Cablevision Adds 130,000 VoIP Users in Latest Quarter

Cablevision Systems, which serves some 3 million households in the New York metropolitan area, added more than 130,000 VoIP customers for Q4 2005 and 458,653 for all of 2005. Some other operating highlights:

• Optimum Online high-speed data customers up 93,900 or 5.9% for the quarter and 341,793 or 25.3% for the year



• Basic video customers were up 17,930 or 0.6% for the quarter and 63,993 or 2.2% for the year; the company's seventh consecutive quarter of basic video subscriber gains



• Interactive Optimum digital video customers were up 119,496 or 6.5% for the quarter and 479,566 or 32.3% for the year



• Revenue Generating Units up 361,045 or 5.1% for the quarter and 1,342,403 or 22.1% for the year



• Advertising revenue up 8.9% for the quarter and 3.8% for the year



• Cable Television Average RPS of $100.46, up $3.77 or 3.9% for the quarter and $12.13 or 13.7% for the year.

http://www.cablevision.com

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Verizon CFO Says FiOS Plan is on Track

Speaking at the annual Bear Stearns Media Conference, Verizon's CFO Doreen Toben said the company is "rapidly executing" on its integration of operations acquired from MCI, and that the company "continues to see a strong and growing customer response" to fiber-optic-based FiOS data and video product offerings.



Customer take rates for the FiOS services are "well on plan." She noted that deployment costs are declining and that the next-generation fiber network platform is driving innovation for new FiOS TV offerings.



Some highlights of the presentation:

• FiOS TV has a 23% penetration rate in the town of Keller, Texas. The company is targetting a 25% penetration in all the markets it enters within 5 years or entry.



• Verizon Wireless is seeing accelerated growth in data services, which accounted for $2.2 billion in 2005 (content, access/email, and messaging).



• CAPEX for Verizon Wireless is expected to be $6.3 billion for 206, compared to $6.5 billion in 2005.



• Wireline growth services now total about $11 billion and are increasing at a rate of more than 10 percent year-over-year.



• Verizon expects 2006 diluted earnings per share before special items such as MCI integration costs (a non-GAAP measure) to be similar to 2005's level of $2.56 per share. Verizon expects 2006 quarterly earnings to increase during the year, with the first quarter estimated to be in the range of 57 cents per share to 59 cents per share.



• Verizon continues to target the completion of the divestiture of its Verizon Information Services (VIS) unit by the end of this year. In December Verizon had announced that it had begun reviewing strategic alternatives -- including a spin-off, sale or other strategic transaction -- for the domestic operations of the company's wholly owned directories publishing business.

A webcast is available on the Verizon investor website.

http://www.verizon.com

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Virginia General Assembly Passes Cable Choice Bill

The Virginia General Assembly Senate and House of Delegates have passed legislation that will hasten competition for cable television services in the state. The bill now moves to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for his signature into law. If signed by Gov. Kaine, the new law will take effect July 1.



Verizon issued a statement welcoming the passage of the bill: "No party got all it wanted in the legislation, but the end result is one Verizon believes will stimulate competition, increase consumer choice and provide localities with continued control over their rights of way, consistent with the legal requirements in Virginia."http://www.verizon.com

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Extreme Networks' BlackDiamond 12K Deliver "Multidimensional" Carrier Ethernet

Extreme Networks introduced its new BlackDiamond 12K carrier switch designed for delivering "multidimensional" Ethernet to both business and residential subscribers.



Extreme Networks said the parameters for deploying a successful carrier Ethernet platform have evolved to include a need for massive scalability, much lower costs, and huge numbers of VPNs.



For instance, guaranteed data connections are needed for valuable IPTV and VoIP services.



Key features of Extreme Networks' Multidimensional Ethernet and BlackDiamond 12K switch include:

• guaranteed services with three-tier hierarchical QoS.



• support for up to tens of thousands of subscribers per line card with eight QoS service levels for each subscriber.



• the ability to serve as an "Ethernet Cross Connect" linking access networks to various content networks using a Layer 2 approach



• standards-based MAC in MAC technology that will vastly increase the number of Ethernet VPNs per network to millions of service VPNs. Extreme's Mac-in-Mac implementation is being standardized as IEEE 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridges.

The BlackDiamond 12K carrier switch leverages the company's ASICs and existing hardware resiliency and software resiliency features. Pricing starts at US $60,000.

http://www.extremenetworks.com

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T-Com Selects Nominum's Foundation Caching Name Server

T-Com, Deutsche Telekom's broadband/fixed network unit,, has selected Nominum's Foundation Caching Name Server (CNS) to provide its broadband subscribers with a faster and more reliable, 'always-on' internet access.



