Washington State School District Deploys Marconi's ViPr

The Lake Washington School District, near Redmond, Washington, has selected Marconi's ViPr Virtual Presence System for high-resolution video telephony and multimedia communications between remote school sites. The school district's existing Wide Area Network is based on Gigabit Ethernet. Using ViPr's always-on and virtual presence capabilities, team leaders from different schools can collaborate on academic projects and Master Teachers -- experienced...

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Global Crossing Continues Decommissioning TDM Switches

Global Crossing is continuing to decommission legacy switches in four additional cities throughout its MPLS network. The company's first TDM switch was decommissioned in Chicago last year and replaced with Sonus VoIP switches. Since then, the company has decommissioned switches in its San Francisco hub and moved the traffic to VoIP switches in Sacramento. It will do the same with switches in Los Angeles, Boston and Newark in the first half of this year.Global Crossing began the decommissioning project last year as VoIP traffic traversing its private...

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BroadVoice Selects UTStarcom's WiFi VoIP Handset

BroadVoice, an Internet telephony service provider, has selected UTStarcom's F1000 Wi-Fi handset for deployment to its VoIP subscribers. Customers will be able to make VoIP calls from anywhere there is a Wi-Fi hotspot. UTStarcom said its F1000 handset has a standby time of up to 80 hours and talk time of 3 to 4 hours. http://www.utstar....

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Widevine Secures Premium VOD Content for SaskTel

SaskTel has gone live with a video-on-demand (VOD) service offering Hollywood content secured by Widevine Technologies. Among the content being secured are movies provided by top Hollywood studios Warner Bros. International Television Distribution, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Pictures Television International. SaskTel recently announced multi-year Video-on-Demand distribution agreements with all three studios.SaskTel introduced its IP broadcast service in 2002 over its existing DSL network and launched its video-on-demand service in 2003. The...

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Spirent Introduces Distributed Abacus IP Telephony Rollout Platform

Spirent Communications announced availability of the Distributed Abacus IP Telephony Rollout Platform designed to assess and validate signaling performance and call quality in pre-production networks. The Distributed Abacus platform allows for centralized testing of service provider or enterprise pre-production networks, rather than consuming time and resources with site-by-site testing. Spirent's Distributed Abacus platform treats multiple Abacus IP Telephony test systems as a single "virtual" platform for testing IP and hybrid IP/PSTN networks....

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Spirent Adds H.235 VoIP Encryption Test Capability to Abacus

Spirent Communications has enhanced its Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Migration Test System with H.235 VoIP gateway message encryption test capability. This enables network operators and equipment manufacturers to validate the effectiveness of signaling encryption for VoIP gateways and gatekeepers within a multi-zoned H.323 environment. VoIP architectures employ gateways to carry traffic from one network to another. Call management servers instruct gateway controllers, or gatekeepers, through the Gatekeeper ReQuest (GRQ) messages to control multiple...

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Passave Adds Forward Error-Correction to EPON

Passave, a supplier of FTTH chipsets, releasing a sophisticated forward error-correction (FEC) mechanism for Ethernet-based passive optical networks (EPONs). The FEC capability enables the use of low-cost, low-power lasers for delivering Ethernet over low-quality transmission lines, such as lines using aging fiber. Passave said the use of FEC doubles the reach of a FTTH network and doubles the number of customers that can be served from a single optical line terminal (OLT) in the central office. It also improves the cost-performance curve for FTTH.FEC...

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NTT-ME Deploys Juniper T-Series

NTT-ME Corporation has deployed Juniper Networks' T-series core routing platforms to scale its backbone. NTT-ME originally deployed Juniper Networks M-series routers in February 2003. Financial terms were not disclosed.http://www.juniper....

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3Com Offers Terabit Enterprise Switch

3Com introduced a terabit-capacity, enterprise modular core network platform for large-scale, secure convergence and application integration.The Switch 8800 uses dual load-sharing switch fabrics so that adding resiliency will also double switch performance. The Switch 8800's 1.44 Terabit backplane initially delivers up to twenty-four 10 Gigabit wirespeed ports and 288 Gigabit wirespeed ports - but can support a second generation fabric and modules to double the switch's performance and capacity. The Switch 8800 is complemented by 10 Gigabit modules...

