Joost Raises $45 Million from VCs and Media Companies

Joost has raised $45 million in funding to support the rollout of its Internet TV service. The funding came from five selected parties, each of whom invested in a minority percentage of the company. The investors include Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Li Ka Shing Foundation, CBS Corporation and Viacom.



As previously announced, CBS and Viacom are also content partners, providing channels and programming on Joost. In addition to its investment, CBS has contributed more than 2,000 hours of CBS entertainment, sports and news programming.

http://www.joost.com

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Utah's UBTA-UBET Deploys Occam Broadband Loop Carrier

UBTA-UBET Communications, which serves Utah's Uintah Basin, selected Occam Networks to assist with building out services to new homes under construction in its service area. UBTA-UBET serves more than 20,000 residential and business subscribers with POTS, broadband, and related services. UBTA-UBET Communications has purchased Occam's 6312 Optical Line Termination blades, 6252-02 ADSL2Plus and POTS with Gigabit Ethernet blades, 6440-01 Gigabit Optical Ethernet Transport blades and 6640-01 Subscriber Trunk Gateway blades.

http://www.occamnetworks.com

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Teridian Ships 100 Million Chips for STBs

Teridian Semiconductor announced a major company milestone -- the shipment of 100 million ICs into cable and satellite digital set-top boxes worldwide. Teridian's chips provide the connectivity in systems from DirectTV, EchoStar's Dish Network, Thomson, and Motorola. Teridian's broad STB product portfolio currently includes modem ICs for satellite STBs, smart card reader chips enabling conditional access (CA) features, A/V Pro video switch, and 10/100 Ethernet semiconductors enabling IP connectivity.

http://www.teridian.com

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NewStep and Kyocera Wireless Collaborate on CDMA/Wi-Fi FMC

NewStep Networks and Kyocera Wireless are conducting trials for CDMA-compliant Voice Call Continuity (VCC) solutions for fixed-mobile convergence. The companies have tested a Wi-Fi enabled prototype handset with the NewStep CSN fixed-mobile convergence platform. This enables seamless CDMA-to-VoIP handoffs.

The tests used Kyocera's next-generation, VCC-enabled CDMA/Wi-Fi handsets handsets.

NewStep offers two versions of its carrier-class CSN server-based software platform: the CSN30 for enterprises and small carriers, and the CSN1000 for large carriers.

http://www.newstep.com

http://www.kyocera-wireless.com

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Qwest Ready for Federal Networx Universal Contract

Qwest Communications announced the launch of products and services available under the Government Services Administration's (GSA's) Networx Universal contract. Qwest is a offering a full suite of 39 services required by the GSA. Qwest is one of just three nationwide providers for Networx Universal.



Qwest said it recently received an "Order to Proceed" from GSA and plans to take the first orders from federal agencies on the Networx Universal contract later this year.

http://www.qwest.com

http://www.gsanetworx.com

• In March 2007, 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.
  
  

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Korea's Hanaro Reports One Million 100 Mbps Broadband Subscribers

hanarotelecom reported that its number of 100 Mbps broadband subscribers exceeded 1 million for the first time in Q1 2007. The 100 Mbps service coverage expanded to 7.3 million households as of the end of Q1, up from 4.3 million households as of the end of 2006. The company said it is on the right track to achieve the full-year target of 12.6 million households able to receive the 100 Mbps service.



Hanaro also stated that strong subscriber growth continued, with broadband net adds of 34,000 and voice net adds of 73,000 for the first quarter. The number of hanaTV subscribers grew by 230,000 in the first quarter, reaching 380,000 activated subscribers on a cumulative basis.

http://www.hanaro.com

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France Telecom International Wholesale Deploys Sonus

France Telecom International Wholesale will deploy Sonus-based solutions in the United States to expand its international voice wholesale services. The deployment includes the Sonus GSX9000 Open Services Switch, PSX Call Routing Server, SGX Signaling Gateway, and the Sonus Insight Management System. In addition, they will be deploying the Sonus Network Border Switch for enhanced security and advanced peering capabilities. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.sonusnet.com

