Itatel Names Bertolina as CEO

Italtel, which designs, develops and implements next generation multiservice integrated network systems, named Giorgio Bertolina as its new CEO.


Born in Ivrea in 1960, and with a degree in Economics from Turin University, in 1985 Bertolina began his career in Olivetti where he held several roles, finally becoming Area Manager for Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. At the end of the 1990s Bertolina joined the Marconi Group where he covered various important managerial assignments in Italy and abroad, until his appointment in 2001 as Country Manager for Italy and subsequently as chairman and chief executive officer of Marconi Communications S.p.A. From 2005 until the company's acquisition by Ericsson, he was a member of the Executive Committee of Marconi Corporation. More recently he joined as chief executive officer Enterprise Digital Architects, an Italian ICT company.

http://www.italtel.com/

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Tiscali International Network Buys Capacity on Hibernia Atlantic Cables

Tiscali International Network (TINet), which specializes in wholesale IP-MPLS services, selected Hibernia Atlantic to deliver multiple 10 Gbps wavelengths of capacity to and from Dublin, New York and other major metro areas on Hibernia's private network. Hibernia Atlantic operates the only undersea cable crossing directly from Ireland to Canada and the U.S., thereby avoiding single points of failures, landing points and backhaul routes, such as the U.K.'s Bude, Bristol and Whitesands areas.


http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com

http://www.tiscali.net

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India's Bharti Airtel Selects ECI for Optical Expansion

Bharti Airtel has selected ECI Telecom to supply equipment for their nationwide optical network expansion. The one-year contract covers deployment of ECI's XDM Converged Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP). These expansions allow Bharti to add new services, such as broadband data, voice and leased lines, while supporting more subscribers. Financial terms were not disclosed.



Airtel recently became the first Indian mobile service provider joining the exclusive club of global service providers with more than 40 million customers from a single-country. In order to manage and handle this continual growth, Bharti Airtel selected ECI's optical solutions to increase their network capacity from 2.5G to 10G and to Metro DWDM, and to expand their current network beyond the existing footprint.

http://www.ecitele.com

• In July 2007, India's Bharti Airtel awarded a contracted valued at US$2 billion to Ericsson. The deal is described as one of the world's largest network expansion projects. It is Ericsson's largest deal to date. The two-year contract covers an expansion of Bharti Airtel's GSM/EDGE network as well as capacity management. Specifically, Ericsson will design, plan, deploy, optimize and manage Bharti Airtel's GSM network across 15 circles in India as well as for its pan-India pre-paid platform across 23 circles. In addition, Ericsson will also deliver pan-India integrated device management solutions, enabling usage of advanced data services by all mobile customers across retail and enterprise segments.



• Also in July 2007, Bharti Airtel Limited awarded a contract valued at approximately US$900 million to Nokia Siemens Networks for an expansion of its mobile, fixed and Intelligent Network platforms. Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks will expand Airtel's GSM network in eight circles; its National Long Distance and International Long Distance network with 1.8 million Next Generation Network (NGN) ports -- the largest ever NGN contract in the country -- and its International Calling Card prepaid service capacity by 4.5 million news users. The GSM and NGN expansions are planned over two years and the International calling cards expansion over three years.

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AT&T Deploys Thales SONET Datacryptors for DoD Network

AT&T Government Solutions will deploy the Thales SONET Datacryptors on the Joint Hawaii Information Transfer System (JHITS) network.



AT&T Government Solutions was awarded the contract by Defense Information Technology Office (DITCO), which is a part of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), a division of the Department of Defense (DoD). The JHITS contract has an estimate contract value of $250 million.

http://www.thales-esecurity.com

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Ixia Appoints Former Nortel Exec as President, COO

Ixia has appointed Atul Bhatnagar to the new position of President and Chief Operating Officer. He will also join Ixia's Board of Directors in the third quarter of 2007. Bhatnagar most recently served as Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Data Networks Division of Nortel. Mr. Bhatnagar will report to Errol Ginsberg who remains actively involved in the Company as its Chief Executive Officer and a member of its Board of Directors.



At Nortel, Mr. Bhatnagar's business unit was responsible for the design and marketing of a full range of Ethernet switches, security solutions, WLAN mobility solutions, Metro Ethernet technologies and enterprise routers. Bhatnagar came to Nortel through its acquisition of Alteon Web Systems in October 2000, where he was Vice President of Advanced WebSwitching Products, creating next generation WebSwitches and security acceleration products. Prior to joining Alteon Web Systems, Bhatnagar worked at Hewlett-Packard for close to 15 years.

http://www.ixiacom.com

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In Memoriam: Steve Byars

Axerra Networks marked the passing of Steve Byars, who died unexpectedly from a diabetes-related complication at age 50.






Steve Byars served for six years as Vice President of Marketing at Axerra Networks, where he was instrumental in building the company's market presence as a leader in Pseudo-Wire circuit emulation and service emulation solutions over packet networks. He held a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering degree from Stanford University. Steve also is also known for his work at Current Analysis, and was previously the CTO at Netrix Corporation, where he was responsible for the company's VoIP business strategy. His experience also includes product development for Bell Laboratories and GTE Communications Systems



In a tribute, Axerra Networks remembered Steve Byars not only as a hard-working colleague and talented marketing executive, but also as a valued friend.

http://www.axerra.com

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Riverbed Expands Executive Team

Riverbed Technology announced the appointments of Peter Elsey as director, service provider alliances, Asia Pacific and Richard Gray as director, systems integrator alliances, Asia Pacific.



Elsey joins Riverbed from British Telecom where he most recently was Asia-Pacific head of sales for managed ICT services. Prior to that, he was a senior member of BT's regional outsourcing deal-making team.



