ShoreTel Names New CEO

ShoreTel, a supplier of enterprise IP telephony solutions, named John W. Combs as its new president and CEO, succeeding Thomas T. Van Overbeek, who will remain on the company's board of directors. Combs has previously served as a senior executive at Mitel and Nextel. He joins ShoreTel from wireless infrastructure supplier Littlefeet, where he served as CEO and Chairman. Before that, he was CEO of InternetConnect, a broadband networking solutions provider.



ShoreTel said its revenues more than doubled between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2004, with its most recent quarter bookings growing more than 60% compared to the previous quarter. The company attributes much of this growth to stronger-than-anticipated demand for its new IP phone family. http://www.shoretel.com

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Airspan to Supply Fixed Wireless in Colombia

Airspan Networks will supply its broadband fixed wireless access solution to the Comsat International - America Inalambrica Consortium for the deployment of a turnkey project in Colombia. The Colombian government, through COMPARTEL, conducted a competitive tender for the installation and operation of a turnkey telecommunications network which will provide broadband internet access to locations throughout the country. The tender called for bids on 5 designated zones, of which the Comsat-led Consortium bid on three. The Consortium bid an innovative combination of VSAT and WipLL technologies. COMPARTEL will pay the Consortium in excess of $20 million over five years as it builds and operates the networks.



The COMPARTEL Program is a six-year initiative to provide telecommunications access to public institutions in Colombia. The Project was divided into three phases to support Rural Telephony, Telecenters and Broadband Internet access. In particular, this third phase was designed to support Broadband Internet access for more than 3,700 sites throughout Colombia, of which approximately 2,300 sites are in the zones to be built by the Consortium.



Airspan said anticipates initially that approximately one third of the sites in the three zones will be served by its WipLL base stations and customer premise equipment, which will be installed over the next 18 months. The equipment will operate in the 900MHz and 2.4GHz frequencies. The VSAT equipment will be used to backhaul the traffic from most of the WipLL sites. http://www.airspan.comAirspan is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida with its main operations center in Uxbridge, U.K.

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Nortel Networks Declares Preferred Share Dividends

The board of directors of Nortel Networks Limited declared a dividend on each of the outstanding Cumulative Redeemable Class A Preferred Shares Series 5 and the outstanding Non-cumulative Redeemable Class A Preferred Shares Series 7. The dividend on each series is payable on September 13, 2004 to shareholders of record of such series at the close of business on August 31, 2004. http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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American Fiber Sys. to Acquire Marietta

American Fiber Systems, which operates metro fiber networks in five cities nationwide, to acquire Marietta FiberNet, a CLEC, offering voice, data and Internet services to business clients in the north metro Atlanta area. Financial terms were not disclosed.



Marietta FiberNet was the first municipally owned telecommunications operation to be certified in the State of Georgia.



AFS has deployed over 76,000 miles of metropolitan fiber optic cable since 2000 in several cities, including Cleveland, OH; Kansas City, KS/MO; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Nashville, TN; and Salt Lake City, UT. It has over 400 capacity enabled on-net buildings. http://www.americanfibersystems.comhttp://www.mfn.net

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Korean Government Endorses 801.16

South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication issued a statement endorsing the IEEE
802.16 standard as Korea's base technology for portable wireless broadband access. Plans are being developed for the licensing of carriers interested in offering "WiBro" portable broadband services based on the standard. Initial commercial services are forecast to launch in 2006. http://www.mic.go.kr/eng/index.jsp

• In April 2004, the U.S. Trade Representative and South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) negotiated a compromise agreement regarding the wireless Internet platform for interoperability (WIPI) standard that was developed in Korea. Under the deal, the Korean government can require mobile carriers to use WIPI. However, on top of WIPI, mobile operators will also be allowed to add other specifications such as QUALCOMM's binary runtime environment for wireless (BREW), which currently in in use by an estimated 7 million Korean mobile users.

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SIP Forum Releases SIP Test Framework

The SIP Forum announced the completion and release of its first SIP test suite, called the SIP Forum Test Framework. The open source test framework allows SIP device vendors to test for common protocol errors. It is freely available under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) to test implementations against a test suite and framework that is SIP RFC 3261 compliant.
This license, commonly used in the software engineering community, enables anyone to copy, distribute and modify the open-source program, thus insuring wide distribution and use. RFC3261 is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) document that describes the SIP communications protocol.



The SIP Forum Test Framework (SFTF) v1.0 is being hosted at SIPfoundry.org's Web site. http://www.sipforum.orghttp://www.sipfoundry.org

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India's Reliance Infocomm and MCI Partner on MPLS VPNs

Reliance Infocomm, in partnership with MCI, launched India's first MPLS Global VPN service. The agreement enables Reliance Infocomm to offer its business customers seamless global MPLS-based VPN connections by leveraging MCI's expansive global network.



MCI is installing MPLS network nodes in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore that will enable MCI to deliver seamless access to its global Private IP network throughout India using connections to the nationwide Reliance Infocomm MPLS VPN network. http://www.relianceinfo.com

• Reliance Infocomm is India's largest mobile service provider with over 7.5 million subscribers. Reliance Infocomm has established a pan-India, high-capacity, integrated (wireless and wireline) and convergent (voice, data and video) digital network.

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Canadian Government Embraces IP for its Embassies

Bell Canada was awarded a three-year $68 million contract by the Government of Canada to design, deliver, install, integrate and manage all engineering, implementation and network monitoring services for MITNET 2004, a global network that will provide international voice and data communications for the country's diplomatic missions around the world. The contract provides a fully managed, end-to-end IP communications solutions for Foreign Affairs Canada.



Bell Canada's plans are currently in place to commence the migration of Foreign Affairs Canada's existing International Private Line (IPL) sites to Bell Canada's IP VPN, working with its best-in-class partners including Infonet, Telstra and Intelsat along with others.



Foreign Affairs Canada currently operates in 110 countries, with 160 missions around the world and locations in Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Pacific Rim, in addition to North America. http://www.bce.ca

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