PMC-Sierra to Close R&D Centers in Winnipeg and Saskatoon

PMC-Sierra announced a corporate restructuring that include the closure of two of PMC-Sierra's R&D centers in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The total work force reduction under this restructuring is expected to be approximately 175 positions across the organization. PMC-Sierra currently has 1,183 employees worldwide. The restructuring will begin immediately and is expected to be substantially complete by the end of the third quarter of 2007.



Overall, the company expects the restructuring will reduce on-going annualized operating expenses by an estimated $20 to $24 million per year.



Regarding current business activity levels, PMC-Sierra's revenues for the first quarter of 2007 are expected to be between the middle to high end of the range that was provided during the company's webcast conference call on January 25, 2007 following its fourth quarter 2006 earnings release. At that time, the revenue outlook provided was a range of $98 to $105 million for the first quarter of 2007.

http://www.pmc-sierra.com

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3Com Buys Out Huawei's Stake in Joint Venture

3Com Corporation closed its acquisition of Huawei Technologies' 49% stake in H3C for $882 million and 3Com now owns 100% of the China-based company. To fund the transaction and related fees and expenses, 3Com used approximately $470 million of cash from its balance sheet and approximately $430 million from a senior secured bank loan at its H3C segment.



3Com won the right to acquire the remaining stake in H3C through a bidding process that ended on November 28, 2006 and received the final required approval from the People's Republic of China on March 22, 2007. Additionally, members of H3C's management team have signed two-year employment contracts that go into effect with today's closing. Included in the agreement are bonuses tied to aggressive targets based on H3C's future financial performance, as well as non-compete provisions.

http://www.3com.com

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Sonus Partners with Apertio for Broadband-Cellular Convergence Solutions

Sonus Networks has formed a partnership with Apertio aimed at broadband-cellular convergence. The two companies will integrate Sonus' IMS-ready wireless solutions with Apertio's One-HLR, Home Location Register, a standards-based approach to a critical component of wireless networks.



Apertio's software application suite, Apertio One, delivers a single, open, subscriber-centric architecture for current and new generation networks. The suite includes Apertio One-NDS (Network Directory Server), Apertio One-HLR (Home Location Register) and Apertio One-HSS (Home Subscriber Server). The company is privately held, and headquartered in Bristol, UK, with offices in Chicago, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Beijing. http://www.sonusnet.com

http://www.apertio.com

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Telstra to Withdraw NYSE Listing

Telstra confirmed its intention to withdraw the listing of its American Depositary Shares, evidenced by American Depositary Receipts (ADR), and the underlying ordinary shares from the New York Stock Exchange. In conjunction with the delisting, Telstra will be moving to an over-the-counter ADR program.



The securities will not be listed on any other exchange in the United States, but Telstra's ordinary shares will continue to be listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.



On 21 March 2007, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved final rules that will make it easier for foreign companies such as Telstra to terminate their SEC registration. When the SEC's deregistration rules become effective, Telstra intends to fully deregister from the SEC's ongoing reporting obligations in order to reduce administrative burdens and costs.

http://www.telstra.com

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Verizon Launches its Own Local TV Station of FiOS

Verizon launched its first owned-and-operated television channel to be delivered over its FiOS fiber network. FiOS TV subscribers in the Washington metro area will be able to tune to the new local television channel, FiOS1, a one-stop shop for local weather, traffic, news, sports and community features.



Verizon is planning to launch similar channels in other markets this year.



Verizon's first original programming is "Push-Pause," featuring programming produced by citizen video journalists (VJs) who live in the area. FiOS1 also plans to invite viewers to submit their own local community stories for possible showing on "Push Pause."



FiOS1 will also present a new program called "Limbo Local" that lets viewers use their mobile phones to text-message bids for items throughout the day. In a twist on the conventional notion of an auction, the person who submits the lowest unique bid at the close of the auction wins the prize.



FiOS1 will feature 20 hours of sports programming a week, including some high-school and college games in season. Verizon is an official partner of Georgetown University Athletics and has secured the rights to air certain George Mason University sporting events.

http://www.verizon.com

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Extreme Networks Appoints CFO

Extreme Networks appointed Karen M. Rogge to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, replacing Michael Palu, who served as acting Chief Financial Officer for the past seven months, and will return to his position as Vice President and Corporate Controller for the company.



