Saturday, December 31, 2011

2011 Mergers & Acquisitions

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Newport to Acquire ILX Lightwave for Photonic Devices

Newport Corporation (NASDAQ: NEWP) today reported that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ILX Lightwave Corporation ("ILX"), a market and technology leader in high-performance test and measurement solutions for laser diodes and other photonics components.

On December 28, Newport Corporation agreed to acquire ILX Lightwave Corporation, for $9.3 million in cash.

ILX , headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, is a supplier of high-performance test and measurement solutions for laser diodes and other photonics components. The product line includes laser diode controllers and drivers, temperature controllers, current sources, optical power and wavelength meters, semiconductor laser/LED burn-in, test and characterization systems, and fiber optic sources. The company expects 2011 revenues of approximately $8 million. The company is profitable, and Newport expects the acquisition to be accretive to its earnings immediately after closing.

Robert J. Phillippy, Newport's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "The addition of ILX, together with our recent acquisition of Ophir Optronics, will further enhance Newport's position as the industry's leading provider of photonics instrumentation and measurement equipment. With our expanded portfolio of products and technology, we will offer our customers solutions to the most demanding applications in both the scientific and industrial markets."

http://www.newport.com http://www.ilxlightwave.com

Verizon Cancels Plans for $2 Convenience Fee

On December 28, Verizon Wireless announced plans to begin charging customers a $2 "convenience fee" for making payments via online credit or debit card transactions. The company later dropped the plan following media attention, consumer complaints, and a statement from the FCC promising to look into the matter. http://www.verizon.com

Exar Trims Financial Guidance

On December 28, Exar Corporation revised downward its financial guidance citing "weaker economic conditions in Asia and Europe and continued inventory corrections" across all product lines. Exar now expects revenue for the fiscal third quarter to be between $28 million and $30 million and non-GAAP gross margin to be between 48% and 50%. http://www.exar.com

Vodafone Egypt Upgrades Subscriber Data with NSN

Vodafone Egypt, the country’s largest telecom operator, is upgrading its subscriber data management system built on the One-NDS platform provided by Nokia Siemens Networks, enabling the operator to speed up the process of launching new, targeted services. Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks is upgrading its comprehensive subscriber data management solution, including the One-NDS platform, and providing its Home Location Register (HLR), and Mobile Number Portability (MNP). The One-NDS platform unifies fragmented data into a single repository and is more efficient than having multiple databases for different front-end applications such as HLR and MNP. http://www.nsn.com

Verizon Wireless Cites LTE Growing Pains

During December, Verizon Wireless suffered three intermittent nationwide outages on its LTE network -- all of which were caused by glitches in the network's IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Verizon Wireless' VP of network engineering Mike Haberman told GigaOM that these disruptions should be seen in light of the company's pioneering efforts with LTE. As of December 2011, Verizon Wireless has deployed its 4G LTE network in more than 190 markets across the U.S., covering more than 200 million people. The company said it has taken decisive steps to remedy each of the software bugs as well as to segment its network geographically to limit the extent of any future issues. http://www.verizon.com http://www.gigaom.com

Monday, December 26, 2011

Cavium Trims Guidance

On December 27, Cavium cut its financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2011. The company currently expects that revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 will be between $56 million and $57 million.


The company noted that revenues have been weaker than expected across both the enterprise and service provider as well as the broadband and consumer market segments, and further exasperated by a larger than expected impact of a hub transition at one of its major customers. http://www.cavium.com

Thursday, December 22, 2011

AT&T to Boost LTE Downlinks with Qualcomm's 700 MHz + Carrier Aggregation

The FCC granted regulatory approval for AT&T to acquire 700 MHz licenses from Qualcomm.


AT&T is purchasing 700 MHz spectrum licenses covering more than 300 million people for approximately $1.9 billion. The deal includes all 11 of Qualcomm’s D and E Block licenses in the Lower 700 MHz band.


In its FCC application for license transfer, AT&T said it plans to use supplemental downlink technology (carrier aggregation) to bond this unpaired spectrum with paired spectrum that it already holds. This will enable AT&T
to add substantial capacity on its LTE network once the LTE Advanced standards are released. The licenses at issue cover all of the United States with six or 12 megahertz of Lower 700 MHz spectrum. Specifically, Qualcomm holds all six of the Lower 700 MHz D Block licenses (six megahertz). In addition, Qualcomm holds five of the 176 Economic Area licenses35 (also six megahertz) in the Lower 700 MHz E Block, providing coverage in five of the top 15 metropolitan areas (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), covering more than 70 million people.


