SureWest to Freeze Pension Plan

SureWest Communications, which serves the Sacramento, California region, said it will freeze its pension plan effective April 1, 2007. The pension plan will be closed to future employees and future benefit accruals for current employees will be discontinued. No employees will lose their previously earned pension benefit. In place of a pension plan, SureWest in introducing a "Total Rewards Program" and putting in place other forms of employee benefits such as enhanced educational reimbursement options, enhanced employee recognition programs and revisions to certain compensation policies.

http://www.surewest.com

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BT Selects ADVA's Ethernet Gear for 21CN

BT has named ADVA Optical Networking a supplier of Ethernet last mile access products for its 21st Century Network (21CN). Specifically, BT's 21CN will deploy the ADVA FSP 150 as the Network Termination Equipment (NTE) throughout the network. The ADVA FSP 150 portfolio provides Ethernet demarcation, extension and aggregation. Financial terms were not disclosed.



ADVA said its equipment will enable BT to provide stringent monitoring from the network core to the customer premise to remotely respond to faults, minimizing the need for manual intervention at customer sites and rapidly increasing their response time. The ADVA Network Manager (NM) will be integrated with BT's OSS to provide continuous end-to-end service provisioning and monitoring.



ADVA has previously supplied its FSP 500 switch to BT.

http://www.advaoptical.com

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PostPath Enhances its Email/Collaboration Server

PostPath, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, released an updated version of its email and collaboration server that offers enterprises a drop-in alternative to Exchange.



PostPath Server 2.2 supports unmodified Outlook desktops, Active Directory tools, and Blackberry Enterprise Server. The new product is aimed both at organizations that intend to run a mixed Exchange/PostPath infrastructure and at those that wish to migrate away from Exchange entirely. s. http://www.postpath.com

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Cisco to Acquire Reactivity for XML Gateway

Cisco agreed to acquire Reactivity, a start-up offering XML (eXtensible Markup Language) gateways, for approximately $135 million in cash and assumed options.



Reactivity's family of appliances support of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application services. Support for SOA operations comes from the Reactivity XML Gateway; functionality that eases services deployment by directly supporting Web service provisioning and versioning and standards mediation directly in the network infrastructure. Policy support comes from the Reactivity XML Manager; functionality that combines organizational roles and workflow with real-time visibility and analysis. This enables companies to deploy, control, and scale XML traffic throughout their Web services environment.



Cisco said the acquisition demonstrates its commitment to the expanding Application Networking Services (ANS) Advanced Technology segment, which is an important part of Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) strategy and vision.



Reactivity was founded in 1998 and has 56 employees in Redwood City, California.

http://www.cisco.com

http://www.reactivity.com

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Nortel and Calix Extend Marketing Alliance

Nortel and Calix announced a joint marketing agreement (JMA) that extends a strategic alliance put in place by the two companies three years ago. Under the agreement, the companies will continue working closely to help service providers deploy advanced packet-based broadband access infrastructure supporting Nortel's IP-based information, communication, and entertainment services.



Over the past three years, the strategic alliance has generated 26 customers and resulted in the deployment of over 2,300 Calix C7 multiservice access platforms (MSAPs) and over 400,000 physical interfaces.



The companies will continue to collaborate on a variety of marketing and sales activities. In addition to working together to promote emerging IP-based services, the companies will also leverage Calix Compatible, a solutions assurance program designed to ensure interoperability across multiple suppliers.

http://www.calix.com

http://www.nortel.com

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MetaSwitch Cites Deployments by Eight Georgia CLECs

MetaSwitch announced the deployment of its VP3510 Integrated Softswitch by eight Georgia-based Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) and Independent Operating Companies (IOCs). The gear is being used to migrate customers off existing Class 5 switches, and to offer a range of voice services, including traditional Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) telephony and VoIP, throughout Georgia and in Tennessee. Of the eight Georgia customers, four are new and four others are existing customers. They vary in size and customer base, serving from 5,000 to over 100,000 lines. http://www.metaswitch.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Invests in Sequans for WiMAX Silicon

Alcatel-Lucent has made an equity investment in SEQUANS Communications, a developer of fixed and mobile WiMAX semiconductor solutions.



SEQUANS offers both base station and subscriber station system-on-chips (SoCs) for both fixed and mobile WiMAX.



The investment is an extension of Sequans' recent round of funding announced in July 2006. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.sequans.com

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Kineto Supplies UMA Client for HP iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger

Kineto Wireless is supplying its Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) client software for the new HP iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger, a smartphone announced at the 3GSM World Congress. UMA enables to seamlessly roam and switch between the cellular GSM network and home or enterprise Wi-Fi access networks. http://www.kineto.com

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Juniper Appoints Michael Lawrie to Board

Juniper Networks appointed Michael Lawrie, chief executive, Misys plc, to its board of directors. Mr. Lawrie will replace Frank Marshall, who joined the board in connection with the April 2004 completion of the NetScreen Technologies, Inc. acquisition.



