The Cloud Selects Devicescape for "mycloud" Easy Connect

The Cloud, Europe's leading independent wireless broadband provider, announced the launch of mycloud (beta), a new connector capability that aims to simplify the Wi-Fi user experience by providing seamless log-on to home, office, public access and free networks, without complex registration requirements or hidden costs.


The Cloud has partnered with Devicescape Software to power "mycloud." The Devicescape Connect Service automatically connects subscribers' Wi-Fi devices to The Cloud and other European networks. The new ‘mycloud' service allows customers to automatically connect to all of The Cloud's 10,000 hotspots across the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway. The service will initially be offered on select networks to beta subscribers, eventually rolling out to the full footprint of Cloud hotspots.


Some of Devicescape's other customers include BT, Deutsche Telekom, FatPort (Canada) and Vex (Brazil).http://www.thecloud.nethttp://www.devicescape.com

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CopperGate Acquires Conexant's HomePlug AV Powerline Technology

CopperGate Communications has acquired Conexant Systems' HomePlug AV business, including all relevant power line technology and silicon products, related patents, appropriate licenses, and requisite personnel. Former Conexant employees will become part of the CopperGate team and will expand the company's R&D initiatives in Southern California. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.


CopperGate is already the leading provider of HomePNA compliant chipsets, the dominant coax and phone wire standard for IPTV installations and the company remains strongly committed to the HomePNA standard. CopperGate said the acquisition makes it the first semiconductor company with home networking technologies supporting all three wire types -- coax, phone and power lines.


"Adding power line technology to our HomePNA coax and phone line technology opens up many new markets globally and better prepares the company for the exciting new ITU home networking standard, G.hn," said Gabi Hilevitz, Chief Executive Officer of CopperGate.


G.hn is the working group name for the next generation global home networking standard being created within the ITU-T. With G.hn, coax, phone wires and power lines will all be supported by a single standard. Today, there are twenty-five active global members of G.hn including AT&T, Verizon, France Telecom, Intel and TI and the group recently began meeting monthly due to strong interest and increased contributions. The G.hn foundation specification is expected by the end of 2008.


Separately, CopperGate announced a significant milestone -- the shipment of 5 million HomePNA chipsets worldwide.http://www.copper-gate.com

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Sun to Add On2's Video Codecs to Java

Sun Microsystems entered into a multi-year agreement to add On2 Technologies' TrueMotion video codecs to its JavaFX family of products. Sun said that the deal will enable the same high resolution video and media applications to run across the billions of devices that use the Java platform -- browsers, desktops, mobile and embedded devices. The first availability of On2 video codec for JavaFX software products is scheduled for the fall of 2008.http://www.sun.comhttp://www.on2.com

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Taiwan's Chunghwa Established JV in Vietnam

Chunghwa Telecom, the incumbent operator in Taiwan, has established a joint venture with Viettel Corporation (''Viettel'') to provide Internet Data Center (''IDC'') services in Vietnam. This venture, which is expected to begin operations in the third quarter of 2008, marks Chunghwa Telecom's first investment project outside of Taiwan. The initial investment is US$30 million, of which 70% will be provided by Viettel and 30% will be provided by Chunghwa Telecom.


Chunghwa Telecom initially will cooperate with Viettel to offer Taiwan- based companies and customers IDC services in Vietnam, where demand for these services is expected to increase dramatically, in line with Internet growth. In Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom provides not only basic IDC services, but also total solutions for network monitoring, security, load-balancing, and disaster recovery. The company said it expects that the joint venture will expand to also provide both basic and total solution IDC services for Taiwanese corporate customers, government authorities and private companies in Vietnam.http://www.cht.com.tw/

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Spain's TeleCable Selects Juniper M-series, MX-series Routers

TeleCable, a leading cable TV and Internet provider in Spain, has deployed Juniper Networks' M-series multiservice routers and MX-series Ethernet Services Routers in its metro network to improve the user experience for its broad range of voice, television and mobile services. TeleCable offers a range of television, video, data and telephone services throughout northern Spain. The new metro Ethernet network will leverage the MX-series' MPLS capabilities and the MX960 ESR, which delivers up to 960 Gbps of switching and routing capacity and is optimized for emerging Ethernet network architectures and services. Financial terms were not disclosed.http://www.juniper.net

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Virgin Media Tests 40G with Nortel, Juniper

Virgin Media, the largest broadband provider in the UK, has conducted a trial of 40 Gbps technology using equipment from Nortel and Juniper Networks.