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Microsoft Names VP of Communications Sector

Microsoft named Martha Bejar as corporate vice president of Communications Sector, succeeding Maria Martinez, who became corporate vice president of Worldwide Services for Microsoft. Bejar previously served as Nortel's president of Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) regions.

http://www.microsoft.com

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AT&T Supplies MPLS-VPN for TransUnion

TransUnion, a global leader in credit and information management, has selected AT&T to provide a networking solution integrating more than 150 locations in the United States and Canada. Under the three-year, $11.4 million agreement, AT&T will deploy Virtual Private Network (VPN) services integrating TransUnion locations with a full range of voice, data, Internet and business-continuity services.

http://www.att.com

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AT&T and WildBlue Expand Satellite Access Service

AT&T announced an expansion of its broadband satellite service across its 22-state wireline footprint. The service is offered in partnership with WildBlue Communications. The announcement marks first-time satellite Internet service availability from AT&T for consumers in the former BellSouth nine-state region, and substantially increases availability to areas not addressed in the company's previous launch of satellite-based broadband Internet to residential customers in AT&T's traditional 13-state service territory.

http://www.att.com

http://www.wildblue.com

• In March 2007, WildBlue Communications began offering Internet access services using its new Ka-band spot beam satellite, WildBlue-1. The new satellite allows WildBlue to more than triple its customer capacity, making high-speed Internet service available to more than 750,000 rural consumers throughout the continental United States. WildBlue expects that the additional capacity accessible on WildBlue-1 will be available to all areas of the contiguous United States by the second quarter of 2007. WildBlue will also continue to utilize its capacity on Anik F2, alongside WildBlue-1.

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Ericsson Predicts Ten-fold Traffic Growth by 2012

Ericsson is predicting that traffic in fixed as well as mobile networks to grow tenfold by 2012, said company CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg, speaking at Ericsson's Capital Markets Day conference in Stockholm.



"Our way of communicating is changing rapidly with the rollout of mobile and fixed high-speed broadband", said Svanberg. "As a result, we expect traffic in fixed as well as mobile networks to grow tenfold by 2012. With high-speed broadband, we will see multimedia to start a new era in telecom."



Some other observations from Svanberg:

• GDP growth increases 0.6% for every 10% of mobile penetration.



• The new generation of mobile base station will be 80% more power efficient that models from a few years ago.



• There will be 4.5 billion mobile users in 2012.



• Time-to-market is key for capturing the new opportunities.



• New operator business models will emerge to accommodate the new opportunities.

The event featured speakers from Telstra, Tandberg TV, and T-Mobile.







http://www.ericsson.com

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Nortel to Supply WiMAX Healthcare Net for Chunghwa

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom is launching "Taiwan Mobile Healthcare Services" using Nortel's WiMAX platform.



The WiMAX network will provide high-performance network access to emergency medical personnel and for home-based patient care services.
To be launched at the Taipei Medical University Hospital, Tri-Service General Hospital and Taipei City-Wan Fang Hospital, Mobile Healthcare is part of the M-Taiwan initiative being piloted by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA).

http://www.nortel.com

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Nortel Focuses 4G, Carrier Ethernet and Unified Communications

Nortel is targeting the next wave of "hyperconnectivity" by focusing its R&D in three key areas, said Nortel President and CEO Mike Zafirovski, speaking at an Investor Technology Day conference in Ottawa. The basic premise of hyperconnectivity is that "anything that can be connected and would benefit from being connected will be connected." This means person-to-person, person-to-machine, and person-to-person connectivity.



Nortel R&D will focus on: 4G mobile broadband, Carrier Ethernet and Unified Communications.





Company executives outlined a six-part strategy to transform the company, seeking to pull overall margins to 43%.





As part of the event, Nortel hosted demonstrations of Fixed-Mobile Convergence, 4G WiMAX and LTE, and Provider Backbone Transport and 40-Gigabit optical transport innovations.



Nortel also demonstrated a prototype of an emergency response solution that will automatically assemble emergency response teams (ERT), establish required communication channels and ensure that vital data is available where required.

http://www.nortel.com

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