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DivXNetworks Licenses mp3 Patents

DivXNetworks announced a strategic licensing agreement with Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, inventors of mp3, and Thomson, co-inventors of mp3 and exclusive licensing representative for their mp3 patents and software. The agreement will enable DivXNetworks, Inc. to include mp3 and, in the future, mp3 SURROUND technology, in all DivX software and consumer electronics offerings.In December 2004, Thomson and Fraunhofer IIS launched mp3 SURROUND, which will enable 5.1 channel surround-quality sound for a broad spectrum of applications...

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Freescale and Marvell Partner on Cellular - WiFi Convergence

Freescale Semiconductor and Marvell announced plans to offer WLAN solutions for mobile devices, such as mobile handsets, smartphones and entertainment devices. Freescale customers will receive Marvell's IEEE 802.11 reference designs, ICs, software and tools to simplify customer development and time-to-market. Freescale offers its 3G Innovative Convergence and EDGE Mobile Extreme Convergence platforms, as well as i.MX applications processor family. Marvell has a multi-mode, lower power IEEE 802.11 product line enabling connectivity using 802.11b,...

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AMCC Names Cisco Exec as CEO

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) named Kambiz Hooshmand, 43, as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. He succeeds David M. Rickey who is retiring from his post as chairman, president, chief executive officer and a director of the company. Hooshmand joins AMCC from Cisco Systems, where he most recently served as vice president and general manager of Cisco's Optical and Broadband Transport Technology...

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VON Keynote: The Impact on the Enterprise

Corporations have recognized IP communications is a driver of greater productivity, said Micky Tsui, VP and GM of Avaya's Communication Systems Division, in a keynote address at VON Spring in San Jose, California, and the sales number reflect this trend. IP telephony spending over the past year has been growing a phenomenal 88% annual grow rate. IT spending overall is at about 5%, while the overall GDP growth rate is about 4%.Based on multiple analyst reports, Avaya believes these trends will accelerate in the years ahead. Tsui presented the...

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Force10 Awarded Patent for Terabit Backplane Design

Force10 Networks has been awarded a U.S. patent for the high capacity backplane that powers its TeraScale E-Series switch/routers. Force10's passive copper backplane leverages advanced multi-layer design and manufacturing techniques to scale to 5 Terabits per second. Force10 said the design enables network operators to migrate from 10 Gigabit Ethernet to both 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet. The company now has more than 50 patents and patents pending for its innovations in terabit scale switching and routing. http://www.force10networks....

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MCI Deploys Ultra Long Haul Transmission Technology

MCI has deployed Ultra Long Haul (ULH) network technology on 3,129 route miles of its network, a key milestone in its ULH Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network expansion strategy. The network routes include New York City to Cleveland, Chicago to Denver (via Omaha), and Salt Lake City to Los Angeles (via Sacramento).MCI said the ULH deployment will enable OC-768 capacity. ULH is also expected to lead to long-term CAPEX savings, as 70% of the network equipment components are removed from the physical plant. When the multiyear ULH...

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SIP Forum Announces New Technical Working Group

The SIP Forum has formed a new Technical Working Group (TWG) charged with bridging the gap between Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) specifications and real-world industry practices. Goals for the new Technical Working Group include producing documents specifying best industry practices, and making the SIP protocol and its extensions more accessible to implementers. Additionally, this working group will develop SIP protocol test suites allowing implementers to better prepare for interoperability events and...

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VON Keynote: Following the Money

The digital revolution certainly changed life in the 80s and 90s, but VoIP could lead to the biggest changes yet, said Stewart Alsop, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates, in a keynote address at VON Spring. Alsop believes VoIP will lead to the complete deconstruction of the telephone system and all it entails. He doesn't buy the notion that voice is just a commodity but rather that customers will be empowered to decide which services they want and from whom they wish buy them. Alsop predicted a number of prominent deaths, starting with...

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Data Connection SIP Software Supporting Over 1 Billion Calls This Year

Tellme Networks, which uses speech recognition to handle a third of all the directory assistance calls made in the U.S., has incorporated Data Connection's DC-SIP software solution into its network, enabling over 1 billion directory assistance calls using VoIP this year. Tellme is using Data Connection's SIP software to connect directory assistance calls to Tellme's data centers nationwide. "Directory assistance will drive millions of SIP sessions per day to the Tellme data centers, which essentially makes our network one of the largest SIP endpoints...

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