Qualcomm originally planned to use this spectrum for its Media FLO mobile TV service, which was launched in 2009 and then cancelled in early 2011 after failing to catch on in the market.


"This spectrum will help AT&T continue to deliver a world-class mobile broadband experience to our customers," said Bob Quinn, senior vice president-Federal Regulatory, AT&T. "We appreciate the FCC Chairman, the Commissioners and their staff for completing its review before the holidays. http://www.att.com http://www.fcc.gov

  • In 2008, Qualcomm won eight licenses in the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction at a total cost of $558.1 million. Specifically, Qualcomm purchased licenses in the E block covering the Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco Economic Area regions. These licenses doubled Qualcomm's 700 MHz spectrum holdings throughout a footprint of more than 68 million people in 28 individual markets for MediaFLO USA's "FLO TV" service (21 of its top 100 markets) at a cost of $554.6 million. In addition, Qualcomm purchased three licenses on the B block at a cost of $3.5 million.

December 22, 2011


Verizon Wireless Experiences Another LTE Glitch 
Verizon Wireless experienced a nationwide disruption on its 3G and 4G in the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 21. The service was slowly being restored throughout the day. The company has not yet commented on the cause of outage or any potential customer credits. http://bit.ly/t75MYf 21-Dec-11
Russia's Yota Launches Wholesale LTE Network in Novosibirsk 
Russia's Yota announced the launch of its first LTE network in Novosibirsk in Siberia. The network is ready for joint operation by several operators. Commercial service is expected to start by January 15, 2012, with modems available in retail shops by various network partners.

Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia with a population of about 1.5 million. 
http://www.yota.ru 21-Dec-11
  • Earlier this year, Yota announced agreements with Beeline, Megafon, MTS and Rostelekom under which these leading Russian carriers will offer 4G services over Yota's LTE network.
  • Yota has been a leading WiMAX operator but changed course to LTE.
Jawbone Secures $40M for Mobile Lifestyle Products 
Jawbone, which has been known for its premium Bluetooth headsets, received a combined $40 million in funding from Deutsche Telekom, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, private investor Yuri Milner, and investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management. This brings funding to nearly $210 million.

Jawbone, which is based in San Francisco, is positioning itself as a "leading innovator in products and services for the mobile lifestyle."

"We are experiencing fantastic growth and the worldwide demand for our mobile lifestyle products and services is unprecedented," said Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone. 
http://www.jawbone.com 21-Dec-11
Infinera's CTO to Step Down 
Drew Perkins will step down as Infinera’s chief technology officer to pursue other opportunities and will continue to support Infinera in a technical advisory role. Mr. Perkins is one of Infinera’s co-founders and has been at the company since 2001.

Infinera said the office of the CTO will be assumed by Dave Welch, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. A co-founder and current member of the Board of Directors, Dr. Welch was co-CTO for the four years after the company was founded. 
http://www.infinera.com 21-Dec-11
Swisscom Picks Ericsson for LTE 
Swisscom has selected Ericsson for an upgrade of its mobile infrastructure to LTE. The selection follows an open tender in which five vendors participated. Swisscom plans to invest several hundred million Swiss francs over the next five years to update all mobile base stations, increase network capacity at heavily frequented locations and press ahead with LTE expansion.

Swisscom plans to begin the rollout in January 2012 and by mid-2014 all 6,000 mobile base stations will be upgraded with new hardware and software and connected to fibre-optic lines. The carrier expects to add more than 300 new mobile sites each year. The antenna systems will not be affected, and the stringent radiation limits will continue to be met. Swisscom also said it intends to set up microcells at busy locations. In addition, the existing HSPA network will be increased to a maximum of 84 Mbps in the downlink. 
http://www.swisscom.com 21-Dec-11
JDSU Intros 40/100 G Test Solution 
JDSU announced that a tier-1 service provider in North America has selected its new T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 40/100 G Transport Module for field-test applications. The unit is designed for field turn-up and troubleshooting of Carrier Ethernet/packet transport, long-haul, and metro-core networks, as well as government telecommunication centers. The T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 40/100 G solution can be used for testing OTU3 and OTU4 with 100 GE client, 40 and 100 G Carrier Ethernet with RFC 2544, CoS with 10 data streams, and loop up/down. The T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 can switch between 40 G and 100 G applications within 12 seconds. It supports both CFP- and QSFP+-based services and offers signature ruggedness, optional battery power, and control connectivity that can withstand extremely diverse test conditions. http://www.jdsu.com 21-Dec-11
Telstra International Launches Global DDoS 
Telstra International launched a Global Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection service provides for multinational customers.

