White Rock Gains RUS Acceptance for SONET Products

White Rock Networks has gained RUS acceptance and RUS Buy American Status for its VLX2020 optical products from the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Technical Standards Committee . The designation enables rural telecommunications service providers to obtain low-interest funds to deploy the VLX2020 for voice, data, and video applications over OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, and OC-192 survivable SONET networks. http://www.whiterocknetworks.c...

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Net2Phone to Provide VoIP for Vietnam ISP

State-owned Vietnam Datacommunications Company (VDC), the largest provider of data services in Vietnam, is providing Net2Phone's VoIP services to its corporate and residential customers throughout Vietnam. Net2Phone has partnered with VITC, a U.S.-based communications firm with operations in Asia, to secure relationships with top Vietnamese ISPs, including VDC. Financial terms were not disclosed. Net2Phone's hosted SIP platform provides partners with residential broadband telephony, calling cards, prefix dialing and enterprise services. http:...

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Global Crossing Signs Brazil's Largest Financial Extranet

Global Crossing was awarded a one-year contract to provide multimedia services to provide Rede de Telecomunicações para o Mercado (RTM), the largest financial extranet in Brazil. The contract covers international voice capacity through Global Crossing's Direct Dial Services (DDS). http://www.globalcrossing....

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USDA Offers $2.2 Billion in Loans for Rural Broadband

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) will offer no less than $2.211 billion in loans for FY 2004 as part of its Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee program. The funding includes $2.051 billion for direct cost-of-money loans, $80 million for direct 4% loans, and $80 million for loan guarantees. The official notice was published in the Federal Register Online: : March 29, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 60). http://www.usda.gov/rus/telecom/index.htmhttp://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.h...

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Court Challenge to Cable Modem as "Information Service"

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to review a lower court's ruling that had overturned the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an "information service." The case originally arose regarding whether local municipalities could require cable operators to open their networks to other ISPs. In October 2003, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court vacated the FCC declaratory ruling that had classified cable modem service as an "information service without a separate offering of a telecommunications service." The FCC promptly appealed...

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Agilent Introduces SAN Tester for 4 Gbps FC

Agilent Technologies announced test capabilities for the 4 Gbps Fibre Channel standard. The Agilent 1733A SAN test module enables Fibre Channel traffic generation at wire speeds of 2 Gbps or 4 Gbps, with allowances for any combination of data, error, link, fabric control and fabric services test. It fits in the same Agilent platform as the company's existing 1 and 2 Gbps test modules. http://www.agilent....

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ADC Supplies FTTP in Florida

Home Town Cable Plus, an integrated service provider in Port St. Lucie, Florida is deploying ADC's OmniReach FTTP products to deliver voice, video, data, and Internet services to homes and businesses in its subscriber area. These services include POTS and long distance, 217 channels of switched digital video (SDV), gigabit Ethernet Internet service and enhanced home security service over the IP-based FTTP network. http://www.adc....

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Level 3 Acquires ICG's Wholesale Dial Access Business

Level 3 Communications has acquired the wholesale dial access business of ICG Communications for approximately $35 million in cash. The business unit provides dial-up Internet access to America Online, EarthLink, MSN, United Online and other leading ISPs. Level 3 plans to migrate a majority of ICG's customer traffic onto its own network infrastructure over the course of the next two quarters. http://www.level3....

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BT Selects Alcatel's IP-based Service Delivery Platform

BT awarded a EUR 30 million contract Alcatel for an service delivery platform that enables advanced IP services and supports existing Number Translation and Network based Call Centre services. The contract, which is part of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) strategy, covers the Alcatel 8690 Open Services Platform (OSP). Alcatel is working with Sun Microsystems and Ulticom to supply the IT platforms and signaling software, respectively. The Alcatel 8690 OSP is part of Alcatel's Open Path to Enhanced Networking (OPEN) program for enhanced broadband...

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Spirent Adds VoIP Conformance Testing for IP Telephony

Spirent Communications rolled out a new bundle of Convergence Test & Measurement applications for the Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test Migration System. The new features add SIP, H.323, MEGACO, MGCP, and SIGTRAN protocol conformance. Spirent's Abacus 5000 system provides a variety of test scenarios and unique capabilities, such as emulating a call agent (media gateway controller) and signaling gateway, the backbone of a VoIP network. By generating real voice and data traffic and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) packets, the Abacus 5000 with...

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SBC Offers Faster DSL -- 1.5 to 3 Mbps Downstream

SBC Communications launched higher speed consumer DSL tiers at up to twice the download speeds of its current flagship DSL offer.Residential customers, who qualify, can get speeds of 1.5 to 3 Mbps downstream and 384 Kbps upstream - for $36.99 a month if they also subscribe to SBC Total Connections, which includes local, long distance and wireless service. If ordered online or as part of a qualifying bundle of SBC services, residential and business customers can receive the higher speed SBC Yahoo! DSL for $39.99 a month. When purchased separately...

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QUALCOMM's Push-to-Talk Claims Set-up Latency Under 1sec

QUALCOMM announced that its QChat push-to-chat solution achieves a call set-up latency of less than one second. At the IIR Push-to-Talk World Summit, QUALCOMM demonstrated its QChat technology running over a CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network (Release 0 with QoS software enhancements). http://www.qualcomm....

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Malaysia Equips Teachers with Wi-Fi

Malaysia's Ministry of Education has equipped 35,000 teachers with notebook PCs using Intel Centrino technology in the first phase of a five-year technology integration plan that also includes enabling all schools with Wi-Fi. http://www.intel....

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Foundry Switches to Power "FlashMob" Supercomputer

Foundry Networks is supplying its Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches for FlashMob I, a supercomputer to be created on 03-April-2004 at the University of San Francisco by hundreds of volunteers using their ordinary laptop PCs. The "FlashMob" computer uses the combined processing power of all the donated laptops to work on a single problem. The Foundry FastIron 1500 Layer 2/3 switches will be interconnected via 10 Gigabit Ethernet to enable a very high-speed switch fabric. http://www.flashmobcomputing.orghttp://www.foundrynetworks....

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