Rollout of Australia's NBN to Proceed

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard vowed to press ahead with the rollout of the $43 billion National Broadband Network, with an emphasis placed on rural deployment ahead of urban areas. The pledge to bring the NBN to rural areas first helped Gillard to secure political support from two independent MPs needed to form her minority government.


BN Co's management and its 300 employees welcomed the resolution of the political impasse, saying it looks forward to getting the rollout underway.
http://www.nbnco.com.au

• In June 2010, NBN Co., the consortium established to design, build and operate Australia's forthcoming wholesale-only National Broadband Network (NBN), reached an agreement with Telstra that would provide access to Telstra facilities and the progressive migration of Telstra traffic onto the National Broadband Network, subject to regulatory approval.



• NBN Co was established in April 2009 to design, build and operate a wholesale-only national high-speed broadband network for all Australians. In the fibre footprint, the network will deliver broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps, subject to the retail plan chosen.

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Poland's Mobyland Readies LTE 1800 Network

Poland's Mobyland, in partnership with CenterNet Mobile, is preparing to launch commercial LTE services in the 1800MHz band. Ther service will be delivered with 20 MHz channels, and the company expects this will enable it to reach data download speeds initially of up to 153 Mbps (and ultimately at 326 Mbps) and data uploads of 48 Mbps (and ultimately at 86 Mbps).


The network is being rolled out in locations where GSM 1800 has been in use, which means that the Mobyland signal will be available both Poland's larger cities and smaller locations.


"Our plans assume that at the end of 2010 the number of base stations in operation will reach 700 and the LTE network will cover over 7 million people," says Adam Kuriański, the President of CenterNet and a board member of Mobyland.


Huawei is listed as the lead supplier for the network.
http://www.mobyland.com/

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Verizon Invests in 4Home

Verizon Ventures has made an equity investment in 4Home, a start-up developing "connected home services," which include energy management, home security and monitoring, media management, and home health.


Verizon's investments occurred as part of 4Home's $7 million, Series-B financing round, which closed in the first quarter of 2010.


4Home has been working with Verizon's LTE Innovation Center and the companies previously showcased applications running over an LTE network at the Consumer Electronic Show in January.


4Home is based in Sunnyvale, California.
http://www.4Home.com
http://www.verizon.com

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Qualcomm On Track with LTE TDD Development

Qualcomm said its on track with its development of LTE TDD products. The company has been demonstrating prototypes at Expo 2010 Shanghai China, including its Mobile Data Modem (MDM9200) chip, which leverages 2x2 MIMO in the 2.3GHz band. Qualcomm plans to begin mobility trials of products based on LTE TDD later in 2010 in conjunction with multiple operators worldwide using its MDM9200 and MDM9600 solutions.

"TD-LTE will be a very important technology for China Mobile and also other operators around the world to deliver a cutting-edge user experience to subscribers," said Bill Huang, general manager, China Mobile Research Institute, China Mobile. "We are very pleased to see this demonstration and are working closely with Qualcomm and other companies in the wireless value chain to ensure that the benefits of TD-LTE will be available to customers."

Qualcomm's product portfolio includes products with integrated baseband and radio frequency (RF) supporting LTE TDD, such as the MDM9200 solution. The MDM9200 is a multi-mode, single-chip 3G/LTE solution that supports both FDD and TDD modes of Category 3 LTE. The first LTE TDD products powered by Qualcomm technology are expected to become available in mid-2011.

Qualcomm has also won one slot of 20MHz TDD spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band in India's key telecom circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala. The company plans to facilitate accelerated deployment of LTE in concert with 3G HSPA and EV-DO networks in India and plans to conduct live demos later this year.
http://www.qualcomm.com

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Wisconsin's Marquette-Adams Picks Occam for Fiber Expansion

Marquette-Adams Telephone Cooperative, which serves central Wisconsin, has chosen Occam Networks' BLC 6000 multiservice access platform (MSAP) to extend its fiber network throughout the southern parts of its service area. A combination of $20 million in second-round Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) grants and loans will fund the fiber deployment to over 4,600 previously-unserved homes and businesses.


"With the new funding, we will routinely deliver 100 Mbps access to our customers and will easily scale up to 1Gbps with Active Ethernet solutions from Occam," said Jerry Schneider, general manager of Marquette-Adams Telephone Cooperative.

Marquette-Adams started a six-year transition to an all-fiber infrastructure in 2008 utilizing Occam's BLC 6000 and a mix of GPON and Active Ethernet technologies. Over 1,000 existing customers are currently served over this network and the remaining 2,400 of Marquette-Adams customers will transition to fiber by 2012. Fiber subscribers are able to access traditional voice and data services, as well as video services such as HD television programming.
http://www.occamnetworks.com

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NSN Invests in OpenCloud for Service Broker Functionality

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has made a £4 million in OpenCloud, a provider of real-time Application Servers and Service Broker systems based in Cambridge, UK. OpenCloud's Rhino is a carrier-grade service execution environment for traditional and Telco 2.0 services on TDM and IP-based networks. It uses commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software to deliver service layer agility to service provider networks.

Additionally, the existing OEM relationship is strengthened, allowing Open Cloud's technology to be integrated into Nokia Siemens Networks' charge@once unified suite for convergent charging and billing.


Nokia Siemens Networks and OpenCloud have worked together over the last two years, resulting in numerous customer wins around the globe. Most recently, in June this year, Nokia Siemens Networks announced a contract with Vodafone in Portugal, which leverages OpenCloud's Service Broker technology to reduce the time and cost of launching new services.


