Telstra Announces New Corporate Structure

Telstra announced a new corporate structure aimed at helping the company to grow in key markets, invest in innovation, and provide better customer service.

The key changes include:

• The creation of two new product units, headed by Justin Milne and Philip Jones, to enable Telstra to compete effectively in fixed and mobile markets.



• The creation of a new International unit, headed by Tarek Robbiati, that will take geographic and operational responsibility for CSL, Reach, Telstra's businesses in China, international sales and business development.



• The consolidation of network, technology and IT functions and the appointment of Michael Rocca as acting Chief Operations Officer to further drive Telstra's network and technology excellence.



• The appointment of Robert Nason to lead a new Customer Satisfaction, Simplification & Productivity unit responsible for improving customer service.



• The creation of an Operating Committee, comprising the heads of customer-facing and product units, to meet weekly and focus on business performance.

The changes mean the company will have four main functional groups - customer-facing units, product-based business units, a newly consolidated operations unit, and corporate support units - as well as the new International division, Sensis, and Telstra Wholesale.
http://www.telstra.com

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Dell'Oro: Edge Router Market Stable in Q3

The worldwide service provider edge router market grew 2 percent to $1.2 billion in the third quarter this year, according to the latest "Routers Quarterly Report" from the Dell'Oro Group . This marked the second consecutive quarter of growth for the worldwide market for edge routers, indicating that demand has stabilized following a strong contraction in the first quarter of the year. The leading edge router manufacturers Cisco Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, and Juniper Networks all recorded growth at or above the market average.


"Service providers are willing to invest in their edge networks because they can get a return on the investment over a relatively short time horizon," said Shin Umeda, Vice President at Dell'Oro Group. "The stability we saw during the third quarter gives us more confidence that the worst is behind us and that next quarter and 2010 will produce solid market growth," added Umeda.
http://www.delloro.com

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AMCC Becomes AppliedMicro with Focus on Telco, Data Center and Enterprise

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) has changed its name to AppliedMicro to reflect the company's drive for breakthrough energy efficiency and cost optimized semiconductor devices that will propel the company into new growth markets.


In keeping with the 30-year AMCC heritage, the company said it will remain dedicated to its customers in the telco, datacenter and enterprise markets, while increasing market share by striving to reduce the power consumption of its products by as much as 50 percent.


AppliedMicro vowed to leverage its substantial intellectual property, patent portfolio and engineering resources to pursue aggressive migration to advanced manufacturing processes and design techniques for its semiconductor devices that lead the market in optical transport, network switches and, routers, data center and enterprise systems. The company plans to migrate to 40-nanometer and 28-nanometer manufacturing processes to help achieve the energy efficiency gains.
Applied Micro believes its will set new standards for low-power ultra-high performance processors, framers, mappers, physical layer and optical data center devices that will drive a new era of energy efficient infrastructure.


In addition, new design centers in India and Vietnam will assist the company in bringing advanced hardware and software solutions to market as most of the company's engineering resources remain at its Sunnyvale, California headquarters.


"While higher performance continues to be an industry driver, energy efficiency will play a more prominent role in the design considerations and purchasing decisions for our customers in the data center and telecommunications industries," said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, President and Chief Executive Officer of AppliedMicro. "We are driving fundamental technology innovation that will radically lower the energy consumption of enterprise, datacenter and small business systems while simultaneously providing significant cost savings. Our computing and communications silicon solutions will have pioneering performance and the lowest power footprint in their class."http://www.appliedmicro.com

• In January 2009, Dr. Paramesh Gopi was named President and CEO of AppliedMicro in January. Previously, he served as VP and GM of Marvell's
  Embedded and Emerging Business Unit.

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NSN Targets the Energy Sector

Nokia Siemens Networks will pursue a partnership strategy to address opportunities in the energy sector. Areas of interest include the transformation of power grids into intelligent smart grids, and managing user demand and consumption via smart metering.


Nokia Siemens Networks aims to apply its existing charging, mediation, service management and network management solutions, and to work with third parties, to exploit opportunities in the intelligent energy market. The company's business serving the energy sector will form part of its new Business Solutions organization from January 1, 2010.


The first announced partner is ServusNet, which is working with NSN to help wind power operators optimize power generation and delivery. ServusNet is using Nokia Siemens Networks Open Element Management System (EMS) Suite, a software platform for both utility and telecommunications network management across different technologies and vendors.


"When you look at what is required to manage power grids, or to make full use of unpredictable renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, as well as bringing greater transparency and flexibility to billing, the synergies with the core of our existing telecoms business is obvious," said Juhani Hintikka, Head of Operations and Business Software, Nokia Siemens Networks. "While our research and development remains focused on communication service providers, we will look to exploit opportunities where we can create clear value for our customers by entering new growing markets with our current products and services."http://www.nsn.com

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Rogers Launches On Demand Online

Canada's Rogers Communications launched its On Demand Online, a web-based destination for aggregated primetime and specialty TV programming, movies, sports and web-only extras. The service is available online exclusively to Rogers customers from any Internet connection within Canada.


The initial BETA roll out will feature more than 1,000 hours of aggregated content from 17 broadcast and production partners and 30 channels. Those Rogers Cable customers with matching cable TV subscriptions will be able to access online a selection of their own specialty TV programming they subscribe to at home.


"Rogers On Demand Online is an extension of the existing cable television model which customers have come to enjoy and rely on at home that truly
revolutionizes the world of entertainment and provides the most convenient TV content access ever made available," said David Purdy, Vice President of
Video Product Management. "By expanding the TV experience to the Internet, Rogers customers can now take TV beyond the box with their favorite shows,
movies, TV classics and exclusive content - all in one place from virtually any place - wherever they have an Internet connection in Canada. And this is
just the beginning."http://www.rogers.com
http://www.rogersondemand.com/

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Charter Emerges from Chapter, Cutting $8 Billion in Debt

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company said its financial restructuring significantly improves its capital structure by reducing debt by approximately 40 percent, or approximately $8 billion.


