Microsoft Drops Kin Phones Two Months After Launch

Microsoft discontinued its recently launched "Kin" mobile phones due to poor demand. Microsoft said it intends to redeploy employees on the Kin team to its Windows Phone 7 project. Verizon Wireless was offering the two Microsoft Kin phones. The first Windows Phone 7 devices will be available by holiday 2010 under labels from other manufacturers.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/KIN/

• In 2008, Microsoft acquired Danger, a Palo Alto, California-based developed of mobile phone for the youth market. Danger was best known for its Sidekick device, which is marketed by T-Mobile.

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China Telecom Shanghai Activates Juniper TX Matrix Plus

China Telecom has deployed its Juniper Networks' multi-chassis routing system in a production environment of its Shanghai network.


The Juniper Networks TX Matrix Plus interconnects T1600 Core Routers, providing the core of its super metro area network in Shanghai and supporting Expo 2010, which is taking place in the city.


China Telecom has 3.5 million Shanghai broadband customers, including 1.2 million IPTV subscribers, and had been using Juniper Networks TX Matrix with three T640 Core Routers within its network there since 2006.


The Juniper Networks TX Matrix Plus system underwent certification testing at China Telecom's Academy of Science & Technology in Guangzhou during the middle of 2009. And in October Juniper successfully staged a stringent proof-of-concept in Shanghai, leading to the decision to deploy the TX Matrix Plus by the end of the Q1 2010.


The systems are currently connected to network links -- including OC768, OC192, OC48, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet ports.


Juniper said China Telecom can scale its Shanghai core network as needed with addition of more line cards -- including Juniper Networks' new 100 Gigabit Ethernet interface.
http://www.juniper.net

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European Commission Launches Net Neutrality Consultation

The European Commission has launched a consultation on net neutrality covering such issues as whether Internet providers should be allowed to adopt certain traffic management practices, such as prioritizing one kind of Internet traffic over another.


The EC will examine whether such traffic management practices may create problems and have unfair effects for users, and whether the level of competition between different Internet service providers and the transparency requirements of the new telecom framework may be sufficient to avoid potential problems by allowing consumers' choice.


The consultation will feed into a Commission report on net neutrality, which should be presented by the end of this year. All interested parties -- service and content providers, consumers, businesses and researchers -- are invited to respond to the consultation by 30 September 2010.
http://wwww.europa.eu

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Zayo to Acquire American Fiber Systems

Zayo Group agreed to acquire American Fiber Systems Holding Corporation (AFS), a leading provider of metropolitan fiber network and telecom services. Financial terms were not disclosed.


AFS, which is based in Rochester, NY, operates over 800 route miles of unique, fiber-rich network in 6 new metropolitan markets -- Boise, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Nashville, Reno and Salt Lake City. In addition, AFS enhances Zayo's fiber depth and footprint with approximately 400 additional route miles in Atlanta (a Zayo market pending the close of AGL Networks), Cleveland and Minneapolis. Atlanta, Boise and Las Vegas are particularly strong markets for AFS, representing nearly 75% of its revenue base.


Zayo noted that the AFS customer base is weighted towards the carrier, wireless and other wholesale segments, similar to the sales and marketing approach of the Zayo Bandwidth business unit.


"The addition of AFS's markets significantly increases the geographic scope of the bandwidth infrastructure services that Zayo offers to its customers," said Dan Caruso, President and CEO of Zayo Group. AFS will be the 15th acquisition by Zayo Group since its inception in 2007.
http://www.zayo.com
http://www.afsnetworks.com/

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Cisco Delivers Hosted Collaboration Solution for Service Providers

Cisco released a Hosted Collaboration solution that enables Service Providers to deliver Cisco applications via the cloud using an "as a service" model.


Specifically, the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution gives service providers and integrators the ability to deploy multiple collaboration applications on one server in a virtualized environment and then host those applications for multiple client organizations. The solution is designed to be run from partner data centers.

Applications available as part of the Hosted Collaboration solution include: Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Contact Center, Cisco Unified Mobility, Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco WebEx Meeting Center (hosted by Cisco).

Cisco is also providing professional services to enable partners to deploy the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution in an "as a service" model. The company cited deployments or trials with a number of major players, including Verizon Business and Orange.
http://www.cisco.com

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Cisco Expands Data Center 3.0 Strategy with FabricPath Routing

Cisco expanded its Data Center 3.0 strategy for transforming information delivery in physical and virtualized environments.
Cisco's data center and virtualization vision combines unified fabric and unified computing in the data center. The key innovation in its 3.0 architecture is a new Cisco "FabricPath" technology that increases network scalability, resource agility, asset efficiency, and performance in the data center. The company is also rolling out enhancements for its Nexus and Catalyst data center switching platforms, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) extensions, and new Cisco services.

