Huawei Wins Phase II IPTV contract in Morocco

Morocco's Maroc Telecom has selected Huawei as the exclusive supplier for the second phase of its IPTV project. In just 3 months since launching IPTV service, Maroc Telecom has registered more than 10,000 subscribers.



The first phase of the IPTV project covered the capital city Rabat and Casablanca, and the service focused on BTV and VOD using H.264 encoding.



In the phase two contract, Huawei will enable "Video Value-Added Services" for Maroc Telecom, and provide uniform management and backup of the network-wide equipment. Huawei will also supply content protection mechanisms and the EPG interface customization function that reflects the local characteristics of Morocco. The user channels will be expanded from the 50 channels implemented in phase I to 100 channels in phase II. IPTV service availability will be extended from Rabat and Casablanca to the entire country.



Huawei noted it now has over 40 carrier customers for its IPTV solution, including six commercial deployments which current serve over 300,000 subscribers.

http://www.huawei.comhttp://www.iam.ma

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Ciena Reports 16% Sequential Revenue Rise, 1-for-7 Reverse Stock Split

For its fiscal third quarter 2006 ended July 31, 2006, Ciena reported revenue of $152.5 million, representing a 16.3% sequential increase from fiscal second quarter revenue of $131.2 million, and an increase of 38.0% over the same period a year ago when the company reported sales of $110.5 million. Ciena's net loss (GAAP) for the fiscal third quarter 2006 was $4.3 million, or a net loss of $0.01 per share. This compares with a reported GAAP net loss of $51.0 million, or a net loss of $0.09 per share, for the same period a year ago.



"Strong sequential revenue growth in our fiscal third quarter, combined with significant progress toward a normalized operating model, attests to continued success in the execution of our strategy," said Ciena CEO and President Gary Smith. "We continue to see positive indicators in overall market demand for next-generation solutions that maximize the business case for IP service delivery," said Smith. "As a result of these market dynamics and strong traction across our product portfolio and customer landscape, we expect our fiscal fourth quarter revenue will trend upward sequentially by as much as 5% from our fiscal third quarter revenue."



Separately today, Ciena announced that its Board of Directors has approved a one-for-seven reverse split of its common stock to be effective as of 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 22, 2006. Ciena said the purposes of the reverse split are "to increase the per share trading price of Ciena's common stock, thereby appealing to a broader range of investors; and to provide investors with more useful information in making period-to-period comparisons of Ciena's earnings per share."http://www.ciena.com

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Nokia Acquires gate5 for Mapping/Navigation in Mobile Devices

Nokia agreed to acquire gate5, a supplier of mapping, routing and navigation software and services, for an undisclosed sum.



gate5, which was founded in 1999 and is based in Berlin, provides software to leading personal navigation device manufacturers around the world. Its "smart2go" software enables a sophisticated mapping and navigation experience with advanced features such as house polygons, earth browsing and dynamic route guidance. All applications are extendable with more than 5,000 city guides, travel guides or services.

Nokia said it will continue to support gate5's PND (personal navigation device) customers and remains fully committed keeping them satisfied with enhanced software solutions. It will also continue to support gate5's multi-platform strategy for mobile devices, including Symbian, Linux, Windows Mobile, Palm and Java platforms.



Nokia sees the acquisition as an important step in developing the new product category of multimedia computers that offer people multiple ways to connect to information, entertainment and other people.



"Our combined expertise means that mobile device owners will enjoy a wide range of location based services," said Dr. Michael Halbherr, CEO, gate5. "Based on maps and routing functionality, there are countless useful features for mobile users; e.g. travel guides, search what is around you including restaurants, hotels, shops, etc. anything you need in your surroundings. We are excited to become part of Nokia and to be able to take the gate5 technologies and products to even wider audiences."http://www.nokia.comhttp://www.gate5.de

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Telstra Awards Contracts Valued at EUR 270 million to Alcatel

Telstra has budgeted AUD460 million (EUR 270 million) for upgrades to its fixed networks in a works program led by Alcatel.