The service offers 'in the cloud' protection and mitigation of DDoS attack traffic, averting congestion of customer Internet connections and protecting customer web infrastructure, whilst legitimate, clean traffic is delivered to the customer. Telstra's Security Operations Centre (SOC) systems and staff will offer 24/7 monitoring, extensive analysis and highly effective mitigation and traffic cleaning through global cleaning centres. 
http://www.telstra.com 21-Dec-11
Japanese Carriers Establish Consortium to Promote NFC 
A new Japan Mobile NFC Consortium has been established by NTT DOCOMO, KDDI and SOFTBANK MOBILE to coordinate the adoption of multiple international standards for near field communication (NFC) technologies incorporated in their mobile devices and services.

Japan’s three mobile operators already offer Osaifu- Keitai™(wallet phone) mobile services based on the contactless-IC smartcard called FeliCa.

Overseas, however, mobile operators and service providers are increasingly adopting Type A and Type B standards to develop growing markets for NFC services. In view of this worldwide trend, the consortium intends to work with mobile industry groups in Japan, including service suppliers and handset manufacturers, to incorporate compatibility with the Type A and B standards in the Japanese mobile ecosystem. 
http://www.ntt.co.jp 21-Dec-11
China Mobile Has Added 60 Million Users in 2011 
As of November 30, China Mobile had 644,319 customer lines in service. During the month of November, the carrier added 5,430,000 users, bringing the total number of additions during 2011 so far to 60,302,000. http://www.chinamobileltd.com 21-Dec-11

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Akamai to Acquire Cotendo for Cloud Acceleration Suite

Akamai Technologies has agreed to acquire Cotendo, which specializes in cloud-based acceleration technologies, for approximately $268 million in cash, plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Cotendo common stock.


Cotendo offers a suite of Web and mobile acceleration services using from over 30 global distributed point of presence (POPs). Cotendo's single platform software includes acceleration services for dynamic web applications, static and dynamic web content, SSL, Advanced DNS, Adaptive Image Compression, performance monitoring and automatic failover as well as real-time reports and analytics. Cotendo also offers a distributed cloud application environment called Cloudlet that allows decision-making (logic, data) at the edge, closest to the end users.


Cotendo was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with a technology center in Israel. Cotendo currently has approximately 100 employees, with over 50 based in Israel.


Akamai said the acquisition will increase the pace of innovation in the areas of cloud and mobile optimization.


"As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo," said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai. "Cotendo's technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world." http://www.akamai.com http://www.cotendo.com

  • In June 2011, , introduced a Mobile Acceleration Suite (MAS) to speed up delivery of mobile websites and mobile applications. The solution is especially aimed at reducing latency on mobile devices, which is one of the top revenue killers for content providers. Long page-load times reduce conversions and engagement with applications or sites. The new Cotendo service addresses these latency and page-load performance problems caused by slow or variable mobile network data connectivity rates.


    Cotendo's MAS does not require modifications to the origin site, such as creation of separate Web sites or infrastructure dedicated to mobile content. The MAS suite applies optimizations to speed up mobile content delivery at the logic, content and network layers.


  • Also in June 2011, Cotendo raised $17 million private funding for its cloud-based content acceleration technologies. Strategic investors and new business partners Citrix Systems and Juniper Networks, through its Junos Innovation Fund, participated in this round of funding along with existing venture backers Sequoia, Benchmark and Tenaya Capital. Citrix and Juniper, market leaders in their respective industries, join the growing ranks of Cotendo strategic partners, including AT&T, Google and Sumitomo.


  • In April 2011, Cotendo announced that AT&T is leveraging its "Cloudlet" capabilities in its AT&T Content Acceleration suite for the faster delivery of dynamic content, such as social media and shopping cart data. Specifically, AT&T is teaming with Cotendo to add their Search Engine Optimization and Cloudlet offerings to the AT&T Content Acceleration suite. This will push the business logic of dynamically generated web pages into the content acceleration cloud.


    AccuWeather, which provides up to the minute weather reporting, is using the Cloudlet module of the AT&T Content Acceleration service to improve response times without buying and maintaining additional servers. Previously, users with GPS-enabled smartphones were tying up AccuWeather's whole network with very specific requests for weather data. AT&T said that with the addition of the Cloudlet module, requests for updated weather information can now be made within a larger local geographic area, eliminating the need to travel back to headquarters for the latest forecast. As a result, update requests to headquarters have declined by 75 percent, and AccuWeather is now providing near real-time response important to its users.


