Comcast Grows 3.9% in 2009, Targets Project xfinity for 2010

Comcast's Q4 2009 revenue increased 2.9% to $9.1 billion and operating cash flow increased 1.1% to $3.4 billion, reflecting continued growth in its Cable division, partially offset by higher expenses in Programming and Corporate costs. Fourth quarter 2009 Operating Income increased 3.4% to $1.8 billion.



Revenue increased 3.9% in 2009 to $35.8 billion, while Operating Cash Flow increased 4.4% to $13.7 billion and Operating Income increased 7.2% to $7.2 billion.


"In 2009, we continued to invest in our products and services and in growth opportunities like Comcast Business Services. We also made real progress deploying All-Digital and Wideband, and launched innovative products like Comcast High-Speed 2go, our 4G wireless broadband service, and On Demand Online. We believe these initiatives and our focus on delivering the best consumer experience further improves our competitive position now and in the future," stated Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast.


Some highlights:

• As of December 31, 2009, Comcast's video, high-speed Internet and voice customers totaled 47.1 million, reflecting 1.5 million net additions during 2009.



• The company expects CAPEX in 2010 to be less than 2009 both in dollars and as a percentage of revenue.



• Goals for 2010 include to complete the all-digital transition, complete the wideband DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade and launch Project Xfinity.



• As of the end of 2009, the all-digital migration was about 35% complete. This will recapture about 50 analog channels.



• Project xfinity will offer 100+ HD channels, 50-70 foreign language channels, 20,000 VOD choices, 19,000 On-Demand online programs, 100 Mbps Internet speeds and new convergence features.

http://www.comcast.com

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3Crowd Offers Crowd Sourced Load Balancing Among Competing CDNs

3Crowd Technologies, a start-up based in San Mateo, California announced a crowd-sourcing method of leveraging multiple content delivery networks (CDNs).


For content owners with high customer service goals, 3Crowd offers a turnkey multi-cloud service strategy. Its two new services, CrowdMonitor and CrowdDirector, effectively convert multiple CDNs into a single cloud-service that can be monitored, managed and deployed as a single service.


CrowdMonitor lets content providers actively monitor and react to cloud service performance and reliability data. Passive monitors are placed throughout a network and at the end user's location. CrowdMonitor collects continuous streams of logs and analyzes information related to traffic path, speed, downtime, whether or not content is cached, latency times, etc.

CrowdDirector effectively acts as a virtual load balancer on a network, enabling enterprises and content owners to manage their services across multiple CDNs, cloud services, and web servers, using a set of simple and articulate rules. These rules, which include feedback from the ‘crowd' or the performance from the actual content delivery, are built from a multitude of parameters such as time, location, networks (ASNs), content types, CDN performance, traffic capacities, pricing and more.


3Crowd is the latest startup founded by serial entrepreneur Barrett Lyon, creator of the Opte Project, an Internet mapping project, founder of Prolexic Technologies and co-founder of BitGravity.
http://www.3crowd.com

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Nokia Reports Fast Adoption of New Ovi Maps With Free Navigation

Since launching its new version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation on January 21, Nokia has delivered over 1.4 million downloads. The one million mark was reached just one week after the launch.


The new Ovi Maps is a key part of Nokia's strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. By leveraging its investment in NAVTEQ, the company hopes to quickly activate a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services.


"We're averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day," said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia. "When we announced free walk & drive navigation we knew it would be a game-changer. The number of people now using their Nokia for navigation, and as a result looking for more location-aware software, is growing faster than even we predicted."


As of 31 January 2010 the top five countries downloading the new version of Ovi Maps were: China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. The top five most popular Nokia devices installing the download were: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia N97, Nokia 5230 and Nokia E72.
http://www.nokia.com/maps

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Lockheed Martin Awarded $31 Million for National Cyber Range

Lockheed Martin was awarded a $30.8 million contract for Phase II of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) National Cyber Range (NCR) program.


DARPA's NCR is part of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a major government-wide effort to increase the nation's defenses against electronic attack. In Phase I, DARPA and its industry team created initial conceptual designs, concepts of operation, and detailed engineering and system demonstration plans. In Phase II, DARPA will work with Lockheed Martin and the Johns Hopkins University - Applied Physics Laboratory to build and evaluate prototype ranges and their corresponding technology. The NCR will support large-scale cyber testing, providing fully automated range management and test management suites to assess and validate leap-ahead cyber research technologies and systems, and to help DARPA identify new research directions.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/isgs/capabilities/NexGen/

• In November 2009, Lockheed Martin IS&GS opened a NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland designed to preserve and protect Lockheed Martin customer missions and address the greater cyber security challenges worldwide. The unique 25,000 square foot center leverages existing Lockheed Martin and partner capabilities in cyber security. It features seven collaboration areas, reconfigurable spaces, global cyber range, cloud computing platforms, green IT datacenter, telepresence and high definition video teleconferencing and global site connectivity.

