EC Brings Case Against France and Spain over Telecoms Taxes

The European Commission will bring a legal case against France and Spain because they continue to impose specific charges on the turnover of telecoms operators in breach of EU law. In both France and Spain, these "telecom taxes" were introduced when they decided to end paid advertising on public television. The Commission considers the 'telecoms taxes' in France and Spain to be incompatible with EU telecoms rules, which require specific charges on...

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France Telecom Acquires Stake in Iraqi Mobile Operator

France Telecom-Orange and its partner Agility have formed a joint venture to acquire a 44% state in Korek Telecom, a leading Iraqi mobile operator. The joint venture will be formed by Agility (54%) and France Telecom-Orange (46%). Korek Telecom holds the leading position in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (population of 5 million) and plans to extend its operations across the rest of Iraq (total population of 33 million). Stephane Richard, France Telecom-Orange's Chairman and CEO, said: "The acquisition of this stake in Korek Telecom is a new step...

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Cisco's Acquisition of Inlet adds Digital Media Processing Capability

Cisco completed its previously announced acquisition of Inlet Technologies, a provider of Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) digital media processing platforms. Inlet is based in Raleigh, N.C. Cisco paid approximately $95 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of Inlet.Inlet offers a set of encoding solutions that scale from mobile to web to high-definition. The line includes an IP input live streaming appliance, a high-density...

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Altobridge Raises US$12 Million for Rural Wireless Access

Altobridge, a start-up based in Dublin, Ireland, has raised US$12 million in funding from Intel Capital and IFC for its low-cost, low-capital, wireless communications solutions designed for rural communities.The Altobridge solution provides wireless access for remote communities, enterprises and schools of the world's emerging markets. The company claims its "Data-at-the-Edge" reduces mobile network operators' backhaul requirements by at least 50%.Mike...

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NTT Communications Confirms Ongoing Arcstar Outage in Northeast

NTT Communications confirmed that its Corporate Telephone Service (Arcstar direct) and corporate communication services (IP-VPN and e-VLAN) remain out of service in the northeastern part of the country.Submarine cables connecting Japan with the United States and other parts of Asia have been partially damaged, but the company has been using backup cable routes to maintain uninterrupted service. NTT Com's data center services have been operating without...

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GENBAND Qualifies SIP Trunking for MS Office Communications Server

GENBAND announced that the SIP Business Trunking softswitch solution offered on its GENBAND C20 Converged Softswitch has achieved interoperability qualification with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Additionally, GENBAND announced that its C20 softswitch is an integral component of the Swisscom SIP Trunking Solution which was recently certified for use with the Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Swisscom is offering a Microsoft-certified...

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AT&T to Impose Fixed Line Data Caps in May

AT&T will introduced a monthly data cap of 150GB for all its DSL customers and a 250 GB cap for all its U-Verse users starting in May. According to DSL Reports, the company claims its average broadband customer consumes 18 GB per month, so the new limit would effect only a small percentage of its user base. Overage charges will be $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit.http://www.att.com http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusi...

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Update on Disaster Impact on Telecom Service in Japan

March 14NTT again warned that TEPCO's "rolling" power blackouts, beginning on Monday, would impact many communications services, including telephone systems, Hikari, OCN, ISDN, FLET, FLET ADSL, Business Ethernet, some leased lines and PBX.NTT reported that 1,928,800 people had used its emergency voice message board so far.Softbank announced the some calling restrictions remain in place as of Monday at 9am.March 13As of March 13 at 6am, NTT East reported 475,400 fiber-optic lines were disconnected. This number is up 76,500 from 8 p.m. Saturday....

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Intel Acquires Egypt-based SySDSoft

Intel's Mobile Communications business unit has acquired SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo, Egypt, and hired approximately 100 of the company's electrical engineers and computer scientists. Financial terms were not disclosed.SySDSoft designs state-of-the-art IP solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms. The solutions address WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wireless...

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Allied Telesis offers Energy Efficient Switches

Allied Telesis introduced further upgrades to its best selling series of GS950 WebSmart eco-friendly Gigabit switches. The AT-GS950/8, AT-GS950/16 and AT-GS950/24 maintain the same standard of Gigabit Ethernet speeds while reducing power consumption by as much as 50%. A number of models in the GS950 series operate with no internal fans, making them suitable for use in a range of environments. They are also smaller in size than existing models, and...

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Mellanox Debuts 10 GigE NICs, Switches, Software and Cables

Mellanox Technologies, which has been known for its high-performance InfiniBand fabrics, unveiled its end-to-end 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity portfolio for High Performance Computing, cloud computing, and mega warehouse data centers. The product set is aimed at allowing companies to scale-out their data center environment to thousands of servers while preserving a simplified, "flat" network architecture. Mellanox said its Vantage family of...

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