DIRECTV Reports Higher Profits, Emphasis on Quality Subscribers

DIRECTV reported U.S. gross subscriber additions of 863,000 for Q2, a decline of 10% compared to the second quarter of 2005 primarily due to the implementation of revised credit policies and dealer incentives aimed at improving the quality of new subscriber additions. DIRECTV now has 15,513,000, up from 14,670,000 a year earlier.Q2 revenues increased 10% to $3.52 billion and operating profit before depreciation and amortization(1) nearly doubled to $977 million compared to last year's second quarter. The DIRECTV Group reported second quarter 2006...

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Cisco Beats Expectations and Reports Good Momentum

Cisco Systems reported net sales for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2006 ending 29-July-2006 of $7.98 billion, compared with $6.6 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005 and compared with $7.3 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Scientific-Atlanta contributed $582 million to net sales for the quarter.Net income (GAAP) was $1.5 billion or $0.25 per share, which includes stock-based compensation expense related to employee stock options and employee stock purchases of $152 million, net of tax, or $0.02 per share. Net income prior to...

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Cablevision Reports Revenue Growth, Stock Option Review

Cablevision reported consolidated net revenue growth of 15.6% to more than $1.4 billion as compared to the second quarter of 2005. The company did not release full Q2 results because of an ongoing stock options review and an expected restatement of financial results.Some highlights from the period:Telecommunications services net revenues, including its "Optimum" branded consumer services and "Optimum Lightpath" branded business services, rose 17.2% to $1,049.1 million, compared to the prior year period.Basic video customers were up 35,328 or 1.2%...

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3Com Appoints Edgar Masri as New CEO, Seeks Greater Stake in Huawei Joint Venture

3Com appointed Edgar Masri as its new President and CEO, replacing Scott Murray who submitted his resignation. Masri previously served as the Chief Operating Officer for Redline Communications. From 2000 to 2006, Masri was a general partner at Matrix Partners, a venture capital firm focusing on technology investments. Prior to joining Matrix, Masri spent 15 years at 3Com in a variety of senior management positions, including his role as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company's former Network Systems Business Unit and President...

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Time Warner Cable Selects ARRIS CMTS

Time Warner Cable has signed a two-year Purchase Agreement for the ARRIS C4 and C3 CMTS products. The nation's second-largest Multiple System Operator (MSO) has already deployed the 1RU-size ARRIS C3 CMTS in several of its systems and, in anticipation of this purchase agreement, placed its first C4 CMTS orders last week.Time Warner Cable has over 5.4 million high-speed data subscribers and over 1.6 million digital phone customers.http://www.arrisi....

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Sony Debuts "mylo" WiFi Personal Communicator

Sony introduced its "mylo" personal communicator for the US market. The pocket-sized device works in any open 802.11b wireless network to provide instant messaging, VoIP calling, email, web browsing and media playback. Some key features:the communicator comes with Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger softwareit includes JiWire's hotspot directory listing more than 20,000 WiFi networks in the US.1GB of the flash memory is includedit uses a...

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Nokia to Acquire Loudeye, Enter Digital Media Distribution

Nokia agreed to acquire Loudeye, a provider of digital music platforms and digital media distribution services, for approximately US$60 million.Loudeye aggregates rights and content from all the major labels and hundreds of independents and currently offers licensed catalog and complete media for over 1.6 million tracks. The company delivers 60 live services in over 20 countries and multiple languages across Europe and South Africa, Australia and...

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Brocade to Acquire McDATA Corp for $713 Million

Brocade Communications Systems agreed to acquire McDATA Corporation, a leading provider of storage networking solutions. Brocade, which offers a family of Storage Area Network (SAN) connectivity platforms, said the acquisition accelerates the pace of change in next generation data centers."The acquisition of McDATA will build on Brocade's vision for the next generation data center, leveraging Brocade's product innovation and operational discipline. The combined company will accelerate innovation and the delivery of a diverse set of compelling...

