Qwest Reports Continued Access Line Loss, to Offer Standalone DSL

Qwest Communications reported Q4 revenue of $3.5 billion, a 5.6% decrease from Q4 of 2002. For the full year, revenue was $14.3 billion compared to $15.4 billion for 2002, or a decline of 7%. The net loss for the fourth quarter was $307 million, or $0.17 per diluted share. Some highlights of the report:Access line loss continued at the same rate as Q3 2003. Total access lines, excluding the impact of 145,000 MCI lines disconnected in Q2, decreased by 3.9 percent year-over-year compared to 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2002. Sequentially,...

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Ciena to Acquire Catena for $487 Million, Entering Broadband Access Market

CIENA will acquire Catena Networks, a privately-held supplier of broadband access equipment, for approximately $486.7 million in stock (77.5 million shares of CIEN). Catena Networks has deployed more than 5,500 integrated broadband access solutions for RBOCs, IOCs and CLECs. Catena's major customer include BellSouth and two other RBOCs.Catena generated approximately $25 million in revenue in Q4 and is recently profitable. The company has approximately 250 employees. It has offices in Ottawa, Ontario and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.Catena's...

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Ciena to Acquire Internet Photonics for $150 million

CIENA will acquire privately held Internet Photonics, a supplier of carrier-grade optical Ethernet transport and switching solutions, for approximately $150 million in stock (24.4 million CIEN shares). Internet Photonics' Ethernet transport solution has gained momentum with North American cable MSOs, including deployments with six of top ten cable operators in the U.S. Carriers could also use Internet Photonics' solutions to deploy Ethernet private-line services. Internet Photonics is based in Shrewsbury, New Jersey and Marlborough, Massachusetts....

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Ciena Reports Revenue of $66 Million

CIENA reported revenue of $66.4 million for the fiscal quarter ending 31-January-2004, compared with $70.5 million for the same period last year. CIENA's reported net loss for the quarter (GAAP) was $76.7 million, or a net loss of $0.16 per share. There were 100 customers during the quarter, including 14 new accounts. There was one international customer that represented 17% of the quarter's revenue. Overall gross margin for products and services was 30.9%. The company ended the quarter with cash and short- and long-term investments valued...

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Teknovus Ships EPON System-on-a-Chip

Teknovus, a start-up based in Petaluma, California announced shipment of a fully integrated Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) controller for Optical Network Units (ONUs). The device is compliant with the emerging IEEE 802.3ah EPON standard. It integrates an 802.3ah EPON engine supporting multiple logical links, along with an EPON SERDES, two Ethernet PHYs, integrated buffers, and an embedded processor for management in a single package. The device also includes line-rate Layer 2/3/4 packet filtering and classification hardware, offers a...

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Charter Adds 88,100 Cable Modem Users in Q4

Charter Communications reported Q4 revenues of $1.217 billion, an increase of 2% over last year's Q4 revenues of $1.189 billion. This growth is due primarily to a $49 million, or 47%, increase in high-speed data revenues, reflecting 437,400 additional data customers since December 2002, including 88,100 in the Q4.High-speed data revenues increased 65% year over year. Bundled customers increased 35% in 2003 and represent 22% of Charter's customer relationships as compared to 16% a year ago. Charter reported a net loss of 120,900 analog video customers...

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Motorola Introduces Softswitch-based IP Multimedia Subsystem

Motorola's Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) introduced an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that complements its SoftSwitch (MSS) and Push-To-Talk over Cellular (PoC) core product initiatives. The Motorola IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) enables converged voice, data and video applications through standards-based interfaces. It is compliant with 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards for IP Multimedia Subsystems, and supports a variety of 2.5G and 3G wireless access networks, including GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, and CDMA, as well as emerging systems such as IEEE 802.11...

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AudioCodes Announces UMTS Compliant Media Gateway

AudioCodes has extended its Stretto converged (wireless and wireline) media gateway product family to comply with the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) R'4 and R'5 standards. AudioCodes' UMTS-enabled media gateways and blades enable OEM vendors to build and offer next generation cellular networks, based on carrier-grade, feature- rich, standards-compliant media gateways. Such gateways enable 3G operators to cap their investment in legacy TDM equipment or proprietary technologies. http://www.audiocodes....

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BT to develop new National Network for the NHS

BT was awarded a seven-year contract valued at £530 million to procure, integrate and manage networking services for the New National Network for the NHS. The project, which is part of a £5 billion program to modernize IT systems used by the national health service, is described as one of the largest intranets in Europe. BT said the increased bandwidth provided by the network would open up a host of new opportunities to the 18,000 NHS sites in England. http://www.btplc....

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China Telecom Expands IP-based PAS Network

China Telecom Corporation (CTC) awarded a contract valued at approximately $18.8 million to UTStarcom for expansion of its IP-based PAS (Personal Access System) network in the province of Gui Zhou. The IP-based PAS deployment in Gui Zhou in 2003 attracted 350,000 subscribers in its first six months. http://www.utstarcom....

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Mexico's Ultravision Deploys Navini's Broadband Wireless

Mexico's Ultravision S.A. de C.V., which operates MMDS wireless cable television networks in over 40 cities, begin commercially deploying a Non-Line-of-Sight wide- area wireless broadband network using equipment from Navini Networks. Ultravision will deploy Navini's 2.6 GHz MMDS technology covering approximately 334,960 households in Puebla, San Andres Cholula and San Pedro Cholula. Ultravision will be able to offer a broadband service with download speeds up to 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds up to 550 Kbps. Financial terms were not disclosed. h...

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EC Notes Good Progress in Rolling out Broadband

A mid-term progress report published by the European Commission notes good progress in rolling out broadband access and in getting public services on line. Broadband penetration has almost doubled in the year to October 2003 and there has been strong progress in a number of policy areas. The report finds that future priorities should include a focus on interoperability, standards and multi-platform access, learning from practical experiences in other EU member states, focusing on content for new high speed services, and developing businesses...

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