Nortel Lands 5-Year CDMA Contract with US Cellular

U.S. Cellular has awarded Nortel a five-year contract to provide advanced wireless capabilities for its CDMA network. Under this agreement, U.S. Cellular will purchase Nortel's CDMA switching, base stations, and software. It also includes emergency technical support, spares management, software patch management, performance monitoring and other services from Nortel's Global Services portfolio. The deal builds on Nortel and U.S. Cellular's long-standing relationship for supplying CDMA solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortel.com

Read More

India's BSNL Awards $100 Million GSM Expansion Contract to Nortel

India's BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.) awarded a GSM expansion

contract valued at over US$100 million to Nortel. BSNL, which currently serves 20 million cellular subscribers, is actively growing its network reach and capacity to meet increased demand for mobile telephony services across the country. This project focuses on southern areas of the country. Deployment is underway and completion is expected in 2008.http://www.nortel.com

Read More

Indonesia's PT Telkom Selects Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS for DRS

PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (PT Telkom), the incumbent fixed telephone service provider in Indonesia, has chosen Alcatel-Lucent's IP/MPLS platform to deploy a national Data Recovery Service (DRS) network connecting ten cities across the country. PT Telkom is migrating the connectivity of its data centers to IP/MPLS to facilitate administrative operations such as centralized billing. The deployment includes the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 and 7710 Service Routers and the 7450 Ethernet Service Switch.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Read More

France Telecom Announces Executive Appointments

France Telecom announce the following executive changes :

• Raoul Roverato is appointed Executive Vice-President in charge of the new growth businesses Division. This ‘new growth businesses' Division comprises the Content and Audience & On-line Advertising Divisions and is responsible for coordinating all of the Group's current or future growth initiatives.



• Patricia Langrand, in addition to her current position, is appointed Special Advisor to the Chairman and CEO for relations with media and content players.



• The International Business Development Division, led by Anne Bouverot, reports to the Executive Senior Vice-President, Group Genral Secretary, Jean-Yves Larrouturou.



• The Division in charge of operations in Africa, Middle-East and Asia (AMEA) led by Marc Rennard reports to the Executive Senior Vice-President, Group Genral Secretary, Jean-Yves Larrouturou.



• The Home Line of Business, led by Antonio Anguita reports to the Executive Senior Vice-President in charge of Group Transformation and Operations in France, Louis-Pierre Wenes.

http://www.orange.com

Read More

Juniper Extends Steel-Belted Radius Platform with WiMAX Support

Juniper Networks enhanced its Service Provider Steel-Belted Radius (SBR) Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) Server with support for WiMAX broadband wireless networks with Support for mobile WiMAX is expected to be generally available as a separate software module for SBR Carrier AAA server in Q3 2008.


Juniper said mobile WiMAX places extraordinary demands on Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) systems, which need to support multiple Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) methods; manage mobile IP sessions; and facilitate roaming. Its SBR Carrier AAA solution will address these challenges by supporting the methods required by the WiMAX standard for authenticating users and devices (EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and EAP-AKA), as well as legacy technologies such as EAP-SIM for backward compatibility -- on a single, unified platform. With its mobile IP key derivation and management functionality, the SBR Carrier AAA Server will also have the intelligence to set up mobile IP sessions; manage mobile sessions throughout their lifetimes; and support roaming in both home and visited networks.


Juniper noted that more than 120 service providers worldwide are using its SBR.http://www.juniper.net

Read More

Ethernet Alliance Announces Creation of IEEE P802.3at/Draft 3.0

A new IEEE P802.3at/Draft 3.0 addressing Power of Ethernet (PoE) Plus has been submitted it to the IEEE 802.3 working group ballot for technical review of the draft standard. PoE Plus is designed to provide up to 30W of power using Category 5 cables. Standard ratification is expected by 2009.


The additional power is seen as key for several advanced applications over converged networks, such as the use of high-end, pan-tilt-zoom video cameras.


"PoE Plus brings value to Ethernet by enabling key video services such as perimeter security, video conferencing and video-based IP phones for video collaborations," said Val Oliva, president, Ethernet Alliance. "The Ethernet Alliance is proud to support the IEEE P802.3at task force in its process of creating and ratifying the IEEE P802.3at draft standard."http://www.ethernetalliance.org

Read More

Wisair Introduces SDIO Wireless USB solution

Wisair introduced a new SDIO Wireless USB solution for portable and handheld electronic devices. The design, which is based on the Wisair WSR601 low-power single chip, enables vendors to embed Wireless USB into portable devices, such as digital still cameras, camcorders and smart phones, using the Secure Digital Input/Output (SDIO) interface.


