TI to Acquire Chipcon for Low-power RF Devices

Texas Instruments (TI) agreed to acquire Chipcon, a leading company in the design of short-range, low-power wireless RF (radio frequency) transceiver devices, for $200 million. Chipcon's CC2430 is the world's first true System-on-Chip ZigBee solution. The company also provides a ZigBee-compliant protocol stack, the Z-Stack, which was acquired when Chipcon purchased Figure 8 Wireless in January 2005. Chipcon also offers a proprietary RadioDesk technology platform to wireless input device manufacturers.TI said combining Chipcon's design experience...

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Videotron Selects Nuera Media Gateways for Cable Telephone Expansion

Videotron, which serves some 1.4 million cable television customers and 96,000 residential phone customers in Quebec, is deploying Nuera ORCA media gateways to provide telephone service to their cable television customers. Videotron is using the Nuera media gateways to initially interoperate with traditional switching systems. The network is designed to deliver the service, security features and 911 capabilities that allow Videotron to meet consumer and regulatory requirements, while positioning Videotron to take advantage of softswitch technologies....

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Nearly 40 Million DSL Adds and 1.5 Million IPTV Adds in 2005

Nealy 40 million new DSL lines were activated in 2005 - over 100,000 every day - bringing the global installed base close to 140 million, according to the latest data produced for the DSL Forum by industry analyst Point Topic. Some highlights:European Union countries accounted for close to 40% of the total growth in new broadband DSL subscribers in the period, confirming the EU's position as the number one most active DSL region worldwide. The UK and France led the way, each adding more than three million subscribers.The Middle East and Africa...

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Vonage Raises $250 Million

Vonage raised $250 million in convertible debt funding with a group of investors led by affiliates of Bain Capital, with participation from leading financial institutions and existing investors including New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Meritech Capital Partners. The latest round of financing brings total investment in the company to $658 million.Vonage said it plans to use the money for general working capital to build-out its network across the United States, including deployment of Enhanced 911. Vonage senior management also participated...

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Vestel Integrates OpenTV in Set-Top Boxes

Vestel Group, Turkey's largest consumer electronics and white goods manufacturers, will integrate OpenTV Core Middleware 1.1 into its next generation set-top boxes.Separate from this deal, DigiTurk, the first and only digital direct-to-home satellite network operator in Turkey, recently announced that it selected Vestel's OpenTV middleware enabled set-top boxes for deployment to its ever-growing pay-television subscriber base. http://www.opentv.com http://www.vestel.com...

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Sumitomo Selects Ikanos' 100 Mbps Symmetrical VDSL

Sumitomo Electric Networks (SEN), one of Japan's leading communications equipment manufacturers, has selected Ikanos Communications' Fx100100-4 and Fx 100100S-4 chipsets. Previously, SEN has used Ikanos' chipsets for products supporting speeds up to 100 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps upstream. http://www.ikanos....

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First Modernized GPS Satellite Is Operational

A joint U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin team announced that the first modernized Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite has been declared fully operational for GPS users around the globe following extensive on-orbit testing of the spacecraft's new military and civilian signals.The GPS IIR-14 (M) satellite, which is the most technologically advanced GPS satellite ever developed, was built by Lockheed Martin and launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on September 25. http://www.lockheedmartin....

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Motorola Names Mader to Head Networks Wireline Business

Motorola named Tom Mader to be corporate vice president and general manager of Wireline Networks. Mader will be responsible for further establishing Motorola's global leadership in Fiber-to-the-Premise (FTTP) and Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN) solutions, including the deployment of next-generation entertainment services such as IPTV, video on demand (VOD) and digital recording.Prior to joining Motorola, Mader was founder of Mader & Associates, a VoIP) equipment company that offers outsourced marketing, distribution, order fulfillment and accounts...

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Foundry Adds 48-port GigE Module

Foundry Networks announced a wire-speed 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps module for its BigIron RX-Series family of high-performance Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches. The new module increases the non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet capacity to 768 ports for a single switch and 2,304 ports in a standard 7 foot equipment rack. All ports are non-blocking to ensure wire-speed performance. The new module utilizes compact mini RJ-21 connectors and cables to streamline cable management.The RX-BI48T 48-port 10/100/1000 I/O module with mini RJ-21 connectors is available...

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Foundry Adds 48-port GigE Module

Foundry Networks announced a wire-speed 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps module for its BigIron RX-Series family of high-performance Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches. The new module increases the non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet capacity to 768 ports for a single switch and 2,304 ports in a standard 7 foot equipment rack. All ports are non-blocking to ensure wire-speed performance. The new module utilizes compact mini RJ-21 connectors and cables to streamline cable management.The RX-BI48T 48-port 10/100/1000 I/O module with mini RJ-21 connectors is available...

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Coaxsys to Unveil 200Mbps Ethernet-over-Coax with ST

Coaxsys is planning to introduce a 200Mbps Ethernet-over-Coax networking solution in January at the International CES show in Las Vegas. The solution will be demonstrated in conjunction with STMicroelectronics, a leading developer of IPTV set-top box silicon.Gary Hoffman, Coaxsys VP of Business Development, stated, "TVnet 2X provides a major leap over the speeds specified by current networking solutions, such as 10/100 Ethernet, HomePlug-AV, and IEEE 802.11n. Like existing 100Mbps TVnet products, it works over existing TV coaxial wiring--but...

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