Level 3 Reports Revenue of $391 Million

Level 3 Communications reported revenue of $391 million for its Communications business, compared to $389 million for the previous quarter. Revenue for Level 3's information services business was $503 million compared to $494 million for the previous quarter. The net loss for the second quarter 2004 decreased to $63 million or $0.09 per share compared to a net loss for the previous quarter of $147 million or $0.22 per share.



During the quarter, the company announced two new consumer VoIP services aimed at cable operators, enhanced service providers, ISPs, IXCs and others who provide residential voice services to end-users: (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service, which is targeted towards customers who currently operate their own switching infrastructure, but want to deploy residential voice services cost effectively with minimal involvement in local interconnection issues; and HomeTone, which is a turnkey VoIP residential service offering local and long distance capabilities. http://www.level3.com

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Sprint and Novatel Offer Wi-Fi/PCS Connection Card

Sprint and Novatel Wireless are offering a new PCMCIA that offers seamless always-on connectivity via the Sprint Nationwide PCS Network and Wi-Fi networks. The Sprint PCS Connection Card by Novatel Wireless (Merlin C201) now comes packaged with Sprint PCS Connection Manager Software.



While connected to the enhanced Sprint Nationwide PCS Network that covers 99% of the nation's largest cities, customers can wirelessly access the Internet and corporate applications at data speeds averaging between 50 and 70 Kbps, with peak speeds up to 144 Kbps prior to bandwidth optimization. The Sprint PCS Wi-Fi Access provides connectivity at up to 11 Mbps. http://www.sprint.com

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Telefónica Reaches 3.7 million ADSL Lines

Telefónica reported a 5.6% growth in operating revenues to EUR 14.324 billion for the first half of 2004, compared to the same period in 2003. First-half operating profit was EUR 3.421 billion, 21.4% more than in the year-ago period.

Some highlights:

• Telefónica enlarged its worldwide customer base by 12.6% to 103.8 million.



• The number of ADSL connections rose by 1.7 million net versus June 2003 to 3.7 million. The 2 million connections operative in Spain (+58.2% vs June 2003) equate to an estimated 74% share of the overall broadband market, while Telefónica Group's 1.6 million retail clients give it 58% of this ADSL segment. In Latin America, ADSL connections now number over one million (0.6 million one year back), of which 0.6 million fall to Telesp (+58% year-on- year).



• Telefónica de España operating revenues rose 2.2% year-on-year to EUR 5.399 billion at the 1H04 close. Worth noting is the clear spurt in revenue growth in the second-quarter period, which owes in part to the rise in the monthly fee effective as of 01-April-2004.



• A geographical breakdown shows Spain representing 61.6% of the Group's consolidated revenues at the end of the second quarter, though its weight had dropped 1.3 p.p. vs. June 2003 with the slack taken up by Brazil (17.6% vs. 16%). Latin America raised its share of total revenues by 0.9 p.p. to 33.1%.



• The Group's net debt amounted to EUR 18.776 billion in June 2004, down by EUR 459 million down from the end of 2003 .

http://www.telefonica.com

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Motorola to Offer Apple iTunes on its Mobile Phones

Motorola is partnering with Apple to enable users to transfer songs from the iTunes jukebox on their PC or Mac, or from the iTunes Music Store, to Motorola's next-generation mobile phones. Apple will create a new iTunes mobile music player, which Motorola will make the standard music application on all their mass-market music phones, expected to be available in the first half of next year. The interface will be USB or Bluetooth. http://www.motorola.com

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Comcast Adds 4 Mbps to Service Tiers

Comcast has added a new 4 Mbps cable modem service tier. Comcast customers now can choose between two options: 4Mbps and 3Mbps, which are priced at $52.95 and $42.95 respectively, for customers also buying cable TV service.



Comcast is also increasing e-mail storage for its users to 1.7GB, as compared to the previous 70MB. http://www.comcast.com/

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Alcatel provides BT with SIP-based Solution

BT awarded a multi-million EUR contract to Alcatel to supply a suite of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based multimedia applications. The Alcatel solution will help BT generate additional revenue through the new BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger service offering.



