BT Launches Entertainment Division

BT is creating a new division called BT Entertainment within its Retail consumer business to develop, license and bring to market content value added services such as on-demand music, gaming, TV and movies. The new division will incorporate innovative services such as Rich Media -- BT's content platform business, Click & Buy -- BT's online payment system and BT Learning Centre -- BT's online learning offering.



BT Entertainment will be headed by Andrew Burke, currently director of value added services at BT Retail. Burke previously CEO of eVerger the media venture capital fund and before that COO of eVentures the internet capital fund owned by News Corporation and Softbank.



BT Entertainment has also hired Dan Marks to oversee its interests in video-over-broadband services. Marks previously served as President of Universal Studios Networks UK. http://www.btplc.com/

Read More

Scientific-Atlanta Uses Broadcom's VoIP Chips

Scientific-Atlanta is using Broadcom's VoIP chips and software for the development of next generation VoIP adapters. The products are aimed at global markets.



Broadcom is already a supplier of chips and software to Scientific-Atlanta for its digital interactive set-top boxes, voice modems (EMTAs) high speed data modems & wireless residential gateways. Scientific-Atlanta has extensive relationships with both cable multiservice operators (MSOs) and incumbent voice service providers.httop://www.broadcom.com

Read More

Intelsat Loses its Americas-7 Satellite

Intelsat reported the permanent loss of its in-orbit Americas-7 satellite following an unexpected electrical distribution anomaly on November 28. Customer traffic has been diverted to alternative satellites. The satellite, which operated at 129° West, was launched in September 1999 and covered the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Central America, and parts of South America. The satellite was self-insured by Intelsat.



A new Intelsat Americas-8 satellite is currently scheduled to launch on December 17, 2004. It will provide 36 Ku-band, and 24 C-band, equivalent transponders to the Intelsat North American fleet and help mitigate the impact of the permanent loss of IA-7.



Intelsat noted that the loss of Americas-7 satellite triggers contingency options in its pending acquisition by Zeus Holdings Limited, which has advised Intelsat it is evaluating the impact of the IA-7 failure. http://www.intelsat.com

Read More

Global Crossing Tightens MPLS SLAs

Global Crossing announced new Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for its converged IP services, including IP VPNs, VoIP and IP video. The upgraded SLAs include:

• end-to-end availability of 99.999%, compared to the previous guarantee 99.9%.



• packet delivery of 99.999%, compared to the previous guarantee of 99.9%.



• jitter of 5 milliseconds (ms), compared to the previous guarantee of 15 ms.



• a new service guarantee ensures that service performance issues trigger availability guarantees and reparations.



• a new performance guarantee equates service degradation with unavailability, and offers reparations to customers experiencing severe latency, jitter or packet delivery issues.

Global Crossing said its IP network has been operating at 99.999% packet delivery and availability, and less than 5 ms of jitter during 2004. Routing is optimized across the network using MPLS. The company also noted that it is currently carrying up to 2.5 billion minutes per month over its private, global VoIP platform, deployed four years ago. http://www.globalcrossing.com

Read More

NETGEAR Offers Low-Cost PoE Switch and AP

NETGEAR announced the launch of its ProSafe 8 Port 10/100 Desktop Switch with 4 Port Power-Over-Ethernet (PoE, IEEE 802.3af ) capability and its PoE-enabled ProSafe 802.11g Wireless Access Point. Power over Ethernet eliminates the need to place wireless access points near a power outlet or pay to install new power outlets to ensure optimum placement of the wireless connection.



