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 in RF transceiver and System-on-Chip devices with TI's advanced analog silicon technologies and broad systems expertise would enhance its ability to offer customers complete short-range wireless solutions for consumer, home and building automation applications. The acquisition also broadens TI's offering of RF solutions and strengthens TI's position in ZigBee.


Chipcon will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of TI and will continue to operate from its Oslo, Norway headquarters. Its other facilities include a software design center in San Diego, California; and sales offices in New Hampshire, Germany, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The company employs about 120 people.
http://www.ti.com

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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. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nuera.com
http://www.videotron.com

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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 region was the fastest growing, with a 140% increase in DSL subscribers - led by Turkey, which added more than 850,000, becoming the first country in the region to pass the one million mark. Latin America has established a DSL subscriber base of more than five million. Brazil added 1.1 million in the year and Mexico saw 98% growth in its subscribers to DSL.



• A total of 19 countries achieved more than one million subscribers by the third quarter of 2005, with Australia, Belgium, Turkey, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland breaking through the barrier in the past year.



• China alone added almost 10 million DSL subscribers and is rapidly approaching 25 million in total. The USA extended its lead over Japan as the second largest DSL population in the world, and nine countries increased their DSL population by more than one million new subscribers. Of the established nations, the fastest growth rates were in Australia, at 97%, and the UK, at 91%.



• Seven countries have over 20% of phone lines delivering broadband services using DSL. Switzerland, Spain and the UK are likely to reach that initial target for mass market status around the end of 2005.


IPTV has already attracted 1.5 million subscribers around the world in the first half of 2005, 30% of them in Hong Kong alone and a further 18% in France.

http://www.dslforum.org

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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 in the round.
http://www.vonage.com

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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.tr

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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.com

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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.com

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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 receivables management expertise to small/start-up VoIP testing equipment companies worldwide. Previously, he served as chief executive officer for Netrake, a leading provider of session border controllers. Before joining Netrake, Mader worked for Lucent Technologies in two senior leadership roles, first as regional vice president in Texas where he managed global marketing, sales, technical support and service delivery to Independent Telco customers, and second as regional vice president and managing director in Germany where he was responsible for operations and product management of its Global Optical Networking product family.
http://www.motorola.com

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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 in the first quarter of 2006 and priced at $15,995 for US customers and $17,595 for International customers.
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

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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 in the first quarter of 2006 and priced at $15,995 for US customers and $17,595 for International customers.
http://www.foundrynetworks.com

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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 its higher bandwidth paves the way for the features and functions required by operators delivering IPTV and other high-speed applications within the home."

Coaxsys noted that during 2005 it has deployed tens of thousands of TVnet adapters for voice, video, and data with more than sixty service providers.
http://www.coaxsys.com

• The existing Coaxsys technology delivers up to 104 Mbps transfer rate and supports distances up to 250 feet, enabling it to deliver multiple HDTV signals simultaneously throughout a home. The TVnet technology is also compatible with TV splitters and supports Ethernet unicast, multicast, and broadcast. The solution consists of a Coaxsys IPTV 7000 TVnet adapter that connects to any network-enabled operating system or device with an RJ-45 Ethernet network interface. It can be used for connecting IPTV set top boxes, gaming console systems, PVRs, multimedia servers, and VoIP phones.

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