Charter said it is positioned to generate positive free cash flow through the reduction of more than $830 million in annual interest expense.


"This successful financial restructuring is a significant accomplishment and makes Charter a stronger company for the benefit of our customers, vendors, employees and the communities we serve," said Neil Smit, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We have restructured our balance sheet without losing sight of serving our customers and maintaining our business relationships. Charter will remain focused on further enhancing the customer experience and is positioned to generate free cash flow. On behalf of the management team, I would like to thank the more than 16,000 Charter employees across the country for their hard work and dedication throughout this process."http://www.charter.com

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BT Openreach Deploys ADVA's FSP 2000 for Optical Services

Openreach, BT's UK-based access network arm, is deploying the ADVA Optical Networking's FSP 2000 to support its nationwide Optical Spectrum Access (OSA) services, which provide very high-bandwidth connectivity between two end-user sites. Launched earlier this year, OSA services are particularly well-suited for WAN and Storage Area Network (SAN) applications where multiple client interfaces are involved. The services offer a range of client protocols and interfaces over 2.5- and 10 Gbps DWDM wavelengths.


ADVA Optical Networking's FSP 2000 is a WDM system that multiplexes, transports and protects high-speed data, storage, voice and video applications.


"Our customers have exacting demands, which means their service selection must be versatile and reliable enough to meet these demands at a competitive price and on a timescale that is realistic for the end customer," said Richard Thorpe, connectivity services general manager at Openreach. "We chose the ADVA FSP 2000 to support our OSA services because customers demand lower lead times and the flexibility to offer multi-speed, multi-protocol services that are supported by the latest DWDM technology. "http://www.advaoptical.com

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Intelsat 15 Successfully Launched

The Intelsat 15 satellite was successfully launched by a Zenit-3SLB rocket from the Land Launch facilities at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan. The satellite, built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, will provide video and data services through its high power Ku-band payload. Once IS-15 is operational, it will replace Intelsat's 709 satellite at 85º E, and is expected to have a useful life of at least 17 years.


Of the IS-15's 22 Ku-band transponders, five are owned by SKY Perfect JSAT Corp.
http://www.intelsat.com

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Milestone for Hughes: 2 Million Satellite Terminals Shipped

Hughes Network Systems announced a milestone for satellite networks and services -- the company has shipped an aggregate of over 2.1 million satellite terminals as of Q3 2009. The achievement continues the company's leadership of the global very small aperture terminal (VSAT) market which began in the mid-80s when Hughes shipped the first VSAT network to Wal-Mart.
http://www.hughes.com

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Broadcom to Acquire Dune Networks for $187 Million

Broadcom agreed to acquire Dune Networks, a privately-held developer of switch fabric solutions for data center networking equipment, for approximately $178 million in cash.


Dune Networks, which is based in Yakum, Israel, offers a scalable chipset that supports bandwidth speeds of up to 100Gbps per port and can connect more than ten thousand servers (ports) in a single deployment. Its SAND chip-set includes a family of Fabric Element (FE) devices and a family of line-card devices named Fabric Access Processor (FAP) devices. Target applications include Carrier Core and Edge Router Platforms, Carrier Ethernet Switching Platforms, Carrier next generation Packet Transport Platforms, Enterprise Ethernet Switches and Routers and data center switching platforms.


"Dune's massively scalable interconnect fabric, combined with our Ethernet products, augments our portfolio of solutions for data center networking equipment," said Martin Lund, Vice President and General Manager, Broadcom's Network Switching line of business. "This technology is particularly well suited to meet the emerging requirements for cloud computing networks at a large scale, and will enable us to address new market applications for Ethernet in the data center."


Dune Networks is a semiconductor supplier of networking devices, facilitating the build of Data Center, Enterprise and Carrier Ethernet Solutions. Dune Networks provides a switching solution that truly scales in capacity, port rate and service scheme. This extends the life cycle of packet platforms from the legacy 3 years up to 10 years and more, significantly improving the economics of packet networks. Founded in the year 2000, Dune Networks' offices are located in Sunnyvale, California and Yakum, Israel.
http://www.broadcom.com
http://www.dunenetworks.com

• In April 2009, Dune Networks announced an $8.3 million in series B funding led by Evergreen Venture Partners. Evergreen joined existing series B investors USVP, Pitango, Aurum, JVP and Alta Berkeley. This additional funding brought the total amount of funding raised to date to $53 million.



• Dune Networks is headed by Eyal Dagan (DEO), who previously was a co-founder and CEO of Charlotte's Web Networks, which developed high-end core equipment for next generation optical networks.

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EXFO Raises Financial Guidance

Citing a stronger-than-anticipated US dollar versus Canadian dollar and higher sales volume, EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering now expects GAAP net earnings to finish between US$0.00 and US$0.01 per diluted share for the first quarter of fiscal 2010. The company had previously forecasted a GAAP net loss between US$0.06 and US$0.02 per share, partially based on an anticipated pre-tax, foreign exchange loss of US$0.03 per share to account for the significant weakness of the US dollar in days preceding the issuing of company guidance on October 13, 2009.


EXFO also anticipates that revenues will fall between US$45 and US$46 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2010, slightly above the US$40 to US$45 million guidance range, due to stronger bookings than expected. The company's book-to-bill ratio is expected to be above 1 for the quarter.
http://www.EXFO.com

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