Alcatel-Lucent Collaborates with Germany's DIEHL on Smart Metering

Alcatel-Lucent has signed a collaboration agreement with DIEHL Energy Solutions, a division of DIEHL Metering. Alcatel-Lucent, which currently offers a smart metering solution, will work with DIEHL Energy Solutions to develop and market a comprehensive solution that will enable energy supply and combination utilities to provide timely, detailed consumption information to their customers thus enabling consumption-related price and more accurate billing. The goal of the cooperation agreement is the joint development and marketing of compatible products...

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Telecom Italia Moves Ahead with 28 Mbps HSPA by Ericsson

Telecom Italia will initiate deployment of Ericsson's HSPA technology in early 2009 supporting top downlink speeds of up to 28 Mbps and upload speed of 5.8 Mbps. Tests in Telecom Italia's mobile network will start early 2009 and initial deployment is planned in the city of Milan in June 2009. National coverage will follow in the second half of 2009. The deployment will include Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO), a technology that uses two...

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Ericsson Deploys Solar Base Stations for Orange Guinea

Orange Guinea Conakry is deploying more than 100 base stations fully powered by solar energy.Ericsson's hybrid diesel-battery energy solution replaces one of a site's diesel generators with a bank of specially designed batteries that can handle a large amount of charging and discharging. This self-contained power solution can be set to meet the batteries' optimal charging and discharging levels, extending the lifetime of the battery and the generator,...

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Calix Partners with Xangati for Application Management

Calix announced a reseller relationship with Xangati to offer an application management solution for service providers. This formalized relationship reflects the positive service provider response to initial integration efforts between the Calix Management System (CMS) and the Xangati Application Management 2.0 solution announced in June 2008.Calix supplies a broadband access platform. The integration of Xangati with the Calix CMS provides a 360-degree...

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Zhone Partners with Alloptic for RF-over-Glass (RFoG)

Zhone Technologies will expand its Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) portfolio through a strategic agreement to resell Alloptic's Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG) solutions. Integrating RFoG with Zhone's standards-based GPON system boosts available spectrum and enables carriers to deliver advanced digital video services without replacing existing analog video headend equipment. "Enabling 2-way RF services is vital to network operators," said Shane Eleniak, Alloptic VP of marketing and business development. "With RFoG, interactive video and...

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Verizon Business Offers Single-Source Procurement Internationally

Verizon Business has begun offering a single-source procurement service to provide multinational enterprises with a simpler way to build, support and manage their global networks. The new single-source model covers the procurement of customer premises equipment (CPE) and other support services in 122 countries and territories. Verizon Business said this new model bolsters and simplifies the services it provides to support CPE - from billing and...

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NeuStar and GSMA Certify Sonus for Carrier ENUM

Sonus Networks' solutions for wireless carriers have been certified as part of PathFinder, the GSMA-managed service operated by NeuStar. The PathFinder initiative is dedicated to the simple delivery of IP-based services to fixed and mobile networks, reducing the cost and complexity of providing innovative new services.PathFinder is based on Carrier ENUM technology, facilitating an interoperable, industry-wide solution which enables the routing of global IP service interconnect traffic. The service acts as a central directory where operators share...

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Verizon Wireless Selects Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent for LTE

Verizon Wireless confirmed plans to move ahead with its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) migration and named Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent as primary network vendors for its initial LTE network deployments in the United States. Verizon Wireless has selected Starent Networks as a key supplier for the packet core. Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent have been selected as key suppliers for the IP Multi-Media Subsystem (IMS) network, which will enable...

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America Movil to Offer Nokia Maps in Latin America

America Movil has agreed to offer Nokia Maps Navigation to its mobile consumers in Latin America with Nokia GPS-enabled phones. Nokia Maps, with GPS functionality and featuring location-based services, will empower users to expertly navigate, whether searching for an unfamiliar address in their home city or exploring a vacation destination. Nokia and America Movil announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding related to broader services collaboration. By combining America Movil's marketing, customer and service expertise and Nokia's strength...

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Verizon Business Enhances Managed Services Portfolio

Verizon Business is rolling out a new portfolio of converged solutions that address the security and performance challenges faced by large corporations. The new solutions span the entire IT "stack," which is the computing structure that includes the network, data, application and user layers.Verizon Business believes this integrated approach will enable companies to more efficiently build a secure, high-performance communications and IT infrastructure...

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BroadSoft Integrates with IBM SPDE 3.0

BroadSoft has teamed with IBM to offer standards-based application infrastructure to support the rapid creation of rich new Web 2.0-oriented communications services.The combined BroadSoft and IBM technology provides an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-ready application infrastructure, which allows for simplified integration of rich voice applications with Web 2.0, social networking and business process applications. The platform offers interfaces that...

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BT Upgrades its Web Conferencing

BT released an advanced version of its web-based scheduling and automation tool. New features in Engage Meeting Manager 2.0 are designed to make reservations faster and easier through an intuitive conference wizard, meeting templates, custom directories, B2B scheduling, iCal integration and user interface improvements.Engage Meeting Manager 2.0 is available to all BT Conferencing video customers, whether the customer utilizes BT multi-tenant bridges or their own managed bridging infrastructure. Multi-tenant customers can use Engage Meeting Manager...

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Comcast's 2009 Plan Calls for All-Digital, More DOCSIS 3.0

For Q4 2008, Comcast's net revenue increased 9% to $8.8 billion, operating cash flow increased 9% to $3.4 billion, and operating income increased 20% to $1.8 billion, all compared to the same time period in 2007. However, Comcast's total video, data and voice customer net additions in Q4 slowed to 290,000, compared to 714,000 net additions in Q3. The company said that in these more challenging times it will focus on free cash flow generation, increase...

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ZTE Develops Low Cost Solar Handset for Digicel

ZTE unveiled a low-cost solar-powered mobile phone using proprietary technology from Dutch-based innovator Intivation. Digicel will begin offering the new Coral-200-Solar in June. Pricing and technical details were not disclosed. Since early 2008, Digicel has been providing its customers with low-cost or free portable solar chargers in many markets. The companies noted that there are an estimated two billion people who have limited or no access...

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