Fujitsu Captures 75% Global Market Share in Metro ROADMs

Fujitsu Network Communications has attained over 75% market share for Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs), according to figures from RHK cited by the company. The product category is defined as a platform that offers single wavelength granularity, optical layer protection with sub-50 ms switching times, automated per-channel dynamic gain equalization, and favorable engineering rules that let carriers shrink network Capital Expense (CAPEX) requirements. The market is being driven by metro WDM builds, including metro core/regional interoffice capacity adds, triple play services, video distribution, broadband and mobile backhaul, and enterprise applications such as business continuity and storage. The early adopter market for ROADMs has been fueled largely by North American-based Multiple System Operators (MSOs) looking to support cable TV broadcast distribution, Video on Demand (VoD) and data services. RHK forecasts that sales of current, third-generation ROADM-based metro Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) products will grow steadily to account for over 40% of the total $1.6B metro WDM market by 2009.


Fujitsu's FLASHWAVE 7500 platform has been deployed by North American MSOs and Japanese carriers. The FLASHWAVE 7500 metro WDM portfolio comprises three configurations:

• The FLASHWAVE 7500 Core System is an all-optical ROADM designed for large metropolitan networks that require up to 40 wavelengths of 10 Gbps capacity per wavelength to satisfy existing traffic demands and provide plenty of capacity for future network growth.



• The FLASHWAVE 7500 Small System offers the added flexibility of deployment with or without the ROADM switch fabric. Available in a 16- or 32-channel version, the FLASHWAVE 7500 Small System is a low cost way for carriers in small- to medium-sized cities to converge existing networks, while offering the scalability to accommodate future growth.



• The FLASHWAVE 7500 Extension System provides a compact and lowest cost solution for delivering the benefits of DWDM transport to the edge of large networks. As a stand-alone platform or extension from a larger network, the system can be cost-justified with just a few wavelengths.

http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom

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TI Tests DSL Gateways with KTL

Texas Instruments (TI) will cooperate with KTL, an independent testing laboratory (ITL) officially recognized by the DSL Forum, to provide more extensive interoperability testing of TI´s residential gateway products. TI said this collaboration should ultimately allow its customers to reach the market faster and more cost-effectively with leading DSL, wireless and voice products. http://www.ti.com

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Alcatel Ships 19.6 Million DSL ports in 2004

Alcatel's DSL port shipments increased strongly in 2004, reaching 19.6 million ports for the full year, a 24 percent increase over 2003. Citing Q4 data from the Dell'Oro Group, Alcatel said its cumulative global market share has increased to 37.8% with a total of more than 58 million cumulative DSL lines shipped. The figure is more than four times the cumulative global DSL line volume of any other supplier.
http://www.alcatel.com

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KPN Upgrades to ADSL2+ with Alcatel

Alcatel announced contract with KPN for the upgrade of its existing DSL infrastructure in The Netherlands to ADSL2+. This contract involves the upgrade of all current DSLAMs, which were installed and implemented by Alcatel in previous years. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.alcatel.com

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Wireless USB Specification Nears Completion

The Wireless USB specification is expected to be completed at the end of March and the Multi-band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) medium access controller (MAC) is scheduled to be completed by midyear, according to an update from Intel provided at its Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco.


Wireless USB will be one of the technology implementations that will use UWB as the radio technology. The goal of Wireless USB is to deliver the same ease of use and high speeds associated with USB 2.0, but without wires. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB Promoter Group, of which Intel is a leading member, is defining the wireless USB specification. Intel said the first version of this specification will be completed by the end of this month. UWB is designed to transmit data within short range (up to 10 meters) at very high bandwidths (up to 480Mbps) while using little power. One of the main advantages of UWB is it does not interfere with other wireless technologies already in use, such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular wide-area communications.


The MBOA's MAC layer specification v1.0 is expected to be finalized by the end of June.http://developer.intel.com

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SBC Signs Wi-Fi Roaming Pacts with Boingo, Airpath

SBC Communications announced Wi-Fi roaming agreements with Airpath Wireless and Boingo Wireless. The agreement with Airpath adds 3,300 nationwide and international locations - making more than 4,000 total roaming hot spots available to SBC Wi-Fi customers. In addition, SBC hot spots will be available to thousands of Airpath mobile computer users.


The agreement with Boingo will bring increased traffic to the SBC FreedomLink network from Boingo customers and from worldwide subscribers of Boingo's Platform Services partners. For Boingo, the agreement increases the company's U.S. hot spot density with more than 3,400 SBC Wi-Fi locations, adding key airports and other locations that are important to business travelers.


