Monday, June 21, 2004

Verizon Extends Deployment of Nortel Packet Switches for Local Service

Verizon is extending its deployment of packet voice switches to serve local business and consumer lines in six additional central offices. Company technicians are currently installing packet-switching systems in five southern California communities and one town in the state of Washington. http://www.verizon....

Lucent Partners with Microsoft on IPTV

Lucent Technologies and Microsoft announced a non-exclusive partnership to integrate the Microsoft IPTV software platform with Lucent's network access solutions. This integration enables the delivery of standard-definition, high-definition and on-demand programming to the Microsoft TV IPTV-based set-top box via the Lucent Stinger IP-Enabled DSLAM and Lucent ADSL2+ modem. At SuperComm, the companies are showing high-definition content delivered over a single ADSL2+ connection. http://www.lucent....

Powell Praises SBC Move toward Network Investment

"The state of the industry is much better off this year than last because the talk about broadband and convergence is turning into real action and investment" said FCC Commissioner Michael K. Powell at a SuperComm event in Chicago. Powell describe President Bush's goal of making broadband available to all Americans by 2007 as achievable but ambitious. He said broadband should not be just about DSL or cable modems, but also include WiFi, WiMax, broadband over powerline and other forms of access. In reaction to the SBC announcement of investing...

Agere Develops Layer 4 Mechanism for "Unbreakable Access"

Agere Systems unveiled a Layer 4 technology for providing per-service protection in broadband access networks. Agere's "Unbreakable Access," which is an algorithm that runs on the company's network processors, identifies premium traffic streams entering the network and sets up back-up IP paths through the transport network. If a network path for a protected service, such as VoIP, IPTV or VOD, should fail, the system would restore the service using the alternate path. Agere said this restoration occurs up to 20 times faster than existing alternatives,...

SBC's Ed Whitacre Outlines $6 Billion FTTN Plans

Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of SBC Communications, outlined plans to invest up to $6 billion over the coming five years to push fiber deeper into neighborhoods and fully compete with cable network operators. SBC expects that a FTTN (fiber-to-the-node) architecture will enable it to deliver 15 to 20 Mbps DSL downstream to every home. Under its previous Project Pronto initiative launched in the late 1990s, SBC extended fiber into remote terminals located 12,000 ft from customers. The new plan would push fiber into remote terminals located with...

SUPERCOMM 2004 Opens in Chicago

SUPERCOMM 2004 opened in Chicago with 675 exhibitors, up by 25% over last year. Total attendance is expected to be about 30,000 over the three day event -- a 20% increase over last ye...

Turin Unveils SONET/SDH and Ethernet Edge System for Metro Access

Turin Networks introduced its "TraverseEdge 100" (TE-100), a compact next-generation SONET/SDH and Ethernet edge system for metro access networks. The platform can be used to aggregate a combination of DS1 or E1, DS3 or E3, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet service interfaces onto dual high-speed SONET OC-3/12/48 or SDH STM-1/4/16 ports The TE-100 supports key standards, including GFP (Generic Framing Procedure), LCAS (Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme) and both Low-order and High-order Virtual Concatenation (VCAT), which enable Ethernet traffic...

RADVISION Announces ATCA-based Video Media Server

RADVISION has ported its media server platform to the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA). The AdvancedTCA version of RADVISION's media server is a multipoint video telephony solution powered by Intel Architecture and built with modular communications building blocks optimized for Linux. The platform is powering a number of live video services demonstrations in Intel's booth at this week's SUPERCOMM tradeshow. The company plans to make available for carrier lab trials in Q4. RADVISION's existing video telephony...

Nextel Announces Unique 'Push To E-mail' Application

Nextel Communications is launching a "NextMail" application that allows users to send a streaming mp3 voice message from their phone to any e-mail recipient quickly and easily by simply pressing the "Direct Connect" button on the side of every Nextel phone. Because its messages are sent with a time and date stamp, NextMail provides a quick and easy means of communicating the status of current jobs or projects. The application can send the mp3 file to as many as 50 email addresses at once - and the recipient of a NextMail message can easily respond...

Spirent Offers VoIP-PSTN Emulation Test Solution

Spirent Communications introduced new VoIP performance emulation capabilities for Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test System. The Abacus 5000 can emulate a call agent, signaling gateway, IP end-points, PSTN network elements and generate real voice and RTP packets. Spirent's Abacus 5000 also features the first built-in media gateway controller (softswitch) emulator that can scale up to thousands of simultaneous calls. This feature simplifies testing of VoIP devices by reducing the need to deploy multiple softswitches and by saving time needed to configure...

Verilink Rolls Out a New Generation of VoIP Access Devices

Verilink introduced a new line of VoIP enabled Integrated Access Devices (IADs). Verilink's new 8000 Series supports Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) and Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) and provides a migration path from traditional telephony, TDM or ATM, to IP. Covad Communications is using Verilink's 8000 Series ...