NTT Com Deploys Inter-AS Diagnostics to Monitor Routing Anomalies

NTT Communications is deploying a new inter-AS diagnostic system in its OCN Internet backbone service to monitor and diagnose anomalies in routing information between multiple ISPs. The system, which was developed by NTT Laboratories, is believed to be the first such automated inter-domain monitoring tool in use in a commercial Internet service.


NTT said that routing anomalies between "Autonomous Systems (AS)" until now could only be analyzed manually by network operators with specialized skills. It is difficult for network operators to constantly monitor huge volumes of routing information that change from moment to moment in order to discover dangerous anomalies at an early stage. There have been numerous incidents of malicious activity in this respect and the most significant Internet vulnerabilities are seen in the context of DNS and BGP.


NTT's ENCORE system places agents with monitoring and diagnostic capabilities at each ISP, integrates the information gathered by these Agents to infer routing information behavior, and analyzes the causes of anomalies. When an abnormality is detected through regular monitoring, the system diagnoses the anomaly and identifies the factors inhibiting communications. http://www.ntt.co.jp

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Verizon Reaches Tentative Labor Agreements With Two Unions

Verizon reached tentative agreements with both the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on new, three-year contracts covering approximately 400 employees in 10 states. The employees work in a division called the National Buried Service Wire Group and are responsible for the location and placement of underground telecommunications facilities and equipment.


The new contracts, which run through March 2007, provide for a 12% general wage increase over the life of the contracts, with annual increases of 4%. Verizon noted improvements to several benefit packages and said a new element of the contracts states that covered employees in the group will have a streamlined process for applying for future Verizon job openings in construction, maintenance and installation functions. http://www.verizon.com

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Siemens Launches Fixed-line MMS Phone

Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) introduced a fixed line MMS phone for the home market. The cordless phone combines a high-resolution color display and an integrated digital camera. Borrowing another mobile feature, the Siemens' Gigaset SL740/SLX740isdn offers picture CLIP to personalize a phone book with snapshots that can be associated with specific incoming callers. http://www.siemens.com

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Alcatel and Korea's SK Telecom Debut Photo-Music-Video Service

SK Telecom, the largest mobile operator in Korea, introduced a photo-music-video (PMV) service at the 3GSM World Congress 2004 in Cannes, France that was developed jointly with Alcatel. The service enables users to produce and send personalized video content to mobile phones or an email address. The message combines digital photos with music and video they like, as well as text and desired effects. The service leverages the Alcatel Mobile Multimedia Service (MMS) platform.


SK Telecom launched trial PMV service in Korea in December 2003 and plans to launch the service commercially in April.


Alcatel said its Linux-based MMS platform, featuring three 2.4 GHz, dual-processor Intel Xeon processor-based rack-mounted servers, can process over 150 MMS messages per second -- the equivalent of over half a million MMS messages per hour. http://www.alcatel.com

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Brazil's Vivo Selects Marconi for Wireless Network

Vivo, the largest mobile operator in South America, selected Marconi for a network expansion that includes wireless access and SDH optical backbone equipment. Marconi is also providing antennae systems and network installation and commissioning. The network will improve Vivo's capability to carry its customer's mobile traffic over its own network, reducing its dependency on incumbent operators for the transportation of its customers' call traffic. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Vivo is a joint venture between Telefónica Móviles and Portugal Telecom with more than 20.5 million customers at the end of 2003, which represents 45% of the current Brazilian mobile market and the 56% of its areas of operations. It's cellular footprint covers 86 percent of the Brazilian territory and includes 19 Brazilian states and Federal districts. http://www.marconi.com

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Barton Replaces Tauzin on Key Congressional Committee for Telecom

Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) will replace William "Billy" Tauzin, (R-La) as the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, which oversees telecommunications related issues in the U.S. House of Representatives. In recent years, Tauzin has been an outspoken critic of the FCC and its decision to allow state commission to set rates for unbundled network element (UNE). In 2002, he sponsored the Tauzin-Dingell Broadband Legislation (H.R. 1542), which was widely seen as favoring the Regional Bell Operating Companies. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 273 to 157 to approve the legislation, but the U.S. Senate never acted on the bill and it was never signed into law. http://www.house.gov

• Speaking at the USTA Telecom show in Las Vegas in October 2003, Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas) predicted that Congress most likely will not consider any major new telecommunications legislation in 2004 due to the presidential election and other higher priority issues. Barton, who sits on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said it is "obvious that we need to revisit the Telecom Act of 1996." Whereas many people anticipated that the Telecom Act would lead to extensive facilities-based competition, Barton said FCC policies had instead led to the mess of UNE-p. Barton suggested that we "may need a legislative fix" for other industry issues, such as the challenge of how to increase broadband penetration rates in the U.S. and what to do about the Universal Service Fund.

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AFC Adds Former AT&T Exec to its Board

Frank Ianna, retired president of AT&T Network Services, was elected to AFC's board of directors. The election brings the number of AFC board members to seven. http://www.afc.com

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Sonim and Sony Ericsson to Collaborate on Push to Talk Over Cellular

Sonim Technologies, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, has entered into a global strategic partnership Sony Ericsson focused on Push-to-Talk applications. Sonim and Sony Ericsson will collaborate to integrate Push-to-Talk capability in Sony Ericsson phones, based on the Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) standard.