The announcement was made at the Cisco Live! conference in Las Vegas. Webcast materials are online.


Cisco FabricPath, which is based on the emerging Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) standard, is a Cisco NX-OS feature designed to bring the stability and performance of routing to Layer 2 in the data center. Cisco said its FabricPath approach resolves the shortcomings of Ethernet in large data centers, such as complications from using Spanning Tree Protocol. The fundamental difference between FabricPath and classical Ethernet is that with FabricPath, the frame is always forwarded in the core using a known destination address. Each frame traversing the core is encapsulated with a FabricPath header, which consists of routable source and destination addresses. Upon reaching the remote switch, the frame is deencapsulated and delivered in its original Ethernet format.



Cisco will deliver its FabricPath Switching System as integrated, validated hardware + software to build massively scalable domains. It is based on the FabricPath feature of NX-OS and FabricPath-capable hardware, such as new Nexus 7000 with F-Series I/O modules. This new module for the Nexus 7000 will offer 32 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with supports for Data Center Bridging and TRILL standards. Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) will be enabled in the near future through a software upgrade.


Other data center announcements from Cisco include:

• Cisco WAAS -- WAN acceleration can now be deployed in the branch office as an on-demand service direct from select models of the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2.



• New Cisco Catalyst 4948E switch -- featuring microburst protection for predictable latency, plus automation and visibility. The switch also supports wire-speed IPv6, in addition to auto-provisioning and smart call-home features.



• New Cisco Cloud Enablement services: including strategy, planning, design, and implementation, help customers successfully transition the data center to a cloud infrastructure to quickly realize the benefits of a cloud operational model.



• Cisco Intelligent Automation Solutions: Cisco is also introducing Cisco Intelligent Automation for IT Services, including new versions of the Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Tidal Enterprise Orchestrator products that provide real-time IT process orchestration and batch automation to simplify data center management and increase operational efficiency and performance.



• Cisco Validated Design guides: Cisco validated design guides serve as blueprints for ready-to-deploy IT across a variety of domains, including Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center (VMDC) solutions for private cloud design.

http://www.cisco.com30093

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Vodafone Portugal Selects NSN's Service Broker

Vodafone Portugal has selected Nokia Siemens Networks' Service Broker to enable the seamless convergence of legacy circuit-switched services, such as Personnel Greeting Voice services, with IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services. NSN's Service Broker technology, based on an OpenCloud platform and integrated into the operator's existing IMS and intelligent network (IN) systems, is expected to substantially cut the time and cost of launching new services. It will also allow Vodafone Portugal to offer new real-time services without the need to adapt other network elements, enabling continuity with established systems such as charging and billing.

"As a service provider, we are committed to offering our customers innovative services and the ultimate communication experience, so they can live richer lives while on the move," says Jorge Bento, director of intelligent network, services and platforms at Vodafone Portugal.
http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com
http://www.vodafone.pt

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Portugal Blocks Telefonica's Bid for Vivo Stake

The government of Portugal acted to block the proposed sale of Portugal Telecom's stake in Vivo, the Brazilian mobile operator, to Telefónica S.A. The Portuguese government remains a special "golden" shareholder in Portugal Telecom and opposed Telefónica's bid for strategic reasons. The moves follows several bid increases from Telefónica, which reported had pushed the offer up to EUR 7.15 billion.
http://www.telefonica.com
http://www.telecom.pt

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Procera Cites First Deployments of PacketLogic

Procera Networks announced the first shipments of its PacketLogic PL8720 platform, a two rack unit (2RU) 10 Gbps deep packet inspection (DPI) appliance for providing awareness, analysis, and control over network traffic. The new PacketLogic PL8720 is designed for networks transitioning from GE (gigabit Ethernet) to 10GE links. It offers up to eight 10GE or sixteen 10GE DPI ports.
http://www.proceranetworks.com

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Ooma's iPhone App Offloads AT&T Voice Minutes

Ooma, which offers residential voice service in the U.S. using a freemium model, released an iPhone app that
lets Ooma customers make domestic and international calls over any Wi-Fi or 3G network while tapping into their Ooma account rather than using AT&T voice minutes. Ooma leverages its own "PureVoice" codec to reduce bandwidth usage by 60%. For international calls, Ooma calculates this will save customers up to 90%.
http://www.ooma.com

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