Cable & Wireless Appoints New Chairman

Cable & Wireless appointed Richard Lapthorne as its non-executive Chairman, replacing Sir Ralph Robins, who is retiring. Lapthorne currently serves as Chairman of Amersham plc, Morse PLC, Avecia plc, Tunstall Holdings Ltd and TI Automotive.
http://www.cw.com/template_05.jsp?ID=mc_579jan1003

• In November, Cable & Wireless announced a major restructuring under which it would withdraw from domestic business markets in the US and in Continental Europe except for operations serving multinational Enterprise and Service Provider customers. Cable & Wireless is also restructuring its operations in the UK and Japan to reduce costs.
  http://www.convergedigest.com/Mergers/financialarticle.asp?ID=5573
  

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Sirenza Introduces 40 Gbps Transimpedance Amplifier

Sirenza Microdevices, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, introduced a 40 Gbps common-base transimpedance amplifier (TIA) that employs electronically tunable transimpedance bandwidth control to compensate for various combinations of photo-detector and hybrid interconnect parasitics in order to simplify the manufacture of optical receiver modules. The device achieves 62.3 dB-ohm (1.3K-ohm) differential transimpedance with a bandwidth of 39.3 GHz, while consuming only 165 mW of DC power.
http://www.sirenza.com/press_releases/current/2003/january/011003.html

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Switzerland's BridgeCo Raises $13 Million for its 1394-to-Ethernet Home Net Bridge

BridgeCo AG, a start-up based in Zurich, Switzerland, secured US$13.3 million in second round financing for its network and signal processor designed for home entertainment networks. The company's Entertainment Network Adapter (ENA) efficiently bridges 1394 (FireWire) and Ethernet networks. Investors included Benchmark Capital, Earlybird, Infineon Ventures, and Intel Capital.
http://www.bridgeco.net

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UTStarcom Announces $114 Million in New Contracts with China Netcom

UTStarcom announced contracts valued at approximately $114 million with China Netcom Corporation for new and expansion deployments of its IP-based PAS (Personal Access System) equipment in three provinces in China, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning.
http://www.utstar.com

• Last week, UTStarcom announced new contracts valued at more than $100 million to supply its AN-2000 IP-DSLAM in support of Yahoo! BB ADSL service in Japan. To date, Yahoo! BB has already deployed more than $130 million worth of UTStarcom IP-DSLAM equipment to support its 12 Mbps ADSL service.
  

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Song Networks Reports Progress in Financial Restructuring

Song Networks (formerly Tele1 Europe) reported progress in the ongoing process of converting its bonds to new shares. During the first conversion period bondholders representing 84 percent of the total outstanding bonds, issued by the wholly owned subsidiary Song Networks N.V, have turned in their bonds in exchange for new shares in Song Networks Holding AB. The converted loans are equivalent to a total debt of approximately SEK 3.6 billion. The company said that through the restructuring Song Networks will be virtually free of debt. Also, Song Networks completed its previously announced acquisition of Arrowhead AB from Vattenfall AB for SEK 100 million.
http://www.songnetworks.net

• Song Networks operates local access networks in the largest cities in the Nordic region. The company is headquartered in Stockholm.
  

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SyChip and SanDisk to Offer Secure Digital (SD) WLAN Card for PDAs, Digital Cameras

SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, is planning to launch a new line of SanDisk Connect SD wireless products to enable Wi-Fi connectivity in digital cameras, cellular phones, PDAs, Point of Sale (POS) terminals and other handheld devices. The products will use SyChip's WLAN NIC design, which is based on the Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) standard. The companies said the Secure Digital card is an ideal form factor for the wireless LAN because of its small size, low power consumption and ability to be removed if needed. SanDisk Connect products will include both a non-memory version and a version with 256 MB of flash memory. Retail availability is expected at the end of Q1.
http://www.sychip.com

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STMicroelectronics and SpaceBridge to Develop ICs for Two-Way Satellite Services

