Monday, April 4, 2011

Verizon Customers Hit in Epsilon Data Breach

Verizon has begun informing its customers that their names and email addresses were part of the massive data breach reported by Epsilon, the online marketing firm, late last week. About 50 other leading consumer and financial firms were also victims of the data breach. A full list of companies whose customer data was compromised has not yet announced by Epsilon.http://www.verizon.com

Oclaro Sees Quarterly Revenue Shortfall

Oclaro now expects revenues for the third quarter of its fiscal 2011, ended April 2, 2011, to be approximately $116.5 million. This compares with revenue of $120.3 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2011, ended January 1, 2011, and compares with the estimate of $123 million to $131 million the Company provided on January 27, 2011.



Oclaro blamed the revenue shortfall from the previous estimate resulted primarily from inventory corrections among certain telecom customers that began during the quarter and continued through the end of the quarter. The company also expects a correlation between this lowered revenue estimate for the quarter, and the estimated level of gross margins and adjusted EBIDTA for the quarter. http://www.oclaro.com

EB Upgrades LTE Testing for Enhanced MIMO and Beamforming

EB (Elektrobit Corp.) has added two LTE features in EB Propsim F8 test platform: an increased amount of fading channels for MIMO testing, and enhanced modeling capability for beamforming testing.



The new feature enables affordable testing of bi-directional 4x4 MIMO with a single emulator unit. It is a flexible way to extend testing capacity as a single EB Propsim F8 with a limited number of channels can later be upgraded to the full configuration, 32 channels. With the feature, LTE testing capacity is raised by 100 percent thus enabling more cost efficient MIMO testing with a single product.



With the beamforming application, EB launches to market a unique tool that makes possible the creation of dynamic user scenarios for testing LTE networks. EB now has available a full set of channel models for TD-LTE. The application also supports SCME*, WINNER+** and IMT-Advanced*** channel modeling. The application enables optimization of network performance, reliability and coverage giving the vendors the ability to create a competitive product portfolio for the LTE market. In addition to the beamforming tool, EB now offers a full set of ready-made TD-LTE channel models according to the China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR).

http://www.elektrobit.com http://www.elektrobit.com/wireless_communications_tools/lte_testing

Verizon Settles Govt Overcharging Case for $93.5 Million

Verizon will pay the U.S. government $93.5 million to settle charges that it over billed from 2004 to 2010, when Verizon allegedly billed the government for a variety of surcharges including property tax surcharges, carrier cost recovery charges, state telecommunications relay service surcharges and public utility commission fee surcharges. The case concerns a whistleblower lawsuit filed against Verizon over a GSA fixed-price contract, which supposedly was negotiated to avoid hidden surcharges.



"Verizon was not only charging the government for the costs associated with communication services but it also was pumping up its revenues by charging the government for Verizon's own property taxes and other costs of doing business," said Colette Matzzie, a Washington, DC, attorney with Phillips & Cohen LLP, which represents the whistleblower. "Under federal law, Verizon was responsible for paying those costs, not the government."
http://www.phillipsandcohen.com

NSN Appoints Ricky Corker to Lead North American Business

Nokia Siemens Networks has announced the appointment of Rick Corker to lead its business in North America, replacing Sue Spradley, who is stepping down to pursue opportunities outside the company but who will continue to serve as a non-executive advisor to Nokia Siemens Networks and as a member of the company's external advisory board. Spradley joined Nokia Siemens Networks in July 2007.



Corker, an Australian citizen, is currently head of the company's Asia-Pacific region, where he has delivered strong growth, particularly in the key countries of Korea and Japan. Corker will be based in Dallas and his appointment is effective from April 15 2011.http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

Huawei: Ten Years of Building its U.S. Base







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Huawei marks ten years in the USA and dedicates a new R&D lab in Silicon Valley. Huawei USA Chairman Ken Lu reflects on the first decade in the US market and the company's aspirations to become a total ICT solution provider.http://www.huawei.com

Group of U.S. Senators Urge Obama to Block Huawei, ZTE

A group of five U.S. senators published an open letter in which they urge President Obama to block Huawei and ZTE from making inroads into the U.S. telecom market especially with regards to the proposed National Wireless Initiative and Public Safety Network. The letter states that these companies receive support from the Chinese government and might represent a threat to national cyber security. The senators are also seeking to prevent Huawei or ZTE from receiving direct or indirect from any government backed project. Signatories include Senators Jon Kyl, Darrel Issa, Saxby Chambliss, Richard Burr, James Inhofe, and Tom Coburn.http://bit.ly/gPdEMihttp://www.senate.gov

Toshiba Debuts SmartNAND with Error Correction Code

Toshiba America Electronic Components introduced "SmartNAND", its next-generation 24-nanometer (nm) NAND flash product family featuring a control chip that supports error correction code (ECC). The chip remove the burden of ECC from the host processor, while minimizing protocol changes.