The contract includes the Alcatel 8690 Open Services Platform (OSP) - which allows the customization and rapid roll-out of high-value services and hosts the Alcatel 8605 multimedia application suite - and the Alcatel 5020 Softswitch, which provides the necessary bridge between the voice and data worlds. The selection of Alcatel follows BT's recent decision to employ the Alcatel 8690 OSP as the cornerstone of its common intelligence services layer (CISL) project and reaffirms Alcatel's pedigree as a leader in delivering innovative VoIP-based applications over broadband networks. http://www.alcatel.com

• Earlier this month, BT and Yahoo! launched a residential service that allows consumers to manage all their home communications - phone calls, webcam, emails, texts and instant messaging - together in one place from a Web browser.



• BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger is an integrated software package that combines voice services over the web with Yahoo!'s instant messaging. Users are able to make free calls when connecting from their PC to another PC or make calls to a landline or mobile from their computer at the same cost as a phone call on their "BT Together" fixed line phone package. Call records will appear on the standard BT telephone bill as ‘Clic2call' rather than ‘mobile' or ‘local number'. BT customers traveling abroad can make international calls back to any UK number for the price of a domestic UK call.

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Verilink Closes its Acquisition of Larscom

Verilink closed its merger with Larscom. The company is aiming to become a leading provider of next-generation broadband access solutions. Its portfolio encompasses voice over packet and voice over TDM IAD solutions including VoIP, VoDSL and VoATM. The Larscom merger adds to the company's position in the integrated access space as well as introducing solutions for the Optical Ethernet Access market. http://www.verilink.com/

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Nortel Networks Expands Carrier VoIP, Multimedia Developer Program

Products from AFC, ARRIS, Mediatrix, Ubiquity and Verilink have successfully completed interoperability testing with its Carrier VoIP and Multimedia portfolio. As a result, these companies have each been awarded a Certificate of Compatibility under Nortel Networks Developer Program.



In addition, Nortel Networks also announced the following new program members: Bloophone, Computer Talk Technology, Inc., Entrisphere, i3micro, Interval Research, NewHeights, Polycom, SS8 Networks, Inc. and Terayon. http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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SEC Drops its Investigation in Charter's Cable Business

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has concluded its enforcement action against Charter Communications. The investigation generally concerned the Charter's determination of the number of its customers, various accounting practices and procedures concerning capitalization of certain expenses and dealings with certain vendors, including programmers and digital set-top terminal suppliers.



In the Settlement Agreement and Cease and Desist Order, Charter neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing, and the SEC assessed no fine against the company. http://www.charter.com

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Time Warner's Road Runner Accelerates to 6 Mbps

Time Warner plans to introduce a new option for its Road Runner Premium cable modem service that doubles the top download speed to 6 Mbps. The uplink will run at up to 512 kbps. Pricing for the premium service ranges from $64.95-$84.95 per month, depending on the package or bundle of other services they take from Time Warner Cable. This compares to the core Road Runner cable modem service, which offers speeds of up to 3Mbps downstream and 384kbps upstream, and is typically priced at $44.95 retail, with discounts in a bundle or multi-service package.



Time Warner Cable currently has 3.4 million cable modem customers, which represents 18%of eligible homes. http://www.timewarner.com

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Kasenna Announces Secure Video Delivery Network Design

Kasenna outlined its plans for a Secure Video Delivery Network (Secure VDN) for enabling widespread broadband service provider distribution of premium video content. Kasenna's Secure VDN delivers content in an encrypted format all the way from the studios to viewers' homes, thereby addressing the digital rights management (DRM) concern that has so far impeded direct broadband delivery of first-run studio content.



Over the past few months, Kasenna has introduced its own management and application development platforms and acquired ViewNow, which has content distribution relationships with the major film studios. Kasenna's Secure VDN combines ViewNow's studio distribution relationships with end-to-end encryption and a full suite of content management, distribution, delivery, and tracking tools based on Kasenna's MediaBase and vFusion products. The system includes real-time usage tracking capability.



In the past, studios have had to rely on monthly reports from VOD providers to determine which titles were most popular. Kasenna said its ViewTrak application, enables the studios and the network operators to see up-to-the-minute statistics on the number of people purchasing any given title at any time. http://www.kasenna.com/

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Alvarion to Acquire interWAVE for GSM/CDMA Expertise

Alvarion agreed to acquire interWAVE Communications International in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $56 million.



interWAVE is a provider of compact mobile GSM and CDMA network equipment and services, primarily aimed at low density markets in developing regions, as well as specialty vertical applications. The company's solutions are deployed in over 50 countries by more than 100 operators, mainly local and regional cellular operators. interWAVE, which is based in Mountain View, California with engineering facilities in China and Ireland , had 12-month trailing revenues of about $39.4 million.