STMicroelectronics and SpaceBridge Semiconductor will develop a family of highly integrated broadband wireless modem chips and low cost integrated two-way set top box solutions for the two-way satellite consumer market. The planned devices are targeted to provide speeds up to 155Mbps -- more than 20 times faster than ADSL and cable modems -- for delivering broadband wireless access, HDTV and interactive television capability. ST and SpaceBridge will collaborate on the design and development of the new chip set family, which will be manufactured by ST and jointly marketed by both SpaceBridge and ST.
http://www.st.com
http://www.spacebridge.com

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klocwork Raises $9 Million for Software Intelligence

klocwork, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California and Ottawa, Ontario, raised $9 million in Series B private equity financing to support its "software intelligence" solutions. The company is building automated software that analyzes a system, extracts information directly from the source code, identifies defects, productivity bottlenecks, stability problems, and takes corrective action. U.S. Venture Partners led the round, and Cisco Systems, Inc., and Duke University, became new investors. Pequot Ventures added to its original investment.
http://www.klocwork.com

• klocwork received its initial $5 million Series A funding in February 2001 from Pequot Ventures, when it was spun-off by Nortel Networks after a five-year incubation period.

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Jordan Telecom Selects Alcatel DSL platform and Multiservice Switch

Jordan Telecom will connect 65 geographically dispersed educational sites throughout the country with a network based upon the Alcatel 7300 ASAM and Alcatel 7470 Multiservice Platform (MSP). To date, Alcatel has secured 100% of the ADSL market in Jordan. The first ADSL contract was awarded to Alcatel in July 2000. Since then, Alcatel has expanded the network several times. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.alcatel.com

• JITCO, which is a holding company consisting of France Telecom (88%) and the Arab Bank (12%), acquired 40% of Jordan Telecom shares following the privatization of the Jordan Telecom in January 2000. In November 2002, the Government of Jordan sold an additional 10.5 % of Jordan Telecom shares to the public.

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Avaya Issues Preliminary Financial Results

Avaya said preliminary results for its recently completed first fiscal quarter indicate revenues in the range of $1.060 billion to $1.070 billion and a loss of between $0.08 and $0.10 per diluted share from ongoing operations. The company said it ended the quarter with a cash balance of $650 million, an increase of more than $50 million sequentially from the fourth fiscal quarter of 2002 due primarily to continued improvements in the management of accounts receivables. Full results are expected on 21-January-2003.
http://www.avaya.com

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3Com Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit against D-Link

3Com announced a lawsuit against D-Link alleging that certain of D-Link's network interface card products infringe upon 3Com Ethernet patents. The company said "these patents are the result of 3Com's long history of leadership in the field of computer networking, starting with its founding by Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe in 1979."http://www.3com.com

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Microsoft and Thompson Expand Digital TV Agreement

Thompson agreed to expand the integration of Microsoft Embedded software, such as the Windows CE operating system, into a range of its RCA and RCA Scenium digital television sets. The companies said their common vision is to the position the PC and TV as complementary appliances whose shared technologies can lead to enriched and expanded consumer capabilities. Thomson's most advanced high-definition television sets already utilize the Windows CE operating system to offer such features as TV browsing of broadband Internet content.
http://www.thomson.net/http://www.microsoft.com

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NETGEAR Debuts Wireless ADSL Modem Gateway

NETGEAR introduced a new broadband Internet gateway featuring an integrated ADSL modem, 802.11b wireless router, four-port 10/100 switch, and SPI firewall. The unit has an estimated MSRP of $249.
http://www.netgear.com

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DISH Network Builds Interactivity into DBS Service

EchoStar Communications is now offering 14 interactive TV channels to 5 million DISH Network households in the US. The interactive channels offer "on-demand" access to news, weather, entertainment, sports and other information by selecting options with the remote control. Echostar is also offering on-line billing and account management through the service. OpenTV provides the backend software.
http://www.dishnetwork.com

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D-Link Debuts VideoPhone That Operates on a TV

D-Link introduced a broadband appliance that delivers IP videoconferencing (H.323 protocol) to a TV set via a broadband connection. D-Link's i2eye DVC-1000 VideoPhone, which will be priced at $299, features an adjustable tilt/focus camera lens and integrated microphone. It is capable of streaming video at up to 30 frames per second. It does not require a PC to operate and is configured using a setup wizard displayed on the television screen. Standard RCA type audio/video cables connect i2eye to a television or VCR. A standard telephone handset can be attached. The i2eye unit can be set to display video calls in either picture-in-picture or full screen mode.
http://www.dlink.com/