The PoC specification aims to provide consumers and business users a seamless Push-to-Talk experience, and the ability to access the service with any enabled handset anywhere around the world. http://www.sonimtech.comhttp://www.SonyEricsson.com

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Sonim Raises $28 Million for its Push-to-Talk Technology

Sonim Technologies, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, announced $28 million in Series C financing for its Push-to-Talk technology for wireless networks. Sonim develops valued-enhanced applications for GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA and CDMA 2000 networks. Its Push-to-Talk solution is compliant with the recently announced Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) specification. The new funding cam from Accel Partners and from the existing investors, funds advised by Apax Partners, 3i Partners and BV Capital. http://www.sonimtech.com

• Earlier this month, Sonim Technologies announced separate strategic partnerships with Samsung and with Sony Ericsson.

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Ixia Extends Conformance Testing to High-Speed PoS

Ixia introduced a new virtual network interface card (VNIC) driver for its IxANVL protocol conformance testing software that enables testing over OC-48 and OC-192 Packet over SONET (POS) networks. The new VNIC driver expands the complete IxANVL solution to all high-speed network interfaces, including Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, ATM, Sync Serial, Async Serial, T1/E1 and now high-speed POS. http://www.ixiacom.com

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Orange France and RIM to Launch BlackBerry Services

Orange France will begin offering the BlackBerry wireless service over its GSM/GPRS network. BlackBerry from Orange France will provide mobile professionals with push-based access to their corporate email system via an advanced handheld, in addition to phone capabilities, Internet access and organizer. http://www.rim.com

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Elliptic Semiconductor Licenses its IPSec Core to Centillium

Elliptic Semiconductor has licensed its IPSec offload engine to Centillium Communications for use in its ADSL System-on-Chip (SoC) product family. Elliptic said the dramatic increase in speed of ADSL to 40 Mbps or more in countries such as Japan makes DSL the preferred method of Internet access for corporate email, extranets and remote access for mobile and/or home based employees. Increasingly businesses use either IPSec or SSL virtual private networks (VPNs) to conduct business with complete privacy over the increasingly hostile Internet.


Elliptic Semiconductor is based in Ottawa. http://www.ellipticsemi.com

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Telefónica Reports Steady Growth, 2.7 Million ADSL Users

The Telefónica Group of Spain reported steady growth in all of its major business lines and the general improvement of its financials. Revenues in Q4 2003 increased 9%, EBITDA 18.3% and operating income 41.6% compared to a year earlier. Some Telefónica Group operating highlights, as of 31-Dec-2003:

• 99 million telephony customers, a 13% increase on end-2002.



• 52 million managed cellular customers, a 25.7% rise on last year, thanks mostly to strong commercial activity in all its areas of operation. In 2003, the cellular business became the largest contributor to Group EBITDA, with EUR 4.581.9 billion (36.4% of the total vs 32.7% in 2002).



• 2.7 million ADSL connections, up by 81.8% for the year. Of this total, 1.9 million are in Europe and the rest in Latin America.



• Spain represented 62% of the Group's 2003 revenues, compared to 59% for the prior year. Latin America's contribution to the company's revenues was down to 33.3% of the total, compared to 35.2% a year earlier.



• Net debt of Telefónica Group was EUR 19.235 billion, down from EUR 22.533 a year earlier



• CAPEX in 2003 totaled EUR 3.727 billion, a decrease of 1.6% from 2002

http://www.telefonica.es

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ARRIS Receives Major CMTS Order from Japanese MSO

Jupiter Telecommunications Co. Ltd. (J-COM Broadband), Japan's largest multiple system operator (MSO), has deployed a number of ARRIS Cadant C4 Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTS). J-COM will use the platform to support the very high data rate services it is offering, as well as to ease their upgrade to high density DOCSIS 2.0 operations. Financial terms were not disclosed.


As of 31-Dec-2003, J-COM served 1,781,800 subscribing households in the Hokkaido, Kanto, Kansai, and Kyushu regions of Japan. J-COM Broadband's principal shareholders are Liberty Media Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. http://www.arrisi.comhttp://www.jcom.co.jp/corporate/english.html

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China Network Communications Selects Cisco 10000

China Network Communications Group (CNG) will deploy the Cisco 10000 Edge Services Router as part of its aggressive expansion of broadband services in the provinces of Shandong, Liaoning, and Hangzhou. Combined, the three provinces currently have over 1 million broadband subscribers. Broadband demand is expected to double over the next year. http://www.cisco.com

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Marvell Post Record Revenues of $243 Million, a 13% Sequential Rise

Marvell Technology Group posted record quarterly revenue of $243.3 million, representing an increase of 61% over the same period a year earlier and a 13% sequential increase from the preceding quarter. Net income (GAAP) was $19.8 million, or $0.14 per share (diluted). The period was Marvell's 25th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.


Marvell attributed its strong revenue growth largely to the continued adoption of its Gigabit, wireless and storage silicon products.


Additionally, Marvell's Board of Directors has approved a 2 for 1 stock split. http://www.marvell.com

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