U.S. Senate Looks for Lessons from Telecom Act of '96

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is holding two public hearings this week on "Lessons Learned from the Telecom Act of 1996." Senator McCain will preside. The tentative list of witnesses includes David Dorman, CEO of AT&T; Richard Notebaert, CEO of Qwest Communications; James Geiger, CEO of Cbeyond Communications; Adam Thierer, Director of Telecommunications Studies at The Cato Institute; Charles Ferguson, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; Reed E. Hundt, the former Chairman of the FCC during the Clinton...

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Bush Calls for Internet Access Tax Ban

Noting that the U.S. now ranks 10th amongst industrialized nations in broadband availability, President George Bush issued a call for Congress to permanently ban taxes on Internet access. His speech also included passing references to government policies that would encourage carriers to invest in broadband. He also mentioned a need for standards that encourage broadband-over-powerline deployments. Bush also affirmed his support Michael Powell's chairmanship of the FCC. http://www.whitehouse....

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David Juliano Named President of Comcast Online

David Juliano has been promoted to president of Comcast Online, which handles the company's residential and commercial High-Speed Internet services. Previously, Juliano served as the division's senior vice president and general manager. Since 1999, Comcast Online has grown under Juliano's leadership from 80 thousand customers to become the nation's number one broadband provider - with over 5.3 million customershttp://www.comcast....

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Conexant Reports $243.8 Million in Revenue, up 38%

In its first earnings report following the completion of its merger with GlobespanVirata, Conexant Systems reported quarterly revenues of $243.8 million, up 38% over the preceding quarter and up 74% over the same period in 2003. The net loss for the quarter was $143.4 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $68.0 million, or $0.26 per diluted share in the preceding period. The company cited strength in growth areas, which include products for DSL connectivity and wireless local area networking as well as digital set-top...

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Major Service Providers Join WiMAX Forum

The WiMAX Forum today announces that major service providers including BT, France Telecom Qwest Communications, Reliance Telecom and XO Communications have joined the organization. Service providers now make up nearly 25% of the WiMAX Forum membership. http://www.WiMAXForum....

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Net2Phone and Navini Combine VoIP with Wi-Fi

Net2Phone has adapted its broadband VoIP telephony service to operate over Navini Networks' wireless broadband infrastructure equipment. Under a partnership, Net2Phone will offer VoIP telephony solutions to Navini's wireless broadband customers. Net2Phone's wholesale VoiceLine service provides inbound and outbound calling with applications such as phone number selection, call waiting, caller ID and voice mail. Calls are routed over Navini's Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) solution to Net2Phone's SIP-based platform, which performs call...

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Telica Adds Voice Routing Engine to its Softswitch

Telica has enhanced its Plexus 9000 and PLUS second generation softswitch family with a new Advanced Multi-key Routing application that allows service providers to route calls based on hundreds of parameters, including least-cost routing, time-of-day routing, class/quality of service routing, switch ID routing, domestic and international routing, and other factors. Telica said carriers could use this capability to define multiple routing plans that support individualized handling of each customer's traffic. Some examples include:Route voice calls...

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Alcatel Invests $15 Million in General Bandwidth

Alcatel has invested US$15 million in General Bandwidth, a start-up based in Austin, Texas that has developed a VoIP Media Gateway. The investment further strengthens the three-year OEM relationship between the two companies and allows for additional development enhancements to their joint FTTP and VoIP offerings. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.genband.comIn December 2003, SBC Communications announced a four-year primary supplier agreement with Alcatel for SBC's FTTP initiative. As part of that supplier agreement, General Bandwidth provides...

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Allied Telesyn Goes Live with ADSL2+

Allied Telesyn announced the deployment of ADSL2+ technology in "Triple Play" networks at Vernon Telephone Cooperative in Westby, Wisconsin and Coon Valley Telephone Company in Coon Valley, Wisconsin. Allied Telesyn is delivering ADSL2+ in both its 9400 and 9700 Multiservice Access Platforms -- both of which use an "Any Service, Any Slot" architecture that simultaneously supports ADSL, ADSL2+ and FTTH. The platforms are complemented by Allied Telesyn's RG-634 residential gateway, which provides an ADSL2+ modem, VoIP ports, Layer 3 routing and...

