Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Ericsson Shows Green Base Station + Tower Designs

Ericsson unveiled a series of towers for wireless base stations and antennas that are more environmentally friendly and better able to blend in with a community than typical communication masts.



The Ericsson Tower Tube, designed by renowned Scandinavian architect Thomas Sandell, takes a new approach to site architecture - the 5m-diameter, 40m-high flexible concrete tower encapsulates all radio base station equipment, including the antennas. The flexible concrete tower can be colored and branded to the operator's specific needs to either blend in with its surroundings or become an attractive landmark for the local community.



Diverging from standard design, the radio base station is placed at the top of the tower cutting the distance between it and the antenna. This gives capacity and coverage benefits for the cellular network and can together with the fact that no active cooling is needed reduce energy consumption up to 40 percent.



Ericsson also noted that its new design occupies less land -- 60-75 percent less than conventional sites -- making site acquisition is easier. Being a self-contained structure, operators can also avoid the need for security fences and the cost of maintaining and patrolling them.

http://www.ericsson.com

Ixia Joins Nortel's Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem

Ixia has joined Nortel's Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem initiative as a key test solution supplier. Ixia and Nortel will cooperate to ensure cross-vendor compatibility with new protocols for Carrier Ethernet deployments including PBB (Provider Backbone Bridging) and PBB-TE (PBB-Traffic Engineering).



The promise of Carrier Ethernet is to provide high-speed, low-cost, easily managed core networks operating at Layer 2 that provide all of the services that have been performed by IP networks. Current Metro Ethernet networks allow customer-separated services, but with a catch - only 4,096 distinct customers can be supported.



Nortel's Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem provides Service Providers the ability to create and extend Carrier Ethernet using lower-cost, high-bandwidth switches. PBB and PBB-TE are key protocols that make this possible. PBB allows virtually unlimited numbers of individuated customers on a network. PBB-TE (IEEE 802.1Qay), proposed by Nortel, answers the needs for Triple-Play traffic separation and protocol-agnostic tunneling.



With its recent IxNetwork product release, Ixia introduces PBB/PBB-TE, Ethernet OAM/CFM and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) testing support. Ixia's PBB/PBB-TE capability is part of its new comprehensive Carrier Ethernet Test Solution and it is the first to verify both PBB/PBB-TE and MPLS-based Carrier Ethernet.




http://www.ixiacom.com

OPNET Develops "Live" User Monitoring Solution

OPNET Technologies introduced a solution for passive end user experience monitoring. The new "ACE Live" will integrate with OPNET's ACE for rapid diagnosis of detected application performance problems in high-speed environments. ACE provides analytics for in-depth troubleshooting of application performance. The new offering is planned to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008.



OPNET said its solution will offer both agent-less monitoring and optional active monitoring. These two approaches are complementary. Live monitoring tracks the actual response time that users are experiencing, with alerting and rapid diagnosis of performance problems.



In addition to announcing ACE Live, OPNET is showing major new and upcoming releases of many of their software offerings, including release 14.0 of ACE, IT Guru Network Planner and SP Guru Network Planner, SP Guru Transport Planner, IT Guru Systems Planner, IT Sentinel and SP Sentinel, IT Netcop and SP Netcop, OPNET Modeler, OPNET Panorama release 4.5, OPNET LoadScaler release 8.0, and SLA Commander release 4.5.

http://www.opnet.com

Microsoft Debuts Silverlight 1.0

Microsoft officially released Silverlight 1.0, its cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering video and richer user experiences on the Web. Silverlight provides enhanced Web audio and video streaming and playback using Windows Media technologies.



Microsoft said it is committed to supporting multiple Operating Systems and browsers, including the Mac. Microsoft is also working with Novell to deliver Silverlight support for Linux, called Moonlight.



In addition to the release of Silverlight 1.0, Microsoft released Expression Encoder 1.0 (formerly Expression Media Encoder), a tool for professionals to encode, enhance and publish rich media content to Silverlight.




A number of major content producers also began showing Silverlight deployments. "Entertainment Tonight," HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment as well as several Microsoft Web initiatives including the "Halo 3" preview, Tafiti.com and The Podium '08 are now showcasing Silverlight.



Microsoft is also launching Silverlight Partner Initiative, a program designed to foster collaboration among solution providers, content delivery networks, tools vendors and design agencies.



"Our expectations for compelling, immersive experiences on the Web are increasing daily," said Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect. "With today's release of Silverlight 1.0, we're making it possible for developers and designers to deliver to individuals the kind of high-def experiences they crave by integrating data and services in rich and unique ways. Silverlight will further accelerate the growth in rich interactive applications by giving developers and designers new options for delivering great experiences that span the Web, PC, phone and other devices."



http://www.silverlight.net/http://www.microsoft.com/

KDDI Deploys Bytemobile for Wireless Downlink Optimization

KDDI Corporation has deployed Bytemobile's Unison Optimization Services Node (OSN) solution for the acceleration of its new Kaisoku (High-Speed) CDMA Packet Access (CPA) service. Bytemobile said its technology accelerates website access and file transfer for CPA service on laptops by up to 5x.



The in-network deployment was managed by NEC Corporation, Bytemobile's new reseller partner in Japan.



