Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Alloptic Signs Distribution Deal with TVC Communications

Alloptic, which supplies RFoG (RF over Glass) and passive optical networking (PON) solutions, announced a distribution deal with TVC Communications, a value added distributor serving the broadband telecommunications and cable industries. Under the agreement TVC will provide Alloptic equipment to cable and broadband customers in the US and Canada. The agreement encompasses the entire Alloptic product portfolio, including EPON/GEPON systems along with its industry-leading RFoG products.


http://www.alloptic.com
http://www.tvcinc.com

DISH Network Announces $1 Billion Debt Offering

DISH Network Corporation plans to offer approximately $1 billion aggregate principal amount of debt securities. The net proceeds of the offering are intended to be used for general corporate purposes.
http://www.dishnetwork.com

Google Joins National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Board

Google has joined the National Cyber Security Alliance's (NCSA) board of directors. Eric Davis, head of anti-malvertising, will hold Google's board of director seat.
The NCSA is a nonprofit public private partnership that brings together government, corporate, nonprofit and academic organizations to conduct public education and awareness efforts to empower a digital citizenry to use the Internet safely and securely by protecting the computers and networks they use.

The NCSA board of directors also includes executives from Cisco, McAfee, Microsoft, EMC, SAIC and Symantec.


In addition, the NCSA has launched a Web portal to encourage broad-based participation in its education and awareness activities this year.
"The theme of National Cyber Security Awareness Month this year is "Our Shared Responsibility," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the NCSA. "We can only secure cyber space if everyone gets involved in making sure that all computer users engage in safe and secure practices to protect the computers and networks they use. October is a rallying point for everyone to get involved in educating their employees, customers, students, neighbors, friends, and family."
http://www.staysafeonline.orghttp://www.google.com

Motorola Takes its LTE Tour to Sweden

Motorola has taken its "LTE drive tour" to Kista, Sweden, where it is demonstrating the next generation wireless broadband technology to operators from across Scandinavia. During the drive tour, visitors will witness mobile broadband performance as well as rich media experiences on the move in an urban environment via an LTE-enabled van. The demonstration will also include hand-over between sectors and a number of demanding, bandwidth hungry video applications running over LTE - including for the first time live TV over LTE. The LTE network, which includes two Motorola LTE eNodeBs running on commercial hardware, is operating at 2.6GHz and is integrated with Motorola's backhaul and evolved packet core (EPC) products. It was deployed and optimized in just 10 days.
http://www.motorola.com/experiencelte

ShoreTel Posts 5% Annual Growth

ShoreTel reported quarterly revenue of $32.4 million, an increase of 4 percent over the previous quarter. GAAP gross margin was 63.3 percent and the GAAP net loss was $(0.7) million, or $(0.02) per share.


For its fiscal year 2009, Shoretel's revenue reached a company record at $134.8 million, an increase of 5 percent compared to fiscal year 2008 revenue of $128.7 million. GAAP net loss for the fiscal year was $(11.8) million, or $(0.27) per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $2.6 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, in fiscal year 2008.


The company added nearly 3,000 customers during the year, including AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, and the Verizon Center, home of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals. The company has now sold to nearly 11,000 customers worldwide and has granted user licenses to more than 1 million end users.


"Very few technology companies have been able to grow revenue during what is arguably the worst economy since the Great Depression. Our annual revenue growth of 5 percent clearly demonstrates ShoreTel's ability to sustain growth despite the weak economic environment," said John W. Combs, chief executive officer of ShoreTel. "Other positive indicators in the fourth quarter included a substantial increase in order volume, our newly announced agreement with IBM, our ability to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction in ShoreTel's history while at the same time efficiently cutting cost out of our business, and most importantly, the expansion of our distribution channel with the addition of two new telecommunications carriers. With these new additions, ShoreTel products and services are now being sold by all of the top three U.S. wireline telecommunications providers."http://www.shoretel.com

Verizon's FiOS TV Adds Remote DVR Features

Verizon is making two advanced FiOS TV Home Media DVR features available at no additional charge to all FiOS TV DVR users who also subscribe to FiOS Internet. One of the features, FiOS Media Manager, gives DVR users advanced PC-to-TV features that allow them to play on their big-screen entertainment systems personal videos, photos or music stored on a computer. Specifically, Media Manager lets users wirelessly stream personal photos, music and videos from their computer to their TV screens, plus search and enjoy online videos from blip.tv, Dailymotion and Veoh on their TV.