  • In April 2011, ntroduced its "Cloudlet" Platform, which helps content providers to push business logic for Web content applications into the cloud and much closer to the end user.


    Cotendo said its Cloudlet paradigm will solve the challenge of quickly and efficiently delivering personalized web pages and device-specific content. This type of highly customized content typically cannot leverage the power of traditional content delivery network and site acceleration feature because each page must be generated individually.


    Cotendo's Cloudlet offers the capability to generate and deliver intelligent and real-time adaptive locally cached dynamic assets that can be content-aware (e.g. cookies), device specific, and selective by context (e.g. user's location). This includes the ability for granular authentication and contextual, personalized application delivery, which enterprises could leverage for serving content to employees and partners around the globe.


    Cotendo also sees an opportunity for its Cloudlet to serve content to mobile devices. Cloudlet promises the ability to deliver location and device-aware information on an as-needed basis while simultaneously reducing their origin server calls by 90%.


    Cloudlet will integrate with other Cotendo content delivery, site acceleration and Web performance optimization offerings. It does not require code alternations to websites or applications.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

China Mobile Has Added 60 Million Users in 2011

As of November 30, China Mobile had 644,319 customer lines in service. During the month of November, the carrier added 5,430,000 users, bringing the total number of additions during 2011 so far to 60,302,000.
http://www.chinamobileltd.com

Japanese Carriers Establish Consortium to Promote NFC

A new Japan Mobile NFC Consortium has been established by NTT DOCOMO, KDDI and SOFTBANK MOBILE to coordinate the adoption of multiple international standards for near field communication (NFC) technologies incorporated in their mobile devices and services.


Japan’s three mobile operators already offer Osaifu- Keitai™(wallet phone) mobile services based on the contactless-IC smartcard called FeliCa.


Overseas, however, mobile operators and service providers are increasingly adopting Type A and Type B standards to develop growing markets for NFC services. In view of this worldwide trend, the consortium intends to work with mobile industry groups in Japan, including service suppliers and handset manufacturers, to incorporate compatibility with the Type A and B standards in the Japanese mobile ecosystem.
http://www.ntt.co.jp

Swisscom Picks Ericsson for LTE

Swisscom has selected Ericsson for an upgrade of its mobile infrastructure to LTE. The selection follows an open tender in which five vendors participated. Swisscom plans to invest several hundred million Swiss francs over the next five years to update all mobile base stations, increase network capacity at heavily frequented locations and press ahead with LTE expansion.


Swisscom plans to begin the rollout in January 2012 and by mid-2014 all 6,000 mobile base stations will be upgraded with new hardware and software and connected to fibre-optic lines. The carrier expects to add more than 300 new mobile sites each year. The antenna systems will not be affected, and the stringent radiation limits will continue to be met. Swisscom also said it intends to set up microcells at busy locations. In addition, the existing HSPA network will be increased to a maximum of 84 Mbps in the downlink.
http://www.swisscom.com

Jawbone Secures $40M for Mobile Lifestyle Products

Jawbone, which has been known for its premium Bluetooth headsets, received a combined $40 million in funding from Deutsche Telekom, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, private investor Yuri Milner, and investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management. This brings funding to nearly $210 million.


Jawbone, which is based in San Francisco, is positioning itself as a "leading innovator in products and services for the mobile lifestyle."


"We are experiencing fantastic growth and the worldwide demand for our mobile lifestyle products and services is unprecedented," said Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone.
http://www.jawbone.com

Russia's Yota Launches Wholesale LTE Network in Novosibirsk

Russia's Yota announced the launch of its first LTE network in Novosibirsk in Siberia. The network is ready for joint operation by several operators. Commercial service is expected to start by January 15, 2012, with modems available in retail shops by various network partners.


Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia with a population of about 1.5 million.
http://www.yota.ru
  • Earlier this year, Yota announced agreements with Beeline, Megafon, MTS and Rostelekom under which these leading Russian carriers will offer 4G services over Yota's LTE network.


  • Yota has been a leading WiMAX operator but changed course to LTE.