The 40G North-South trial was conducted over a 350km span of Virgin Media's current UK 10G network. Nortel provided its 40G Adaptive Optical Engine DWDM transponder cards which interconnected with Juniper Networks' T-series routers with 40G interfaces located at sites in Manchester and London.


The live field trial, conducted in late April 2008, carried 40G traffic generated by Virgin Media and delivered over its long-haul optical network between Manchester and London.


"Our aim for this trial was to ensure we continue to meet the growing capacity needs of the high-speed services we deliver and provide a quality experience for Virgin Media customers," said Daniel Hennessy, director of Technical Architecture, Virgin Media. "Our strategic suppliers have demonstrated very clearly how existing network assets can be scaled to meet the growth in demand associated with evolving customer behaviour and step changes in the products provided as part of our high-speed broadband proposition. Our optical network will provide a solid foundation for growth as it takes advantage of technology designed to avoid electrical regeneration and where possible reduce the incremental cost of scaling transport capacity."http://www.virginmedia.comhttp://www.juniper.net

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Virgin Media Offers NETGEAR CPE

Virgin Media, the largest residential broadband provider in the UK with 3.7 million customers, is offering NETGEAR's customized Wireless-G Routers and Adapters for subscribers of its "M", "L", and "XL" fiber-optic broadband packages.


Packaged as Virgin Media Wireless Routers, NETGEAR's Wireless-G Router is available for free to new subscribers of "L" and "XL" fiber-optic broadband packages, or for a one-off £40 fee for new subscribers of the "M" package. NETGEAR's Wireless-G Router with Built-in ADSL2+ Modem is also available for free for new customers on Virgin Media's non-cable broadband service through a telephone line.http://www.netgear.comhttp://www.virginmedia.com/

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Global Crossing Posts Q1 Revenue of $630 Million, up 25% YoY

Global Crossing's consolidated revenue grew 25 percent year over year to $630 million for the first quarter of 2008, and adjusted gross margin was $331 million or 53 percent of revenue. "Invest and grow" revenue increased 36 percent year over year to $517 million. Adjusted cash EBITDA was $67 million, and the company generated $25 million in cash from operating activities.


Global Crossing's wholesale voice business was stable and generated $112 million of revenue in the quarter, which was an increase of $1 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2007 and a decrease of $10 million year over year.http://www.globalcrossing.com

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City of Provo, Utah Sells its Municipal FTTH Network

The City of Provo, Utah has sold its iProvo network to Broadweave Networks, a local fiber-optic services provider, for $40.6 million.


Under the terms of the deal, which is subject to municipal council approval, the city retains a license to use the network to connect city buildings, schools, and power infrastructure. Broadweave will operate as both the network owner and the service provider.


The City said the sale price is enough to retire the outstanding bonds incurred to build the network.


iProvo is believed to be the largest municipally owned fiber-to-the-premises network in the U.S., passing all 36,000 residences and businesses within the city.


Broadweave, which offers Triple Play residential services, also plans to sharpen its focus on business subscribers.http://www.provo.orghttp://www.broadweave.comUTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) is a different municipal fiber project.

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Sun and Ericsson Develop GlassFish SIP Server

Sun Microsystems released a preview version of its Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server version 3 and new Sun GlassFish Communications Server.


GlassFish is one of the leading open source application servers with more than 7 million downloads over the past 3 years.


The new GlassFish Communications Server is based on Project SailFin, a GlassFish project to build a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications server. Project SailFin is the result of collaboration between Sun and Ericsson that will give developers access to the telecommunications technologies they need to develop next-generation instant messaging, VoIP and shared multimedia applications on the Web. The GlassFish Communications Server is scheduled to be available after the Java Community Process finalizes the JSR 289 specification, which is expected in Q3 2008.


In related news, Ericsson and Sun announced a joint competition designed to spark innovation among developers and support the creation of next-generation Internet and mobile services. The international competition targets the 7 million members of the Java technology developer community worldwide and will run for a 5-month period with winners to be announced in October 2008.


