Fujitsu Unveils Hybrid GPON/CWDM Architecture

Fujitsu Network Communications unveiled a new Hybrid Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) architecture and industry vision that incorporates several enhancements, including higher downstream/upstream speeds, support for native transport of Ethernet and TDM services via Generic Encapsulation Method (GEM), and the option to eliminate legacy ATM.



Fujitsu said its Hybrid GPON architecture allows cost-effective and efficient capacity upgrades without requiring changes to previously deployed GPON Optical Network Terminals (ONTs). Available as part of the initial GPON product release, the Fujitsu Hybrid GPON option is fully G.984 compliant, utilizing the same GPON protocol, downstream rates, and upstream rates.



Since most of the cost of a PON architecture is in residential ONTs and associated installation and labor costs, substantial savings are produced by eliminating the requirement to upgrade the ONTs.



Current PON deployments rely on BPON technology that provides 622 Mbps of bandwidth toward subscribers (i.e. downstream) and 155 Mbps of bandwidth from subscribers (i.e. upstream). The newer GPON technology supports 2.488 Gbps downstream and 1.244 Gbps upstream, allowing for residential speeds of up to 75 Mbps per home.
http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom

Read More

Hanaro 100 Mbps Optical LAN Service Reaches 400,000 Residential Customers

Korea's hanarotelecom reported significant progress in the rollout of its 100 Mbps optical LAN service last year, which resulted in the optical LAN coverage in about 3,700 apartment complexes with 2.2 million households. There were 400,000 subscribers for its optical LAN service as of the end of December 2005.


Mr. Byung-Moo Park, Hanaro's representative director designee, said the company intends to expand the coverage of its 100 Mbps optical LAN service to about 8,000 apartment complexes with 4 million households in 2006, as well strengthening its service competitiveness by providing differentiated value-added services such as a "TV-Portal." Hanaro is targeting 550,000 VoIP subscribers this year by actively leveraging fixed-line number portability for about 2 million HFC subscribers of Hanaro and Thrunet and launching digital wired/wireless integrated services."http://www.hanaro.com/eng/ir

Read More

Australia's Reeltime Selects SecureMedia DRM for VOD

Reeltime Infotainment, which plans to launch a national IPTV service for Australia, has selected SecureMedia's conditional access and digital rights management (CA/DRM) software solutions. Based on the use of the Encryptonite System, Reeltime has secured distribution agreements for movies from Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, United Artists, Columbia Pictures and other studios.



Reeltime will launch its VOD service to the public shortly, using IPTV set-top boxes and download to PCs, via its various ISP partners. The service is operated by Reeltime as a "white label" on behalf of ISPs, who will market and bundle the service in conjunction with their traditional voice and data packages. Reeltime's VOD transmission rights include the use of MPEG-4/H.264 over HFC (Cable), DSL, fiber optic and twisted pair.



Reeltime has secured access agreements with Telstra for its national network, including the consumer DSL network.

http://www.securemedia.comhttp://www.asx.com.au

Read More

Nortel Names Juniper Exec as Chief Strategy Officer

Nortel announced the appointment of George Riedel as Chief Strategy Officer. Riedel joins Nortel from Juniper Networks, where he was vice president, strategy and corporate development leading corporate strategy, business development and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining Juniper Networks in 2003, he was a Director at the management consulting firm of McKinsey and Company, where for 15 years he co-led telecom and high-tech practices in North America and Asia.

http://www.nortel.com

Read More

Narad and Axerra Team on Pseudo-Wire for T1 over HFC

Narad Networks and Axerra Networks will offer a combined Pseudo-Wire solution for delivering T1 voice and data services to business customers over the cable operator's hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network. The solution will enable service providers to deliver business class T1 services in dense business nodes supporting up to 200 T1s per node and up to 500 T1s per node later this year. Axerra's Pseudo-Wire customer premise equipment is connected through Narad's Ethernet-over-coax network to a Pseudo-Wire aggregation device at the headend that can support up to 1000 T1 circuits in a single chassis.



Axerra's AXN Pseudo-Wire Gateways and Access Devices furnish full-service capabilities over the HFC and fiber infrastructure of cable networks, including leased line T1 PCM Voice, T1 Private Line Data, Ethernet Private Line, native Frame Relay, ATM, HDLC, and IP services. Axerra offers low latency and high-precision clock recovery features.



