Thursday, October 29, 2009

Cisco TelePresence Planned for U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Cisco has established a Global Climate Change Meeting Platform (GCCMP) powered by a network of Cisco TelePresence and conferencing technologies to extend the reach of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15). Specifically, the COP15 main conference facility, the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, will feature four Cisco TelePresence rooms, specially designed to make local and remote meeting participants feel as if they are in the same room. The rooms will be connected to 77 Cisco TelePresence rooms, the Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy, and select Danish embassies around the world at no cost to COP15 participants. In addition, the Danish government is arranging access to the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, UNEP in Nairobi, the United Nations' Palais des Nations, UNICC in Geneva and U.N. Headquarters in New York City.


Earlier this year, Cisco was chosen by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark as the official technology partner of COP15, which takes place in the Danish capital between Dec. 7 and 18.
http://www.cisco.com

Nortel and Ericsson Expect to Close Wireless Sale this Month

Nortel Networks and Ericsson announced an amendment of their previously announced asset sale fir substantially all of Nortel's CDMA business and LTE Access assets. Under the amendment, Nortel and Ericsson have extended to November 30, 2009 the date by which to close the sale. The parties expect to close the sale prior to such date. The parties agreed to the extension in order to allow more time for the satisfaction of closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. http://www.nortel.com

Alcatel-Lucent Posted Q3 Revenue of EUR 3.687 billion, down 9.3% YoY

Alcatel-Lucent reported Q3 2009 revenues of Euro 3.687 billion, down 9.3% year-over-year and 5.6% sequentially. At constant currency exchange rates, revenue decreased 11.0% year-over-year and 3.5% sequentially. The adjusted operating income was Euro (11) million or (0.3%) of revenue, and the reported net loss (group share) was Euro (182) million or Euro (0.08) per share.


Alcatel-Lucent's CEO, Ben Verwaayen, state: "Our company continues its transformation journey. This quarter demonstrates both the relevance of our strategy through key customer wins and our capacity to consistently execute our plans with significant operational progress.


We are winning in areas of differentiation such as IP transformation, next generation broadband and wireless, application enablement and services. This is demonstrated in our wins with Qwest in merging IP and optics into a combined solution, Singapore's Nucleus Connect in application enablement, and the securing of LTE trials with France Telecom-Orange, Telefonica and Etisalat, bringing our total number of LTE trials to 16.


We have achieved significant operational progress. We are rapidly reshaping our cost and expense structure, having achieved 80% of our Euro 750 million target in annualized savings year to date. We generated Euro 362 million in free cash flow this quarter by improving our operating working capital metrics. Finally, robust investor reception to our Euro 1 billion convertible bond offering allowed us to further strengthen the balance sheet.


Against what remains a challenging market environment, we reiterate our view that our addressable market should be down between 8% and 12% at constant currency and that we will achieve an adjusted2 operating income1 around breakeven this year."


Some highlights:

  • The carrier segment saw a double-digit decline in revenue, driven by 2G wireless access, TDM switching and terrestrial optics. The segment did see moderate growth in fixed broadband access, good growth in IP and strong growth in submarine optics, fixed NGN/IMS and W-CDMA.


  • Enterprise revenue continued to decline at a double-digit rate. Applications software revenues grew at a strong double-digit rate and finally Services revenues grew at a low single-digit rate.


  • From a geographic standpoint and in local currencies, revenue declined at a double-digit rate in both Europe (-13%) and in the rest of the world (-32%). On the other hand, revenue declined slightly in Asia Pacific (-1%). Finally, North America returned to moderate growth this quarter (+1%).


  • The company estimates that it has achieved approximately 80% of its plan to reduce costs and expenses by Euro 750 million on an exit run rate by the fourth quarter 2009.


  • Alcatel-Lucent reiterated its guidance for 2009. The company continues to expect the global telecommunications equipment and related services market to be down between 8% and 12% at constant currency in 2009.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

NTT Comm Completes Acquisition of Pacific Crossing Limited

NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) completed its previously announced acquisition of Pacific Crossing, which operates the PC-1 trans-Pacific undersea cable network. The deal was first announced in May.


