Axtel to Acquire Avantel, Combining Networks in Mexico

Axtel agreed to acquire Avantel Infraestructura in a plan to create a fully complementary national telecommunications company in Mexico providing local, long-distance, broadband and data, in a transaction valued at $500 million. The deal combines AXTEL's hybrid wireline and fixed-wireless local access network, and 683 kilometers of metropolitan fiber optic rings, with Avantel's 7,700 route kilometers of long-haul fiber optic network and 300 kilometers of metropolitan fiber optic ring.



The merger would consolidate AXTEL's position as the second-largest fixed-line integrated telecommunications company in Mexico.

http://www.avantel.com.mxhttp://axtel.com.mx

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NETGEAR Posts Revenue of $151.6 million, 36% year-over-year growth

NETGEAR's Q3 net revenue increased to $151.6 million, 36% year-over-year growth and non-GAAP net income increased to $11.9 million, as compared to $9.1 million in the comparable prior year quarter, 31% year-over-year growth.



NETGEAR launched a total of 10 new products in the third quarter, with the most important being NETGEAR's SSL VPN Concentrator 25 and Skype Wi-Fi Phone.



Net revenue from service providers reached 23% of total revenue in the third quarter http://www.netgear.com

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AT&T U-verse VOD to Include Warner Bros. Movies

AT&T reached a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to include the studio's current and catalog titles as part of the AT&T U-verse TV video-on-demand (VOD) programming lineup. Financial terms were not disclosed.



"Warner Bros. has always been focused on providing our content to consumers when and where they want to view it," said Deanne Lewis, director, On-Demand Sales of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. "We are pleased to join with AT&T to offer our award-winning movies as part of the U-verse on-demand library. AT&T U-verse TV not only allows us to continue to extend our reach but also provides consumers with more viewing options."http://www.att.com

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AT&T Offers Remote Home Monitoring Video Service

AT&T introduced a new home monitoring service that enables customers to use both personal computers and Cingular wireless devices to access high-quality, streaming digital video and other real-time data and information from their homes. The service combines live and recorded video (non-audio) capabilities with a range of environmental sensor options. Users can customize alerts and actions.



For example, a user can program the service to send a text message alert to a cell phone when motion is detected in an area of the home, while at the same time automatically turning on lighting and recording video of the same area.



AT&T is offering a $199 starter package that includes:

• A pan-and-tilt IP camera


• Two power modules that enable device connectivity via home power outlets


• A wireless door/window sensor


• A wireless gateway for connecting equipment to a home network

Thereafter, the service is provided for $9.95 a month.

http://www.att.com

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Comcast Credits Triple Play for Growing Momentum

Citing increased demand for its Triple Play service bundle, Comcast reported that revenue increased 12% to $6.6 billion in the third quarter of 2006 (results are presented as if the acquisition of Susquehanna Communications and the Adelphia/Time Warner transactions were effective on January 1, 2005.)



Some operational highlights for Q3:

• Revenue generating units (RGUs) increased 1.486 million in the third quarter of 2006 or 82% from prior year net additions.



• Added 558,000 new digital subscribers during the quarter. Digital penetration now exceeds 50%.



• Video revenue increased 9% to $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2006, reflecting growth in digital customers and increased demand for new digital features including ON DEMAND, digital video recorders (DVR) and HDTV programming, as well as higher basic cable rates and subscribers.



• Basic video subscribers increased by 10,000 subscribers to 24.1 million during the third quarter of 2006 compared to a decline of 44,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2005.



• Comcast ended the quarter with 12.1 million or 50% of video subscribers taking digital services, a 1.6 million or 16% increase from one year ago.



• Growth in video revenue and digital cable subscribers also reflects increasing consumer demand for new digital features including ON DEMAND, driving a pay-per-view revenue increase of 31% in the third quarter of 2006 from the same time in 2005.



• Added 536,000 high-speed Internet subscribers during the quarter - the most quarterly additions in two years. Comcast now has 11.0 million high-speed Internet subscribers or 24% penetration of available homes.



