Cisco and IBM Team on Speech-Enabled Contact Centers

IBM and Cisco will jointly deliver speech-enabled self-service solutions for contact centers. The solution combines IBM's WebSphere Voice Server product and Cisco's Customer Voice Portal. The companies said they would leverage open standards, including Voice XML and J2EE. These solutions enable contact centers to provide low-cost speech-enabled self-service transactions to their customers, such as transferring money from a checking account, submitting insurance claims, changing cellular phone plans, making hotel and car reservations or finding...

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Telefónica Deploys Acme Packet's SBCs

Telefónica de España has selected Acme Packet's Net-Net session border controllers for its hosted business and residential VoIP offering throughout Spain. Financial terms are not disclosed. The Acme Packet session border controllers are interoperating with Telefonica's existing infrastructure, Ericsson's Engine Multimedia, a complete, all-IP and SIP solution with an open architecture based on IMS, the 3GPP standard. The Acme Packet session border controllers are providing access control and complete network topology hiding at all protocol layers...

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Comcast Reaches 7.4 million Cable Modem Subscribers

Comcast added 414,000 cable modem customers in Q1 giving it a total of 7.4 million subscribers, representing a penetration rate of 18.3% of available homes. Average monthly revenue per subscriber was $42.81 in the first quarter of 2005, a slight increase from the first quarter of 2004 and a 1.8% increase from the $42.06 reported in the fourth quarter of 2004. Comcast High-Speed Internet service revenue increased 32.5% to $925 million. Some additional highlights from Comcast's Q1 report: Comcast Cable reported revenue of $5.1 billion for Q1, representing...

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Taiwan's Chunghwa Reaches 3.2 Million ADSL Subscribers

As of 31-March-2005, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom was serving 3.2 million ADSL subscribers, up by 132,000 for the quarter. Total Internet subscriptions numbered 3.87 million. The number of fixed-line subscribers was 13.26 million. The company also serves 8.17 million mobile subscribers. http://www.cht.com...

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NETGEAR Sees 23% Year-over-year Growth

NETGEAR reported Q1 revenue of $109.0 million, a 3.7% increase as compared to $105.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2004, and a 23.3% increase as compared to $88.4 million for Q1 2004. Net revenue in the first quarter of 2005 derived from North America was $51.1 million, the Europe, Middle East and Africa, or EMEA, region was $47.0 million, and the Asia Pacific region was $10.9 million.Non-GAAP gross margin in the first quarter of 2005 was 33.0%, as compared to 32.9% in the prior quarter and 31.1% in the year ago comparable quarter. http:...

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OIF Delivers Two Common Electrical I/O Agreements

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) completed two Implementation Agreements (IAs) relating to Common Electrical I/O technology. The first, CEI 11G-LR, addresses 11 to 13 Gbps applications over backplanes. This IA responds to the industry's move toward higher speed electrical signaling, driven by system vendors' desire to quadruple the bandwidth of existing systems without increasing the number of backplane traces. The second IA, CEI Protocol (CEI-P) is a new protocol designed for use with the fast electrical interfaces developed by the CEI...

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France Activates 890,000 ADSL Access Points in Q1

In Q1 2005, 890,000 ADSL access points were added across France. This includes lines served by France Telecom and the unbundled lines served by other carriers. The total number of ADSL access points in France (including unbundled lines) has now topped 7.2 million, up from 4.1 million a year earlier. As of 31-March-2005, France Telecom had 5,150,000 ADSL lines in its home market, of which 3,364,000 were serviced by its own Internet service and 1,787,000 were using third party ISPs. Some highlights from the carrier's quartely report:The number...

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AMCC Reports Rise in Revenue

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) reported quarterly revenue of $64.2 million up 5% sequentially and up 36% year over year. The net loss on a GAAP basis was $5.3 million or $(0.02) per share."We were pleased with our progress in the March quarter. Revenue increased sequentially and the company realized the benefits of our improved cost structure," said Tom Tullie, AMCC's Chief Operating Officer. http://www.amcc....

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Alcatel reports Q1 Revenues of EUR 2.6 Billion

Alcatel reported Q1 revenues of EUR 2.607 billion, up from EUR 2.515 for Q1 2004 but down from EUR 3.806 billion for Q4 2004. Operating profit amounted to EUR 107 million, representing a 4.1% operating margin and a 27% increase over the same period last year. Serge Tchuruk, Alcatel's Chairman and CEO, said "In the fixed line business, we confirm our expectations of a rebound in the second half, following a second quarter which will continue to be weak. This rebound should materialize as triple play generated revenues more than offset the decline...

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Marconi Not Selected for BT's 21CN

Shares in Marconi fell 40% on Thursday following news that the company had not been selected for BT's 21st Century Network. Marconi, which had been a traditional supplier to BT, currently generates about a quarter of its business from the carrier. Marconi will continue to supply equipment and services to BT under the various, multi-year frame contracts it has in place."This is a disappointing outcome from a very competitive tender process. Our products performed extremely well technically, but we have been unable to meet BT's commercial requirements,"...

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BT Selects Vendors 21st Century Network (21CN)

BT announced eight preferred vendors for its 21st Century Network, an ambitious undertaking in which it plans to invest up to £10 billion over the next five years to migrate to a fully-converged, packet network. Access -- Fujitsu and Huawei have been chosen in the access domain which will link BT's existing access network with the new 21CN.Metro -- Alcatel, Cisco and Siemens have been selected as preferred suppliers for metro nodes which provide routing and signalling for 21CN's voice, data and video services.Core -- Cisco and Lucent will be...

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