Most recently, Rogge served as Vice President, Corporate Finance and Treasurer at Seagate Technology. Prior to Seagate, Rogge served as Vice President and General Manager for the Internet search division at Inktomi. http://www.extremenetworks.com

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Vyyo Secures New Funding from Goldman Sachs

Vyyo, a supplier of broadband access equipment for cable system operators, announced new funding from Goldman, Sachs & Co., an existing investor. The deal includes $17.5 million in new funding and an additional $17.5 million to pay off the aggregate of notes issued to Goldman Sachs in 2006. The total financing of $35 million consists of a five-year unsecured note convertible into Vyyo common stock at $10 per share, a premium of 34% over the closing price of Vyyo's common stock on March 27th. The convertible note will bear a 5% annual interest rate.



The announcement follows two key events for Vyyo: Its selection as a vendor partner by StarHub, which passes one million homes in Singapore; and the announcement that prominent cable executives Jim Chiddix and Wayne Davis have joined the company as vice-chairman and CEO, respectively.

http://www.vyyo.com

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Azaire Enables "All Services Everywhere" for CDMA with PDIF

Azaire Networks introduced a new CDMA network component for its IP Converged Network Platform with eXtended Mobility (IP-CNP with XM). The new product is the first Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) optimized and available to deploy for CDMA networks.



Azaire said its platform can be used by mobile operators to provide their subscribers with highly secure access to their enterprise and consumer applications using authentication and authorization features.



To enable fixed mobile convergence networks, the 3GPP2 has defined an element called the Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF). The PDIF is responsible for security, access, authentication, and policy enforcement. The Azaire Networks' "IP-CNP with XM" is 3GPP2-compliant and combined with Azaire Networks' Authentication Engine, provides the baseline security framework for WLAN, femtocell and WiMAX implementations of fixed mobile convergence.

http://www.azairenet.com

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Axerra Releases Pseudo-Wire Access Device

Axerra Networks has released its AXN10-8NR Pseudo-Wire Access Device, extending its family of AXN Pseudo-Wire Gateways and Access Devices with a solution that is designed specifically for mobile wireless backhaul cell site connectivity applications. Along with capabilities that enable operators to meet the growing traffic requirements for the backhaul of voice and data services, including EV-DO and HSDPA, in packet-based radio access networks (RAN), the AXN10-8NR features removable, field upgradeable and reparable power supplies and spans a wide range of operating temperatures.



Axerra's AXN10-8NR combines ATM with IMA, circuit emulation, Frame Relay/HDLC/PPP, and Ethernet Pseudo-Wires in a single access device. It provides up to eight T1/E1 interfaces for connections to equipment already installed at the BTS and NodeB cell site, each soft-configurable for the type of Pseudo-Wire service required. It also furnishes Ethernet Pseudo-Wire services and four Ethernet ports for connections to new generations of cell-site equipment, aggregating the full range of existing and projected services for backhaul over a unified, packet-optimized RAN. It also features Axerra's high precision clock recovery mechanism, which meets one of the most demanding and critical requirements of voice and data backhaul over packet access networks.



By enabling packet access networks to backhaul all generations of mobile wireless traffic, including CDMA2000, EV-DO, GSM, GPRS, and UMTS, the AXN10-8NR also enables operators to leverage pricing from multiple backhaul providers. Additionally, alternative access providers, such as MSOs, can compete with ILECs for mobile wireless backhaul revenue.

http://www.axerra.com

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Alvarion, NDS and MobiTV Showcase Mobile WiMAX TV Services

Alvarion, is showcasing an application called "4Motion" mobile WiMAX high resolution TV in cooperation with NDS (content security) and MobiTV (content aggregation.



4Motion is designed to fully integrate NDS's digital rights management (DRM) and conditional access (CA) solutions, with MobiTV's end-to-end mobile WiMAX television services, to enable broadcast of live channels video on demand (VoD), interactive TV, and other value added video applications. 4Motion is designed to be compliant with 802.16e-2005 and WiMAX Forum Network Working Group specifications and is expected to be commercially released later in 2007.



Alvarion noted that its BreezeMAX WiMAX system now has more than 300 deployments in 100 countries.

http://www.alvarion.com

http://www.mobitv.com

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Narus Develops Security to Monitor Core of Carrier Wireless Nets

Narus is developing a module for its "NarusInsight Secure Suite" that detects and mitigates wireless-specific attacks from various devices and at different levels of the network architecture. By implementing at the core, Narus said it can monitor all IP traffic and correlate across every link and element on the network, offering far greater visibility into the traffic.



Initial customer availability of NSS' new wireless module is targeted for Q4 2007.

http://www.narus.com

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Tango Introduces its "Abrazo" Hybrid Mobile Phone-PBX

Tango Networks introduced its "Abrazo" fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solution for enabling mobile operators to integrate all mobile phones with any corporate PBX, Centrex or Unified Communications network. "Abrazo," which means embrace in Spanish, unites the mobile phone network with the enterprise voice network, turning every mobile phone into a PBX/Centrex extension for both incoming and outgoing calls.



