Tekelec Names Frank Plastina CEO

Tekelec has named Frank Plastina as its new CEO, president and a member of the board of directors, replacing Fred Lax, who resigned. For much of his career, Plastina served in senior executive and management positions at Nortel Networks. In 1997, he was appointed general manager of Nortel's DMS-10 and Signaling Solutions Group. Between 1999 and 2001, he had profit and loss responsibility for Nortel's Wireless and Carrier business, a global organization...

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UTStarcom Awarded Optical Transport Contract by Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom awarded a contract to UTStarcom to supply its NetRing 10000 multiservice optical transport products. Chunghwa Telecom intends to utilize UTStarcom's NetRing solution to deliver high-density, high-speed broadband services, including voice, data, and video, to subscribers throughout Taiwan in support of its MultiMedia on Demand (MOD) service. UTStarcom's NetRing products provide aggregation, grooming, cross-connect, and transport to deliver high-density, highly efficient STM-1 to STM-64, PDH (E1, E3), Fast Ethernet, and...

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Tello Launches Presence and Telephony Service

Tello, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, launched its business instant communication and collaboration service.Tello enables users to locate and collaborate with their key contacts beyond their enterprise boundaries and across multiple platforms - including phones, mobile devices and PCs.The service consists of Tello Enterprise for businesses and Tello Basic for individuals and runs on the Tello Connect platform. It features a federation system that aggregates contacts' presence (i.e., shows if the contact is available on a certain application...

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Huawei-3Com Tests 10G Core Routing Switch with Spirent

Huawei-3Com tested its Quidway S8500 10G Multi-Service Core Routing Switch using Spirent Communications' Test System and Global Services. Huawei-3Com has validated wire-line forwarding, low latency and no packet loss in a fully meshed topology. The platform features high port density and scalability, supporting up to 576 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) or 48 10 GbE interfaces. In addition, the Quidway S8500 can provide wire-line forwarding capacity for MPLS-VPN networks.http://www.spirentcom....

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TAZZ Networks Works With BT on MPLS Policy Control

TAZZ Networks, which provides policy control solutions for broadband networks, announced a collaborative effort with BT on the design and delivery of a lab demonstration platform intended to illustrate the power of network-centric ICT (Information and Communication Technology) solutions for enterprise customers. This proof of concept platform delivers an on-demand IP-VPN based on a robust and dynamically controlled CoS (Class of Service) enabled MPLS network - ICT-ADQ (Application Driven Quality of Service).The ICT-ADQ platform was explicitly designed...

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ChoiceStream to Provide Personalization for Starz VONGO VOD

ChoiceStream, a start-up based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will power the personalized recommendation engine on the new Vongo Internet video on demand service from Starz Entertainment Group. ChoiceStream provides:Personalized content programming that promotes discovery: ChoiceStream powers 'Vongo Recommends,' personalized recommendations that are based on consumers' individual movie preferences. This enables VONGO to dig deep into inventory and surface useful recommendations that genuinely match subscribers' interests.Personally relevant merchandising....

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IBM Provides Federated IM Access to AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, iChat

IBM unveiled a new version of its Lotus "Sametime" audio and video corporate conferencing application, featuring federated connectivity with leading consumer IM platforms, including AOL, and Yahoo! In addition, IBM and Google intend to connect Lotus Sametime and Google Talk users.Lotus Sametime 7.5 sports more than 100 new features and represents a major upgrade in instant messaging and Web conferencing capabilities. New features and functions include:In addition to enhanced security features, privacy settings and location awareness capabilities,...

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3Com Launches V6000 Enterprise VoIP and IM Platform

3Com introduced its new V6000 Integrated Branch Communications platform for running centrally-managed, business continuity applications, including SIP-based IP Messaging, IP Mobility, IP Contact Center, IP Conferencing and Presence. The new V6000, which runs 3Com's VCX IP Telephony module and convergence applications, is designed for medium to large, geographically distributed enterprises. Should the WAN between sites be lost, the IP Telephony and IP Messaging applications running on the V6000 can work totally independent of the corporate headquarter...

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Akimbo Adds VP of Sales -- Targets Internet VOD

Akimbo Systems, which provides an Internet video-on-demand service for television, has hired Jim Bennette as vice president of sales. Bennette joins Akimbo from Orb Networks, where he was vice president of business development. At Orb, he was responsible for content strategy development and built critical content and distribution partnerships with major content creators including broadcasters, networks and studios, as well as video-on-demand, digital music and digital photo providers. Prior to Orb, Bennette was vice president of western region...