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Tahoe RF Semiconductor Targets Wireless Designs

A team of engineers formerly with IBM Microelectronics' Wireless Division has formed a new radio and analog integrated circuit design company, Tahoe RF Semiconductor. The new start-up will offer services ranging from front-end circuit design and simulation all the way to back-end layout, DRC/LVS, post-layout simulation and fully packaged fabrication management using Cadence software. The company said its recent experience includes an entire WCDMA wireless chipset with analog baseband filters, 2GHz direct down conversion receiver, dual transmit/receive WCDMA PLL/synthesizers, IF VGA circuits, RF VGA circuits, pseudo direct upconvert transmit chip, 2GHz quadrature generation and 4GHz VCO. Other recent projects include a JCDMA transmit/receive chipset with integrated frequency synthesizers, CMOS and ECL standard cell libraries, 8GHz RF divide by 4 and dual modulus dividers, and CDMA2000 IF downconverter. The company is based in Auburn, California.
http://www.TahoeRF.com

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Wi-Fi Alliance Announces Wi-Fi ZONE Global Brand for Public Hotspots

In an effort to create a globally recognized brand for public access services, set a minimum quality standard and to improve users' ability to find Wi-Fi enabled locations, the Wi-Fi Alliance has launched a "Wi-Fi ZONE" global brand initiative. Locations that participate in the Wi-Fi ZONE program will be allowed to display the Wi-Fi ZONE logo. The Wi-Fi Alliance will also provide a Web service to help users locate the hotspots.
http://www.weca.net

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Isocore Announces GMPLS - Phase 1 Interoperability Testing

Isocore, which runs an independent internetworking lab in McLean, Virginia, will undertake the first carrier-driven Generalized Multi Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) interoperability testing in February. The tests will focus on GMPLS-RSVP, with specific attention on basic protocol functionality consistent with connection management and survivability operations. It will also include OIF UNI interoperability. Subsequent phases will exercise greater protocol capabilities based on more elaborate and complex operational requirements from carriers.
http://www.isocore.com

• In September 2002, Isocore announced the completion of interoperability tests for MPLS Fast Reroute capabilities and BGP/MPLS-based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

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Vendors Publish Web Services Reliability Specification based on SOAP

A group of vendors, consisting of Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Oracle, Sonic and Sun Microsystems, published a Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) specification working draft aimed at providing more reliable transport for Web services. WS-Reliability is a specification for open, reliable Web services messaging - including guaranteed delivery, duplicate message elimination and message ordering - enabling reliable communication between Web services. The reliability features are based on extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), rather than being tied to the underlying transport protocol. The specification will allow a variety of systems to interoperate reliably in a platform- and vendor-neutral manner. Following collaboration on the specification draft, the companies plan to submit WS-Reliability to a standards body on a royalty-free basis. The draft specification is online.http://xml.fujitsu.com/en/about/ws_r.html

• SOAP is a lightweight protocol developed through the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is based on XML. http://www.w3.org

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Agreements Reached on Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM)

Major progress was reported in the development of standards for Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM). At its meeting this week in Vancouver, the IEEE 802.3ah Task Force reached consensus on critical issues for point-to-point copper and point-to-multi-point optical networks, enabling the whole standard to move forward in the standardization process. Notably, an agreement was reached to adopt the G.SHDSL proposal as the copper specification to provide an Ethernet solution that would address local loop lengths of 2,700 meters (approx. 9,000 feet). An encapsulation mechanism for the PHY based upon 64b/65B was also adopted. Significant progress was also reported for EFM over fiber. The task force adopted specifications for the point to multipoint (or EPON) optical transceivers, which will enable the EFM components to be manufactured at significantly less cost than their APON rivals. As a result, the Task Force will circulate an updated draft of the IEEE P802.3ah document as draft 1.3 following the conclusion of the January meeting. The Ethernet in the First Mile Alliance, which is the marketing group charged with promoting the technology, described the accord as a major milestone for first mile copper and optical Ethernet.
http://www.ieee802.org/3/index.htmlhttp://www.efmalliance.org

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