By combining PC-1 capacity with NTT Com's vast domestic and international network, NTT Com can offer customers, both in the enterprise and carrier markets, the highest quality network services between Asia, Japan and the United States.


NTT Com will retain the Pacific Crossing management team and Pacific Crossing will continue as a business within the NTT Com group selling network capacity in the wholesale carrier marketplace. Pacific Crossing's customers will see an immediate extension of network reach beyond PC-1 with extended domestic capability in Japan and the US as well as the ability to leverage NTT Com's international network to offer turnkey solutions for Asia to US connectivity.
http://www.ntt.com
http://www.pc1.com
  • Pacific Crossing's PC-1 network is the second-largest trans-Pacific subsea cable system, spanning 21,000 km and connecting the U.S. and Japan. The system has landings at Harbour Pointe, Washington (near Seattle); Grover Beach, California (between San Francisco and Los Angeles); Ajigaura, Japan (near Tokyo); and Shima, Japan (near Osaka and Nagoya). The network offers extensive backhaul into major U.S. and Japanese cities.


  • Pacific Crossing recently added Gigabit Ethernet access support for its carrier and ISP customers. Pacific Crossing's new service allows customers to access the PC-1 network using a standard Gigabit Ethernet interface at the company's four Points-of- Presences in the U.S. and cable landing stations in both the U.S. and Japan. For customers in Japan, Pacific Crossing also has the ability to offer access directly to a customer's premise through a domestic partner network.


  • In March 2008, Fujitsu and Pacific Crossing completed an upgrade project that more than doubles the capacity of the 21,000-kilometer PC-1 trans-Pacific fiber optic submarine cable network. The project, which began in September 2007, involved the installation of Fujitsu's FLASHWAVE S650 submarine wavelength divisional multiplexer equipment in Pacific Crossing's cable landing stations, and the upgrade of the overall capacity to 1.98Tbps, of which 1.01Tbps is available on the two Trans-Pacific segments. The six-month contract was completed without any disruption to existing network traffic.


  • In January 2007, Pacific Crossing raised $50 million in new financing to pay off its remaining debt and finance new projects. The company also announced the appointment of Robert Boss as CEO and Robert Annunziata as Chairman. Boss previously was president of Japan Telecom America. Annunziata has served in a numerous executive positions throughout the telecom industry, including as CEO of Global Crossing during most of 1999.


  • In January 2006, Pacific Crossing Ltd, Inc., a former subsidiary of Global Crossing and of the former Asia Global Crossing (now Asia Netcom), emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Over $650 million of existing debt was converted into equity and $25 million in secured debt.

Corning Cable Systems Standardizes on Bend-Insensitive ClearCurve Multimode Fiber

Corning Cable Systems, part of Corning's Telecommunications segment, has standardized on Corning ClearCurve multimode fibre as its new standard product offering for all 50 micron LANscape cables and cable assemblies.


LANscape cables with ultra-bendable performance offer a minimum bend radius as small as five times the outer diameter of the cable in some designs, compared to 10 times in traditional cables. Thus, tight bend situations experienced in LAN and data centre environments that would result in elevated attenuation with traditional 50 micron cables and adversely impact system performance, experience minimal attenuation increase with the new LANscape cables enabled by ClearCurve multimode fibre.


Corning first introduced ClearCurve multimode fibre in January 2009. ClearCurve multimode fibres are compliant and fully backwards compatible with relevant OM2, OM3 and OM4 industry standards for high-bandwidth, laser-optimized multimode fiber.


In April 2009, Corning Cable Systems introduced the Pretium Low-loss OM3 Jumpers with ultra-bend performance, which can greatly reduce outages and degradation in systems caused by severe bending situations.


In June 2009, Corning Cable Systems announced its Evolved-Density Growth-Enabled (EDGE) suite of data centre products enabled by ClearCurve multimode fibre.
http://www.corning.com

UTStarcom Unveils MPLS-TP Transport Solution

UTStarcom has expanded its NetRing Transport Network product portfolio (NetRing TN), which includes new MPLS - Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) solutions designed to overhaul existing mobile backhaul networks, provide Ethernet services and deliver broadband aggregation applications. MPLS-TP is pre-standard technology being jointly defined by ITU-T and IETF.