In 2006/07, Alcatel will establish an IP network footprint in five Australian cities - Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide - by supplying and deploying its IP-DSLAMs, Ethernet aggregation and optical networking solutions.



A milestone reached in the lead up to this next phase of upgrades is the establishment of Telstra's state-of-the art Integration Laboratory in Australia, which will be managed by Alcatel.



This technology upgrade is unrelated to Telstra's previous Fibre to the Node (FTTN) proposal, which was put on hold earlier this year.

http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.telstra.com

• In November 2005, Telstra announced a Network Transformation Project that will migrate its Australian voice and broadband access networks into a single IP-based infrastructure. At the time, the carrier said it aimed to have 80% of its Internet customers on broadband in three years (today 50% are on broadband). CAPEX plans for the next generation IP network called for an investment of more than A$10 billion over five years, of which A$2-3 billion is incremental over existing plans, with the IP core in place by the end of 2007. Telstra has selected three strategic vendors for this multiyear project: Alcatel, Cisco Systems, and Ericsson.

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Arcadian Raises $20 Million for IP-based Wireless Monitoring Network

Arcadian Networks, a privately held wireless carrier based in New York, raised an additional $20 million of financing from Clal Industries and Investments Ltd. (CII), Goldman Sachs and Gilo Ventures.



Arcadian Networks commenced operations in April 2006 and has introduced IP-based, private network and turn-key carrier services for real-time monitoring and control of mission-critical applications such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), security surveillance, VoIP, automatic meter reading (AMR), and workforce management. Industries that will use this network include electric and water utilities, as well as oil and gas, public safety, mining,
transportation and environmental companies.



Arcadian Networks operates a unique 700 MHz-based network.

http://www.arcadiannetworks.com/

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Fujitsu Names Keith Horn COO for U.S. Semiconductor Operation

Fujitsu Microelectronics America (FMA) named Keith Horn to be its Chief Operating Officer (COO). Horn, who is currently serving as senior vice president of sales and marketing, will report to Kazuyuki Kawauchi, President and CEO of Fujitsu Microelectronics America.http://us.fujitsu.com/micro

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HelloSoft to Provide Symbian VoIP and IMS/VCC Solutions

HelloSoft is extending its VoIP and IMS/VCC software solutions for mobile devices to the Symbian OS ecosystem. HelloSoft has a range of VoIP and wireless products. In addition, HelloSoft's IMS/VCC stack enables seamless hand-off between cellular and Wi-Fi networks for multi-mode handsets.



HelloSoft is headquartered in San Jose, California with an R&D facility in Hyderabad, India.
http://www.hellosoft.com

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ESnet and Internet2 to Launch Next Gen Research Network

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and Internet2 will deploy a high capacity nationwide network that will greatly enhance the capabilities of researchers across the country who participate in the DOE's scientific research efforts.



Called ESnet4, the new network created through this partnership will initially operate on two dedicated 10 Gbps wavelengths on the new Internet2 nationwide infrastructure and will seamlessly scale by one wavelength per year for the next four to five years. It will deliver production IP capabilities as well as new optical services like point-to-point dynamic circuits. The network will serve large-scale DOE Office of Science projects such as DOE's participation in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab and several supercomputing centers.



Significantly, the ESNet4 optical infrastructure will provide flexibility and control through the dynamic provisioning of lightpaths and sub-channels.

The new ESnet4 infrastructure will be provided by Internet2 through its recently announced agreement with Level 3 Communications to develop a new advanced nationwide hybrid network infrastructure with enhanced IP services as well as new dynamic optical capabilities. Level 3, which will provide the underlying bandwidth services over a dedicated optical platform, is deploying Infinera's Digital Optical Networking equipment a to enable the provisioning of optical circuits dynamically. The new Internet2 network builds upon successful tests of dynamically provisioned optical waves for ESnet conducted earlier this year by the Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) project of the Internet2 member community.




ESnet, funded by DOE's Office of Science and operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, connects more than 30 DOE laboratories and provides networking to over 100,000 DOE laboratory scientists. It is also used by more than 18,000 researchers from universities, other government agencies and private industry. ESnet directly serves major science facilities including particle accelerators, supercomputing centers, and massive scientific data storage systems.



