Equant Transforms into Orange Business Services

France Telecom launched "Orange Business Services" as its unified portfolio of enterprise services, including Equant's international IP communication and IT services, France Telecom's enterprise communications services and Orange's existing leadership in mobile for businesses.



Orange Business Services will offer a set of integrated services including both fixed and mobile voice and data, network services, managed & IT services and outsourcing.



Some key facts on Orange Business Services.

• a total of 29,000 people in 166 countries and territories



• currently accounts for 12% of the global communications solutions market and 29% of the business mobile market across its European mobile footprint.



• claims 3,750 multinational companies as customers



• serves 400,000 businesses in France and 40,000 local public sector organisations in France



• 1 million mobile business customers and their 8 million end users



• serves 1,300 trading floors in 58 countries with trading desks & networks



• connections to IP VPNs have grown by 59% between Q1 05 and Q1 06 all over the world. The company now maintains 213,000 IP VPN connections.



• owns and manages the world's largest IP VPN, reaching 220 countries, including 14 Russian and 19 Chinese cities.



• France Telecom / Orange have mobile operations in 21 countries



• Orange has an agreement with US wireless operator, Cingular, to provide consolidated mobile services to multinationals



• Orange customers can roam across 423 cellular networks in 163 countries

http://www.francetelecom.com

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France Telecom Unites Mobile, Wanadoo, and IPTV under Orange Brand

France Telecom debuted its new Orange brand, uniting its Wanadoo Internet, IPTV and Orange mobile services. The new label is aimed at delivering a unique and simplified customer experience, based on a joint portal, unified customer service, shared customer loyalty program and renovated high street shops in France. It also marks a strategic step in the company's NeXT strategy to transform itself into a nimble provider of next-generation products and services.



The Orange brand will now include all the Group's activities worldwide, except for traditional telephony offers, which will retain the France Telecom brand in France and the incumbent operator's where relevant.



The France Telecom Group itself is now symbolized by the ampersand, while the Orange brand represents the offerings and services to consumers and businesses.



Key facets of the Orange re-branding include:

• a single portal, www.orange.fr, to access the brand's Internet and mobile universe, for news, entertainment and communication;
  
  
• A single invoice for the various services. The tag "Wanadoo becomes Orange" will be placed on the Internet invoice for several months, to prevent any confusion for customers;
  
  
• A unified customer service, 3900, for streamlined management of the customer's relations with the Group;
  
  
• A shared customer loyalty program beginning this fall, to reward the loyalty of all fixed-line, mobile and Internet customers.
  
  
• Fixed Mobile Convergence via "Unik", a 2-in-1 telephone that at home connects automatically to the Livebox via WiFi and all calls become unlimited, 24-by-7. Away from home, Unik operates like a traditional mobile phone. Unik requires an Orange Broadband subscription, a Livebox, and a special terminal (starting at EUR 99). It will be available in September, 2006.
  
  
• Orange Optimales, "all included" packages with a switched line, the 8 MégaMax broadband Internet service, digital TV and 24-by-7 call plans.
  
  
• High Definition Voice for Livebox customers: unlimited IP calls with unequaled sound quality.
  
  
• High Definition ADSL Television for "HD Ready" TV owners.
  
  
• Unlimited TV-on-mobile packages, with the TV, Totale TV and Sport options.
  
  
• In the UK, "Free Orange Broadband" for Orange mobile pay monthly customers. Orange consumers signing up to a new pay monthly mobile contract with a talk plan over £30 will benefit from free broadband. There is no connection fee and the broadband package - worth £17.99 a month - includes up-to-8-meg broadband, an Orange Livebox (wireless modem), and Orange Wireless & Talk - Orange's Internet phone service which offers free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. The UK service also offers the promise of one email, one address book, one portal for mobile, fixed-line and broadband; cheaper calls to Orange mobiles through new "Anytime" broadband talk service; and a roadmap of future Orange interconnected services.