Sun also announced a new GlassFish Partner initiative designed to provide developers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and System Integrators (SIs) with access to a large number of frameworks and applications running on the GlassFish application server.http://www.sun.comhttp://www.ericsson.com

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Intel and SGI to Provide Supercomputing for NASA's Project Pleides

Intel and SGI will collaborate to provide next generation supercomputing capabilities for modeling and simulation at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

Specifically, NASA Ames, Intel and SGI will work together on a project called Pleiades to develop a computational system with a capacity of one Petaflops peak performance (1,000 trillion operations per second) by 2009 and a system with a peak performance of 10 Petaflops (10,000 trillion operations per second) by 2012.http://www.nas.nasa.gov/http://www.intel.com

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The New Clearwire Outlines Plans for Nationwide Mobile WiMAX

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel confirmed plans to combine their next-generation wireless broadband businesses to form a new wireless communications company with a nationwide mobile WiMAX network. Sprint will own the largest stake in the new company with approximately 51 percent equity. The existing Clearwire shareholders will own approximately 27 percent and new investors, including Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, will contribute $3.2 billion into the new company to acquire a 22 percent stake.


The company believes it will have a time-to-market advantage over competitors in fourth-generation services, supported by strong spectrum holdings and a national footprint. Further, it will build on the strong foundation of Clearwire's existing subscriber base of nearly 400,000 wireless broadband customers as of year-end 2007, as well as Sprint's continued XOHM WiMAX network build-out in certain markets throughout this year.


Some highlights of the deal:

• The name of the new company will be called Clearwire and it will apply for listing of its common stock on the NASDAQ under the ticker "CLWR." Benjamin G. Wolff, currently CEO of Clearwire, will serve as the new company's CEO and Barry West, currently Sprint's Chief Technology Officer and XOHM business unit leader, will be president. The company will be based in Kirkland, Washington and have R&D in Herndon, Virginia.



• The new Clearwire is targeting a network deployment that will cover between 120 million and 140 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2010.



• Sprint will contribute all of its 2.5 GHz spectrum and its WiMAX-related assets into a subsidiary of the new company. The implied equity valuation of Sprint's contribution is approximately $7.4 billion. In addition to spectrum, Sprint will contribute to the new Clearwire certain hardware, software and all of its WiMAX-based trademarks and other WiMAX-related intellectual property.



• The new Clearwire will leverage Sprint's existing infrastructure, reducing the cost of building out the mobile WiMAX network nationwide. The new Clearwire expects to utilize Sprint's towers, fiber network and IT support at favorable bulk rates. Sprint also will realize cost savings for its core business by sharing certain costs of towers and other infrastructure.



• Intel will work with manufacturers to embed WiMAX chips into Intel Centrino 2 processor technology-based laptops and other Intel-based mobile Internet devices, and will market the new company's service in association with Intel's performance notebook PC brand.



• Google will partner with the new Clearwire in the development of Internet services, advertising services and applications for mobile WiMAX devices. In addition, Google will be the search provider and a preferred provider of other applications for the new Clearwire's retail product.



• Google will partner with the new Clearwire on an open Internet business protocol for mobile broadband devices. The new Clearwire will support Google's Android operating system software in its future voice and data devices that it provides to its retail customers.



• Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will enter into wholesale agreements with the new Clearwire, becoming 4G providers of new Clearwire's mobile WiMAX service.



• Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks and, after completion of the transactions, the new Clearwire, will enter into 3G wholesale agreements with Sprint, becoming bundled providers of Sprint's wireless voice and data services, expanding the reach of Sprint's network to more customers, while providing the cable companies a simpler, more effective vehicle to bundle wireless services.



• Sprint and Google have also entered into an agreement related to Sprint's mobile services, whereby Google will become the default provider of web and local search services, both of which will be enabled with location information, for Sprint. Sprint will also preload several Google services - including Google Maps for mobile, Gmail and YouTube - on select mobile phones and provide easier access to other Google services.



• Google and Intel have options to enter into 3G and 4G wholesale agreements with Clearwire and Sprint respectively and have no current plans to do so.

Clearwire Chairman Craig O. McCaw, said, "The power of the mobile Internet, which offers speed and mobility, home and away, on any device or screen, will fundamentally transform the communications landscape in our country. We believe that the new Clearwire will operate one of the fastest and most capable broadband wireless networks ever conceived, giving us the opportunity to return the U.S. to a leadership position in the global wireless industry."http://www.sprint.comhttp://www.clearwire.com

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