Japan Reaches 9.9 Million DSL Lines

More than 320,000 new DSL accounts were added in Japan during November, according to the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications. The figures represent a slight decrease over the pace of DSL activations in October 2003, when some 360,000 new DSL accounts were added. About 340,000 DSL activations were added in September.


As of 30-Nov-2003, there were some 9,911,306 DSL lines in service, compared to 5,117,867 at the end of November 2002.


In the NTT West territory there are 4,385,551 DSL lines, of which 1,623,763 DSL lines are provided by the incumbents (NTT West and NTT East) and 2,761,788 lines are provided by other carriers.


In the NTT East territory there are 5,525,755 DSL lines, of which 2,021,945 lines are provided by the incumbents (NTT West and NTT East) and provided 3,503,810 lines by other carriers.
http://www.soumu.go.jp/joho_tsusin/eng/Statistics/dsl/index.html

Read More

ARRIS Sees Stronger Cash Position

ARRIS announced that due to its strengthening cash position and balance sheet, it is terminating its bank credit facility. This action will save approximately $900,000 annually in fees and other costs. The termination will require that the company write off approximately $2.3 million in non-cash unamortized fees related to the establishment of the facility.


In addition, ARRIS is discontinuing the sale of its Digicon "S" series and Digicon "T" Series model connectors due to the unfavorable outcome of a patent infringement lawsuit. The products accounted for approximately $13 million of annual revenues. ARRIS said it does not expect the decision will have a material effect on its overall financial results for the current quarter or future periods.
http://www.arrisi.com

Read More

DIRECTV Latin America Files Chapter 11 ReOrg Plan

DIRECTV Latin America filed a proposed Plan of Reorganization and Disclosure Statement with the its U.S. bankruptcy court. The plan reflects an agreement reached between DIRECTV Latin America, its majority owner, Hughes Electronics Corporation, and the official committee of unsecured creditors Under the plan, Hughes will receive more than 80% percent of the reorganized company's equity upon its emergence from Chapter 11 in consideration of its allowed claim for debtor-in-possession financing, as well as for assets to be contributed to the reorganized company and certain other claims. The company hopes to emerge from the Chapter 11 process in early 2004.


In its five year business plan, DIRECTV Latin America projects that its region-wide subscriber base will increase from approximately 1.5 million subscribers at the end of 2003 to 3 million at the end of 2008. The business plan also projects that the company will begin to generate positive cash flow in 2005.
http://www.directvla.com

Read More

Convergys Acquires Wireless Billing Contracts from ALLTEL

Convergys Corporation is acquiring certain billing and customer care assets from ALLTEL Communications Inc., a subsidiary of ALLTEL, for $37 million. The price represents approximately one time the anticipated 2004 revenue for the contracts. Additional earn-out payments are possible based on future performance.


As part of the acquisition, Convergys will begin providing billing services to more than 10.5 million additional wireless and wireline subscribers, and will add several new corporations to its list of billing and customer care clients including Cingular, Centennial Communications, and Commonwealth Telephone.


Dave Dougherty, Executive Vice President, Global Information Management, Convergys, said the "strategic acquisition provides us with additional wireless and wireline market share, important new clients, and fuels the growth of our Professional Services business."http://www.convergys.com

Read More

Avvio Networks Announces New 10 Gigabit Products

Avvio Networks, a start-up based in Lowell, Massachusetts, began shipping an OC192 multiplexer with G.709 encoding and widely tunable DWDM transmitter. The device is a quad OC48 to OC192 multiplexer offering LR DWDM on the line side and SR, IR an LR interfaces on the client side at 1310nm or 1550nm. It is also available with 1310nm, 1550nm or DWDM interfaces on the line side. In addition, Avvio Networks is readying a 10 Gbps repeater for shipment.
http://www.avvionetworks.com

Read More

SBC Uses Cash Flow to Increase Dividend by 10.6%

The Board of Directors of SBC Communications approved a 10.6% increase in the company's quarterly dividend, from 28.25 cents a share to 31.25 cents a share, or 12 cents a share on an annual basis, from $1.13 to $1.25 a share. The board also authorized the buyback of 350 million common shares representing approximately 10% of SBC shares outstanding.


