initiates a conference call. http://www.alcatel.com

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New Edge Networks Gets Broadband Access to BellSouth Region

New Edge Networks announced a deal with BellSouth enabling it to provide multi-site managed network services using Frame Relay and DSL throughout BellSouth's network in nine southern states. Under the deal, New Edge Networks gains access to about 1,325 BellSouth central office locations, including more than 1,065 sites where New Edge Networks or affiliate carriers had no prior presence. Financial terms were not disclosed.


New Edge Networks already has completed installation of network interfaces into most of BellSouth's 38 telephone calling areas known as LATAs. This has fully enabled frame relay and DSL connectivity between New Edge Networks and BellSouth. Region wide access should be completed before the end of this month.


New Edge Networks said the BellSouth-provided DSL and Frame Relay broadens the depth and breadth of its national reach for offering integrated managed services to businesses and carrier customers.


"With its national ATM backbone and agreements with other selling partners and carriers, New Edge Networks is an important addition to our wholesale distribution channel," said Marc Cathey, BellSouth sales assistant vice president. "This network implementation with New Edge Networks makes it easier for customers to have reach throughout our coverage area."http://www.newedgenetworks.com

• New Edge Networks owns a nationwide multi-services network with more than 850 carrier-class switches and Internet routers.



• In October 2003, New Edge Networks signed a wholesale DSL agreement with MCI Wholesale Services, giving it access to 75 new market locations not already served by other carriers with which the company has separate agreements. MCI has broadband DSL switching equipment in more than 700 locations in large metropolitan areas around the U.S.



• Also in October 2003, New Edge Networks announced an agreement to resell Verizon's symmetric high bit-rate DSL (SHDSL) service to customers throughout most areas where Verizon offers DSL services. Under the national wholesale agreement, New Edge Networks will build gateways to Verizon in New York and Los Angeles, where it will offer the high bit-rate DSL services.

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ECI Telecom Sell Government Surveillance Business to Verint

ECtel Ltd., a company in which ECI Telecom holds 58%, agreed to sell its Government Surveillance business to Verint Systems for approximately $35 million in cash. Most of the employees of the transferred business are expected to join Verint at closing.


Mr. Doron Inbar, Director of ECtel and CEO of ECI Telecom, said "Following the transaction, ECtel will be able to refocus on its core telecom business."http://www.ecitele.com

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Telecom Industry Association Predicts Uptick in IP Market

Despite a decline in IP revenues over the past two years due to rapid price declines, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) predicts that total IP revenues will grow in 2004 by 7.8%, achieving a total of $13.9 billion.


TIA's newly released 2004 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast notes that in 2003, IP accounted for the majority (58%) of network traffic for the first time. The study predicts that the U.S. IP traffic will rise by a factor of more than six, increasing to 1,633 petabytes per month in 2007, a 58.3% compound annual increase (2004-2007).


"The rapid growth of IP traffic on the network -- 75 percent in 2003 -- clearly indicates that the migration to IP is in full swing. We are therefore pleased that the FCC is addressing the issue as a national priority and acting this week to begin to clarify the regulatory issues surrounding IP applications such as VoIP," said Matthew J. Flanigan, TIA president.


The report also predicts the IP market will reach $18.7 billion in 2007, with a 9.7% compound annual growth rate from 2004 to 2007. This projected growth reflects that companies are beginning to migrate to convergence technologies to enhance productivity, reduce costs and upgrade the enterprise network to accommodate new applications and technologies.


IP applications revenues are expected to grow even faster. IP revenues for audio conferencing, videoconferencing, Web conferencing, follow-me services, unified messaging and instant messaging totaled $1.5 billion in 2003, more than twice the $696 million of 2002. Revenues will increase to a projected $11.4 billion by 2007, a 66.5% compound annual growth rate.


The 2004 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast is available in hard copy or on CD-ROM from TIA. http://www.tiaonline.org/media/mrf.cfm

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IBM and Eagle Broadband Collaborate on FTTU Networks

IBM and Eagle Broadband signed a joint marketing agreement to design, build and operate fiber-based broadband networks and deliver an "four-play" bundled digital services (voice, video, data and security), video content and multimedia set-top box technology to communities across the U.S.. The companies will work together to help municipalities lower costs and accelerate the delivery of bundled digital services that can improve competitiveness, stimulate economic growth and development, attract businesses and residents, create jobs and improve quality of life.


The partnership combines IBM's expertise in providing comprehensive technology, consulting, systems integration and project management services with Eagle's experience designing, building and operating fiber-based broadband networks. http://www.ibm.com/serviceshttp://www.eaglebroadband.com

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World Wide Packets Supplies Active Ethernet Access Net for Danville, Virginia

The City of Danville, Virginia is using World Wide Packets' "LightningEdge" platform to provide fiber access to some 100 local government, public school and utility locations throughout the city. The network architecture employs World Wide Packets' Active Ethernet technology. The current deployment is capable of growing into a network to ultimately serve over 50,000 residents and 8,000 businesses. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.worldwidepackets.com

• In January 2004, World Wide Packets, a start-up based in Spokane, Washington raised $15.7 million in the first closing of its third round of funding for its Ethernet-based last mile access solutions.



• World Wide Packets features a Layer 2 Ethernet-to-the-Subscriber architecture that runs over either copper or active fiber connections. The company's product line spans central office aggregation boxes, neighborhood concentrators and customer premise equipment, supporting IP voice, video and data services. World Wide Packets also provides a network management system with extensive provisioning capabilities. Because it leverages a Layer 2 Ethernet network architecture, the company said its network architecture more easily accommodates wholesale service models whereby multiple ISPs, voice carriers or video providers share the same network.

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