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Kineto and Reef Point Confirm Interoperability

Kineto Wireless and Reef Point Systems confirmed the interoperability of their solutions for fixed-mobile convergence. The two companies have ensured interoperability between the Reef Point UMA Security Gateway and the Kineto IP Network Controller at the Kineto UMA test facility in Milpitas, California. The Reef Point UMA Security Gateway is now qualified for deployment in conjunction with Kineto's UMA network controller.The core component of Kineto's mobile/Wi-Fi convergence solution is the Kineto UNC (UMA Network Controller). The Kineto UNC...

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Avaya's Revenues Rise 9% to $1.2 Billion

Avaya's quarterly revenues increased 8.8% $1.249 billion, compared to revenues of $1.148 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2005. The first quarter of 2006 included the full quarter contribution from the Tenovis acquisition. Avaya said its Global Communications Systems revenues rose 11.7% year-over-year and Avaya Global Services revenues increased 5.8% over the same period. Net income from continuing operations was $71 million or 15 cents per diluted share, compared to $33 million or seven cents per diluted share for the same period last year.During...

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Broadcom to Acquire Sandburst for Switching Silicon

Broadcom agreed to acquire Sandburst, a start-up specializing in scalable packet switching and routing systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), for $80 million -- $75 million in cash in exchange for all outstanding shares of capital stock and vested stock options of Sandburst and up to 100,000 shares of Class A common stock reserved for future issuance in exchange for unvested employee stock options of Sandburst.Sandburst designs and develops switching solutions that target the high-end carrier-class chassis market. The company provides a complete switching...

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Motorola Releases Multi-Radio Solution for Municipal Wireless Networks

Motorola announced the commercial release of its MOTOMESH, a multi-radio, high performance mesh networking system for municipal wireless. The system addresses the needs of public safety, public works and public access in a single network by leveraging multiple radios in both licensed and unlicensed frequency bands. Motorola also announced that the city of Riviera Beach, FL has been added to the list of over a dozen municipalities to deploy MOTOMESH as its metro-area wireless network.The MOTOMESH multi-radio broadband solution, whose architecture...

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Asia Netcom Upgrades Pan-Asian Cable with Lucent LambdaUnite Switch

Asia Netcom selected Lucent Technologies to upgrade its pan-Asian submarine cable network, known as EAC. Lucent will replace EAC's existing platform with the Lucent LambdaUnite Multi-Service Switch (MSS). Financial terms were not disclosed.With the LambdaUnite MSS platform and its support for ASON (Automatically Switched Optical Networks)/GMPLS (Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching) technology, Asia Netcom will be able to adopt a meshed, network architecture on the optical layer, and offer a wide variety of "Class-of-Service" options as part...

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Samsung BCS Expands its U.S. Distribution

Samsung Business Communication Systems (BCS) announced the conversion of 29 of its existing dealers to distributor status. The newly designated distributors, with footprints that span both East and West Coasts, now have the ability to sell Samsung BCS equipment and solutions directly to enterprise end-users and also to offer Samsung BCS products to other dealers and resellers.Samsung Business Communication Systems (BCS), a Dallas-based division of Samsung Telecommunications America, is the distribution arm for Samsung Electronics' line of business...

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Spirent Acquires SwissQual for Wireless Test

Spirent Communications agreed to acquire SwissQual, a test and measurement company for wireless network operators, for $70.5 million (including performance incentives) on a cash and debt-free basis.SwissQual supplies drive-test systems for optimization and benchmarking of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, CDMA and TDMA networks. It also provides end-to-end monitoring systems for speech, data, messaging and video service quality testing on both fixed and mobile networks; as well as smart-phone based quality assessment probes for the measurement of true end...

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Verizon Business Debuts its Wireless/Wireline Service Portfolio

Verizon Business introduced its service portfolio and announced new integrated wireless and wireline offerings for its U.S. business and government customers."Verizon Business" is the new unit resulting from the integration of MCI and similar businesses that previously were part of Verizon Domestic Telecom, including the former Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group.The new offerings combine the Verizon Business IP network with the Verizon Wireless network. Immediately available, Verizon Business' enhanced suite of Enterprise Mobility solutions provide...

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