SBC also has agreements with GoRemote, iPass and Syniverse Technologies that provide it with revenue when their customers roam on the SBC Wi-Fi network. SBC companies also have agreements with Wayport Inc. and Sprint that provide SBC Wi-Fi customers with roaming access at more than 700 nationwide hot spots including several major airports and hotels. Other deals with Concourse Communications and Wise Technologies will further expand the SBC FreedomLink roaming network once activated. Also, SBC companies have a reciprocal roaming relationship with Telmex, its first international roaming agreement.


The roaming locations are in addition to the more than 6,400 nationwide hot spots available to SBC Wi-Fi customers, including select McDonald's restaurants, Barnes & Noble bookstores, Caribou Coffee shops and The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. locations. http://www.sbc.com

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KT Deploys Cisco's ONS 15454 MSPP

KT recently has started offering Triple Play service in the Seoul area supported by the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP).


KT selected Cisco as its strategic vendor for its new optical backbone plan on December 2004. As part of the initial deployment of the network, Cisco has completed the first service trial of KT's 2.5-Gbps/10-Gbps MSPP project, which is a part of a new 5-year plan to deploy an optical transport system infrastructure to service KT's customer base with multiple advanced services. This service trial involved deploying Cisco ONS 15454 SDH to cover regional nodes in the Seoul metropolitan area and international nodes for this multiservice integrated transport network project. Millinet, one of Cisco's system integration partners, has been a key contributor for this project. Financial terms were not disclosed.


http://www.cisco.com

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WiMedia and MultiBand OFDM Groups to Merge

The WiMedia Alliance and the MultiBand OFDM Alliance Special Interest Group (MBOA-SIG) have merged into a single organization. Operating as the WiMedia Alliance, the combined organization continues to drive the standardization and adoption of ultra wideband (UWB) for high-speed wireless, multimedia-capable personal area connectivity.


The WiMedia-MBOA said it is conducting an intellectual property review of the MBOA-SIG's physical (PHY) layer specification, which has already been distributed to MBOA-SIG members who are building products. The organization is also finalizing the MBOA-SIG's medium access control (MAC) layer specification. Applications such as Wireless USB, Wireless 1394 and wireless IP will use the WiMedia-MBOA's common radio platform based on the MBOA-SIG's PHY and MAC specifications.


Concurrent efforts include developing application profiles for UPnP/IP technologies as well as completing specifications such as the WiMedia convergence architecture (WiMCA) and the WiMedia network protocol adaptation (WiNet) layer. Lastly, the WiMedia-MBOA has begun defining its certification and interoperability program: testing suites will address WiMedia-MBOA specification usage in Wireless USB and Wireless 1394 applications in addition to the total wireless IP UWB technology stack.


The WiMedia Alliance also announced its newly elected officers:

• President: Stephen R. Wood, Intel



• Vice President: Kursat Kimyacioglu, Philips



• Vice President: Jon Rosdahl, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.



• Secretary: Roberto Aiello, Staccato Communications



• Treasurer: Mark Fidler, HP

http://www.wimedia.org

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Consumer Electronics ATA 1.0 Specification Completed

A final CE-ATA 1.0 specification paving the way for the expanded use of mini disk drives in handheld electronics. The CE-ATA specification defines a disk drive interface tailored to the needs of the handheld and CE market segments. The new CE-ATA interface standard for small form factor disk drives addresses requirements inherent to such small devices, including low pin count, low voltage, power efficiency, cost effectiveness and integration efficiency.


At this week's Intel's Developer's Forum in San Francisco, Intel and partners showed a prototype Intel handheld media player running video off a CE-ATA prototype disk drive supplied by Marvell. The CE-ATA prototype drive is an off-the-shelf 1.8-inch hard drive re-fitted with Marvell's small-form-factor chipset and firmware, featuring the 88i6310 SOC, as well as Marvell's stacked flash, motor controller, switching regulator and preamplifier.


"In a word, remarkable. Delivery of the CE-ATA protocol specification is even ahead of the aggressive schedule committed to when we launched the initiative at IDF Fall 2004," said Knut Grimsrud, chairman of the CE-ATA working group and Intel Corporation senior principal engineer. "CE-ATA development is at a feverish pace. The first end products supporting the new technology could be availablehttp://www.intel.com

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LG Electronics, Nortel Show Consumer Handset-Based HSDPA

Nortel and LG Electronics completed the first live test calls using a commercial handset supporting High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). The companies completed calls using commercially-available UMTS network infrastructure from Nortel and an LG HSDPA handset slated for commercial availability in late 2005. Downloads of pop music songs and three-minute streaming movie clips (the LG device served as a modem to a PC screen) were completed in a moving automobile to demonstrate real-world stability at speeds up to 1.4 Mbps.