• Added 483,000 Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) customers during the quarter, for a total base of 2.1 million phone customers. There was a loss of 102,000 circuit-switched customers. CDV service now marketed to 31 million homes or 65% of Comcast's footprint.



• Capital expenditures of $1.25 billion in the third quarter of 2006 were 25% higher compared to the third quarter of 2005 driven by an 82% increase in RGU net additions over the same time period.

http://www.comcast.com

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Time Warner Supplies 1 Gbps "Quilt" Connections for U.S. Universities

Time Warner Telecom has deployed Gigabit Ethernet Internet connections to the Indiana GigaPoP, located at IUPUI (Indianapolis University-Purdue University Indianapolis), and the University of Minnesota. The two universities are among the first to contract for Internet connectivity from Time Warner Telecom, after the company was named a preferred provider of high performance network services for The Quilt CIS project. The Quilt provides network service to more than 200 Internet2 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the U.S.



The Indiana GigaPoP will deploy and manage 1 Gbps of Internet connectivity to Indiana University Bloomington, IUPUI and Purdue University's West Lafayette campus, as well as the vast majority of higher education institutions throughout the state of Indiana as part of the I-Light project that launched in 2001.

http://www.twtelecom.comhttp://www.thequilt.net

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Extreme Reports Revenue of $83.4 Million

Extreme Networks reported quarterly revenue of $83.8 million, compared to $97.9 million in the same period last year and compared to $82.4 million in the preceding quarter. Because the company is conducting a review of its historical practices for stock option grants and accounting for option grants, it did not provide GAAP metrics.



Revenues in the U.S. were $34.2 million in the quarter, representing 40.9 percent of total consolidated revenue, compared to $45.1 million or 46.1 percent of revenue in the same quarter a year ago, and compared to $35.0 million or 42.4 percent of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006. International revenues were $49.6 million or 59.1 percent of total revenues, compared to $52.8 million or 53.9 percent of total revenues in the first quarter of last fiscal year, and compared to $47.4 million or 57.6 percent of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006
http://www.extremenetworks.com

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Verizon Business Connects SuperJANET5 Research Network

Verizon Business has supplied a state-of-the-art, fibre-optic network for SuperJANET5, the U.K.'s new national research and education network. SuperJANET5 will link 19 regional educational networks across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, supporting a potential user base of up to 18 million users.



Verizon Business supplied an autonomous network backbone, with a dedicated, geographically diverse fiber infrastructure. The network can scale to terabit-per-second capabilities.

http://www.verizon.comhttp://www.ja.net/

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Vitesse Releases PMD devices for BPON, EPON and GPON

Vitesse Semiconductor announced the general availability of its "PON PRO" family of physical media dependent (PMD) devices for BPON, EPON and GPON applications. To date, PON PRO products have won over twenty designs worldwide with module manufacturers designing Optical Line Termination (OLT) and Optical Network Unit (ONU) applications for the FTTH market, mostly in Asia.

http://www.vitesse.com/PON

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Riverbed Adds 300 Customers in Q3

Riverbed Technology reported Q3 revenue of $24.6 million, which represents a sequential increase of 36% from the immediately preceding quarter and a year-over-year increase of 247% from the third quarter of last year. The net loss on a GAAP basis for the third quarter of 2006 was $3.1 million, or $0.16 per share, compared to a net loss of $6.1 million in the second quarter of 2006 and a net loss of $3.9 million in the third quarter of 2005. Riverbed's third quarter of 2006 GAAP results included $2.1 million of non-cash stock-based compensation expenses related to employee stock options.



Riverbed added approximately 300 new customers in Q3, bringing its cumulative customer total to over 1,300 since it began shipping Steelhead wide-area data services (WDS) appliances in mid-2004.

http://www.riverbed.com

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Global Crossing to Acquire Impsat for Latin American Presence

Global Crossing agreed to acquire Impsat, a provider of private telecommunications network and Internet services in Latin America, for $336 million, consisting of $95 million in cash and assumption of $241 million of debt.