"This is a great day for France Telecom, but particularly for our customers, who will begin to discover a new digital world driven by openness and simplicity," announced Didier Lombard, Chairman and CEO of France Telecom. "The new Orange, brought by a new France Telecom, embodies the efforts we have made over the last year to move toward greater convergence and give our customers the opportunity to enhance and simplify their daily lives, both at home and at work."http://www.francetelecom.com

• As of 31-March-2006, France Telecom was serving 8.1 million ADSL customers in Europe, representing an increase of 10% since 31-Dec-2005. This includes 4.9 million ADSL customers in France, representing a consumer ADSL market share of 49.8% in France.
  
  
  
  The number of ADSL TV subscribers reached 229,000 at quarter's end, up from 102,000 a year earlier.
  
  
  
  France Telecom also reached 1.2 million VoIP customers in France, up by 377,000 for the quarter.
  
  
  
  The number of LiveBox gateways marketed in Europe surged to 2.4 million (2.1 million in France), up from 489,000 a year earlier.

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Agere to Supply Chipsets for SIRIUS Satellite Radio

Agere Systems will provide a new, advanced system-on-a-chip (SoC) chip set to manufacturers of SIRIUS radios. SIRIUS products that will use this new Agere SoC include satellite radio receivers used in automotive, home, portable and navigation applications. These receivers are scheduled for delivery to consumers next year.



SIRIUS currently has more than 4 million subscribers and expects to surpass 6.2 million subscribers by the end of 2006.


http://www.agere.com

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ADC and Andrew to Merge, Targeting Wireline + Wireless Solutions

ADC and Andrew Corporation agreed to merge, creating a wireline + wireless network infrastructure supplier with $3.3 billion in annual global sales. The deal is structured as a stock-for-stock merger with Andrew becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of ADC. The combined company will be based at ADC's world headquarters in Minnesota with ADC's John A. Blanchard continuing as non-executive chairman, and ADC's Robert E. Switz continuing as its president and CEO.



ADC supplies broad-based connectivity solutions for copper, coaxial, fiber, radio frequency, broadcast and enterprise networks. Andrew provides broad-based wireless solutions for antennas, cable products, base station subsystems, in-building and distributed coverage, geolocation systems and satellite communications.



The combined company will have approximately 20,000 employees worldwide of which approximately 37% are in the United States & Canada, 22% are in Europe, Middle East and Africa, 25% are in Asia-Pacific and 16% in Latin America.



"With accelerating globalization and consolidation among telecommunications service providers and communications equipment suppliers, now is the right time for ADC and Andrew to join forces and grow value as a world leader in network infrastructure solutions," said Ralph E. Faison, president and CEO of Andrew.

http://www.adc.comhttp://www.andrew.com

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TI Releases WLAN Development Kit for Consumer Electronics

Texas Instruments released its Consumer Electronics WLAN Developer Kit (CE WLAN DK) 2.0, providing manufacturers with the systems-level building blocks they need to add Wi-Fi connectivity to battery-operated devices such as digital still cameras, portable media players and emerging communications and entertainment applications.



TI's development platform approach offers systems-level tools, including host processor support. TI's CE WLAN DK 2.0 is built to interface directly with leading processor platforms using an SDIO interface such as OMAP processors and processors based on DaVinci technology. The CE WLAN DK 2.0 is available as part of the platform and comprises a hardware reference design, WLAN chipset and software driver package. The kit is tailored for portable applications and optimized for performance, coverage, battery life and size.
http://www.ti.com/cewlan

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Avaya Selected for Vanguard's IP Telephony Net with 18,000 End-points

Avaya has been selected by Vanguard, the second largest mutual fund firm in the U.S., for IP Telephony networking, applications and more than 18,000 IP endpoints around the world. The contract also includes project design, implementation and management, plus five years of maintenance services provided by Avaya Global Services.