Verizon Wireless Experiences Another LTE Glitch

Verizon Wireless experienced a nationwide disruption on its 3G and 4G in the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 21. The service was slowly being restored throughout the day. The company has not yet commented on the cause of outage or any potential customer credits.http://bit.ly/t75MYf

China Mobile Has Added 60 Million Users in 2011

As of November 30, China Mobile had 644,319 customer lines in service. During the month of November, the carrier added 5,430,000 users, bringing the total number of additions during 2011 so far to 60,302,000.
http://www.chinamobileltd.com

Japanese Carriers Establish Consortium to Promote NFC

A new Japan Mobile NFC Consortium has been established by NTT DOCOMO, KDDI and SOFTBANK MOBILE to coordinate the adoption of multiple international standards for near field communication (NFC) technologies incorporated in their mobile devices and services.

Japan’s three mobile operators already offer Osaifu- Keitai™(wallet phone) mobile services based on the contactless-IC smartcard called FeliCa.

Overseas, however, mobile operators and service providers are increasingly adopting Type A and Type B standards to develop growing markets for NFC services. In view of this worldwide trend, the consortium intends to work with mobile industry groups in Japan, including service suppliers and handset manufacturers, to incorporate compatibility with the Type A and B standards in the Japanese mobile ecosystem.
http://www.ntt.co.jp

Swisscom Picks Ericsson for LTE

Swisscom has selected Ericsson for an upgrade of its mobile infrastructure to LTE. The selection follows an open tender in which five vendors participated. Swisscom plans to invest several hundred million Swiss francs over the next five years to update all mobile base stations, increase network capacity at heavily frequented locations and press ahead with LTE expansion.


Swisscom plans to begin the rollout in January 2012 and by mid-2014 all 6,000 mobile base stations will be upgraded with new hardware and software and connected to fibre-optic lines. The carrier expects to add more than 300 new mobile sites each year. The antenna systems will not be affected, and the stringent radiation limits will continue to be met. Swisscom also said it intends to set up microcells at busy locations. In addition, the existing HSPA network will be increased to a maximum of 84 Mbps in the downlink.
http://www.swisscom.com

Jawbone Secures $40M for Mobile Lifestyle Products

Jawbone, which has been known for its premium Bluetooth headsets, received a combined $40 million in funding from Deutsche Telekom, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, private investor Yuri Milner, and investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management. This brings funding to nearly $210 million.


Jawbone, which is based in San Francisco, is positioning itself as a "leading innovator in products and services for the mobile lifestyle."


"We are experiencing fantastic growth and the worldwide demand for our mobile lifestyle products and services is unprecedented," said Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone.
http://www.jawbone.com

Russia's Yota Launches Wholesale LTE Network in Novosibirsk

Russia's Yota announced the launch of its first LTE network in Novosibirsk in Siberia. The network is ready for joint operation by several operators. Commercial service is expected to start by January 15, 2012, with modems available in retail shops by various network partners.


Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia with a population of about 1.5 million.
http://www.yota.ru
  • Earlier this year, Yota announced agreements with Beeline, Megafon, MTS and Rostelekom under which these leading Russian carriers will offer 4G services over Yota's LTE network.


  • Yota has been a leading WiMAX operator but changed course to LTE.

Verizon Wireless Experiences Another LTE Glitch

Verizon Wireless experienced a nationwide disruption on its 3G and 4G in the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 21. The service was slowly being restored throughout the day. The company has not yet commented on the cause of outage or any potential customer credits.http://bit.ly/t75MYf

Infinera's CTO to Step Down

Drew Perkins will step down as Infinera’s chief technology officer to pursue other opportunities and will continue to support Infinera in a technical advisory role. Mr. Perkins is one of Infinera’s co-founders and has been at the company since 2001.


Infinera said the office of the CTO will be assumed by Dave Welch, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. A co-founder and current member of the Board of Directors, Dr. Welch was co-CTO for the four years after the company was founded. http://www.infinera.com

JDSU Intros 40/100 G Test Solution

JDSU announced that a tier-1 service provider in North America has selected its new T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 40/100 G Transport Module for field-test applications. The unit is designed for field turn-up and troubleshooting of Carrier Ethernet/packet transport, long-haul, and metro-core networks, as well as government telecommunication centers.

The T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 40/100 G solution can be used for testing OTU3 and OTU4 with 100 GE client, 40 and 100 G Carrier Ethernet with RFC 2544, CoS with 10 data streams, and loop up/down. The T-BERD/MTS-8000 V2 can switch between 40 G and 100 G applications within 12 seconds. It supports both CFP- and QSFP+-based services and offers signature ruggedness, optional battery power, and control connectivity that can withstand extremely diverse test conditions.
http://www.jdsu.com

Telstra International Launches Global DDoS

Telstra International launched a Global Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection service provides for multinational customers.