Impsat currently provides services to more than 4,500 national and multinational clients, and has operations in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Peru and the United States.



The companies have had a commercial relationship since 2000, when Global Crossing selected Impsat as one of its providers of Point of Presence (PoP) facilities for Global Crossing's Latin American network, known as South American Crossing.



Global Crossing said Impsat's extensive IP-based intercity network, 15 metropolitan networks and 15 advanced hosting centers will provide a greater breadth of services and coverage to its Latin American operations. Global Crossing expects the acquisition to contribute annual revenue of more than $270 million, and to yield annual Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) of more than $70 million after operational synergies are fully realized.

http://www.globalcrossing.comhttp://www.impsat.com

• In August 2006, Global Crossing announced a cash offer to acquire all of the issued and to-be-issued shares of Fibernet Group Plc , a UK-based provider of specialist telecommunications networks, for approximately $96.1 million (50.6 million British pounds sterling). Fibernet serves a marquee roster of UK corporate enterprise and carrier customers, including the Bank of England, Citigroup, IBM and Carphone Warehouse. provides its services from a national fiber network in the UK and also from its metropolitan networks in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Reading. The company has more than 100 points of presence in the UK and an additional 12 in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Verizon Wireless Delivers 5 Billion TXT Messages in September

Verizon Wireless delivered more than five billion TXT messages in September 2006 -- a new monthly record for both the company and the U.S. wireless industry. This represents an increase of 150 percent - or an increase of three billion messages a month - for the same time period in 2005.



Also last month, Verizon Wireless customers shared more than 100 million PIX and FLIX multimedia messages.
http://www.verizonwireless.com

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QUALCOMM Reaches 200 Million Milestone for GPS

More than 200 million mobile handsets worldwide have shipped featuring QUALCOMM's gpsOne Assisted-GPS technology. The gpsOne solution provides the position-location technology behind the vast majority of the location services at more than 50 major network operators worldwide.



The gpsOne A-GPS solution is integrated into most of QUALCOMM's Mobile Station Modem chipsets. http://www.qualcomm.com

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Multiservice Forum's GMI 2006 Event Tests IMS-Compliant NGNs

The Multiservice Forum wrapped up its Global MSF Interoperability event -- GMI 2006 -- a two-week, multinational, distributed, interactive test bed designed to verify key interoperability aspects of NGN/IMS implementations.



GMI 2006 amounts to a massive "real network" trial of the MSF IMS (IP Multimedia System)-compatible Release 3 architecture. BT/ Vodafone, Verizon, Korea Telecom/ETRI and NTT Japan together with the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Labs (UNH-IOL) are hosting the event and over 500 test engineers and support staff are engaged around the clock in the massive test bed at facilities in 4 countries.



GMI 2006 has 26 participating vendors who have submitted 197 network devices to a total of 98 test cases spread over 8 distinct scenarios, ranging from a nomadic subscriber in a single domain to a full scale test including value added services and roaming over multiple domains, including both MSF R3 and "pure IMS" networks.



The event is sponsored by Nortel and covers such topics as roaming across multiple network types (including cellular and WiFi), QoS issues (including session border control and bandwidth management), and interoperability with 3GPP release 4 in real-world deployment scenarios that explicitly include first-generation VoIP SoftSwitches, PSTN interworking and evolution to a true IMS network.



Specifically, the event is validating MSF Release 3 Implementation Agreements covering:

• Roaming services across multiple network types;


• QoS (Session Border Gateway and Bandwidth Manager);


• IP Carrier Interconnect/Interworking; security interoperability;


• 3rd party applications and service brokering;


• Open Media Gateway Control interface relevant to 3GPP BICN architecture; and


• IPv4/6 Interworking

"Finding out what works well, and equally importantly what doesn't work so well, allows the industry to focus its efforts and accelerate the development of IMS compliant NGNs. You can't beat the value of learning from a live globally networked testing environment such as this" said Roger Ward, President of the MSF and Office of the CTO, British Telecom.

http://www.msforum.org

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