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Skype and iSkoot Sign Co-Marketing Deal for Mobile-PC Calling

iSkoot, a start-up based in Cambridge, Mass. offering a mobile-to-PC calling solution, announced a co-marketing deal with Skype. The iSkoot solution will allow mass market Java-phones as well as high-end Smartphones to place and receive Internet calls through Skype software from their handsets, without the need for PCs, special hardware, or WiFi hot spots. The software enables Skype users to use SkypeOut for inexpensive calls to any phone from their mobile handset.iSkoot said it has eight patents pending for its unique client server protocol and...

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Nokia Wins 3G Expansion Contract from Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom

Chunghwa Telecom Co., the incumbent telco in Taiwan, has awarded a turnkey network expansion contract to Nokia to expand its WCDMA 3G and HSDPA network coverage. Deliveries and deployment will start immediately. Financial terms were not disclosed.Under the agreement, Nokia will deploy WCDMA 3G radio and core networks. Nokia will also provide turnkey services including network planning, other support services, deployment and optimization of Nokia HSDPA that was provided earlier. Nokia has been working with Chunghwa Telecom since 1999, and in addition...

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Lucent Supplies Carrier Ethernet Router to UK's Updata

Lucent Technologies is supplying Updata, a broadband solutions provider in the U.K., with one of its most advanced Carrier Ethernet platforms -- the Lucent Ethernet Router 15100 -- recently acquired from Riverstone Networks. Lucent said the deployment marks one of the first large-scale customer deployments of the Lucent Ethernet Router 15100.The network is used to support high-speed data services for Updata's local government customers in the U.K.http://www.lucent.com/carrier-ethernetIn April 2006, Lucent Technologies completed its acquisition...

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Firetide Ships New Modular Access Points

Firetide began shipping a new line of "HotPoint" access points for municipal and enterprise wireless networks. The new access points include an extended feature set to enable service providers to support multiple Wi-Fi services and virtual networks over a Firetide wireless mesh infrastructure as well as a conventional wired network. Access points can be mounted independently to achieve optimal radio coverage for both mesh backhaul and client access. High powered, 400 mW radios extend reach and penetration, while a turbo-mode provides data rates...

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Microsoft Integrates Speech Capabilities into Office Communications Server

Microsoft plans to integrate speech platform services into its Office Communications Server 2007, extending its unified communications strategy to integrate instant messaging, IP telephony, voice response, audioconferencing and videoconferencing. Microsoft announced Office Communications Server 2007 earlier this summer as a key component of the company's unified communications road map. The addition of speech capabilities gives developers the opportunity to create new communications applications or extend existing applications using an integrated...

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BellSouth Launches Virtual Metro Ethernet Service

BellSouth launched a "Virtual" Metro Ethernet Service, providing four classes of service, committed information rate and service level agreements between locations using multipoint-to-multipoint, point-to- multipoint or point-to-point architecture. BellSouth expects early adopters of the service to include companies from finance, health care, manufacturing, education and local government segments that require guaranteed throughput, comprehensive service level agreements and high-speed, cost effective Ethernet service to support multiple applications.The...

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MobiTV Announces WiMAX Support

MobiTV, which is currently delivering video services to over one million mobile subscribers, announced its official support for the WiMAX standard. The company said it has been investing heavily in research and technology development to support the latest wireless network standards and the company is now committed to deploying advanced mobile television and media delivery services over WiMAX networks. The MobiTV service for mobile is available in the US through Sprint, Cingular and Alltel; in the UK through 3 and Orange UK; in Canada through Bell...

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Sprint Nextel Selects Mobile WiMAX for 4G Network

Sprint Nextel's unveiled plans to develop and deploy a 4G nationwide broadband mobile network based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX standard. The network will use Sprint Nextel's extensive 2.5GHz spectrum holdings, which cover 85 percent of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets. Mobile WiMAX iniitially is expected to support data rates in the 2 to 4 Mbps range. Initial services are expected to be online by Q4 2007.Sprint Nextel is expecting...

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