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Roamware Eliminates Roaming Voicemail Charges for European Operators

A new EU regulation that comes into effect on July 1, 2010 will prohibit operators from charging roaming customers for redirecting calls into voicemail while on a visiting network. The EU regulation aims to ensure that subscribers are not charged an additional fee for receiving voicemail messages while abroad. Subscribers are frequently charged for two international call legs for receiving voicemail in a different country as the call is first directed from the home network to the visited location and then back to home network where the voicemail is located.


Roamware estimates that European operators will collectively incur an annual cost of between euro 130m and euro 150m for re-bounding international voicemail calls, known in the telecoms industry as 'tromboning'.


To reduce the costs of tromboning, Roamware has introduced its patented solution, Voicemail Call Completion (VMCC), and is working with European mobile operators on its deployment. The company said that 40 mobile operators have implemented its solution so far.
"The EU's fundamental issue was that roamers could not exercise discretion in accepting voicemail messages, unlike a phone call which they can refuse to answer. Using Roamware's enhanced Voicemail Call Completion service in the home network, the Roamware software recognizes when the customer is not available to answer a call and deposits it into voicemail without the call ever leaving the home country and incurring roaming charges," said John Jiang, CTO and EVP - Product Management at Roamware.


Roamware is headquartered in San Jose with operations in Brussels, Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi Singapore, Dublin, Johannesburg, Amman and Hong Kong.
http://www.roamware.com

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Swisscom Monitors IMS Network with RADCOM's Omni-Q

Swisscom is using RADCOM's Omni-Q service assurance solution for monitoring its new IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) production network. RADCOM's gear has previously been used in Swisscom's IMS laboratory testing. In in the first phases of commercial IMS services, Swisscom has found a need for pro-active Tier 2 and 3 engineering troubleshooting. The IMS network consists of an Ericsson core and Broadsoft application servers. RADCOM's advanced QExpert business intelligence workflow reporting provides efficient and pro-active engineering and support. It monitors SS7, IMS and mobile services. http://www.RADCOM.com

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Gigamon Secures $22.8 Million for it Data Access Switch

Gigamon has raised $22.8 million from Highland Capital Partners in its first institutional financing to support its data access switching product line.


The Gigamon platform provides data access span ports for monitoring complex and remote networks. The switch aggregates, filters and replicates customized data streams to all monitoring tools.


The company said it has achieved greater than 55 percent year-over-year growth rate for each of the past four years.
http://www.gigamon.com

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MTS Allstream Selects Aviat to Support HSPA Rollout

Canada's MTS Allstream has selected Aviat Networks (formerly Harris Stratex Networks) for its HSPA rollout. Under the agreement, MTS Allstream will use Aviat Networks' Eclipse Packet Node HP300 solution to aid its migration to an all-IP architecture and launch its HSPA network in Manitoba.


MTS Allstream will also deploy Aviat's ProVision Element Management System (NMS), which delivers advanced features for monitoring and controlling TDM and Ethernet transport, such as end-to-end circuit provisioning, Ethernet utilization reporting and RMON performance monitoring. For more information on the ProVision system, please
MTS Allstream is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manitoba Telecom Services and currently serves nearly two million total customer connections spanning business customers across Canada and residential consumers throughout the province of Manitoba.
http://www.aviatnetworks.com/http://www.mtsallstream.com

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IBM to Acquire Initiate Systems for Data Integrity Software

IBM agreed to acquire Initiate Systems, a supplier of data integrity software for information sharing among healthcare and government organizations. Initiate's software speeds the adoption and exchange of electronic medical records.


Initiate Systems is a privately held company based in Chicago, IL and marks the 30th acquisition IBM has made to advance its capabilities in information and analytics. Financial details were not disclosed.
http://www.ibm.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Expands Bell Labs in Ireland

Alcatel-Lucent announced an expansion of its Bell Labs facility in Dublin, Ireland. The program is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Agency) and aims to enable the creation of more than 70 new high-caliber technology positions over the next five years. http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Cisco Posts Sales of $9.8 billion, Net Income Beats Expectations

Cisco reported second quarter net sales of $9.8 billion, net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $1.9 billion or $0.32 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.3 billion or $0.40 per share.


"Our outstanding Q2 results exceeded our expectations and we believe they provide a clear indication that we are entering the second phase of the economic recovery. During the quarter we saw dramatic across the board acceleration and sequential improvement in our business in almost all areas," said John Chambers, chairman and chief executive officer, Cisco.


Some highlights of the quarterly report:

• Cash flows from operations were $2.5 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2010, compared with $1.5 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2010, and compared with $3.2 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2009.



• Cash and cash equivalents and investments have reached $39.6 billion. This compares with $35.4 billion at the end of the preceding quarter.