A second feature lets DVR subscribers use any Internet-enabled cell phone to remotely manage their recorders, including reviewing, changing or adding recording requests; deleting recorded programs; browsing and searching TV and video-on-demand listings; setting parental controls; etc.
http://www.verizon.com

Hutchison Telecom Releases Q2 Performance Indicators

Hutchison Telecommunications International reported key performance indicators for the second quarter of 2009. The Group's total customer base increased 36.5% to approximately 11.6 million on a like-for-like basis compared with last year, with the net gain mostly contributed by its Indonesian operation.


In Indonesia, the customer base grew to 6.4 million with a record 1.1 million net additions during the quarter. The network now has over 7,300 sites and is on track to reach 9,000 base stations on-air with a population coverage of over 75% by the end of 2009.


The Israeli operation maintained its 3G customer growth momentum which drove the 3G customer base to over 1.1 million.


Hutchinson's operation in Vietnam successfully launched GSM service under the brand name Vietnamobile and started the second quarter with customer acquisitions of approximately 624,000.


The Vietnamese operation increased the number of base stations on-air to approximately 1,500 and is on track to take it to 3,000 by the end of the year. The operation acquired approximately 624,000 customers mostly in the prepaid segment. ARPU was at VND68,000 and MOU were initially high at 221 minutes due to short term promotions that allowed a high volume of on-net minutes. To date, over 1,800 base stations are on-air with 65% population coverage.


In Sri Lanka, operations were severely hampered by adverse economic conditions and fierce competition. Customers declined significantly and the operation turned from EBITDA positive in the same period last year into a loss of HK$39 million for the first six months of 2009. The operation's customer base at the end of the quarter stood at 536,000 and will continue its network expansion to reach 800 sites and population coverage to 65% by the end of 2009.


In Thailand, Hutchinson remains in discussion about a potential exit for its Thailand operation with CAT Telecom Public Company Limited and has decided to exclude the KPIs of its Thailand operation in the quarterly announcement starting from this quarter.


The Group successfully spun off its Hong Kong and Macau operations in May 2009 to release value for shareholders. The combined share price of the two listed companies was over 50% higher than that of the share price of Hutchison Telecom on the day of the spin-off announcement.
http://www.htil.com

Hutchison Telecom to Sell its Stake in Israel's Partner Comm.

Hutchison Telecommunications will sell its entire 51.3% equity interest in Partner Communications, a mobile operator in Israel operating under the Orange brand, to Scailex Corporation Ltd., an Israeli company listed in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, for approximately US$1,381 million or HK$10,706 million. The purchase price is comprised of cash of approximately US$1,081 million or HK$8,381 million and a secured debt instrument of US$300 million (approximately HK$2,325 million).

Canning Fok, Chairman of Hutchison Telecom said: "This transaction brings to realization the significant value that we have created in Israel. We are proud to have built Partner into a respected and valuable company and we believe this is the right time to monetize the gain from our investment for the benefit of the Company and its shareholders. I thank the management team and all the staff at Partner for their dedication and hard work throughout."

Going forward, Hutchison Telecom said it will pursue a strategy of becoming a leading mobile operator in emerging markets and focusing on developing its existing operations in Indonesia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
http://www.htil.com

ECI Telecom Ships XDM-3000 Core MSPP

ECI Telecom has begun commercial shipments of its new XDM-3000, an MSPP platform featuring 240 Gbps capacity that can be used as a Multi-ADM-16/64 and DXC. The new platform, which doubles the capacity of the widely-deploy XDM-1000, could be used to relieve traffic bottlenecks in congested nodes of existing networks.


