AT&T Pledges to Energy Usage Intensity by 25%

AT&T has joined the U.S. Department of Energy's Save Energy Now LEADER initiative, which asks that companies pledge to reduce their energy intensity by 25 percent or more during the next 10 years.


Save Energy Now LEADER is a national public-private initiative to drive energy intensity and carbon emission reductions across the U.S. industrial sector. AT&T is among more than 30 companies making this initial pledge to reduce energy intensity.


Over the next 12 months, pledge signatories agree to take the following additional steps toward greater energy efficiency:

• Establish energy use and energy intensity baselines


• Develop an energy management plan


• Report changes in energy intensity, energy use data and achievements annually to DOE
.

Earlier this year, AT&T announced a goal to reduce energy usage intensity by 15 percent in 2009, relative to data growth on its network. AT&T has taken a number of steps over the past year to reduce energy consumption, including introducing a series of efficiency-focused initiatives around AT&T's datacenters, network and facilities.


Recently, AT&T appointed its first director of energy, John Schinter.


AT&T has also joined The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. In addition, AT&T supplies data center performance information to assist the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in developing a new ENERGY STAR rating for data center efficiency.
http://www.att.com

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Intel Shows 48-core Single-Chip Cloud Computer

Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or "single-chip cloud computer." The design leverages a high-speed on-chip network for sharing information between the fully-programmable Intel cores, along with newly invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate extremely energy efficiently at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance.


Intel Labs said it nicknamed this test chip a "single-chip cloud computer" because it resembles the organization of datacenters used to create a "cloud" of computing resources. Researchers from Intel, HP and Yahoo's Open Cirrus collaboration have already begun porting cloud applications to this 48 IA core chip using Hadoop, a Java software framework supporting data-intensive, distributed applications.


Intel plans to produce 100 or more of these 48-core chips to share with partners engaged in developing new software applications and programming models.
http://www.intel.com

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Quantenna Debuts First 4x4 MIMO Wireless Video Bridge

Quantenna Communications has released a 4x4 MIMO Wireless Video Bridge reference design based on its Full-11n chipsets. Quantenna'a Full-11n devices deliver up to four high-definition (HD) video streams at more than 100 Mbps data rates, over 100 feet, and guaranteeing this performance nearly 100 percent of the time through near-zero packet error rate (PER) data transfers, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones that are typical of most residential environments.


At the heart of Quantenna's wireless video bridge reference design is the company's QHS600 device, whose data rates are enabled by a multi-core processing architecture that drives a 4x4 MIMO radio/transceiver augmented with adaptive digital beamforming plus channel monitoring and optimizing.


Quantenna said its QHS600 wireless video bridge reference design delivers five times the coverage of other 802.11n solutions across the 5 GHz frequency band, ensuring the ultra-low system latencies necessary for real-time applications such as online bidirectional video-game controllers. Content and privacy security is ensured without compromising performance by using an integrated DSP engine for higher-layer security acceleration. Additionally, a variety of Quantenna features ensure ultra-simplified setup, including auto detection of access point and bridge mode, and security pre-configuration with single-touch Wi-Fi Protected Setup when new devices are added to the network.
http://www.quantenna.com

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BT and BSNL Partner on Global Conferencing

BT and Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) announced a partnership focused on Global Conferencing Solutions. BT and BSNL engaged on their managed services journey after signing a MoU. As part of this agreement, BT and BSNL have been working jointly on large customer opportunities in India whereby BSNL utilizes their country-wide telecom infrastructure with BT providing its best practices to design, offer and support seamless customer solutions to enterprises for end-to-end service delivery.
http://www.btplc.com

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AT&T Joins Asia-America Undersea Cable

AT&T has joined the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) consortium, which is focused on building an undersea cable system connecting Southeast Asia and the United States. The consortium recently announced the completion of the 20,000 kilometer-long AAG submarine cable network's testing. The AAG system is now ready to begin carrying commercial traffic.