The new 8 port Desktop switch with PoE can power up to four IEEE 802.3af-compliant IP-based devices such as wireless access points, VoIP telephones, surveillance cameras, and card scanners, while maintaining connectivity to standard 10/100 Mbps devices. It can provide power for up to four ProSafe Access Points, enabling the flexibility to place these access points high on walls or in ceilings where AC power is difficult to access. The switch has a list price of $181 while the AP has a list price of $250. http://www.netgear.com

Read More

Iridium Announces Subscriber Growth, New Funding

Subscribers to the Iridium Satellite mobile telephone service grew by 29% for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 versus the comparable period in 2003. In July, the company exceeded the 100,000-subscriber mark for the first time. Iridium cited growth in vertical markets, including aviation and maritime applications. The Department of Defense has also exercised its contract option again this year. In related financing news, Iridium recently closed an agreement for a $65.5 million credit facility with Bank of America, which replaces a similar facility with Riggs Bank. http://www.iridium.com/

Read More

Chelsio 10GEAdapters Used for New Bandwidth Records

Chelsio's 10-Gigabit Ethernet server adapters were used to set new world records for LAN bandwidth and distance at the Supercomputing 2004 conference in Pittsburgh earlier this month. The University of Tokyo shattered the world record for speed and distance of Internet communication, sending standard 1500 byte Ethernet packets more than 31,000 kilometers at more than 7 Gbps totaling 225,000 terabyte meters per second to win the SC2004 Bandwidth Challenge award for single stream distance and bandwidth. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), together with its partners, achieved the highest aggregate bandwidth ever recorded to win the SC2004 Bandwidth Challenge award for sustained bandwidth, delivering 101 Gbps, which quadruples the previous throughput record set a year ago. Chelsio's T110 10GbE Protocol Engine provided the TCP/IP offload technology used in both the University of Tokyo's and SLAC's bandwidth challenge demonstrations. http://www.chelsio.com

Read More

Bellsouth Announces Officer Changes

BellSouth named Mark Feidler as its new chief operating officer (COO). Feidler joined BellSouth in 1991 as director of strategic transactions. In 1993, he was promoted to vice president of corporate development and was named president of Interconnection Services three years later. In 1998, he was appointed president of BellSouth Mobility. In 2001, he was named chief operating officer for Cingular Wireless, a position he held until January 2004, when he was named chief staff officer for BellSouth.



BellSouth also announced that Dick Anderson, currently president-Customer Markets, has been named vice chairman-planning and administration, and Isaiah (Ike) Harris, has been named president- BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Group. http://www.bellsouth.com

Read More

Rainbow Orders 5 New Lockheed Satellites for HDTV

Rainbow DBS Company LLC, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems, selected Lockheed Martin (to build its next five geostationary telecommunications satellites. The five new satellites, designated Rainbow Ka-1 through Rainbow Ka-5, will provide direct broadcast services across the continental United States (CONUS), Alaska and Hawaii. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.



The spacecraft payloads will feature multiple Ka-band spot beams as well as half-CONUS beams. Rainbow Ka-1 through Rainbow Ka-5 are based on Lockheed Martin's A2100AX satellite, with a predicted service life of 15 years.



Rainbow DBS provides the VOOM HDTV service, currently featuring a lineup of 39 HD channels -- more HD programming than any other satellite or cable service provider. http://www.lmcommercialspace.comhttp://www.voom.com

Read More

CableLabs Issues RFP for CableHome Residential Gateway

Key cable operators and CableLabs issued a request for proposal (RFP) that identifies a common set of product requirements for a CableHome-based residential gateway (integrated cable modem and router/wireless access device). The RFP seeks information about a residential gateway that will comply with CableHome 1.1 specifications. The gateway will enable the delivery of value-added services for home networking and high-speed data service subscribers, including but not limited to, services requiring QoS guarantees. The RFP also includes requirements for residential gateways to implement discovery, prioritized QoS and Network Address Translation configuration features as defined by UPnP specifications. The deadline for responses is January 31, 2005. http://www.cablelabs.com

Read More

Azimuth Introduces Voice over WLAN Test

Azimuth Systems announced a new benchmark test suite specifically designed for testing VoIP in the Wi-Fi environment. The new test suite focuses on two key VoWLAN system components. The first component, the VoWi-Fi Benchmark Test for Wireless VoIP Handset, validates the 802.11 behavior of the client handset during motion - ranging and roaming - and analyzes this behavior relative to the voice quality as measured by both MOS and R-Factor. The tests can be run with and without background data traffic. The second component, VoWLAN Benchmark Test for Wi-Fi Infrastructure, focuses on test of the wireless access points. Using the Azimuth testMAC, the system emulates multiple voice calls in conjunction with best effort traffic, and studies the ability of the wireless LAN backbone to deliver quality of service and protect the voice call integrity.