Vanguard anticipates the IP telephony network will help it to reduce costs by more than $1-million annually.

http://www.avaya.com

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AMCC to Investigate Stock Option Practices

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation announced that its Audit Committee, which is comprised of independent directors, is reviewing the company's historical stock option grant practices and related accounting.



This company said its review is proactive and voluntary and was initiated in response to recently reported industry issues around option pricing practices.

http://www.amcc.com

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Atheros and Broadcom Demonstrate 802.11n Draft Compatibility

Atheros Communications and Broadcom announced interoperability between their draft 802.11n solutions. During the last month, the companies have jointly conducted interoperability testing between Atheros' XSPAN and Broadcom Intensi-fi chipsets. Tests have verified that the solutions work together at throughput speeds greater than 100 Mbps, using mandatory modes of the IEEE 802.11n specification (draft 1.0).

\http://www.atheros.comhttp://www.broadcom.com

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Narad Announces "EtherNode" Switched HFC Architecture

Narad Networks unveiled its new "EtherNode" switched hybrid fiber coax (HFC) architecture designed to extend Ethernet services to business customers from any multiple system operator (MSO) fiber network over any available medium, including fiber, coax, or wireless.



Narad said that in cases where business fiber or metro fiber passes near the end of a coax trunk, its new EtherNodes could switch optical Ethernet capacity onto coax trunks with minimal -- perhaps even zero plant downtime. The company argues that its "deep" Fiber To The Node (FTTN) architecture is a significant advance over historical Narad FTTN insofar as it no longer relies upon insertion of the Narad signal at the HFC node. With EtherNodes, the fiber in HFC can be found at any depth and in any location on the network.



Additionally, Narad EtherNodes can now be built in a variety of new, non-coax specific architectures. Where MSOs want to maximize business services capacity with minimal expense, Narad now supports deep fiber architectures, including Fiber-To-The-Curb (FTTC), and Fiber-To-The-Premise (FTTP).



"Over the years MSOs have deployed a significant number of CWDM-based fiber drops to serve individual enterprise customers. This consumes one gigabit of capacity and two lambdas for a customer that uses only a small fraction of this capacity. By inserting an FTTxSWITCH on this existing fiber, the same fiber can serve a large number of customers. MSOs that are running low on lambdas in nodes with lots of business customers can now use fiber EtherNodes to continue to expand their customer base with no new lambdas and significantly less construction required," said Chuck Kaplan, COO of Narad Networks.



Narad's new FTTxSWITCH, with support for deep EtherNodes in FTTN, FTTC and FTTP configurations will be available in limited quantities in October 2006.

http://www.naradnetworks.com

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Motorola to Demo AdvancedTCA with 10 Gbps Ethernet Switching

Motorola plans to demonstrate a 10Gbps Ethernet AdvancedTCA switching blade integrated into its "Centellis" 3600 Series communications server at next week's GLOBALCOMM 2006 in Chicago. The 10 Gbps test system, which will use switching technology developed by Broadcom, provides backwards compatibility to currently deployed 1GbE systems .



"Adding 10Gbps Ethernet switching -- designed with telecom in mind -- to our portfolio is key to extending the ability of ATCA to address a broad range of data plane applications. Network equipment providers will be able to deploy applications such as IPTV transport, Video on Demand and Community Gaming that require high bandwidth I/O or high bandwidth storage or a combination of the two on their standards-based common platforms built using Motorola's open communications servers," said Shlomo Pri-Tal, director, technology office, Embedded Communications Computing, Motorola.

http://www.motorola.com

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Axerra Expands in Russia

Axerra Networks announced the opening of a new office in Moscow, Russia. The office will support new and existing customers in Russia, the CIS, and the Baltic States, where Pseudo-Wire solutions are in demand. Recently, for example, Axerra successfully completed installations for UralSviazInform, the largest service provider in the Ural region of Russia, serving over 7 million subscribers. Axerra's Pseudo-Wire solutions allow UralSviazInform to deliver a complete portfolio of services over an IP/Ethernet access network to customers in the region.