The XDM-3000 offers a fan-out with 24 slots for service cards and combines TDM and carrier class Ethernet services. It offers full switching capability at the VC-12 level, along with advanced MPLS and ASON/GMPLS capabilities. It could be deployed in mesh, ring, multi-ring, star, and point-to-point topologies.

Synterra, a carrier's carrier, is upgrading its core backbone infrastructure nodes in several cities across Russia using the new XDM-3000. The company estimates that the new multi-service equipment will allow Synterra to optimize its network, and realize savings of more than 30% in the modernization of its network.
http://www.ecitele.com
http://www.synterra.ru

Cable&Wireless Announces Roadmap for Global Ethernet Services

Cable&Wireless Worldwide announced the extension of its suite of Ethernet Services across 31 sites in Asia, India, Europe and the US. Its first global Ethernet service will be an International Ethernet Private Line (IEPL) offering for enterprises and carrier customers. The service will deliver point to point Ethernet connectivity, at speeds up to 1Gbps, enabling businesses to connect disparate computing environments globally, through transparent connections between LANs.

Cable&Wireless said it plans to extend its Ethernet Wireline and Ethernet VPN services globally over the next few months to further enhance the network services it delivers over its next-generation multi-service platform (MSP). The company has invested more than US$200 million across Asia in the last two years and now offers a range of managed network services to enterprises including managed video conferencing, managed IP-voice services, and application performance management services.

Cable&Wireless operates a fully meshed global Core Director Transmission network - based on a Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) backbone. The Core Director network is a self-healing transport infrastructure linking major cities in Europe, US, Asia and Africa, providing speeds of up to 1Gbps.
http://www.cw.com

Teranetics Announces New CEO

Teranetics, a start-up offering 10GBASE-T physical layer solutions enabling higher speed Ethernet over-copper, named Dr. Nersi Nazari as President and CEO.

Dr. Nazari served in R&D positions at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Seagate Technology, prior to joining GEC Plessey Semiconductor as Chief Technologist in 1994. He joined Marvell Semiconductor in 1997 as the founding VP of Signal Processing Technology. At Marvell, he introduced the company's first Trellis Coded Modulation-based read channel chip, the first SOC solution as well as the industry's first sub-two Watt 1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet chip.


Teranetics was founded in 2003 and develops 10GBASE-T Phys for structured-copper-cabling environments. The company is based in San Jose, California.
http://www.teranetics.com

Spirent Validates Video Performance of Global Interconnection Demonstration

Spirent Communications provided test and validation capabilities as part of the industry's first live interconnection carrier Ethernet demonstration, which was conducted at the Ethernet Expo: Europe 2009 Conference and Expo.


Dubbed the Global Interconnect Demonstration (GID), the event involved interconnecting Carrier Ethernet services as defined by the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) as well as core and access Ethernet switches that enable these services. Spirent supported the following GID demonstration initiatives:
  • Measured performance of live interconnected Carrier Ethernet between a number of global service providers


  • Validated next generation implementations of protocols and services from multiple core and access switch vendors interoperating together


  • Ran high-bandwidth applications, such as global interactive video services, over circuits interconnecting from the show floor to site around the world


Iometrix served as the GID designer and organizer.
http://www.spirentcom.com

Microsoft and Nokia to Bring Office Mobile to Nokia Smartphones

Nokia and Microsoft announced an alliance and shared vision for the future of mobile productivity. This is the first time that either company has embarked on an alliance of this scope and nature.

The two companies will begin collaborating immediately on the design, development and marketing of productivity solutions for the mobile professional, bringing Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications, collaboration and device management software to Nokia's Symbian devices. Nokia will make these solutions available for a broad range of Nokia smartphones starting with the company's business-optimized range, Nokia Eseries. The two companies will also market these solutions to businesses, carriers and individuals.
The companies said they are also targeting new user experiences for future Nokia devices. These experiences will be identified together, and will be created by dedicated teams inside both companies to better meet the growing needs of the mobile professional.

The announcement builds on the existing work Nokia is doing by optimizing access to e-mail and other personal information with Exchange ActiveSync. Next year, Nokia intends to start shipping Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on its smartphones, followed by other Office applications and related software and services in the future.
http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.nokia.com/press/