Gray joins Riverbed after 10 years at Cisco developing and managing channel and partner relationships in Asia. Prior to Cisco, he worked with IBM and Siemens on large accounts, including Nomura, Schroders and Credit Suisse First Boston.

http://www.riverbed.com

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Eutelsat and ViaSat to Launch "Tooway" Satellite Service in Germany

Eutelsat Communications and ViaSat are preparing to launch a satellite-based, consumer broadband service in Germany beginning at the end of this month. Additional European markets will be added later this year.



The new "Tooway" service is being delivered using the Ka-band spot beam capacity on Eutelsat's HOT BIRD 6 satellite at 13 degrees East. It will also be available via Ku-band capacity on the EUROBIRD 3 satellite. The Ka and Ku-band hubs with equipment supplied by ViaSat to manage Tooway are now fully commissioned and ready for service at Skylogic's SkyPark teleport in Turin, Italy.



Three different service grades will be provided in Ka-band and Ku-band with the initial offer delivering maximum downlink speeds of up to 2.048 Mbps and maximum uplink speeds of up to 384 kbps. Consumer tariffs and hardware prices will be defined by local service providers partnering in the distribution of the Tooway service.



Tooway's first distribution partners and service providers in Germany are Internetagentur Schott and Teles.



The companies said they will offer access equipment a fraction the cost of existing enterprise-focused satellite services. The Tooway consumer satellite terminal comprises an Outdoor Unit (ODU) and an Indoor Un it (IDU) or modem that interfaces to a PC or home network via a standard Ethernet connection (10/100 Mbps). The ODU consists of a 67cm Ka-band dish or a 96cm Ku-band dish. The Ku-band ODU includes a Low Noise Block (LNB) converter with linear polarization able to receive at speeds up to 4 Mbps. It is also equipped with a 2 Watt amplifier for transmission to the satellite by the consumer at speeds exceeding 1 Mbps. In Ka-band, both the LNB and amplifier are integrated in a high-tech transceiver.



The new service is based on ViaSat's "SurfBeam" DOCSIS two-way broadband satellite system that is already used by more than 250,000 homes in North America. To adapt the DOCSIS standard to satellite, ViaSat has developed a satellite air interface that is seamlessly integrated into DOCSIS headend termination systems. It leverages low cost DOCSIS customer premises chips and software.

http://www.tooway.net

• In 2010, Eutelsat expects to extend its Tooway service offering in partnership with ViaSat by deploying a new, high capacity dedicated Ka-band satellite to 13 East with multiple spotbeams across Europe. It is anticipated that the new satellite will enable much higher speed services.

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Atheros Teams TI's DaVinci Processor

Atheros Communications' single-chip AR6001GL and AR6001XL Radio-on-Chip for Mobile (ROCm) WLAN designs have been selected by Texas Instruments to support wireless connectivity with its new TMS320DM355 processor based on DaVinci technology.



The resulting combination is a low-cost, low-power, high-performance platform that delivers quality video wirelessly for Portable Media Players (PMPs), IP security cameras and other portable digital video products.
http://www.atheros.com

http://www.ti.com

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Sony Chooses Limelight CDN for PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP Delivery

Sony Computer Entertainment selected Limelight Networks to deliver system software updates to PLAYSTATION3 (PS3) and PSP (PlayStation Portable) users. With Limelight's CDN technology, SCE is able to ensure fast and stable delivery of its latest system software to PS3 and PSP users, with updates ranging in size up to 150 MB, direct to the entertainment systems.
http://www.llnw.com/

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Kovio Raises $19.5 Million for Printed Silicon Electronics

Kovio, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, raised $19.5 million in the first closing of its Series D funding round. The company is developing a proprietary, printed silicon electronics technology that it says will revolutionize the industry by introducing printed silicon electronics using thin film technology. Product plans have not been disclosed.



The new funding was led by Pinnacle Ventures and included Bessemer Venture Partners, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures, DEA Capital, Flagship Ventures, Harris & Harris Group, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, NCD Investors and Yasuda Enterprise Development.

http://www.kovio.com

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IOGEAR Ships USB-IF Certified Wireless USB End-User Solution

IOGEAR released a Wireless USB (W-USB) Hub & Adapter Kit (GUWH104KIT) that is USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) and FCC-certified. W-USB supports connection speeds up to 480 Mbps.



IOGEAR's Hub can associate with up to three different laptops or PCs, through W-USB adapters. It also features four USB ports and connects to wired USB devices, such as printers, scanners, MP3 players and external hard drives. The Adapter plugs into the PC and wirelessly communicates with the Hub, which users can place up to 30 feet away.



IOGEAR said its device is compatible with current and future Certified W-USB devices, and is backward interoperable with USB 1.0 solutions.
http://www.iogear.com

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TI Launches Low-Cost DaVinci Processor for HD Video Devices

Texas Instruments (TI) released a new embedded DaVinci processor with ARM host control and complete development tools. The new digital media processor, which is priced at under $10 is aimed supporting HD video in digital cameras, IP video cameras, digital photo frames and video baby monitors.



The new DaVinci processor consists of an integrated video processing subsystem, an MPEG-4-JPEG co-processor (MJCP), an ARM926EJ-S core and peripherals. The processor is available in clock speeds of up to 216 MHz or 270 MHz, which allows for a scalable line of products.



The MJCP provides HD MPEG-4 SP encode or decode at 720p and 30 frames per second and JPEG encode or decode at 50 MegaPixels per second.
TI said the device will deliver battery life that is up to twice the life of currently available portable HD systems. Depending on the application, the DM355 consumes approximately 400mW during HD MPEG-4 encoding and only 1mW of stand-by power. As an example, this means that consumers using DM355-based digital cameras in video mode can expect to record 80 minutes of HD video while using just two AA batteries.

http://www.ti.com

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