The service offers 'in the cloud' protection and mitigation of DDoS attack traffic, averting congestion of customer Internet connections and protecting customer web infrastructure, whilst legitimate, clean traffic is delivered to the customer. Telstra's Security Operations Centre (SOC) systems and staff will offer 24/7 monitoring, extensive analysis and highly effective mitigation and traffic cleaning through global cleaning centres. http://www.telstra.com

December 20, 2011


Overture Announces Executive Changes 
Overture Networks announced that Kevin Sheehan, President, and Matt Squire, Chief Technology Officer, will be departing the company.

“2011 was truly a pivotal year for us with the successful merger of Overture Networks and Hatteras Networks. Having fulfilled key roles during the integration of Overture and Hatteras, Kevin Sheehan and Matt Squire are departing the company,” said Jeff Reedy, CEO, Overture Networks. “As we ready ourselves for Overture’s next stage of growth and evolution, we thank both Kevin and Matt for their dedicated hard work and wish them well in their future endeavors.” 
http://www.overturenetworks.com 20-Dec-11
FCC Appoints CTO - Dr. Schulzrinne from Columbia University 
Henning Schulzrinne has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of the FCC. His responsibilities will include guiding the FCC’s work on technology and engineering issues, together with the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. He will advise on matters across the agency to ensure that FCC policies are driving technological innovation, including serving as a resource to FCC Commissioners.

Schulzrinne is currently a professor of mathematical methods and computer science at Columbia University. He has been an Engineering Fellow at the FCC since 2010. He has published more than 250 journal and conference papers, and more than 70 Internet Requests for Comment (RFCs). He is widely known for the development of key protocols that enable voice-over-IP (VoIP) and other multimedia applications that are now Internet standards, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). His research interests include Internet multimedia systems, applied network engineering, wireless networks, security, quality of service, and performance evaluation. He received his undergraduate degree in economics and electrical engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, his MSEE degree as a Fulbright scholar from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. He was a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories and an associate department head at GMD-Fokus (Berlin), before joining the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments at Columbia University.
http://www.fcc.gov 20-Dec-11
Globecomm Lands $8.8M Contract with NATO 
NATO awarded a contract valued at $8.8 million to Globecomm Systems to extend communication services and onsite support for its GPS-Based Force tracking System (FTS). The system is used to locate NATO personnel for the prevention of "blue-on-blue" friendly fire incidents.

Globecomm previously announced approximately $52.5 million in contracts from NATO for this project to design and install a GPS FTS, bringing the combined contract value to approximately $61.3 million. 
http://www.globecommsystems.com 20-Dec-11
Sprint Announces SIP Toll Free Service 
Sprint announced a new SIP Toll Free solution that allows businesses to take advantage of their SIP trunks and existing communication system to make their own routing decisions, share capacity across the enterprise, and aggressively control costs. The Sprint service supports customer-directed routing at no additional charge.

Sprint SIP Toll Free delivers inbound toll-free calls over SIP Trunking and the Sprint Global MPLS network. Toll-free calls originate in the PSTN and are transported over the network for delivery via an IP access facility. A single IP connection delivers traffic without costly gateways or bridges, creating an opportunity for savings through elimination of local access lines, premise-based trunking equipment and management of multiple providers. 
http://www.sprint.com 20-Dec-11
LightSquared Seeks Declaratory Ruling from FCC 
LightSquared is seeking a declaratory ruling from the FCC confirming its right to use the spectrum licensed to the company by the federal government. LightSquared is also asking the FCC to confirm that commercial GPS manufacturers have no right to interference protection from LightSquared’s network since they are not licensed users of that spectrum. The company asserts that commercial GPS manufacturers are responsible for having designed and sold unlicensed devices that use spectrum licensed to LightSquared and its predecessor companies.

"The one inescapable conclusion from two rounds of independent testing is that the incompatibility problem is not caused by LightSquared’s network," said LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy Jeff Carlisle. "It is clear that GPS devices are purposefully designed to look into LightSquared’s licensed spectrum, and given this evidence, we believe decision-makers should consider LightSquared’s legal rights as the licensee." 
http://www.lightsquared.com 20-Dec-11
  • On Monday, December 19th, Reuters reported that LightSquared could run out of cash by Q2 2012, unless it is able to raise substantial capital.
Clearwire Selects Alianza to Manage Voice-Over 4G 
Clearwire has awarded a four-year, hosted software licensing agreement to Alianza, which specializes in cloud-based VoIP. Alianza will be responsible for managing Clearwire’s voice products and services. Specifically, Alianza will oversee day-to-day voice operations for Clearwire and supply all end-to-end software components of the hosted voice platform, including soft switch, application feature server, call rating, CPE provisioning, monitoring, security, and end-user self-support tools.

