Thursday, September 22, 2011

Texas Instruments Completes Acquisition of National Semiconductor

Texas Instruments completed its previously announced acquisition of National Semiconductor. Both companies are leaders in analog semiconductors.More than 5,000 National employees will immediately become part of TI. The two companies will begin the work to integrate National as a unit of TI's Analog business, which will have a combined portfolio of nearly 45,000 analog products, strong customer design tools, and a sales force that is 10 times larger...

ATLANTIC BIRD 7 Satellite to Serve Middle East

Eutelsat Communications' ATLANTIC BIRD 7 satellite was successfully launched into orbit by a Zenit-3SL rocket operated by Sea Launch AG from the ocean-based Odyssey Launch Platform in international waters of the Pacific Ocean.ATLANTIC BIRD 7, which will be located at 7 degrees West, will deliver Arabic and international channels into almost 30 million satellite homes across North Africa and the Middle East. ATLANTIC BIRD 7 will assume broadcasting...

XO Appoints Laura W. Thomas Interim CEO

XO Communications announced the appointment of Laura W. Thomas as interim CEO. She currently serves as XO's Chief Financial Officer and will retain these responsibilities as she takes up the leadership role. Before joining XO in 2009, Laura held executive positions in finance with Concert Communications and MCI. She earned her MBA in Finance from George Washington University and also holds a BA from Radford University. http://www.xo....

LightSquared to Use Convergys for Billing and Rating

LightSquared will implement Convergys' Rating and Billing Manager to deliver transaction volumes and flexible handling of complex account hierarchies for its upcoming, wholesale LTE service.The Convergys Rating and Billing Manager, part of a suite of Smart Revenue Solutions, is a charging, rating, and balance management system that supports emerging services, such as those to be offered by LightSquared. http://www.convergys....

Germany's E-Plus Ex Alcatel-Lucent for Upgrade

Germany's E-Plus has selected Alcatel-Lucent for a significant expansion of broadband coverage throughout the country to increase the availability of high-bandwidth services like video and music downloads on smartphones. Alcatel-Lucent will continue to have overall responsibility for network operations, field maintenance, and build-out of services.This renewed agreement builds on the long-standing Managed Services relationship between the two companies. http://www.alcatel-lucent....

France's SFR Shows LTE in Marseille with NSN

SFR, France's second-largest telecom operator, held a live demonstration for the press in Marseille using Nokia Siemens Networks' Single RAN radio access equipment and Evolved Packet Core (EPC). The companies showcased very high-speed mobile internet access with near instant response times. http://www.nsn....

Cavium Trims Q3 Outlook

Cavium Networks now expects its Q3 financial results to be below the company's previous outlook. The company now expects revenue for the third quarter of 2011 to be approximately 4% to 6% lower than second quarter 2011 revenue of $71.6 million, based on information currently available. on-GAAP gross margins and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be consistent with previous guidance.“Customer revenues have been weaker than expected this quarter, in the enterprise market as well as recognized software services revenue. Sales into the enterprise...

FCC Paper Considers Deployable Aerial Communications

The FCC published a staff whitepaper discussing deployable aerial communications architecture (DACA) to provide communications when the terrestrial communications infrastructure is severely damaged or unavailable. The paper looks at the deployment options for aerial broadband and cellular communications systems in the first 12-18 hours following a catastrophic event. Options could include small, unmanned aerial vehicles, weather balloon technologies, high altitude long distance unmanned vehicles, and quick mounted antennas on wheels. http://w...

Xelerated's 100 Gbps NPU Aims to Upgrade Carrier Ethernet Market

Xelerated has begun volume production of its HX family of 100G network processors (NPU) for packet-OTN, mobile backhaul/PTN and Carrier Ethernet Switch-Routers. The company said it now racked up 20 system design wins for the HX family of NPUs, the first will go into production later this year. The HX chip delivers wirespeed processing and advanced traffic management with deep packet buffering and can be used for pizza box and line card slot capacities...

IEEE Targets High-Density 100 Gbps Backplanes

The IEEE has approved work on a new amendment to the 802.3 Ethernet standard aimed at specifying 100 Gbps operation over backplanes and short-reach copper cables. The project is essential for the development of systems with higher densities of 100 Gbps ports. The work undertaken by the IEEE P802.3bj Task Force will define four-lane, 25 Gbps electrical signaling architectures that will support 100 Gbps Ethernet operation across backplanes up to one...