Misys plc is a UK-based provider of industry-specific software products and solutions. http://www.juniper.net

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Former FCC Chairman Joins Infinera Board

Reed Hundt, who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997, has joined the Infinera board of directors. Hundt currently is a principal of Charles Ross Partners, a private investor and business advisory service, and an independent adviser to both McKinsey and Company, Inc. and the Blackstone Group. He also serves as a director of Intel.

http://www.infinera.com

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Occam Adds Aware's Dr. DSL Line Diagnostics to its BLC 6000

Occam Networks will begin reselling Aware's Dr. DSL Line Diagnostics Platform with its BLC 6000 product line, enabling telecom operators to pre-qualify, provision, baseline and troubleshoot copper lines for both narrowband and broadband services, including POTS, IPTV and advanced triple-play services over copper loops.



Aware's Dr. DSL Line Diagnostics Platform provides analysis and diagnostics of both traditional POTS services and advanced DSL next-generation services.



With the combined solution, Occam's BLC performs the physical tests required to retrieve the raw data and Aware's server-based application and modeling software collects and interprets the raw data and presents the diagnostic information to the end user.

http://www.occamnetworks.com

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Cingular Completes Two-Year $1.3 Billion Expansion in Los Angeles

Cingular Wireless invested almost $1.3 billion over the past two years to upgrade and expand service in greater Los Angeles. The local investment was part of the wireless company's estimated $6 billion national network capital expenditure program during 2006.
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Last year, Cingular built 257 new cell sites, expanded coverage and enhanced network capacity. The company has added more than five new cell sites every week over the past two years for a total of almost 560 new sites in the area. http://www.att.com

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GM Awards $1 Billion, 5-Year Networking Contract to AT&T

General Motors awarded AT&T a five-year global networking contract worth nearly $1 billion. AT&T described the agreement as one of the largest commercial contracts in its history.



The deal renews and expands an existing strategic global relationship in which AT&T provides GM with a global, MPLS-based Virtual Private Network (VPN), supporting local, long distance, global voice mail, conferencing, high speed Internet access and telecommunications business-continuity services.

http://www.att.com

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Verimatrix and Datatrend Partner on Pay-TV

Verimatrix and Datatrend Technologies announced a partnership to deliver a video over IP services solution for telecommunications and multimedia service providers.



The integrated solution combines the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for IPTV content security with a turnkey IT infrastructure solution (in the form of an "appliance" based on IBM System x servers running either the Linux or Windows operating system) from Datatrend.



The Datatrend infrastructure platform (currently available for IBM System x model x3650 and IBM BladeCenter) is an open, scalable, industry-standard platform configured specifically for the Verimatrix VCAS applications.

http://www.verimatrix.com

http://www.datatrend.com

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NextWave Completes Acquisition of GO Networks

NextWave Wireless, which develops mobile WiMAX solutions and has acquired a nationwide spectrum footprint in the U.S. and Germany, completed its acquisition of GO Networks. The Mountain View, California-based start-up provides advanced Wi-Fi network systems to service providers looking to deploy campus and metropolitan Wi-Fi systems.

http://www.gonetworks.com

http://www.nextwave.com

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Cisco and Apple Settle iPhone Trademark Dispute

Cisco and Apple ended their dispute involving the "iPhone" trademark.



Under the deal, both companies are free to use the "iPhone" trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark.



In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms were not disclosed.

http://www.cisco.com

http://www.apple.com

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Narad Raises $10 Million for HFC Bandwidth Enhancement

Narad Networks closed $10 million in new funding for its bandwidth enhancement for HFC cable systems. The company said the new funding would be used to launch its next-generation switched Ethernet platform.



Narad has begun rolling out its new FTTx for HFC platform. Its first product in this series, the FTTxSWITCH, supports Gigabit Ethernet over each of 6 fiber ports and 100Mbps Ethernet over each of 4 coaxial cable ports. The FTTxSWITCH can be deployed in Fiber To The Node (FTTN), Fiber To The Curb (FTTC) and Fiber To The Premise (FTTP) configurations. The FTTxSWITCH will also support wireless access points and standard Ethernet cabling (e.g. RJ-45). Support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet will be available later this year.



Narad's switched Ethernet solution amplifies the broadband capacity of HFC cable systems. Up to 80 Gbps of Ethernet capacity can be distributed within existing HFC cable nodes -- even those without spare fiber. Switched Ethernet over fiber can deliver up to 1 Gbps x 1 Gbps per end user. Switched Ethernet over coaxial cable can deliver up to 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps per end user. With 80 Gbps of underlying capacity, this means up to 800 households in a cable node can have 100 x 100 Mbps dedicated services. In all cases, capacity is dedicated and capable of full carrier-class Quality of Service throughout the plant.



Polaris Venture Partners, Argo Global Capital, Sofinnova and Vertical Group participated in the round. Additional closings will occur over the next 90 days.

http://www.naradnetworks.com/

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Arianespace to Launch AMC-21 Satellite in 2008

Arianespace was selected as the launch company for SES Americom's AMC-21 telecommunications satellite. The satellite is based on Orbital Science's Star-2 satellite bus, and will provide high-powered satellite services with its payload of 24 active Ku-band transponders. It will offer television and enterprise distribution services across the United States, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America from the orbital position of 125 degrees West. The launch date is slated for Q2 2008. http://www.arianespace.com/

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