"Alianza’s proven expertise and track record in successfully deploying voice-over 4G wireless networks makes this relationship a natural fit for Clearwire," said Dow Draper, Clearwire Senior Vice President and General Manager of Retail. "Alianza’s one-stop shopping approach to VoIP service delivery is an ideal solution to Clearwire’s need for a turn-key, highly scalable, customizable voice platform that provides us with the opportunity to consider new consumer offerings previously unavailable to CLEAR." 
http://www.alianza.com 
http://www.clearwire.com 
20-Dec-11
Deutsche Telekom Gains $3 Billion Break-up Fee + AWS Spectrum 
Deutsche Telekom confirmed that it is set to receive US$3 billion in cash from AT&T by the end of the year as the break-up fee for the failed T-Mobile USA deal.

As part of the break-up fee, T-Mobile USA will receive a large package of AWS mobile spectrum in 128 Cellular Market Areas (CMAs), including 12 of the top 20 markets (Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Baltimore and Seattle).

The UMTS roaming agreement for the U.S. in T-Mobile USA’s favor has a term of over seven years and will allow the company to improve its footprint significantly among the U.S. population and offer its customers better broadband coverage for mobile communications services in the future. Population coverage will increase from 230 million potential customers at present to 280 million 
http://www.telekom.com 20-Dec-11
Charter Closes on $750 Million Term Loan 
Charter Communications has closed on a $750 million term loan A senior secured credit facility. The Term Loan A facility has a delayed draw component: $250 million was funded on closing of the Term Loan A and the remaining $500 million will be funded no later than March 15, 2012. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes. http://www.charter.com 20-Dec-11
Gulf Bridge Cable System Readies for Service 
Gulf Bridge International (GBI), the Middle East’s first privately owned submarine cable operator, and TE SubCom, announced the completion of works of the GBI cable system segments within the Gulf, the Gulf to India, the Gulf to Egypt, across Egypt and across the Mediterranean to Italy. The new network is expected to enter service in the next few weeks. "This achievement is a significant milestone for the Gulf region, which continues to experience unprecedented economic and social growth,” said Rashed Al Noaimi, Chairman, GBI. “The GBI cable system will facilitate both well into the future." The GBI cable system boasts a capacity of at least 5.18 terabits. http://www.gbiinc.com 20-Dec-11
Australia's Nextgen Networks Completes Blackspots Rollout 
Nextgen Networks has completed its fibre rollout work under the Australian government's $250 million Regional Backbone Blackspots Program. The new build is key toward bringing the National Broadband Network (NBN) to the Northern Territory. http://www.nextgennetworks.com.au/ 20-Dec-11
  • In December 2009, the Australian government signed an agreement with Nextgen Networks to construct the new broadband backbone infrastructure under the $250 million Regional Backbone Blackspots Program. The investment represents the first building blocks of the National Broadband Network on mainland Australia.
SingTel Launches LTE -- Top Speeds of 75 Mbps 
Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) officially launched its LTE mobile broadband service with coverage in the central financial district and other areas that experience high data usage such as: Shenton Way, Orchard, City Hall, Marina Bay, River Valley, Tanglin, Newton, Novena, Kallang, Rochor, Outram, Tanjong Pagar, Jurong West, Boon Lay, Bukit Panjang, Bedok and Changi. SingTel is also providing in-door LTE service in major shopping malls across Singapore.

Top downlink speed on the SingTel network is a theoretical 75 Mbps, although the carrier says most users will get 3.4 Mbps to 12 Mbps downlink. SingTel also notes that the LTE network is delivering one-fifth the latency of its 3G network. 
http://www.singtel.com 20-Dec-11
Asia Pacific Gateway Cable Designed for 54.8 Tbps 
 A consortium of communications companies, including NTT Communications, KT, Chunghwa Telecom, and others, has selected NEC to construct the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) system, a high-bandwidth optical submarine cable system that will link 9 countries and territories in Asia. The signing took place at Beijing.