SBC Chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. described the actions as "a balanced approach that will allow us both to fund important growth initiatives over the next few years and return value directly to our shareowners." He said using the company's solid cash flows for these purpose reflected its conservative financial management.
http://www.sbc.com

Read More

Velio Sells its High Speed IO Technology to Rambus

Rambus agreed to acquire certain high speed signaling assets from Velio, a start-up based in Milpitas, California. The deal, which was valued at under $13 million, includes related Velio's patent portfolio, the existing Velio licensing business, and a number of Velio personnel. Rambus said that by adding Velio's high-speed signaling technologies to its serial interface offerings, it would accelerate its ability to deliver advanced chip-to-chip interface solutions.


Velio, which is now solely focused on its switch fabric and SerDes products, said it will become a customer of Rambus. The Velio product family includes its Zeus STS-1 Grooming Switches, which feature densities up to 180 Gbps (72x72 STS-48) streams; Quad 1.0-3.2 Gbps SerDes devices, featuring redundancy for storage and Ethernet networks, and an Octal 1.0-3.2 Gbps Serial Repeater/Retimer, for Ethernet and Fibre Channel applications.
http://www.velio.com
http://www.rambus.com

Read More

T-Systems Launches Global MPLS-based Voice Services

T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom's IT and network integration business, has extended its global voice services reach throughout North America using Level 3's network. T-Systems will rollout a carrier-grade, MPLS-based voice and data service between Europe, Asia and the United States. The service is targeted at large enterprises with global operations. T-Systems can offload voice traffic from enterprise customers to Level 3 through a standard IP- port. The traffic is carried through Level 3's softswitch-based interconnections.
http://www.t-systems.com

• In October 2003, T-Systems International selected Lucent Technologies to increase the capacity of the North American element of its international backbone ("Telekom Global Net") from 2.5 Gbps to a full coverage 10 Gbps network. Specifically, Lucent will provide T-Systems with its LambdaUnite MultiService Switch (MSS), a next generation optical transport system and switch, with an element capacity of 320 Gbps. Further capacity expansion to a multiple 10 Gbps or even 40 Gbps meshed network is possible.



• In June 2003, T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom's IT and network integration business, opened a new headquarters for the Americas in New York City. The carrier is targeting network solutions for the North American operations of multinational corporations that already do business with T-Systems in Europe.

Read More

European Commission Sees Active Role in Shaping Telecom Competition

The European Commission will continue to take an active role in shaping the relationship between regulation and competition in the electronic communications sector, said Mario Monti, European Commissioner for Competition Policy, speaking at the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) conference last week in Brussels.


While acknowledging that electronic communications are increasingly the engine for overall economic growth, Monti highlighted two areas in telecom where competition has not taken hold. First, local loop unbundling is not taking off across the EU. Second, as to development of broadband in many EU countries, the dominance by the incumbent of the local loop is being extended into both the wholesale and the retail broadband markets.


Monti said "the aim of regulation is, or should be, creating a pro-competitive environment in the long term, by remedying the most visible market failures in each relevant market." However, he said he believes there is not necessarily a contradiction between access-based and facilities-based competition. In the short term, some incentives should be provided to help competition take hold, but in the long term, "the regulatory framework should privilege operators which base their competitive advantage on building their own infrastructure."


Monti cited several ways in which the EC is helping to shape the market. For instance, the EC has taken the view that bit-stream services are a useful complement to local loop unbundling, but also that they must be characterized as "access services" -- which are differentiated from end-to-end services. As for concrete actions, Mario noted that the EC and its National Regulatory Authority (NRA) partners have worked on 31 cases, 17 of which have already been closed. Examples include a decision in May 2003 on Deutsche Telekom's pricing strategy for local access to the fixed telephony network, and a decision in July 2003 regarding the predatory retail ADSL pricing strategy of France Telecom's subsidiary Wanadoo.http://europa.eu.int/

Read More

UK Broadband Continues at 40,000 Sign-Ups per Week

The number of UK households and small businesses with broadband connections has passed the 3 million milestone, according to Oftel, the official telecom regulator -- double the number from this time last year.


Broadband adoption rates are now running at record levels and ahead of previous predictions, with more than 40,000 households and businesses a week installing a broadband connection. Approximately one in five of all UK homes with Internet access now have a broadband connection.


