mPhase Selected for IPTV Network in Turkey

Beyaz Holding Company, owner of Turkey's leading television news and entertainment station, selected mPhase Technologies to provide technology enabling the introduction of an array of new digital television services throughout the country. The deployment will use the IP transport capabilities of Turk Telecom, the soon-to-be privatized Turkish telecommunications company, as the foundation of the broadband network. mPhase will provide the equipment and technical video expertise for the deployment, while Beyaz-owned Kanal 7 will organize and aggregate the content and manage the marketing of the services. http://www.mPhaseTech.com

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ECI Telecom Confirms Commercial PON Order in Europe

ECI Telecom confirmed that its Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) equipment is being deployed by a major European Utility provider under a contract with Nortel Networks. The ECI solution will allow the customer to deliver advanced "triple play" services - video, voice and data - to its customers over an optical broadband connection.



ECI said the order represents the first mass commercial deployment of FTTH PON in Europe. The announcement follows last month's announcement that ECI's equipment is carrying live traffic in England as part of BT's 21st Century Network initiative.



The ECI solution integrates video, voice and data services from a single, highly flexible platform. The Hi-FOCuS 4 Multi Service Access Gateway is used at the central office side and the Hi-FOCuS B-Light family of ONTs is used at the customer premises. http://www.ecitele.com

• Earlier this month, it was announced that EnergiMidt, a Danish utility company, had selected Nortel to provide a turnkey solution for delivering Triple Play residential services over a new PON network. EnergiMidt Broadband plans to deliver the services to all of its 162,000 customers. Nortel is also providing EnergiMidt with a carrier-grade optical transport network. Financial terms were not disclosed.



• The network will use Nortel's Broadband Access Services Gateway (BASG) product line, Nortel's optical Ethernet portfolio and a host of leading video and in-home networking partners – all brought together, tested and approved by Nortel to form a triple-play solution. The technologies behind Nortel's BASG portfolio are supplied by ECI Telecom.



• EnergiMidt will be adopting a phased rollout of its service to its current energy customers, aiming for approximately 2000 subscribers by the end of 2005. As part of the deployment strategy, EnergiMidt will connect each of the homes passed by their FTTH deployment, thus greatly reducing the time to turn up service for new customers.

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Cisco to Acquire Protego Networks for Security Monitoring

Cisco Systems agreed to acquire privately-held Protego Networks, a provider of security monitoring and threat management appliances for enterprise and small-to-medium business networks. Cisco will pay approximately $65 million in cash for Protego. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2005, which ends on 29-January-2005.



Protego's scalable appliances combine traditional security event monitoring with network intelligence, context correlation, vector analysis, anomaly detection, hotspot identification and automated mitigation capabilities. The products help identify and eliminate network attacks while maintaining network compliance.



Cisco said Protego's products would extend its Self-Defending Network initiative. Protego is currently a member of Cisco's AVVID partner program and the companies have been successfully working together to sell security products to customers. The Protego team will be integrated into Cisco's Security Technology Group. http://www.cisco.com

• Protego Networks was founded in 2002 and has 38 employees. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California.

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Indonesia's PT Aplikanusa Lintasarta Selects Juniper for IP/MPLS

PT Aplikanusa Lintasarta, which is part of Indonesia's Indosat Group, has deployed a next-generation IP/MPLS network using Juniper Networks' M-series routing platforms. The new network, Juniper Networks' first major network deployment in Indonesia, supports multiservice IP VPN services to corporate users. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.lintasarta.co.id

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Empirix Enhances VoIP and TDM performance testing system

Empirix introduced an enhanced version of its "Hammer NXT" VoIP and TDM performance testing system featuring the ability to scale to more than 50,000 endpoints (signaling and media). The Hammer NXT offers up to 24K simultaneous signaling/media endpoints per system for high-density performance testing. The system can detect and analyze the content of each media stream generated (up to 24 K) at full Ethernet line rates, including detection of tones, DTMF, voice prompts, silences, and energy, allowing users to stress and verify media functionality under high-density conditions. A wide range of codecs are supported, as well as unique IP and MAC address emulation.



The new NXT shares a common signaling engine and architecture with the company's Hammer FX-IP functional test system. Customized protocol and signaling configurations can be ported between the two platforms. http://www.empirix.com

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WiQuest Raises $13 Million for Ultrawideband

WiQuest Communications, a start-up based in Allen, Texas, raised $13 million in funding for its ultra wideband (UWB) technology. WiQuest said it is building complete solutions for ultrawideband applications, from mobile handsets and portable gaming to audio/video systems in the modern digital home. The technology is expected to enable a new class of consumer product features, including wireless multimedia, flexible PC connectivity, and simplified, lower cost home theatre installation.



As an early contributing member of the MultiBand OFDM Alliance Special Interest Group (MBOA-SIG), WiQuest engineers have been actively involved in the development of the recently released MBOA-SIG physical layer (PHY) as well as the media access control (MAC) specifications.



WiQuest supports the MultiBand OFDM UWB proposal, currently under consideration in the IEEE 802.15 personal area network working group. The company is also a member of the USB Implementer's Forum and is active in its nascent wireless USB efforts.



The new funding was led by Menlo Ventures and Palomar Ventures. http://www.WiQuest.com

• WiQuest was founded by and is headed by Matthew B. Shoemake, who most recently served as Director of Advanced Technology for Texas Instruments WLAN Business Unit. Shoemake was an initial team member at Alantro Communications which was acquired for $300 million by Texas Instruments in 2000. Dr. Shoemake served the IEEE 802.11 Working Group for over five years in various capacities including chairing the 400-plus member IEEE 802.11n Task Group that is setting the standard for the next generation of Wi-Fi products and chairing the IEEE 802.11g Task Group, which extends Wi-Fi data rates to 54 Mbps. Dr. Shoemake is co-inventor of the high performance option (PBCC) in the 802.11b and 802.11g standards, and he was a lead designer of TI's IEEE 802.11b compliant processors.



• WiQuest Communications was founded in September 2003.

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Elcoteq and Thomson Enter Set-top Box Outsourcing Agreement

Thomson reached an outsourcing agreement with Elcoteq Network Corporation, a global provider of electronics manufacturing services . The deal includes the acquisition of Thomson's manufacturing operation in Juarez, Mexico, and manufacturing co-operation in the set-top box business.



Under the deal, Elcoteq will pay US$33 million for certain fixed assets and inventories of Thomson's Juarez manufacturing operation. Thomson's personnel in Juarez, Mexico will continue in Elcoteq's organization. Currently the plant employs approximately 2,000 employees.



Under the long-term manufacturing agreement, Elcoteq will become a preferred manufacturing partner to Thomson for the manufacture of set-top box products and produce Thomson's set-top boxes in Juarez, Mexico. In addition to manufacturing services Elcoteq will also offer other value add services such as component sourcing services to Thomson.



The acquisition of the Juarez plant will double Elcoteq's manufacturing capacity in Mexico. The Juarez plant is ideally located in the border region between Mexico and the US. http://www.thomson.nethttp://www.elcoteq.com

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