India's Reliance Infocomm Deploys Veraz Media Gateways

Reliance Infocomm, the largest private telecom service provider in India, has deployed Veraz's I-Gate 4000 PRO media gateways, supporting 60,000 ports for international long-distance (ILD) VoIP traffic. Reliance Infocomm is running live traffic over ten media gateways in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Hong Kong, terminating in India. The carrier carries both retail and wholesale voice traffic.


Veraz Networks said that optimizing the bandwidth on the international voice trunks was key to the Reliance Infocomm deployment. Veraz's I-Gate 4000 PRO media gateways provide a compression rate of up to 10:1, using key algorithms including RTP multiplexing and G729 codecs. Additionally, the underlying voice-processing and DSP technology that drives the I-Gate 4000 PRO is based on Veraz's in-house experience in statistical voice multiplexing, signal analysis, voice compression, jitter buffer management, packet loss concealment and packet aggregation.


Veraz operates an R&D facility in Pune, India and has a sales office in New Delhi.
http://www.veraznetworks.com

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BT Announces Ethernet WAN Services

BT announced plans to launch three new Ethernet services this summer:

• BT GigeStream is a low cost, point to point Ethernet private circuit service available nationally at speeds of between 250 Mbps and 1 Gbps.



• BT EVLAN, a VPLS-based, metro any-to-any Ethernet LAN service.



• BT Enterprise Ethernet, a new low bandwidth version of its MegaStream product that will offer many of the characteristics of a traditional private circuit, but with the benefit of a low-cost Ethernet interface.

"BT is transitioning the foundation of our entire business and we're putting Ethernet at the heart of our plans," said Matt Bross, BT Group's chief technology officer.
http://www.btplc.com/

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Foundry and Level 5 Partner on High Performance I/O

Foundry Networks is partnering with Level 5 Networks to deliver high-performance computing (HPC) solutions as part of Foundry's HPC Ethernet Alliance Program. Specifically, the companies will work together in interoperability testing and benchmarking of Foundry's Ethernet switches with Level 5 Networks' EtherFabric adapters.
http://www.level5networks.com
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

• Earlier this month, Level 5 Networks unveiled its EtherFabric, a high-performance I/O architecture aimed at improving server CPU efficiency while remaining completely Ethernet-compatible. Level 5's accelerated interface technology is positioned as an alternative to iWarp and InfiniBand, which the company describes as too disruptive for enterprises because incompatibilities with the existing network require that applications be rewritten for high-performance clusters. Level 5's EtherFabric places the TCP/IP implementation with each application via a linked library. This approach yields over 2x more CPU processing power for applications.

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BT Selects Microsoft IPTV

BT has selected Microsoft's IPTV Edition software platform to deliver TV over broadband in the UK. The announcement represents a major win for Microsoft's IPTV platform.


BT plans to trial TV over broadband services powered by Microsoft TV IPTV Edition in early 2006, with delivery of a commercial service expected to begin in the summer of 2006.
http://www.microsoft.com/tv

• In recent months, Microsoft has announced a number of major carrier wins for its TV platform, including BellSouth, SBC Communications, Verizon, Bell Canada, Cablevision Mexico, Reliance Infocomm (India), Swisscom/Bluewin, and Telecom Italia, among others.

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Redline Expands Spectrum Coverage of its WiMAX Platform

Redline Communications, will expand its family of WiMAX-based products to include coverage of the 3.3 to 3.4 and the 3.6 to 3.8 GHz spectrum. The new radios will initially available on Redline's AN-100 platform. Redline's RedMAX products, which incorporate, the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 WiMAX modem silicon on the SU (Subscriber Unit) with Redline's 2nd generation 802.16 MAC, and 3rd generation OFDM PHY, will be submitted for WiMAX Forum Certification.


Redline said its RedMAX product line will be commercially available before year-end.
http://www.redlinecommunications.com

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Devicescape Offers Platform for Enterprise-Class Access Points

Devicescape Software released a new version of its Wireless Infrastructure Platform that enables device manufacturers to create full-featured, enterprise-class wireless access points. In addition, vendors of specialized Wi-Fi equipment, such as hotspot and public-safety infrastructure, can now use Devicescape WIP to leverage high-end WLAN features into their products.


Enterprise-class features of Devicescape's Wireless Infrastructure Platform (WIP) 2.0 include:

• Automatic configuration and management for easy deployment and self-management of access points, and for automatically configuring additional access points as they are added to the network



• Load balancing for detecting the number of users on each access point and redistributing network traffic as necessary for optimal access point utilization



• Channel planning for detecting conflicting channel assignments, and automatically reconfiguring the wireless network to avoid interference



• Embedded enterprise security to enable the most secure forms of wireless authentication and authorization without the need to deploy and manage separate RADIUS servers. In addition, WIP-enabled access points can support multiple virtual networks, allowing organizations to deploy separate networks for guests as well as individual departments, ensuring optimal network utilization and protection of sensitive data.



