Chile's Entel PCS Selects Ericsson

Entel PCS awarded a three-year contract to Ericsson to provide GSM/WCDMA/HSPA radio access and common core network equipment to expand and upgrade its existing mobile network across Chile. Ericsson will also provide professional services, including network design, deployment and systems integration. Deliveries will begin in the first quarter of 2008.

http://www.ericsson.com

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Ericsson Acquires Spanish IPTV Consultancy

Ericsson (has acquired HyC Group, a leading Spanish company in TV consultancy and systems integration with around 110 employees. The HyC employees will be part of the Ericsson's growing global services organization. The deal follows Ericsson's acquisition of Tandberg Television at the beginning of the year. http://www.ericsson.com

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Israel's Partner Communications Selects Ericsson

Partner Communications, an Israeli mobile communications operator, has selected Ericsson for the replacement of third party 3G equipment existing in its network and the expansion thereof, and for the support and maintenance of the Ericsson elements in Partner's network. As a result, Ericsson shall become the sole vendor of Partner's 3G network. http://www.ericsson.com

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Reliance Completes Acquisition of Yipes

India's Reliance Communications Ltd. received FCC approval

for its acquisition of U.S.-based Yipes Holdings, and subsequently closed the deal. The U.S. $300 million acquisition of Yipes was first announced in July 2007. The transaction, closed on December 19, 2007, is a key milestone in Reliance Communications' plan to become a global data communications leader.



Yipes, which is based in San Francisco, has a strategic network presence in the top 14 U.S. metros. The company claims nearly 1,000 enterprise customers.



Reliance said the combination of Yipes' enterprise Ethernet services with the private undersea cable system of FLAG Telecom (another Reliance subsidiary) will enable the creation of a global service-delivery platform with unmatched coverage and capability.

http://www.reliancecommunications.co.in

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Vivendi Supports Merger of SFR and Neuf

Vivendi confirmed the planned merger between its subsidiary SFR and the Louis Dreyfus group relating to the potential sale of the latter's stake in Neuf Cegetel.



SFR is the second-largest mobile phone operator in France. Neuf Cegetel is the second largest broadband operator in France.

Commenting on the transaction, Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman of Vivendi's Management Board, stated: "This investment is a very attractive opportunity for Vivendi to strengthen its position and development in one of its main business sectors. The planned agreement would make it possible to merge two companies with increasingly complementary and healthy businesses and would create value for Vivendi shareholders."



SFR would finance this transaction through debt, notably with Vivendi granting a loan under market terms. To repay this loan, SFR has agreed to considerably reduce dividend payments that it would receive in the three next financial years.

http://www.vivendi.com

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Occam Wins Upgrade Project in Guam

GTA TeleGuam, Guam's largest telecommunications services provider, has selected Occam Networks to serve as the lead access equipment provider for a major upgrade of the telco's network. The first project includes upgrading 10,000 of GTA TeleGuam's 70,000 access lines. The company is pulling fiber directly to the home in some areas, to the curb in other areas, with other areas remaining with copper for the time being. GTA TeleGuam offers local, long distance and cellular phone service, as well as broadband services.



GTA TeleGuam has purchased Occam's Broadband Loop Carrier (BLC) 6252 ADSL2Plus and POTS Blade, the BLC 6640 Subscriber Trunk Gateway for GR303 signaling; the BLC 6312 Optical Line Termination Blade and the BLC 6450 Access Aggregation Blade for 10Gigabit Ethernet rings. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.occamnetworks.com

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NetCee Releases its Ultra Packet Processor

NetCee Systems, a start-up based in Fremont, California, announced the availability of its Ultra Packet Processor, a deep packet inspection (DPI) engine with broad applicability in protocol analysis and pattern recognition.