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Qwest to Eliminate Access Charges on True VoIP Calls

Qwest Communications is adopting a new policy that makes all "true VoIP traffic" terminating on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) free from access charges. Additionally, Qwest also plans to begin offering local services to VoIP providers, including primary rate interface ISDN circuits (ISDN-PRI). ISDN-PRI is a local exchange service that uses "enhanced T-1" facilities and allows VoIP providers to serve multiple channels within a single broadband connection. Qwest said this would enable VoIP providers to have direct access to the PSTN...

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Charter Deploys Motorola's Broadband Media Center With Moxi

Charter Communications began offering the Motorola Broadband Media Center (BMC) with Digeo's Moxi Service in Charter's Rochester, Minnesota market. The Motorola BMC is an advanced digital set-top that integrates high- definition television (HDTV) with a dual-tuner digital video recorder (DVR), providing the ability to watch one channel while recording another. In July 2003, Charter made a commitment to purchase 100,000 Motorola BMC units. The companies said consumer trials of the BMC has been positive. Separately, Comcast announced a planned commercial...

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Atheros Ships Single-Chip 802.11g

Atheros Communications announced volume shipments of a single-chip IEEE 802.11g WLAN solution -- an industry first, according to the company. The CMOS device integrates a Media Access Controller (MAC), a baseband processor, a high-performance 2.4-GHz radio, and many of the discrete components used in earlier 802.11g designs, resulting in a 35% part count reduction from products based on two-chip solutions, and a similar reduction in BOM (bill-of-materials) costs. The new Atheros chip leverages better signal processing technology that extends...

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Connexion by Boeing Selected by Korean Air

Korean Airlines will install Connexion by Boeing mobile connectivity service on its long-haul fleet of 747-400s and 777ERs in early 2005, with service beginning shortly after that. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/Connexion by Boeing now has agreements with Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System, Japan Airlines, ANA and Kingdom Holding Co., to equip their long-haul aircraft with the mobile connectivity service. Singapore Airlines and China Airlines also have announced their intent to install...

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Dialpad Launches Broadband Phone Service

Dialpad Communications launched a broadband phone service. Dialpad is offering the Cisco ATA 186 and the Sipura SPA2000 gateways for use with this service. Dialpad has also announced that in the coming months it will be adding other broadband phone devices to its offerings and rolling out several special calling features for its broadband phone users. http://www.dialpad.c...

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Lucent Chooses Xilinx FPGAs for its Optical Translator Unit

Lucent Technologies has selected Xilinx FPGAs for a new 10 Gbps Tunable Optical Translator Unit, a key component in one of its DWDM metro optical systems. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro with embedded PowerPC processor running Linux is used for the control and communications functions in its OTU. http://www.xilinx.c...

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ARRIS Develops Edge Product for Digital Video and On-Demand Content

ARRIS introduced a new class of edge network device for cable operators that is designed for simultaneous delivery of MPEG- 2TS and DVB-C based digital video content and emerging DOCSIS-based IP digital multimedia content and signaling. The ARRIS Q5 Digital Multimedia Termination System (DMTS) couples QAM and DOCSIS/EUR-DOCSIS 2.0 CMTS technologies with integral multiplexing features. These capabilities enables the ARRIS Q5 DMTS to produce a dynamically allocated multiplex of digital video broadcast, Video on Demand (VoD), IP Multicast, IP Unicast...

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Greenfield Networks Unveils Ethernet Switch Silicon for IPv6, MPLS

Greenfield Networks, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, unveiled its silicon solutions designed for a new generation of enterprise and metro/ISP edge equipment. Greenfield, which has been operating in stealth mode since 2001, said today's Ethernet market is sharply divided between low-end, commodity switches with limited capabilities and high-end, ASIC driven platforms that are really only suited for core applications. It's ...

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