UTStarcom's NetRing TN packet-based optical transport system is designed for applications such as carrier mobile backhaul, metro Ethernet services for enterprise and DSLAM and X-version of passive optical network (xPON) aggregation. It is capable of carrying time division multiplexing (TDM), ATM, SDH/SONET and Ethernet seamlessly over a reliable and scalable network, with resiliency at par with TDM networks. It also enables legacy enterprise services over Ethernet, providing 'wholesale' connectivity and an alternative for leased lines.

"Packet transport networks (PTN) are an emerging segment of the overall optical transport market that can specifically address the evolution of new enterprise services and the subsequent challenges of packet traffic growth, increased bandwidth pressure and the need to improve ARPU," said Peter Blackmore, CEO and president of UTStarcom. "UTStarcom has invested in the development of this expanded TN portfolio to ensure our customers have an effective migration path to PTN. We are confident that this portfolio will deliver that long-term."http://www.utstar.com/Products/Optical_Transport_Networks/MPLS-TP/

Chunghwa Telecom Reaches 1.5 Million FTTH Subscribers, ADSL Declines

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom reported Q3 revenue of NT$50.1 billion, down 1.7% compared to a year earlier. Mobile communications business revenue decreased by 2.5% to NT$22.1 billion, while Internet business revenue decreased by 0.1% to NT$5.8 billion. Domestic fixed communications business revenue decreased by 2.6% to NT$17.7 billion. International fixed communications business revenue increased by 4.0% to NT$4.1 billion.


For the first nine months of 2009, total consolidated revenue decreased by 3.0% to NT$147.2 billion.


Dr. Shyue-Ching Lu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chunghwa Telecom said, "In 2009, and particularly in the third quarter of 2009, we have maintained or increased the subscriber figures in each of our core businesses, including the highly competitive broadband and mobile businesses, despite the challenges presented by the economic environment and market competition. As a result, we have sustained our overall market leadership position in each of our core service areas, and continue to enhance our value-added services, MOD/IPTV offering and key enterprise solutions. Moving forward, we plan to accelerate our fiber deployment and further enrich our MOD/IPTV content in order to continue our growth momentum.

Some additional highlights:

  • Total broadband subscribers were 4.31 million as of September 30, 2009, a 0.4% decrease in the number of subscriptions compared to the same period of last year.


  • There was a strong growth in FTTx subscriptions, with 165 thousand net additions to bring the total to 1.51 million, compared to 1.34 million FTTx subscribers as of June 30,
    2009.


  • However, ADSL subscribers decreased by 161 thousand to 2.80 million quarter-over-quarter. By the end of September 2009, the number of ADSL and FTTx subscriptions with a service speed of greater than 8 Mbps reached 1.91 million, representing 44.4% of total broadband subscribers, compared to 34.8% at the end of September 2008.


  • HiNet subscribers were 4.07 million at the end of September 2009, relatively stable as compared to the end of the second quarter of 2009.


  • The increase in HiNet FTTx subscribers was offset by a decrease in HiNet ADSL subscribers of a similar magnitude.


  • As of September 30, 2009, Chunghwa had 9.18 million mobile subscribers, slightly up quarter-over-quarter by 1.6% compared to 9.04 million as of June 30, 2009.


  • Chunghwa remained the leading mobile operator in Taiwan. According to statistics published by National Communications Commission (NCC), at the end of August 2009, the Company's total subscriber market share (including 2G, 3G and PHS) was 34.5%, while its revenue share was 33.0%.


  • Chunghwa had 384 thousand net additions to its 3G subscriber base during the third quarter of 2009, recording a 9.4% rise quarter-over-quarter in the total number of 3G subscribers to 4.49 million as of September 30, 2009.


  • Mobile VAS revenue for the first nine months of 2009 was NT$6.18 billion, representing a 18.8% year-over-year increase, of which SMS revenue was up 12.9% and mobile Internet revenue was up 48.1% , respectively, compared to the same period of 2008.
http://www.cht.com.tw