SmartNAND and is available in densities ranging from 4 to 64 gigabyte (GB).



The new SmartNAND 24nm product lineup is a replacement for current 32nm generation devices. Target applications include portable media players, tablet PCs, digital TVs, set-top-boxes, and other devices that require high-density, non-volatile memory.

http://www.memory.toshiba.com

Huawei Opens R&D Facility in Silicon Valley

Huawei marked its tenth anniversary in the United States by hosting an inauguration of a new R&D center in Santa Clara, California. The 200,000 square-foot facility includes multiple state-of-the-art research labs and focuses on the research and development of next generation communications solutions for U.S. customers while supporting Huawei's global R&D research efforts.



In a series of speeches, presentations and technology demos, Huawei executives emphasized the transformation of the company from a merely a Chinese manufacturer into a global R&D powerhouse focused on becoming an end-to-end supplier of ICT solutions for telecom operators, enterprises, small businesses and consumers. The company's R&D team in Santa Clara is pursuing "true Silicon Valley style" projects in areas ranging from enterprise cloud services to content-aware routing.



Huawei began its operations in the U.S. in 2001 by opening its first office in Plano, Texas. Since then, the company has grown to 1,100 employees in 12 branch offices and 7 R&D centers. Its next phase will see it pursue the enterprise, SMB, cable and consumer segments.



Huawei also noted that it has become a leading purchaser of U.S. silicon products, having procured $6.1 billion in 2010. The company invested $103 million locally in research and development last year. It also emphasized its charitable work with local food banks and school programs, including its support of America's Promise Alliance, which aims to reduce the high school dropout rate across the country.



The company said all of these efforts are indicative of its transformation in a global innovation company with local presence.



"Huawei has a long history of delivering customer-centric innovation that has changed the way people communicate," said Charles Ding, President of Huawei North America and Co-president of Huawei USA. "With the opening of our Santa Clara R&D facility, we will continue to focus on groundbreaking research that addresses customer needs and creates new growth opportunities for the company."http://www.huawei.com

Vitesse and AppliedMicro Collaborate on 40G/100G Enhanced FEC

Vitesse Semiconductor and AppliedMicro announced an alliance to drive a standard approach for 40G and 100G Enhanced Forward Error Correction (eFEC) technology. The collaboration allows AppliedMicro to license Vitesse's patented portfolio of 40G and 100G hard decision eFEC cores for its FPGA and ASSP solutions aimed at emerging Optical Transport Network (OTN) applications requiring best-in-class net electrical coding gain (NECG) with the lowest implementation complexity and cost. The two companies will mutually cross license three OTN applications including AppliedMicro's 10GE LAN Signal Mapping to OTU2 Signal patent and Vitesse's Continuously Interleaved Error Correction patent.



Forward Error Correction is widely used in fiber optic communications to reduce bit error rate in typically noisy signal environments. As metro and long-haul networks transition from 10G to 40G, and up to 100G high speed data rates, the challenges in developing cost-effective, improved signal-to-noise ratio solutions become more substantial.



"Providing the industry a standardized eFEC approach for emerging OTN solutions in metro and long-haul networks is our ultimate goal," said Steve Perna, vice president of product marketing at Vitesse. "This effort provides significant technology advancements and value to customers who need an effective and reliable way to transmit data, voice, and video at faster rates in OTN applications. As networks migrate and Ethernet becomes the ubiquitous protocol, this capability will be increasingly critical."

"We are pleased to work with Vitesse to drive a standard eFEC approach for 40G and 100G data rates," said George Jones, vice president of marketing and business development at AppliedMicro. "The combination of AppliedMicro and Vitesse supporting this family of eFEC cores in the marketplace addresses the challenges of time-to-market and interoperability. AppliedMicro's roadmap of SoftSilicon® solutions enables immediate implementation of these eFEC cores for customer designs. Our complementary ASSP solutions will utilize the same cores and provide both software and hardware investment protection for our customers."http://www.vitesse.com http://www.apm.com

Certes and Genesis Networks Target Encryption as a Service (EaaS)

Certes Networks (previously CipherOptics) announced a managed service partnership with Genesis Networks, a leading provider of network and managed services.



Genesis will begin selling Certes Networks' multi-layer encryption solutions as part of its Managed Services portfolio. This offering enables security sensitive clients to meet compliance and data protection requirements with the high-quality support they have come to trust from Genesis' expert technicians and engineers. Certes' policy and key management solution and their multi-layer, wire-speed encryption appliances can secure any network without impacting the underlying infrastructure or application performance.



"Our partnership with Certes Networks keeps us on the cutting edge of security technology and strengthens our security product portfolio," said Rick Fitzgerald, President of Genesis Network Integration Services. "The new managed encryption service allows us to continue to offer our customers a full turn-key solution to support their network and protect their business."http://www.certesnetworks.com http://www.genesisnetworks.com