• Enterprise-class management to allow WIP-enabled access points to be compatible with open network standards, including SNMP, and to integrate seamlessly with existing management platforms, such as HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli.

http://www.devicescape.com

Preparing Home Networks for the Triple Play

It's not enough for service providers to simply get content to the consumer's doorstep. Consumers will want to access the wealth of content arriving at their broadband gateway in many locations and on many different devices throughout and beyond the home. If broadband triple play services are to be adopted at mass-market levels, industry-wide standards must be developed that make it simple for consumers to set up, interconnect and use devices that will consume these services. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is addressing these issues.

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Infranet Initiative Becomes IPsphere Forum

The Infranet Initiative Council, which was launched by Juniper Networks in 2003, has become The IPsphere Forum. The group will promote "the standardization of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches to network service federation, publication and consumption by identifying requirements and current gaps, specifying mechanisms to address these, and contributing to the work conducted by associated standard bodies."


At an executive meeting held earlier in June at Supercomm 2005, the board of directors and officers of the IPsphere Forum were elected. The IPsphere Forum board includes individuals representing the following companies: Alcatel, BT, Cisco Systems, France Telecom, Huawei, Juniper Networks, Lucent Technologies, Red Zinc, Siemens, T-Com, Telenor, and Tellabs.


IPsphere Forum officers are: Chair Kevin Dillon (Juniper Networks), Vice Chair Monique Morrow (Cisco Systems), Secretary Omar Elloumi (Alcatel) and Treasurer Tom Walsh (Lucent Technologies).
http://www.ipsphereforum.org

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China TieTong Expands Cisco IP/MPLS Rollout

China TieTong (formerly China Railcom) has begun migration to a Cisco IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) for the latest expansion of its CRNET backbone. The new network, based on Cisco IP/MPLS technology, is expected to increase the company's coverage to 250 cities from the current 129. CRNET is using the Cisco 12416 Router and the Cisco 7304 Router, among other products. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.cisco.com

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German Banks Deploy Siemens HiPath for SIP VoIP

FIDUCIA IT AG, an IT service provider for the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken banking cooperatives in Germany, has selected the Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP system as the central softswitch in its network. FIDUCIA IT will host real-time communication services such as telephony, CTI applications and unified messaging over IP for the German banking industry. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Siemens said its SIP-based HiPath 8000 can scale to hundreds of thousands of users and is also vendor independent, able to provide compatibility with other commonly used protocols as well as with IBM x345 standard hardware and SuSE Linux operating system software. Most existing IP telephones can be supported by the solution, as can Q.SIG-standard telecommunications systems and third-party gateways with standard interfaces.
http://www.usa.siemens.com

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Alcatel Supplies Metro Optical for Beijing Netcom

Beijing Netcom, a subsidiary of China Netcom, has completed the deployment of an optical network using gear from Alcatel. The project is described as the largest intelligent optical metro network in China. Alcatel supplied its 1678 Metro Core Connect (MCC) and Optical Multi-Service Node (OMSN) products for the project. The network will be used for carrier-class metro Ethernet services, high-speed Internet access, optical VPN, IPTV, Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) and leased-line services -- as well as Storage Area Network (SAN) applications. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Pakistan Suffers Undersea Fault on Sea-Me-We 3 Cable

Pakistan Telecommunication Ltd. suffered a glitch on the Sea-Me-We 3 undersea cable on Monday, severely disrupting Internet communications to the country. The cable is the primary source of connectivity for the country, with satellite links providing back-up capacity. It was not clear when the service would be restored.

http://www.smw3.com
http://www.pta.gov.pk/

• Sea-Me-We 3 includes 39 landing points in 33 countries and 4 continents from Western Europe (including Germany, England and France) to the Far East (including China, Japan and Singapore) and to Australia. The system, which entered service in 1997, was upgraded twice, as of August 2003. It consists of two fiber pairs, each carrying 8 wavelengths. Some wavelengths operate at 10 Gbps and others at 2.5 Gbps.



• In March 2005, Alcatel was awarded a multi-million dollar turnkey contract for a 10 Gbps upgrade of the 38,000 kilometer Sea-Me-We 3 submarine cable network. Alcatel will upgrade submarine sections linking the UK to India via France, Portugal, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti in Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Alcatel will also upgrade all terrestrial stations along the network. The upgrade is scheduled for completion by the end of 2005.



• In March 2004, Alcatel and Fujitsu were chosen to build a new terabit capacity Sea-Me-We 4 submarine cable network, which will span nearly 20,000 km and link 14 countries from France to Singapore via Italy, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia with 16 landing points.

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Apple Takes Podcasting Mainstream

Apple has expanded iTunes to help users discover, subscribe, manage and listen to Podcast through its online music store. iTunes users can now subscribe to over 3,000 free Podcasts and have new episodes automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.


As of March 31, Apple had sold 15 million iPods.
http://www.apple.com
http://www.itunes.com/

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Verizon Wireless Expands EV-DO Network

Verizon Wireless has expanded its EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) network to 50 major metro areas across the U.S. and said it remains on track to cover half the U.S. population by the end of this year. It BroadbandAccess service supports typical user download speeds of 400-700 kbps, while its V CAST wireless broadband multimedia service provides video clips from content partners.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/

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