"VoIP and Wi-Fi are the mix of two enabling technologies that represent only the tip of the iceberg. If successful, the need for application validation in wireless environments will grow considerably," said Fanny Mlinarsky, Azimuth's founder and CTO. "Mixed Wi-Fi and cellular networks, along with multimedia distribution, are the next emerging applications. It is critical for the industry to know that the technology exists to precisely validate mobility versus the Quality of Service in these media rich applications."



The Wi-Fi Alliance recently released its QoS certification WMM, which is based on the 802.11e standard that enables interoperability of devices in the Wi-Fi network to deliver the QoS critical to VoIP. http://www.azimuthsystems.com

Read More

Siemens and Enterasys Networks Expand Worldwide Partnership

Siemens Communications will integrate Enterasys' full line of Secure Networks products and solutions into its HiPath Enterprise Convergence Architecture for VoIP and will distribute the technology worldwide. The expanded business relationship is expected to generate millions of dollars in additional annual revenue for Enterasys. The companies also will collaborate on joint development of HiPath solutions, delivery of services, and certification of each other's technology. http://www.enterasys.comwww.siemens.com/communications

Read More

Shaw Finds Speed the Dominant Factor for Broadband Choice

The need for speed and quality remain the driving factors behind consumer choices for Internet service, according to a new survey conducted for Shaw Cablesystems, Western Canada's leading Internet provider. The survey was commissioned by Shaw and conducted in October of this year, by market research firm Ipsos-ASI. In total, 1,341 interviews were conducted among Shaw's recent Internet subscribers through an online questionnaire.



In the survey, 72% of respondents said speed was an important factor in their decision to choose Shaw as their Internet service provider, making it the most popular motivator mentioned by customers. http://www.shaw.ca

Read More

IBM, Sony and Toshiba Unveil Cell Processor

IBM, Sony and Toshiba unveiled some of the key concepts of their jointly developed advanced microprocessor, code-named Cell, which is aimed at next-generation computing applications and digital consumer electronics.



Cell is a multicore chip comprising a 64-bit Power processor core and multiple synergistic processor cores capable of massive floating point processing. The device is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and broadband rich media applications, including computer entertainment, movies and other forms of digital content. It will feature supports for multiple operating systems, and offer substantial bus bandwidth to/from main memory, as well as companion chips. The Cell processor will be implemented in 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.



IBM plans to offer a Cell processor-based workstation it is developing with SCEI. Sony expects to launch home servers for broadband content as well as high-definition television (HDTV) systems powered by Cell in 2006. Sony Computer Entertainment also expects to launch its next generation computer entertainment system powered by Cell. Toshiba Corporation envisions diverse applications for Cell and expects to launch its first Cell-based product, a high-definition television (HDTV), in 2006.



Design work is taking place at a joint development lab the three companies established in Austin, Texas, after the project was announced in 2001. IBM plans to begin pilot production of Cell microprocessors at its 300mm wafer fabrication facility in East Fishkill, NY during the first half of 2005.



"Massive and rich content, like multi-channel high-definition broadcast programs, as well as megapixel digital still and movie images captured by high-resolution CCD/CMOS imagers, require a huge amount of media processing in real-time. In the future, this digital content will fuse and converge on the broadband network, and start to explode," said Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO, Sony Corporation, and president and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. http://www.ibm.com/chipshttp://www.sony.net/

Read More