NetCee said its Ultra Packet Processor can identify and process over one Trillion types of protocol at more than 50+ Gbps. The trillion number is derived by combining all the possible combinations of Protocols that can be identified from Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) to Layer 7 (Application Layer).
http://www.netceesys.com

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AT&T Supplies VPN for NYK Logistics

AT&T announced a contract to supply VPN services to NYK Logistics. The contract extends local and long distance voice services and a range of other communications services to 70 NYK locations worldwide. The new contract includes AT&T's Managed Internet Service (MIS) and specially designed Class of Service (CoS) capabilities. AT&T said its VPN solution will help NYK centrally manage global network applications. The solution also enables NYK to enhance security, to conduct network maintenance more efficiently and to establish network reporting capabilities to make worldwide transport shipments and tracking more reliable.
http://www.att.com

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DSL Forum Advances BroadbandSuite Release 3.0

The DSL Forum today announced the approval of its latest Technical Report, TR-135 Data Model for a TR-069 Enabled STB and the amendment of TR-069 -- which is set to expedite IPTV rollouts and change the way operators manage their IPTV offering.



Closely following the release of BroadbandSuite Release 2.0, these new specifications are cornerstone to the pending Release 3.0, which will raise the bar to address triple-play augmented via VDSL2, GPON and bonded DSL over a QoS-enabled Ethernet architecture.



The DSL Forum said Release 3.0 will also provide support for multicast to enable IPTV streaming as well as integrated remote management of Set Top Box (STB) and attached storage devices. The full release is tentatively scheduled to complete late 2008.



TR-135 defines the data model for remote management of Digital Television (IPTV or broadcast) functionality on STB devices via CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) as defined in TR-069 Amendment 2 and TR-106. This report provides the data model for describing STB capabilities such as PVR, IGMP, quality of service, as well as providing a means to enable video service performance monitoring. General use cases are also described in the report, including standard data model profiles that would typically be seen while remotely managing a device of this nature.



In TR-135, the Auto-Configuration Server (ACS) may perform some initial configuration of a newly installed STB, but its main functions are configuration of STB parameters for trouble management and collection of statistics for Quality of Service (QoS)/Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring.



The goals of TR-135 are as follows:

• Enable configuration by the ACS of those objects and parameters that are not the responsibility of the IPTV Service Platform.



• Enable operational status monitoring and checking of specific parameters of an STB from an ACS.



• Enable performance monitoring of an arbitrary set of STBs, from one to millions, through estimates of QoS and QoE



• Support various types of STB, including DTT and IP STBs, with or without PVR and other optional functionality.



• Accommodate STB devices that are embedded as part of an Internet Gateway Device (IGD).



• Accommodate STB devices that are standalone, i.e. implemented in separate hardware devices.

The update to TR-069, TR-069 Amendment 2, which arose from collaboration and input from the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) organization. The DVB Project required support for Multicast download protocols. Working closely together, TR-069 Amendment 2 was developed and now contains changes that add support for Multicast downloads, including some additional fault codes, and for autonomous file transfers, transfers that were not directly requested by the ACS. These changes define CWMP v1.1, and therefore include some new rules for guaranteeing interoperability between CWMP v1.0, v1.1 and future CWMP versions.

http://www.dslforum.org

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Giancarlo to Step Down from Cisco, Joins Silver Lake Partners

Cisco's Chief Development Officer, Charles Giancarlo, 50,

has decided to step down in order to join Silver Lake Partners as a Managing Director. After joining Cisco through the acquisition of Kalpana in October 1994, Giancarlo started Cisco's business development organization, where he developed Cisco's M&A strategy. He initiated and then led Cisco's Small and Medium business activities including contributing to the development of Cisco's channel strategy. Giancarlo also initiated and led a large number of Cisco's advanced and emerging technologies including Unified Communications, home networking, wireless networking, security, video, and TelePresence among many others.



Silver Lake is a leading investment firm focused on large scale investments in technology, technology-enabled, and related growth industries. Its portfolio includes or has included Avago, Avaya, Flextronics, Gartner, IPC Systems, NASDAQ, NetScout, NXP, Sabre Holdings, Serena Software, SunGard Data Systems and Thomson.



"Charlie has been a close colleague and a good friend during the 14 years he has been at Cisco, and he has made many significant contributions to the company during that time," said John Chambers.

http://www.cisco.com

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