In this funding round, OpenCloud received an additional £1 million from its existing investors Advent Venture Partners and No 8 Ventures.


"Having successfully worked together with Nokia Siemens Networks, we are pleased to bring our partnership to a strategic level," says Jeff Gordon, CEO, OpenCloud. "The investment will be used to accelerate our portfolio development to support the fast growth of the Service Delivery Platform market, while leveraging Nokia Siemens Networks' global customer reach, expertise and delivery capabilities."http://www.nsn.com
http://www.opencloud.com

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Zoran to Acquire Microtune for STB Tuners

Zoran agreed to acquire Microtune in a deal valued at $84 million.


Microtune designs and markets advanced RF, demodulator, and receiver silicon products and systems solutions for data/voice cable modems, cable set top boxes, digital TV set-top boxes, and automotive in-vehicle entertainment systems. The company, has shipped more that 150 million tuner chips since its founding in 1996, is based in Plano, Texas.


Zoran said it is increasing its focus on the STB market as part of its strategy to become a complete provider of solutions for consumer home entertainment.
http://www.zoran.com
http://www.microtune.com

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Maxim Acquires Phyworks for Optical Transceiver Chips

Maxim Integrated Products has acquired Phyworks Ltd., a privately held developer of optical components based Bristol, UK, for approximately $72.5 million in cash.


Phyworks has a substantial presence in the PON market with solutions for GPON, GEPON and 10GEPON, and with customers in the U.S. and Asia, including China, Korea and Japan. It also supplies VCSEL transceivers, LASER transceivers, transimpedance amplifiers, and equalizer & retimers.


Phyworks' gross margin is better than the Maxim average. The company was founded in 2001 and its primary investors are Add Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Ventures, and DFJ Esprit.


Maxim describes the acquisition as synergistic to its optical transceiver product line. Maxim and Phyworks combined will have market share leadership for transceiver chips for optical modules.


"Phyworks is very pleased to be joining Maxim," said Stephen King, President and CEO of Phyworks. "As the optical communications markets continues to evolve, technologies from both companies can be combined to create higher performance, lower cost solutions that will enable end users to build next generation optical networks. Maxim is the ideal partner for our customers and for our employees, and this combination strengthens Maxim's position as a leader in the markets we share."http://www.maxim-ic.com
http://www.phyworks-ic.com

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TeraXion and Proximion Standardize FBG Dispersion Compensators

TeraXion and Proximion, which both supply Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)-based dispersion compensators, announced the standardization of their tunable dispersion compensation module, for high-speed network systems.


The compatibility agreement covers the form factor of tunable dispersion compensators, limiting the maximum length and width at 150mm and 22mm respectively.


The companies said their compact plug-and-play module is half the total footprint of the competing Etalon technology and yet retains its competitive edge on optical specifications. Additionally, both the electrical interface and command set of the TODCs will remain standard.


FBG based Tunable Dispersion Compensators have been deployed in volume since 2003.
http://www.TeraXion.com
http://www.proximion.com

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ADC Extends WiMAX with In-Building Wireless Systems

ADC's InterReach Fusion distributed antenna system (DAS) has been deployed to extend WiMAX coverage and capacity inside a major airport and three hospitals. Specifically, he largest WiMAX operator in the United States is using ADC's InterReach Fusion system in Washington Reagan National Airport, and in VA hospitals in Dallas, San Antonio, and Temple, Texas.


ADC's DAS use 2x2 Multiple Input/Multiple Output (MIMO) technology to increase signal quality and double the throughput. Densely populated areas will require smaller cells to provide the needed uplink performance. The company said its system simplifies MIMO deployments for WiMAX and LTE because it can drive both MIMO antennas from each remote antenna location with a single CATV cable. Systems based on heavy coaxial cabling require separate cables for each antenna.


ADC system performance tests have shown that the InterReach Fusion system delivers WiMAX access speeds of 13 Mbps upstream and 28 Mbps downstream.


"WiMAX uses high frequencies that attenuate quickly, so an in-building wireless solution that supports MIMO is essential for indoor coverage," said John Spindler, vice president of product management at ADC's Network Solutions business unit. "With these deployments and others in the pipeline, ADC adds WiMAX to the services it supports for major mobile operators worldwide."http://www.adc.com

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Ciena Reports Results, Growth for Nortel's MEN Business

Ciena reported revenue for its fiscal third quarter 2010 of $389.7 million, including $221.8 million in revenue from the acquired assets of the Metro Ethernet Networks business of Nortel (the MEN Business), reflecting the first full quarter of those operations since the close of the transaction on March 19, 2010.

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Ciena's net GAAP loss for the fiscal third quarter 2010 was $(109.9) million, or $(1.18) per common share, which compares to a GAAP net loss of $(26.5) million, or $(0.29) per common share, for the fiscal third quarter of 2009. The fiscal third quarter 2010 included $17.0 million in acquisition and integration-related costs associated with Ciena's acquisition of the MEN Business.


"We're pleased with our progress and believe our financial performance this quarter is evidence of both the strategic value and market acceptance of the combined company. Our focus remains on the execution of our integration plan, and in the third quarter we were able to achieve certain integration milestones sooner than expected," said Gary Smith, Ciena president and CEO. "We are confident in the strength of our market position and believe we are well-positioned to capitalize on future growth opportunities."http://www.ciena.com

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