SBC Sees Progress over Peers in Broadband

SBC Communications is making progress over its U.S. peers in broadband, said Randall Stephenson, SBC's Senior Executive Vice President & CFO, speaking at the Merrill Lynch Global Communications Investor Conference. At the end of 2003, SBC had 3.5 million DSL customers, compared to 2.5 million for Verizon. Comcast had 5.3 million cable modem customers at the end of 2003, but its net adds dropped off significantly in Q4. Meanwhile, SBC has completed 8 consecutive quarters of growing DSL net additions. DSL coverage is now about 80% of its...

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Verizon Seeks Growth in New Services

The telecommunications market is getting bigger, at least for companies on the right side of the technology, said Lawrence T. Babbio Jr., Vice Chairman & President of Verizon, speaking at the Merrill Lynch Global Communications Investor Conference in New York. Babbio said the Verizon continues to deliver on its business plan and will move aggressively to establish a leadership position in key growth areas. These include: Broadband -- where there has been "good" subscriber growth in January and February. The company is upgrading the MSN...

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Lucent Looks to Next-Gen Opportunities

Lucent's return to profitability has been all about improved productivity and a focus on next-gen market opportunities, said Patricia F. Russo, Chairman & CEO of Lucent Technologies, speaking at the Merrill Lynch Global Communications Investor Conference in New York. For instance, Lucent's gross margins have risen from 16% in Q1 2001 to 41% in Q1 2004 and quarterly operating expenses have been reduced by 78% over the same period. Russo observed that the "the tone in our industry has improved in recent months," and she expects the market will...

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Callipso Launches Prepaid, Wholesale Conferencing Service

Callipso announced the availability of two new platform service offerings: "ProConferencer," a web-based, on-demand conferencing application that enables prepaid service providers to offer prepaid hosted audio conferencing services to Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and small-to-medium size businesses. The new voice conferencing application allows businesses to initiate conference calls from any phone or PC without making reservations or relying on operator assistance. "ProCaller", a turnkey prepaid phone card platform for service providers....

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ITU Counts 1.35 billion Mobile Subscribers Worldwide

At the end of 2003, there were over 1.35 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with only 1.2 billion fixed-line users, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU recently convened a global meeting to examine the social and human considerations relating to the rapid development of mobile technology. Two background papers were prepared for discussion at the workshop: "Broadband mobile communications towards a converged world" and "Social and human considerations for a more mobile world". http://www.itu.int/n...

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Level 3 Readies Wholesale Consumer VoIP Service

Level 3 Communications will rollout two new residential VoIP services later this month aimed at broadband users. Level 3 plans to offer the service in more than 300 markets across the U.S. by year's end. The services will be sold through U.S. cable operators, ISPs and enhanced service providers. The company said its service will offer national coverage, enable local number portability, and will meet 911 and E911 interconnection standards across the U.S. As part of the announcement, Level 3 reiterated a VoIP strategy spanning three key areas: Wholesale...

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DIRECTV Renews NDS Conditional Access Contract

DIRECTV signed a six-year agreement for NDS to provide its VideoGuard conditional access system and services to support the DIRECTV pay-TV service. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.nds.com NDS is a News Corporation compa...

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Global Crossing Supplies Wavelength Service to Limelight

Global Crossing was awarded a contract extension to supply a seven-location wavelength delivery network to support Limelight Networks, which provides digital delivery for leading media, entertainment and Internet companies, including IFILM, BuyMusic.com, Musicmatch, Real Networks, RadioFree Virgin, Valve Software, and Quepasa.com. Global Crossing's Wavelength Service is an alternative to dark fiber and traditional capacity services. Limelight Networks has been using Global Crossing's IP Transit for content transport since 2001. Financial terms...

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ARRIS Adds Hitless Software Update to CMTS

ARRIS announced a new software release for its Cadant C4 cable modem termination system (CMTS) that enables the installation of maintenance software updates on a non service effecting basis. In addition to the new hitless update capability, the software also provides for increased cable modem and multimedia terminal adapter (MTA) scalability, additional denial-of-service (DOS) attack counter-measures which provide significant additional system security, and numerous Layer 3 router extensions. http://www.arrisi....

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TI Introduces 10GE (XAUI) Backplane SERDES

Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new discrete serializer/deserializer (SERDES) capable of error-free transmission over 80 inches of standard backplane trace. The device, which could be used to enable higher density systems, is a redundant XAUI serial transceiver compliant with the IEEE 802.3ae specification for 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The device performs the parallel-to-serial conversion, serial-to-parallel conversion and clock extraction functions for a physical layer interface. http://www.ti....

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Laurel Adds 12-port Clear Channel and Channelized DS-3/E3 Cards

Laurel Networks announced the availability of 12-port channelized and clear channel DS-3/E3 electrical physical interface (PHY) cards for its ST200 Service Edge Router. The 12-port channelized DS-3 card provides physical DS-3 connectivity and supports a combination of up to 1,024 NxDS-0, 336 T1 and 12 DS-3 channels. The 12-port clear channel DS-3/E3 card supports 12 clear channel DS-3 or E3 ports. Both new cards feature Laurel's QoS capabilities and the flexibility to configure AnyService on each channel, including Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP),...

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MeshNetworks Offers Embedded Software Suite for WLAN Developers

MeshNetworks, a start-up based in Maitland, Florida introduced its "MeshConnex" embedded software solution targeted at wireless OEMs. The ad hoc networking software suite is a cross-platform, radio agnostic implementation of the company's high-performance MeshNetworks Enabled Architecture (MEA) technology. Developers and OEMs could use the software to integrate MeshNetworks' Multi-Hopping routing techniques into new and existing wireless devices. The company is currently demonstrating the technology running on the Atheros chipset and reference...

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Connexion to Connect with T-Systems' WLAN Roaming Platform

The Connexion by Boeing is planning to connect its in-flight broadband service to T-Systems' WLAN Roaming Platform. T-Systems' WLAN Roaming Platform acts as a single interface from one connected provider to all of the other carriers and wireless ISPs connected to the platform. http://www.t-systems....

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USDTV Launches 'Over-The-Air' Subscription TV Service

U.S. Digital Television, Inc. (USDTV) has launched a low-cost, digital TV subscription service in Salt Lake City as an alternative to cable and satellite TV offerings. USDTV delivers its subscription television service as an over the air signal in partnership with local broadcast entities. USDTV has a $19.95 charge per month and requires a $99 set-top box. The company is planning to expand its service to Albuquerque, N.M., and Las Vegas in the next 30 days. USDTV's initial channel offering includes local stations, as well as the Disney Channel...

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MCI Separates Chairman and CEO Roles

As part of its corporate governance reforms, MCI has separated the chairman and CEO roles at the company. Michael Capellas, who has been MCI chairman and CEO since December 2002, will become MCI president and CEO. Nicholas Katzenbach, the former U.S. Attorney General, will become non-executive Chairman of the Board, effective upon MCI's emergence from Chapter 11 protection. Katzenbach has been an MCI Board member since July 2002. MCI also announced the following organizational changes: Wayne Huyard, president of U.S. Sales and ServiceCindy...

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Acterna Releases Analyzer for Ethernet, WAN, ATM and POS

Acterna released an IP analyzer Ethernet, WAN, ATM and Packet-Over-SONET networksoperating at up to 2.4 Gbps. Acterna's new DA-3600A is a consolidated platform that adds all of the features currently available for the company's DA-3400 and DA-3600 IP network troubleshooting and data analysis platforms. In addition, the DA-3600A has the capability of supporting MPLS over Ethernet. http://www.acterna....

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