Internet2's network currently connects over five million users at 270 research and education institutions in the U.S. and also provides access to over 80 international research networks. This partnership will allow university and lab researchers participating in ESnet activities to leverage their institutions' Internet2 network connection to access the ESnet4 infrastructure and its global network partners around the world.



"ESnet and Internet2 share a common technical vision for the evolution of dynamically delivered network capabilities that will enable the next-generation of scientific breakthroughs," said Bill Johnston, head of ESnet at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "In creating this partnership, ESnet and Internet2 will extend the most cutting-edge network capabilities with guaranteed carrier-class dependability, allowing our scientific community to focus its resources on its core research and educational objectives."http://www.es.net/http://www.internet2.edu/

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GSM Exceeds 50% Market Share in the Americas

GSM has taken more than fifty percent of the market share in the Americas, adding nearly 100 million new customers from June 2005 to June 2006. At the end of 2Q 2006, two billion of the world's 2.41 billion cellular subscribers used GSM/UMTS. Informa's World Cellular Information Service projects three billion GSM/UMTS customers by 2009, with 551 million of these subscribers using UMTS services. Some other notes:

• At 2Q 2005, GSM held 38% of the Americas market. Twelve months later, that market share has grown to 51%, and in several key countries the market
  
  shares are even more impressive.



• Brazil added 21 million new GSM customers in the year ending June 2006, and now represents more than 57% of the Brazilian wireless mobile market.



• GSM in Argentina added 12 million new GSM customers from June 2005 to June 2006, and now holds a market share of 77%, compared to CDMA and TDMA at 11%
  
  and 10%, respectively.



• GSM in Colombia added 14 million new GSM customers from June 2005 to June 2006, with a current market share of 80%, compared to CDMA and TDMA at 10%
  
  each.



• In Mexico, where 16 million new GSM subscriptions in one year have contributed to an almost 78% growth rate, GSM has captured 71% of market share, up
  
  from 48% only one year ago. This compares to a share of 18.5% for TDMA and 7% for CDMA.



• In the twelve months from Q2 2005 to Q2 2006, the GSM family of technologies gained nearly 500 million new customers worldwide, including 41 million new
  
  UMTS 3G customers.



• In June 2006, the industry milestone of 2 billion GSM subscriptions worldwide was reached, including subscriptions to UMTS at 70 million, and in the past
  
  year, new GSM subscriptions accounted for more than 90% of all net new digital wireless customers.



• Mobile broadband UMTS/HSDPA now has 45 networks in service in 32 countries and another 66 networks planned, in deployment, or in trial.



• Although voice still constitutes most cellular traffic, wireless data now exceeds 10 percent of ARPU.



• Data is based on figures from Informa Telecoms & Media World Cellular Information Service (WCIS).

3G Americas' President, Chris Pearson, stated, "2006 is the year for HSDPA. Only one year ago there were no commercial networks in play, and today you have more than 70 million customers using GSM for mobile broadband. Expect to see nearly all of the 289 operators publicly committed to deploying UMTS execute HSDPA on their networks, thereby achieving the best possible use of their spectrum assets, the lowest cost per bit of data and a wide variety in devices and applications for their customers."http://www.3gamericas.org/

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CBS Launches More Than 100 Broadband Channels of College Sports

CSTV Networks, a division of CBS, is launching more than 100 new broadband channels dedicated to live college sports. Consumers can subscribe to CSTV XXL via www.CSTVXXL.com or CSTV.com, which includes the entire array of All-Access broadband channels and all 10,000 events.



The service is powered by thePlatform Media Publishing System and Maven Network's Maven Media System.



"Exclusive Internet content has become a vital element as we segue from a mass media to a personalized media world," said Brian Bedol, President and CEO, CSTV Networks, Inc. "Oftentimes the only way passionate communities of college sports fans can stay connected and catch every play of every game is through original broadband content."http://www.cstv.com/mediaoverview

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