Nominum said its CNS software will be deployed over T-Com's broadband network, which has 13 points of presence across Germany. http://www.nominum.com

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Broadbus Demonstrates Network-Based Time-Shifting of Live TV

At this week's CableLabs Winter Conference, Broadbus Technologies is demonstrating a network-based solution for pausing, fast-forwarding and rewinding live television using existing digital set top boxes. A network-based solutions eliminates the need for deploying PVRs at the customer end.



Broadbus said its B-1 Video Server provides the ability to simultaneously ingest, store, and stream hundreds of channels of live television and support ultra-high concurrency rates.


http://www.broadbus.com

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Nortel Completes Tasman Networks Acquisition

Nortel completed its acquisition of Tasman Networks. Nortel paid US $99.5 million in cash for Tasman Networks.



Tasman Networks supplies a line of secure, high-performance enterprise routers. The company is now part of Nortel's Enterprise Data Networks business unit. The products from the Tasman acquisition are marketed as part of Nortel's Secure Router line.

http://www.nortel.com

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Movaz Supplies Optical Gear for U.S. Department of Energy Lab

Movaz Networks has supplier gear for a secure regional optical network for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), one of the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratories. The new network links PNNL's campus in southeastern Washington State to Seattle. At the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) in Seattle, PNNL has direct access to other national laboratories through the DOE Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and UltraScience Network, as well as other PNWGP member institutions. The fiber and facilities utilized by PNNL create a private network now supporting six 10 Gbps channels and engineered for growth to at least 20 channels.



PNNL is using the Movaz RAYexpress optical add/drop multiplexer, which supports mixed 10G/2.5G services and a wide selection of telecommunications and data client interfaces. http://www.movaz.com

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Cisco Completes Acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta

Cisco Systems completed its acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta. Cisco paid $43 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Scientific-Atlanta, and assumed outstanding options, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $7.0 billion, or approximately $5.1 billion net of Scientific-Atlanta's existing cash balance. The deal was first announced in November 2005.

http://www.cisco.com

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Sentito Adds New Executives

Sentito Networks, a provider of VoIP gateways, named Chris Lee as Vice President and General Manager of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Will Engler as Sr. Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. Lee has held a number of senior management positions with companies such as BBN, Xenia, and Lucent Technologies and has worked with the Metro Ethernet, Frame Relay, and ATM forums.



Engler joined Sentito Networks from Lucent Technologies, where he held the position of VP & GM, Access Networks, and had responsibility for marketing and R&D. At Lucent, he delivered IPTV solutions and VoIP Gateway products to tier 1 service providers worldwide.

http://www.Sentito.com

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Cisco Joins the new Ethernet Alliance

The Ethernet Alliance, a new industry group dedicated to the expansion of Ethernet technology, announced the addition of 16 new members, including Cisco Systems. Cisco has also been appointed to the board of directors of the Ethernet Alliance.



Additional new members include Aeluros, Allied Telesis, Beam Express, ClariPhy, Extreme Networks, Fulcrum Microsystems, Gibson Guitar, Infinera, Luxtera, NetEffect, Neterion, Solarflare Communications, SYSTIMAX Solutions, Teknovus, and Test-Um.

http://www.ethernetalliance.org

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The Multiservice Forum Outlines GMI 2006 Event for IMS Interoperability

The Multiservice Forum (MSF) outlined its plans for a GMI 2006 event in October that is designed to serve as "a dress rehearsal for the opening night of what may be the next-generation multi-vendor service delivery platform." Global MSF Interoperability 2006 (GMI 2006) will bring together equipment suppliers with top tier global carriers to demonstrate practical implementations of IMS convergence and to address key interoperability issues before actual network implementations. The event will provide a massive testbed of the MSF IMS-compatible Release 3 architecture.



The purpose of GMI2006 is to demonstrate multi-vendor interoperability to achieve Fixed Mobile Convergence supporting the IMS service framework and validate MSF R3 Implementation Agreements. Specifically, the MSF is focusing on:

• Roaming services across multiple network types



• QoS (Session Border Controller and Bandwidth Manager)



• 3GPP IMS & Mobile Core Network Interoperability



• IP Carrier Interconnect/Interworking



• Security interoperability



• 3rd party applications and service brokering



• Network management and OSS



• IPv4/6 Interworking

GMI 2006 will use test lab facilities from BT, Vodafone, KT, NTT and Verizon all tied together over a high-capacity, QoS-enabled global IP network. The event is expected to run from 16-October-2006 to 27-October-2006 and involve hundreds of engineers.



At a technical level, GMI2006 will focus on 3 hot issues: provisioning of multi technology VPNs (Inter-site); provisioning of Value Added Services, such as VoIP/IMS; and fault management.

http://www.msforum.org

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