Alvarion is a leading supplier of wireless broadband solutions and is actively involved in WiMAX initiatives. The company said interWAVE's fixed and mobile cellular solution complements its own eMGW residential voice and data solution serving regions of the world where wireline infrastructure is missing or inadequate. http://www.alvarion.com

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Mpower Plans Launch of VoIP Hosted PBX Services

Mpower Communications, a facilities-based broadband communications provider serving areas throughout California, Nevada, and Illinois, announced its plans to launch a VoIP Hosted PBX service beginning in Q4. Mpower will utilize the hosted IP platform of VocalData. The VoIP Hosted PBX application will extend Mpower's services into the customer premise, providing access to advanced features and functionality remotely through a web portal interface tied directly to an Mpower application server. http://www.mpowercom.com/http://www.vocaldata.com/

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MCI Raises Bar on Internet SLAs

MCI tightened its service level agreements (SLA) for IP traffic between key global business centers. All of MCI's Internet service customers worldwide are automatically covered by the enhanced SLAs, which include more stringent network performance guarantees for latency and additional packet delivery guarantees for Latin America, Asia Pacific and EMEA. The North American performance guarantees for average round-trip transmission is now 45 milliseconds or less between hub routers in North America, representing nearly 20% faster transm



MCI is also introducing a jitter guarantee of one millisecond for U.S. traffic that will enable customers to better carry time-sensitive applications like VoIP over their networks. The new metrics are being applied across all MCI IP services, including dedicated and remote Internet access, IP VPN Dedicated and Remote, and Internet Colocation services, at no additional cost to customers.



MCI will also enhance its Remote Access Services this fall with the addition of new end-to-end SLAs for all MCI Internet Dial Corporate customers to ensure a positive experience for each and every end-user. Utilizing MCI's Dial Analysis monitoring and reporting platform, customers will be able to measure end-user performance against the new end-to-end SLAs. http://global.mci.com/terms/us/products/internet/sla/

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Comcast Surpasses 6.0 Million Cable Modem Users

Comcast reported strong operating cash flow for Q2, reflecting robust growth in new video and high-speed Internet services and a decrease in capital expenditures now that its network rebuild program is essentially complete.



Some highlights:

• Comcast Cable reported revenue of $4.839 billion for Q2, representing a 10.4% increase from the Q2 2003. Video revenue for the quarter increased 6.9%, driven by a 5.7% increase in average monthly revenue per basic subscriber and a 20.5% increase in digital revenue primarily reflecting a 1.1 million increase in the number of digital cable subscribers.



• Basic subscribers of 21.5 million are essentially unchanged from a year ago but down 96,000 or 0.4%, from the prior quarter due to seasonality and modestly lower gross additions. During the second quarter of 2004, Comcast Cable added more than 206,000 digital cable subscribers to finish the quarter with nearly 8.1 million subscribers, or 37.5% of basic subscribers.



• Video revenue growth reflects increasing consumer demand for new digital features, including Comcast ON DEMAND, HDTV programming and DVRs.



• Pay-per-view revenues increased 26.0%, driven by more movie and event purchases through the Comcast ON DEMAND service. Increasing demand for HDTV is also contributing to digital growth - at the end of the second quarter, Comcast had almost 600,000 HDTV set-top boxes in customers' homes.



• Cable modem revenues increased 39.2% to $763 million in Q2, reflecting continuing growth in subscribers. Comcast Cable ended Q2 with more than 6.0 million subscribers, a 36.8% increase from the same quarter last year. During quarter, Comcast Cable added 327,000 high-speed Internet subscribers resulting in a penetration rate of 16.1% of available homes. Comcast Cable added more than 1.1 million homes to its cable modem footprint in quarter, and this service is now available to 37.3 million, or 92.6%, of homes passed. Average monthly revenue per high-speed Internet subscriber was $43.52 in Q2, in line with Q2 2003 and a $1.07 increase from the $42.45 reported in Q1 2004.



• Advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2004 increased 15.3% to $330 million, reflecting growth of 6.0% in local advertising and strong growth of 25.4% in regional/national advertising as a result of the continuing success of our regional interconnect strategy.



• Cable capital expenditures declined 14.8% to $893 million compared to the $1.047 billion in the second quarter of the prior year.

http://www.cmcsk.com/

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