The AAG cable connects at AT&T landing stations in Guam, Hawaii and Southern California and is designed to provide more direct connectivity to emerging markets in Asia via landing stations in the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The cable also provides seamless connectivity to Australia and India via common landing points along its route.
http://www.att.com

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Tiscali Selects Infinera for Nationwide Italian Network

Tiscali will deploy an Infinera Digital Optical Network for its nationwide Italian backbone and metro networks. The installation includes the new Infinera ATN metro edge platform for more than 80 metro areas, including Rome, Milan, Turin, and Palermo. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Tiscali serves more than 700,000 customers in Italy, including more than 550,000 ADSL users.
http://www.infinera.com

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Verizon Pays Quarterly Divident

Verizon Communications declared a quarterly dividend of 47.5 cents per outstanding share, unchanged from the previous quarter. The company has approximately 2.5 million shareowners and approximately 2.8 billion shares of common stock outstanding. The company made $3.9 billion in dividend payments through the first nine months of 2009. In September, Verizon's Board approved a quarterly dividend increase of 3.3 percent. This was paid in November and marked the third consecutive year of a Verizon quarterly dividend increase.
http://www.verizon.com

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FCC's Copps Questions Comcast + NBC

In reposnse to the Comcast + GE announcement, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps issued the following comment:


"Some may have thought the era of media consolidation--fewer huge companies controlling more of the nation's media assets--was behind us. This transaction proves those analysts wrong. The push to combine content and distribution continues and, as the economy recovers, we will see more proposed media industry combinations. While I look at each proposed transaction on its individual merits, my long-standing skepticism about the harms imposed by so few controlling so much persists."http://www.fcc.gov

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Alcatel-Lucent Offers Application Exposure Suite

Alcatel-Lucent unveiled an Application Enablement framework aimed at tying Web 2.0 applications and rich content delivery services to capabilities inherent in the company's High Leverage Network architecture.
The new framework would help service providers open their networks to application developers and content providers in a secure and controlled way. The goal is to provide developers with an easy way to integrate key network service information, such as the location of subscribers, service preferences, billing relationships and more, to create "mash up" applications that combine the functionality of service provider networks with Web-based capabilities.


Key components of this framework include:

Application Exposure Suite -- Securely exposes key network assets so developers can easily "grab" simple APIs for new and existing network functionality to differentiate their applications. Capabilities supported include: API Exposure Framework and Network Abstraction Layer, Policy & Privacy Management, Partner On-Boarding Toolkit, Network Application Platform, Advanced Reporting & Analytics, Billing & Settlement Support.


Alcatel-Lucent Open API Service -- Cloud based, cross-carrier aggregation service making it easy for developers to access multiple network assets from multiple service providers and reach large numbers of users. This helps developers same time by eliminating the need to establish individual relationships with carriers and providing the cross carrier advantage of reaching a larger potential customer base.


Transformation Services -- including business consulting, multi-vendor integration, on-board self-care portals and processes, OSS/BSS integration, and Lifecycle Governance. An example of an Alcatel-Lucent-led transformation services project is its engagement with Nucleus Connect of Singapore where Alcatel-Lucent is providing a turn-key BSS/OSS solution including software, hardware and professional services, to support the customer's OpCo operations and business models.


"We are helping service providers find new ways to fully exploit their resources, including location, presence, preferences, address book, Quality of Service and payment, by exposing such capabilities in a managed and controlled way to a growing community of application developers to create a whole new category of advanced Web 2.0 and multimedia services," said Kenneth Frank, president of Alcatel-Lucent Solutions and Marketing. "In particular, the Open API Service eliminates the inconsistent policies, practices, requirements and capabilities across multiple networks that make application development a costly and lengthy process, while protecting the integrity and reliability of the network."http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/application_exposure_suitehttp://developer.openapiservice.com

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Google Launches Public DNS

Google launched its own public Domain Name System in an effort to make Web browsing faster and safer. The service, called "Google Public DNS", is an alternative to company's hosting their own DNS.


The Google Public DNS IP addresses are as follows: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

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Comcast Confirms Acquisition of NBC

Comcast and General Electric confirmed a deal to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast, 49 percent owned by GE and managed by Comcast. The joint venture, which will consist of the NBC Universal (NBCU) businesses and Comcast's cable networks, regional sports networks and certain digital properties and certain unconsolidated investments, will be a leading media creation and distribution player.


Comcast Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts said, "This deal is a perfect fit for Comcast and will allow us to become a leader in the development and distribution of multiplatform ‘anytime, anywhere' media that American consumers are demanding. In particular, NBCU's fast-growing, highly profitable cable networks are a great complement to our industry-leading distribution business.
http://www.comcast.com

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