The APG system is designed for a transmission speed of 40 Gbps per wavelength, utilizing the latest Digital Coherent detection and OADM (Optical Add-Drop Multiplexing) technologies. It will be upgradeable to 100G wavelengths for a total design capacity of 54.8 terabits per second.

Asia Pacific Gateway Cable will have a length of 10,400km, linking China Mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore. APG is expected to meet the demand for intra-Asia connectivity between South East Asia and North Asia. Project completion is expected by June 2014. 
http://www.nec.com 20-Dec-11
Broadcom Debuts CMOS 40G PHY for Long Haul Transport 
Broadcom introduced its next generation 40G physical layer transceiver (PHY) chipset for Optical Transport Networks (OTN). The 40G PHY chipset is the first in the industry to leverage CMOS technology for 40G optical transmission using DQPSK modulation, providing high reliability, lower power consumption and shorter fab cycle time for long haul DWDM transmission.

Broadcom's 40G PHY chipset includes the BCM84141 demultiplexer (Demux) for receiving data and the BCM84142 multiplexer (Mux) for transmission. The chipset is currently in production with multiple customers. Visit Optical Transport Products to learn more. 
http://www.broadcom.com 20-Dec-11
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Deploys 40G with NSN 
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia has upgraded a 354-km undersea cable between Dumai and Dangas using 40 Gbps technology from Nokia Siemens Networks. Four 40 Gbps channels are currently in operation. The undersea cable carries fixed and mobile voice and data traffic from PT Telkom and other major operators of Indonesia. Nokia Siemens Networks notes that many of them employing elements of its Liquid Net architecture. http://www.nsn.com 20-Dec-11
Qualcomm's Dr. Irwin Jacobs Steps Down 
Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs announced his intention to step down at the end of his current term on Qualcomm's Board of Directors.

Dr. Irwin Jacobs served as chief executive officer from Qualcomm's founding on July 1, 1985 to its 20th anniversary, June 30, 2005 and as chairman from founding until March 2009.

"When we first started Qualcomm, I told my wife Joan that, if we were lucky, we might grow to 100 employees," said Dr. Irwin Jacobs. "We clearly have surpassed that. I am immensely proud of the company we have built, its more than 22,000 employees, and the impact Qualcomm has made on the telecom industry and the lives of mobile users worldwide. I leave knowing that Qualcomm's strong management team and technical roadmap will ensure the Company's continuing success." 
http://www.qualcomm.com 20-Dec-11

Monday, December 19, 2011

Qualcomm's Dr. Irwin Jacobs Steps Down

Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs announced his intention to step down at the end of his current term on Qualcomm's Board of Directors.


Dr. Irwin Jacobs served as chief executive officer from Qualcomm's founding on July 1, 1985 to its 20th anniversary, June 30, 2005 and as chairman from founding until March 2009.


"When we first started Qualcomm, I told my wife Joan that, if we were lucky, we might grow to 100 employees," said Dr. Irwin Jacobs. "We clearly have surpassed that. I am immensely proud of the company we have built, its more than 22,000 employees, and the impact Qualcomm has made on the telecom industry and the lives of mobile users worldwide. I leave knowing that Qualcomm's strong management team and technical roadmap will ensure the Company's continuing success." http://www.qualcomm.com

SingTel Launches LTE -- Top Speeds of 75 Mbps

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) officially launched its LTE mobile broadband service with coverage in the central financial district and other areas that experience high data usage such as: Shenton Way, Orchard, City Hall, Marina Bay, River Valley, Tanglin, Newton, Novena, Kallang, Rochor, Outram, Tanjong Pagar, Jurong West, Boon Lay, Bukit Panjang, Bedok and Changi. SingTel is also providing in-door LTE service in major shopping malls across Singapore.


Top downlink speed on the SingTel network is a theoretical 75 Mbps, although the carrier says most users will get 3.4 Mbps to 12 Mbps downlink. SingTel also notes that the LTE network is delivering one-fifth the latency of its 3G network.
http://www.singtel.com

Australia's Nextgen Networks Completes Blackspots Rollout

Nextgen Networks has completed its fibre rollout work under the Australian government's $250 million Regional Backbone Blackspots Program. The new build is key toward bringing the National Broadband Network (NBN) to the Northern Territory.
http://www.nextgennetworks.com.au/
  • In December 2009, the Australian government signed an agreement with Nextgen Networks to construct the new broadband backbone infrastructure under the $250 million Regional Backbone Blackspots Program. The investment represents the first building blocks of the National Broadband Network on mainland Australia.