Bytemobile's Unison OSN Monaco Edition uses proprietary data reduction, protocol acceleration and content caching techniques for the dynamic optimization of data traffic. In addition to optimization, the Unison portfolio of integrated IP services includes: "Web Fidelity" Service for open web browsing and "Media Fidelity" Service for internet video play on feature phones and smartphones; "ACCESS Mobile" Content Filtering Service for parental and operator content controls; and WAP Gateway Service for portal access on Wireless Application Protocol handsets.

http://www.bytemobile.com

AT&T U-verse TV Reaches 100,000 Customer Milestone

AT&T now has surpassed the 100,000 customer milestone for its "U-verse" TV service, making it the largest IPTV deployment in the U.S. AT&T also announced a couple new features for the service, including:

  • AT&T U-bar, which brings Internet-like content to the television screen in the form of customized weather, stock, traffic and sports information.


  • YELLOWPAGES.COM TV, an intuitive new way to search for local businesses and other information using http://www.yellowpages.com/


  • AT&T Yahoo! Games, available on the television screen, including Sudoku, Solitaire, JT's Blocks, Mah-Jongg Tiles and Chess.
http://www.att.com
  • In Q2,

    Verizon Communications added 167,000 net new FiOS TV customers. FiOS TV uses an RF-overlay architecture, rather than IPTV. This gave Verizon 515,000 total FiOS TV customers.

JDSU's Photonic Integrated Circuit Combines Tunable Laser + Optical Modulator

JDSU has demonstrated a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) that combines a tunable laser and optical modulator, using a technology known as the Integrated Laser Mach Zehnder (ILMZ). The company said this paves the way for smaller, higher performance and more cost-effective tunable solutions that support faster network speeds.



The new PIC includes a widely tunable laser and Mach Zehnder modulator on a single chip that is small enough to fit on the tip of a finger. It will be incorporated into full-band tunable transponders and transceivers within compact packages, such as the 300-PIN small form factor (SFF) and pluggable small form factors (XFP) starting in 2008. The new technology also enables JDSU to support transmission speeds greater than 11.3 Gbps and is scalable to support 40G networks.

http://www.jdsu.com
  • In May 2007, JDSU completed its acquisition of Picolight, a leading designer and manufacturer of optical pluggable transceivers. Picolight was a pioneer in developing the vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), a key technology used in high-speed and short-to-medium distance optical interconnects.

TerreStar Selects Nokia Siemens Networks' Internet-HSPA

TerreStar Networks, which is planning to build North America's first 4G integrated mobile satellite and terrestrial communications network, has selected Nokia Siemens Networks' Internet-HSPA solution. This will be Nokia Siemens Networks' first commercial I-HSPA network deployment, a significant milestone for a standardized technology for which Nokia Siemens Networks has been a pioneer. Financial terms were not disclosed.



Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks will provide its Flexi WCDMA Base Station as an integrated part of an Internet-High Speed Packet Access (I-HSPA) flat architecture solution, as well as a full suite of engineering, design, and optimization services for the TerreStar North American network deployment.

"Today's announcement marks a series of firsts for Nokia Siemens Networks: we're deploying the first I-HSPA network, we're delivering the first satellite band Flexi, and we're deploying the first direct tunnel packet core," said Sue Spradley, Head of North America, Nokia Siemens Networks. http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

http://www.terrestar.com
  • In July 2007, Alcatel-Lucent announced plans to supply a next-generation solution for a significant test as TerreStar prepares to build an integrated mobile satellite and land-based communications network in North America, believed to be the first of its kind using the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to deliver universal access and personalized services over standard wireless devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs.


  • TerreStar, which has begun deploying its network for commercial launch in 2008 expects to operate as a carrier's carrier, providing integrated next generation terrestrial and satellite mobility services to communications services providers -- such as wireless carriers, satellite vendors, wireless operators, and electric and telephony cooperatives -- and also providing services directly to companies and government entities.

LSI to Acquire Tarari for Content Processor

LSI agreed to acquire Tarari, a developer of content processors, for $85 million.
Tarari's silicon solutions are designed to offload and accelerate compute-intensive, complex algorithms used for content inspection in XML/Web services, network security and digital media environments. These content-aware networking applications could include anti-virus, anti-spam, intrusion detection and prevention, XML security and advanced network control. Additional services include compression, cryptography and encoding for a wide variety of applications.



Tarari is based in San Diego and has approximately 45 employees.

http://www.agere.com

http://www.tarari.com
  • In August 2007, LSI agreed to sell its mobility products business to Infineon Technologies for $450 million in cash, plus a performance-based payment of up to $50 million payable in the first quarter of 2009. The division, which originally belonged to Agere Systems, designs semiconductors and software for cellular telephone handsets and complete chip-level solutions for satellite digital audio radio applications. It has about 700 employees.

ARRIS Supplies CMTS for WOW!

WOW!, an MSO serving communities in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, has selected the ARRIS C4 CMTS to provide primary-line voice and High Speed Data service to subscribers in its regional systems. WOW! is also an ARRIS Touchstone Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter (E-MTA) customer and has been using Touchstone E-MTAs to provide voice service since it began offering VoIP. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.arrisi.com