• Cisco ended the quarter with 65,874 employees, up from 63,756 three months earlier



• During the quarter, the company repurchased $1.5 billion in stock



• Service revenue up approx. 6% y/y



• New organizational structure is operating very effectively



• U.S. orders up approx. 17% y/y, including Enterprise up approx. 10% y/y, Public sector up 2% y/y, Commercial up in mid teens y/y, and Service provider up low twenties y/y.



• Switching revenue up approx. 13% y/y



• Routing revenue up 2% y/y

http://www.cisco.com

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Broadcom Reports Record Quarterly Revenue of $1.343 billion

Broadcom reported net revenue for Q4 2009 was a record $1.343 billion, up 7.1% compared with the $1.254 billion for the Q3 2009 and an increase of 19.2% compared with the $1.127 billion for Q4 2008. Net income (GAAP) for Q4 2009 was $59.2 million, or $.11 per share (diluted), compared with GAAP net income of $84.6 million, or $.16 per share (diluted), for Q3 2009, and GAAP net loss of $159.2 million, or $.32 net loss per share (basic and diluted), for Q4 2008.


"Broadcom's performance in 2009 highlights the incredible opportunities within the wired and wireless communications markets and the excellent work of our employees in creating compelling products," said Scott A. McGregor, Broadcom's President and Chief Executive Officer. "In the midst of one of the worst economic downturns, Broadcom gained market share, achieved record quarterly revenue and delivered the strongest cash flow from operations in our history."


In addition, the company adopted a dividend policy pursuant to which it intends to pay quarterly cash dividends on its common stock. Broadcom's Board of Directors declared the first quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share payable to holders of the Company's common stock.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Broadcom Debuts 10GbE Converged-NIC

Broadcom introduced its next generation single-chip, dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) converged network interface controller (C-NIC) for server LAN-on-motherboard (LOM), add-in network card and storage adapter applications.


The Broadcom BCM57712 enables bi-directional 10 Gbps line rates on two ports, resulting in a total throughput of 40 Gbps. Broadcom calculates storage performance of over one million IOPS (input/output operations per second) for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI offload. The 10GbE C-NIC, which serves networking and storage connectivity applications, provides hardware-based acceleration and offload capabilities that free the server CPU for application processing tasks.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Broadcom Releases Power 40nm 10GBASE-T PHYs

Broadcom has begun sampling low power 10GBASE-T transceivers produced in 40 nanometer (nm) process technology. The new Broadcom family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) physical layer (PHY) transceivers support IEEE 802.3 10GBASE-T operation over 100 meters of shielded or unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable, and RJ45 connectors and are available in either a dual port or quad port configuration.


Broadcom said its advanced 40nm process technology and power-savings design techniques have lowered the operating power below 4 watts per port, significantly lower than competitive solutions designed in 65nm or 90nm technologies.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Broadcom to Acquire Teknovus for EPON Silicon

Broadcom will acquire Teknovus, a leading supplier of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) chipsets and software for approximately $123 million in cash.


Teknovus offers silicon for EPON at 1G, 2.5G and 10G speeds. It offers both Central Office (OLT) and the Customer Premises (ONU) solutions. The company claims its products are deployed by more than 35 service providers around the world.



The companies note that EPON represents approximately 94% of the FTTx (e.g. Fiber-to-the-Home) connections in the Asia Pacific region. According to the Dell'Oro Group, the Asia Pacific PON market is expected to grow from 22.8 million to 94.5 million subscribers by 2014, a CAGR of 33% (2009-2014).


"Broadcom is known globally for its Ethernet switching expertise," said Greg Caltabiano, President and CEO, Teknovus. "As the EPON market segment evolves and expands, technologies from both companies can be combined to enable a higher performance, lower cost EPON-based access infrastructure."


Broadcom expects that the acquisition of Teknovus will be approximately neutral to earnings per share in 2010.
http://www.teknovus.com
http://www.broadcom.comIn December 2009, Teknovus introduced its the Intelligent EPON Node Controller, a system-on-chip solution that facilitates evolution of the PON network by extending central office (OLT) to subscriber (ONU) distances up to 100 km and by supporting connections to over 1,000 subscriber ONUs. Teknovus' TK3401 Intelligent EPON Node Controller also supports remote management, configuration and upgrade, protection switching, and low power operation. Key features of the TK3401 Intelligent EPON Node Controller include:

• Up to 100 km extended service coverage to reach remote subscribers and support consolidation of central office and cable head-end facilities.



• High OLT port efficiency and cost savings through aggregation of lightly-loaded and geographically dispersed subscriber ONUs; particularly important for cable MSOs supporting subscribers in rural deployments



• Maximized fiber capacity for multiple dwelling unit (MDU) deployments, supporting up to 1,000 subscribers with FTTH (fiber to each unit).

Teknovus noted that China will end 2009 with more than 16 million EPON subscribers (according to China Telecom), slightly exceeding the 15 million forecast for Japan. With several million additional subscribers in Korea, Eastern Europe and the US, the total EPON subscriber forecast is well over 35 million for year-end 2009.

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