Tango Networks said that while other fixed-mobile convergence solutions on the market are either entirely enterprise-based or carrier-based, its hybrid architecture includes both carrier and enterprise components. It supports both legacy and IMS standards. And unlike other offerings that require expensive dual-mode handsets, the Tango Abrazo works with any existing mobile phone, and requires no special client software to manage. Each Tango Abrazo is designed to support a few hundred to more than 25,000 users in the enterprise, and works with legacy TDM, hybrid, or IP PBXs.



The Tango Abrazo is currently being tested in various customer environments and is anticipated to be generally available in late second quarter 2007.

http://www.tango-networks.comMotorola has made an equity investment in Tango Networks, a start-up developing hardware and software that integrates mobile phones with corporate telephone networks. The funding was part of Tango's Series A round.

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RAD Introduces Pseudowire Gateway for Cellular Backhaul

RAD Data Communications unveiled its IPmux-116 pseudowire gateway designed for cellular backhaul transport.



The ASIC-based platform offers accurate regeneration of timing on a per port basis to support multiple customers' timing needs, in-band facility loopbacks to allow customers to test their circuits independently of the transport provider and VLAN aware switching with ingress and egress rate limiting to provide tunable bandwidth. The IPmux-116 supports all modes of TDM emulation, including SAToP,TDMoIP, CESoPSN and HDLCoPSN.



The adaptive clock recovery mechanism conforms to the G.823 sync interface using G.8261-defined scenarios and achieves 16 ppb clock accuracy. Clock redundancy can be achieved through a system-timing feature that uses master and fallback timing sources. Furthermore, timing can be input or output to external peripherals through an optional external clock port.



The unit is available in a 1U-high chassis with eight or sixteen pseudowire ports, one or two Ethernet network ports and one or two Ethernet user ports to meet the specific demands of each transport provider and the requirements of each site.

http://www.rad.com

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Agilent Announces 802.16e 2005 WiMAX Test

Agilent Technologies announced its IEEE 802.16e 2005 Protocol Conformance Test (PCT) Solution, which is based on the new Agilent E6651A Mobile WiMAX Test Set. Created in conjunction with Innowireless Co., the test solution enables WiMAX designers to verify protocol implementations. Beginning in June 2007, Agilent plans to support subscriber station testing for WiMAX profiles 1A and 3A. Base station test and other WiMAX profiles will be supported in subsequent releases.

http://www.agilent.com/find/WiMAX

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US Gov't Awards Largest Ever "Networx" Contract

The General Services Administration (GSA), which is the central procurement agency for the U.S. government, awarded a set of contracts under its "Networx" program valued at an estimated $20 billion over 10 years -- believed to be the largest networking contracts ever issued.



Contract award recipients include AT&T, Verizon Business Services (MCI), and Qwest Government Services.



The Networx program consists of two acquisitions: Networx Universal and Networx Enterprise (to be awarded in May).



The Networx Universal program covers voice, IP, wireless, satellite and IP-centric services to 135 federal agencies across 191 countries. The goal of the Networx program is to transform the current federal telecommunications system to a secure, worldwide IP and MPLS-based network compliant with IPv6 and other major technological advances anticipated throughout its contract life.



The Networx Enterprise is expected to result in multiple awards and may include services not offered by the Networx Universal suppliers; however, many services in Networx Enterprise will be the same as those services in Networx Universal.



The GSA issued its first RFP for the Networx program in May 2005 and evaluations have been underway since then.



AT&T said its Networx team will bring together various partners, including Northrop Grumman Information Technology, EDS, GTSI Corp., SRA International, Bechtel National and Global Crossing.



Verizon Business said it is ready to meet the government's demands for next-generation networking services. The company last year opened a new Government Network Operations and Security Center (GNOSC) in Northern Virginia dedicated to supporting the unique security and operational requirements of federal government customers. The GNOSC, along with Verizon Business's vBNS+ (Very High Speed Backbone Network Service), will also play an important role in helping the federal government adopt IPv6 by the mandated transition target of June 2008.



In addition to Networx, Qwest noted several other large awards from the U.S. government that it recently received. In November, Qwest was the winner of a contract worth up to $100 million from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to provide bandwidth transmission services for connecting military installations located across the West to the Global Information Grid (GIG) over the next 10 years. And last month, Qwest announced it will be the sole provider of telecommunications services to federal agencies in nine Western states in a contract from the GSA worth at least $10 million.

http://www.gsa.gov

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