Mr. Roman Ferster will serve as Axerra's General Manager in Russia, the CIS, and the Baltic States. Mr. Ferster has nearly 20 years of experience in sales and business development, with over 10 years in the Russian, CIS, and Eastern European telecommunications market. Prior to joining Axerra, Mr. Ferster was General Manager of RGRCOM, a leading telecommunications distributor in Moscow, Business Development Manager at RAD Data Communications in Russia, and Regional Director of Sales - Central and Eastern Europe at ECI Telecom.

http://www.axerra.com

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Sprint and RIM Offer Two EV-DO-Capable Devices

Sprint and Research In Motion (RIM) introduced a new BlackBerry 7130e capable of taking advantage of broadband-like speeds delivered on the Sprint Power Vision Network (average download speeds of 400-700 kbps and up to 2Mbps. The handset device offers features like Bluetooth Wireless technology, speakerphone, high-resolution color display and SureType keyboard technology. The BlackBerry 7130e can also be used as a tethered modem in conjunction with a laptop for high-speed Internet and data application access anywhere Sprint has coverage.



Customers purchasing the BlackBerry 7250 from Sprint can also now benefit from broadband-like data speeds of the Sprint Power Vision Network. The BlackBerry 7250 previously introduced by Sprint in 2005, now also features Sprint Mobile Broadband service. The EV-DO-capable device comes equipped with a full-featured phone, Bluetooth Wireless technology, backlit QWERTY keyboard and thumb-operated track wheel navigation and can also be used as a tethered modem for flexible connectivity options.
http://www.sprint.comhttp://www.rim.com

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Concurrent Announces its First VOD Deployment in China

Shekou CATV has deployed Concurrent's MediaHawk VOD platform. Shekou CATV launched VOD earlier this month to subscribers in the Chinese provinces of Shenzhen, Shekou, and Guangdong. Shekou is also using a content acquisition and pre-processing system locally developed by Concurrent's China office for the unique requirements of the Chinese market. Additionally, Concurrent will test the interoperability of their on-demand platform with local partner SZCOM's special add-on hardware module, the IPR 200, that allows low-cost, one-way digital set-top boxes (STB) to be upgraded to two-way digital STBs capable of supporting interactive services.



Shekou CATV currently provides cable television service to approximately 30,000 digital subscribers and broadband data to approximately 10,000 subscribers.

http://www.ccur.com

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Australia's Optus Deploys Juniper's M320 Edge Router

Optus, Australia's second largest telecommunications provider, is deploying Juniper Networks M-series routing platforms to converge its business and residential services on a single, multiservice IP network. The network is being supplied by Siemens Australia. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.juniper.net

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Sprint Nextel to Install Power Generators as Hurricane Precaution

Sprint Nextel announced plans to spend $100 million for hurricane preparations in storm-prone coastal communities. This investment includes the installation of permanent generators for critical wireless cell sites and network facilities on the company's Global IP Network, which provides wireline data and long distance voice services. In addition, the investment funds the purchase of portable generators, SatCOWs (Satellite Cell on Wheels) and SatCOLTs (Satellite Cell on Light Trucks) which can be deployed as part of the company's disaster response and recovery.



By the end of 2006, the company plans to install permanent generators in approximately 800 cell sites serving both the Nationwide Sprint PCS and Nextel National Networks, primarily in Florida. The company also announced plans to install 1,500 additional permanent generators at sites in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and other locations in Florida by the end of 2008.
Sprint Nextel also noted that as a standard business practice, it has permanent generators deployed to all of its wireless and wireline switches. In addition, permanent generators are installed at all of the company's network POPs.



As an example of other hurricane preparations, Sprint Nextel is relocating a section its SONET fiber ring between Mobile, Ala. and Hammond, La. to a path further inland, away from flood-prone areas along the Gulf Coast. http://www.sprint.com/hurricaneinfo

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