The Wisair WSR601 single chip has received regulatory approvals in Japan, the U.S., and Europe, and was recently certified by the USB-IF.

http://www.wisair.com/

Read More

Aktino Names Lonnie Martin as New CEO

Aktino, which offers carrier-class long reach broadband over copper solutions, named Lonnie Martin as its new CEO. Martin most recently was CEO of White Rock Networks, an optical equipment company that he founded in 1999 and guided until 2006, when it was sold to Turin Networks.



Martin has also served as president and CEO of two other venture capital-backed companies (Broadband Telesystems, and Coastcom) and a top executive at two large multinational companies, ADC Telecommunications and Ascom/Timeplex.


Aktino has developed VDSL2-based MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out) on DMT (Discrete Multi-Tone) technology, which virtually eliminates crosstalk between copper pairs and allows multimegabit capacity on each copper pair, all the way to the edge of the carrier serving area.


Aktino, founded in 2003, is based in Irvine, California.
http://www.aktino.com

Read More

Motorola Joins LTE/SAE Trial Initiative

Motorola has joined the LTE/System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Trial Initiative (LSTI), and industry group driving the acceleration of commercial and interoperable next-generation LTE mobile broadband systems.


Motorola has been a major contributor to the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard.


Motorola said that it is leveraging its experience in 802.16e commercial systems by reusing a significant amount of its WiMAX research and development, coupled with its rich heritage in cellular networking, Motorola chipsets, network and video head-end solutions, and professional services to deliver its end-to-end LTE solution.


Motorola is among the vendors selected by Verizon Wireless and Vodafone to participate in their joint LTE trials during 2008. Motorola also is planning a number of other field trials during 2008.
http://www.motorola.com/lte

• In May 2007, a group of world leading telecom technology manufacturers and network operators comprised of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, France Telecom/Orange, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, T-Mobile, and Vodafone, launched a joint initiative aimed at driving high performance mobile broadband networks based on 3GPP Release 8 "Long Term Evolution / System Architecture Evolution" (LTE/SAE) specifications.



• The LTE/SAE Trial Initiative targets mobile broadband peak data rates exceeding 100 Mbps. In line with 3GPP requirements, LTE/SAE aims to provide a mobile broadband service that outperforms both 3GPP Release 6 HSPA, as well as current fixed line DSL data rates while maintaining and extending the highly successful mobility and coverage benefits of 3GPP networks such as GSM.

Read More

Motorola Expands OFDM-based Access Points

Motorola has expanded its Canopy wireless broadband system with the introduction of the 400 series of access points and subscriber modules in the 5.4 GHz spectrum. The Canopy 400 series uses Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology to provide improved near-line of sight (nLOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) coverage, allowing service providers and enterprise network owners to extend broadband network coverage into urban areas where obstructions and foliage have limited system expansion. The modules offer higher throughputs, up to 21Mbps, and extended range, accompanied with GPS synchronization to mitigate self interference. The Canopy 400 series modules, part of the MOTOwi4 Fixed Point-to-Multipoint portfolio, are now available in Europe, Middle East and Africa and soon in Latin America. North America availability is pending final FCC certification.


Motorola said that by leveraging OFDM technology in the access and backhaul layers, the Canopy 400 series significantly enhances overall network performance and reach enabling such applications as high speed data transfer, video surveillance, VoIP, and gaming to subscribers who were not previously reachable. http://www.motorola.com

Read More

FPL FiberNet Deploys Alcatel-Lucent for IP/MPLS

FPL FiberNet, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light which delivers wholesale bandwidth services throughout most major metropolitan areas in Florida, has deployed Alcatel-Lucent's IP/MPLS solution. the packet-based network is being used to deliver Ethernet and IP services. FPL FiberNet currently serves telecommunication companies, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, and enterprise and government customers in Florida through a geographically diverse and protected fiber-optic network. Financial terms were not disclosed.




The deployment includes the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router, Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch, Alcatel-Lucent 7250 Service Access Switch and Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager. In addition, FPL FiberNet's Metro Ethernet services are based on Alcatel-Lucent's optical networking solution, including the Alcatel-Lucent 1665 DMX and 1665 DMXtend, next-generation multiplexers designed for high-capacity voice, data and video transport, as well as its 1675 LambdaUnite MultiService Switch. Alcatel-Lucent also is providing installation, deployment, consulting, network integration and professional services.http://www.alcatel-lucent.comhttp://www.fplfibernet.com/

Read More

NTT Comm and AT&T Join Trans Pacific Express Cable Project

NTT Communications and AT&T have joined the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) Consortium, which is building next-generation, high- capacity undersea system to link the United States with mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea. Other members of the TPE Consortium include Verizon Business, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan)
http://www.verizon.com

• Earlier this month, Verizon Business announced that the U.S.-mainland China portion of the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) submarine cable will enter service in July, a month in advance of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

Read More