HSDPA boosts network capacity to carry up-to-three times as much data traffic and up to twice as many wireless users per cell site compared to today's UMTS networks.


"Based on the success of our interoperability program, I expect Nortel to be the first to market with a complete, end-to-end HSDPA solution with integrated consumer devices," said Peter MacKinnon, president, GSM/UMTS, Nortel.


Nortel recently announced a series of industry milestones with leading chipset and data card vendors, and is working with a number of global operators, including mmO2, on HSDPA trials and deployments in 2005.


Nortel has also demonstrated the maximum data speed enabled by HSDPA -- 14.4 mbps -- on commercially-available equipment including its UMTS Base Transceiver stations and UMTS Radio Network Controller, along with terminals supplied by Ubinetics.
http://www.nortel.com
http://www.lge.com

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BT Opens Global Network Control Centre in Amsterdam

BT has opened a new Network Control Centre (NCC) in Amsterdam, responsible for monitoring BT's global data network. The Amsterdam network centre will focus on the services layer of the network while the transport layer is managed by the Diegem (Belgium) NCC, opened two years ago. The Diegem and Amsterdam NCCs will serve as backup to each other in case complications are encountered at either facility. A third centre provides backup to both NCCs in cases of serious breakdown that continue for more than six hours.
http://www.btplc.com

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Deutsche Telekom Tops 5.8 Million DSL Lines in Germany

Deutsche Telekom ended 2004 with 5.8 million DSL lines in Germany, up by 1.8 million for the year. This figure also includes 246,000 DSL lines sold by T-Com to competitors under its resale offer. 628,000 new broadband lines were recorded in Germany in the fourth quarter alone. In the Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries managed by T-Com in Hungary, Croatia and the Slovak Republic, business operations also focused predominantly on the marketing of broadband communications. The number of DSL lines provided by companies in Central and Eastern Europe consequently increased year-on-year by just under 140 percent to 265,000. This gives Deutsche Telekom a total of 6.1 million DSL lines (including Central and Eastern Europe).


The number of narrowband lines in Germany and abroad fell by 1.5 percent to 54.7 million channels. The number of narrowband lines (including ISDN channels) in operation in Germany was 1.7 percent lower than in the prior year due to substitution by mobile communications and the migration of subscribers to competitors. The number of ISDN channels fell for the first time in the second half of 2004 as a result of the discontinuation of T-Com's attractive price for bundling T-DSL with T-ISDN and the increasing saturation of the market. The number of ISDN channels increased by just under 1 percent in the full year to 21.7 million.
http://www.telekom.deIn February, Germany's Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Post (RegTP) reported that Germany ended 2004 with nearly seven million broadband connections, 20% of which were operated by competitors. In the previous year this figure was 11%, which means it has almost doubled within the space of a year. Amongst new broadband customers, the competitors have gained 33% of the market, and this trend was strengthening at year's end. RegTP credits competition and Deutsche Telekom's resale model for these positive trends. Competitive carriers rented over two million local loops from Deutsche Telekom in 2004.

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Vonage Prevails in VoIP Port Blocking Case

Vonage has prevailed in a case involving VoIP-port blocking by local telephone company. The case involved the Madison River Telephone Company, which Vonage accused of blocking ports used for VoIP applications. Last month, the FCC's Enforcement Bureau issued a Letter of Inquiry to Madison River. This has resulted in a Consent Decree under which Madison River will refrain from blocking VOIP traffic and ensure that such blocking will not recur. Madison River will also pay a $15,000 fine to the U.S. Treasury.


"We saw a problem, and we acted swiftly to ensure that Internet voice service remains a viable option for consumers," said FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell.
http://www.vonage.comOn 09-February-2004, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell issued a challenge to high-speed Internet providers to adopt a set of four voluntary “Net Freedom�? principles:

• Freedom to Access Content. Consumers should have access to their choice of legal content.


• Freedom to Use Applications. Consumers should be able to run applications of their choice.


• Freedom to Attach Personal Devices. Consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes.


• Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information. Consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans.

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Class Action Lawsuits Against Bell Canada Dismissed

Two proposed class action lawsuits against Bell Canada International and Bell Canada Enterprises brought on behalf of BCI common shareholders and seeking $1 billion in damages, have been refused leave to appeal by the Supreme Court of Canada. No further appeal of these actions is available to the plaintiffs and the actions are effectively dismissed.

http://www.bci.cahttp://www.bce.ca

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