Narad's Ethernet-over-Coax solution provides up to 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps of additional bandwidth over each coaxial cable span. In combination with Narad Ethernet switches, these 100 Mbps symmetrical links can be switched onto the coax plant at multiple points to provide Gigabits of symmetric bandwidth per node. http://www.axerra.comhttp://www.naradnetworks.com

Read More

Calix Unveils Adaptable GPON ONTs, Closes Optical Solutions Acquisition

Calix introduced a family of 2.4 Gbps GPON optical network terminators (ONTs) designed so that service providers can migrate from 622 Mbps BPON to 2.4 Gbps GPON without swapping out ONT gear at the customer premise.



Calix describes its 700-Series as the industry's first "install once, never go back" ONT family. The standards-based Calix 700-Series ONTs are FSAN ITU-T BPON and GPON compliant and are designed to interoperate with third-party OLTs. The 700-Series ONTs are compatible with the Calix C7, the Calix F5 (formerly the FiberPath 590), and the Calix FD (formerly the FiberDrive 500). Key features include:

• Auto-detect optics, enabling transition from 622 Mbps BPON to 1.2 Gbps and 2.4 Gbps GPON.



• Customer-facing data capacity of 200 Mbps, providing headroom for handling IPTV and future services.



• A smaller footprint and better design for mounting on the side of a residence.



• IPTV and RF overlay video support.



• Snap-in active electronics.



• Built-in VOIP IAD that uses SIP to terminate VOIP calls at the ONT using standard phone sets and in-home wiring.



• Optional integrated Home Phoneline Network Alliance (HPNA or HomePNA).



• Support for two or four POTS lines.

Separately, Optical Solutions completed its acquisition of Minneapolis-based Optical Solutions. Post merger, Calix has 340 North American customers that have deployed more than 8,000 central office, remote terminal, and remote node systems supporting in excess of two million active subscriber interfaces. This installed base represents over 23 million access lines. The company also claims 75 IPTV network deployments with approximately 100,000 active video subscribers and 180 FTTP customers with more than 90,000 subscribers in over 300 communities.

http://www.calix.com

Read More

Cisco Expands its Carrier Ethernet Portfolio

Cisco Systems announced two significant products for its Carrier Ethernet portfolio: the Cisco ME 6500 Series Ethernet Switch and the Cisco ONS 15310 Metro Access (MA) multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP), which delivers Carrier Ethernet services over SONET.



The Cisco ME 6500 Series Ethernet switches are designed for deployment in both the access and aggregation layers of a service provider network. As Carrier Ethernet switches, they are optimized for both consumer "triple play" services and business-class virtual private network (VPN) services over fiber optic networks. The Cisco ME 6500 Series Ethernet switches are available in two models with list prices starting at $24,000.



Cisco's existing Carrier Ethernet switching portfolio already includes the Cisco ME 3400 Series Ethernet Access switches.



The city of Almere in The Netherlands is using Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches and Cisco ME 3400 Series Ethernet Access Switches to connect all public buildings and not-for-profit organizations over a fiber network. The network will deliver symmetrical broadband at up to 2 Gbps and shared services including telephony using Cisco IP phones, centralized data backup and storage, and video-over-IP remote surveillance. With a Cisco Content Delivery Network, educational TV programmes can be delivered from central servers to schools on demand via IP. The City of Almere public services extranet will be completed by April 2006.



The Cisco ONS 15310-MA system is a modular and fully redundant access platform that complements the Cisco ONS 15454 system. The Cisco ONS 15310-MA platform supports existing time division multiplexing (TDM) services with a high-density of DS1/DS3 ports, as well as Ethernet services, over SONET-based networks. The Cisco ONS 15310-MA system is a hardened platform suited for deployment in RT cabinets or in-buildings, and small central offices. In supports 50msec SONET or Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) protection. The Cisco ONS 15310-MA platform varies in price based on configuration. A basic configuration model starts at a list price of $18,000.



Both the Cisco ME 6500 Series and the Cisco ONS 15310-MA platforms have received Metro Ethernet Forum's MEF9 Carrier Ethernet certifications.

http://www.cisco.com

Read More

AOL and WebEx Partner on Corporate IM

AOL and WebEx Communications will launch a secure, feature-rich version of the AOL's popular AIM instant messenger designed businesses.
The new service will be available in two editions: a professional edition designed for individual professionals and small to mid-size businesses, and an enterprise instant messaging edition with centralized administrative controls for larger corporations. Both editions of the service will work with enterprise directory services and allow users to securely chat, launch conference calls, online meetings and live demonstrations with any AIM user with just a few clicks to the customized AIM Buddy List feature.



The companies said they will deliver additional security as well as the voice, video and web collaboration capabilities of the global WebEx MediaTone Network.



The new services are expected to be available in Q2 2006.
http://www.webex.comhttp://www.aol.com

Read More

Motive Names New CEO

Motive, a provider of broadband management software, named Alfred Mockett as its a new chairman and CEO. Mockett previously was the chairman and CEO of American Management Systems an IT consulting and professional services company. AMS was acquired in 2004 by the CGI Group. Before that, he served as chief executive of BT Ignite, the carrier's broadband and Internet services business unit.



The appointment follows the resignation of Scott L. Harmon, who had served as Motive's CEO and Chairman and co-founded the company in 1997. Mr. Harmon will continue to work with Motive as a consultant.

http://www.motive.com

Read More

Sandia National Lab Clusters 4,000 Servers with Force10

Sandia National Laboratories has linked more than 4,000 Dell PowerEdge servers to create a high-capacity cluster with an approximate aggregate memory of 24 Terabytes and the ability to process 60 trillion operations per second (Teraflop). The Sandia Thunderbird cluster was recently ranked the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world, according to Top500.org.



Sandia is using Force10 Networks' TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers fitted with 90-port Gigabit Ethernet cards and 10 GigE backbone links. In addition to interconnecting the servers in the cluster, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series also provides the command and control infrastructure for the Thunderbird cluster, which is Sandia's second institutionally maintained cluster.

http://www.force10networks.com

Read More

TANDBERG Supports Video on NTT Communications' IPv6 Network

TANDBERG's video platforms are now fully operational on NTT Communications' domestic and international IPv6 network. NTT Comm and TANDBERG tested the compatibility of TANDBERG's visual communication solution and features, including high-definition video, in a range of network environments over a three-way connection between Japan, Norway, and Hong Kong.



The companies said their collaboration marks a significant event for the development of IPv6. http://www.tandberg.net

Read More

airBand Raises $8 Million for Fixed Wireless Services

airBand Communications, a fixed wireless service provider, raised $8 million in a new round of funding to support its rollout in major U.S. markets. Key Venture Partners led the round with participation from existing investors Sevin Rosen Funds, Crescendo Ventures and Dolphin Equity Partners.
http://www.airband.com

• airBand is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and currently offers its services in 28 U.S. markets including the Baltimore, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix.



• airBand is headed by Mark F. Spagnolo, who previously served as CEO of Broadwing Communications. Spagnolo also served as CEO of UUNET.



• airBand's Operations and Technology team is headed by John McLeod, who previously was chief operating officer of Broadwing Communications. Before that, he served as senior vice president of operations at Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN).

Read More

Ixia Offers Triple Play Test Application

Ixia released an upgraded test application for assessing the performance of Triple Play networks.



The new IxLoad release includes a number of important features, such as the ability to emulate millions of IPTV Broadcast Video and Video on Demand (VOD) subscribers and the millions of video streams they are viewing. Ixia said such large scale emulations enable the performance characterization of key IPTV elements, including video servers, multicast routers, and the video delivery network. The required protocols associated with these services, such as IGMP, RTSP and MPEG, are fully supported in IxLoad 3.00.



Additionally, IxLoad makes it possible to efficiently test the performance of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) devices by emulating SIP callers and callees. IxLoad also supports a set of Internet data protocols including HTTP, SSL, SMTP and POP, as well as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and vulnerability attacks, which are necessary in creating the kind of Real-World Traffic essential for effective Triple Play test scenarios.

http://www.ixiacom.com/products/ixload

Read More

Cox Implements Cisco IP Contact Center

Cox Communications will standardize on Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) solutions to provide customer service and support to its subscribers. Specifically, Cox will implement the Cisco IPCC Enterprise Edition, Cisco Customer Voice Portal (CVP) and Cisco Outbound option across its 19 contact centers, replacing the legacy systems. The implementation enables Cox to manage call routing from one location and will have a single view into its service and support processes. Cox has nearly 5,000 customer service agents.



Cox is Cisco's 3000th IP Contact Center customer.

http://www.cisco.com

Read More