ADSL connections continue to exceed cable modem connections by a factor of 3 to 1. There are more than 100 ISPs offering ADSL. Around 80% of the UK has access to broadband via DSL and around 45% via cable modem.


Total ADSL connections: 1,674,000

Total Cable modem connections: 1,331,000 (ntl represents 931,000 and Telewest represents 400,000)http://www.ofcom.org.uk

Read More

SBC Launches Metro Ethernet, EoS and SAN Services

SBC Communications announced a major expansion of its metro optical portfolio with the launch of switched Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and enhanced Storage Area Networking (SAN) services. The new services are aimed at medium and large-sized enterprises, as well as government, education and medical organizations that need substantial network bandwidth in metropolitan areas. The rollout includes:

• "OPT-E-MAN" -- a new carrier-class switched metro Ethernet service offered at speeds ranging from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps. SBC initially is offering it in 14 markets.



• "GigaMAN" -- an existing point-to-point Ethernet service that is being enhanced through the availability of Ethernet-over-SONET, which is offered at interface speeds of 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps. SBC described the EoS platform as more robust, scalable and reliable.



• "FibreMAN" -- a new fully-managed, point-to-point dedicated storage networking service. It can be used to transfer data to and from off-site storage facilities, such as an Internet data centers, at speeds of 1 or 2 Gbps using the Fibre Channel protocol. The service will be available across the traditional 13-state SBC territory.

Now that it has regulatory approval to offer long distance services in all 50 states, SBC noted that it is able to match these metropolitan area services with its nationwide data and IP connectivity.
http://www.sbc.com

Read More

CIENA Posts Revenue of $70.6 million, up 3% Sequentially

CIENA reported quarterly revenue of $70.6 million, a 3% sequential increase and an increase of 14% from the same period a year ago. CIENA's reported net loss for the quarter was $115.0 million, or a net loss of $0.24 per share. For the full fiscal year ending 31-October-2003, revenue totaled $283.1 million, a 22% decrease from fiscal 2002. On a GAAP basis, CIENA's net loss for the fiscal year was $386.5 million, or a net loss of $0.87 per share, compared to the previous year's GAAP net loss of $1.6 billion, or $4.37 per share.


The company said it expects revenue in its current first fiscal quarter to be flat to up as much as 10% compared to the preceding quarter.
http://www.ciena.com

Read More

Covad and AT&T Bundle DSL in 3 More States

Covad Communications and AT&T have extended their bundle of DSL + local/LD voice to residential customers in 3 more states: Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin. AT&T said it plans to offer Covad's DSL service in all 24 states where it provides bundled local and long distance residential services.
http://www.att.com

Read More

Deutsche Telekom's GSN Project Tests ADVA's Metro Optical

Deutsche Telekom has tested ADVA's FSP 3000 metro optical platform as part of its Global Seamless Network (GSN) Project in Darmstadt and Berlin, Germany. ADVA Optical Networking, in conjunction with Extreme Networks, showcased next-generation Metro Ethernet applications. ADVA's FSP 3000 systems are deployed in a three-node ring configuration together with a remote FSP 3000 Slimline network element, which is connected to the ring through an Automatically Switched Transport Network (ASTN).
http://www.advaoptical.com

Read More

MCI's John W. Sidgmore Dies at Age 52

John W. Sidgmore, former WorldCom chairman and CEO, passed away at age of 52 of complications associated with acute pancreatitis.


Sidgmore was known for his leadership of UUNET Technologies, which was acquired by MCI. He became President and CEO of WorldCom in April 2002, following the resignation of Bernie J. Ebbers and revelations of the accounting scandal at the company. He led WorldCom through subsequent congressional investigations and set the course for a "New WorldCom" through a Chapter 11 restructuring. He stepped down in November 2002, handing the reins over to Michael Capellas.


In a statement, MCI said: "We are deeply saddened by John Sidgmore's passing. He was a true Internet visionary, leader and friend who had an uncanny ability of bringing joy into people's lives."http://www.mci.com

Read More

AT&T Readies its Consumer Voice Launch

AT&T will launch a new set of VoIP services to business customers and consumers beginning in Q1 2004. For consumers, AT&T has been running a customer trial of VoIP services over broadband connections since October in three states. Due to the success of the trial, AT&T said it would move ahead aggressively to offer the service in the top 100 markets across the country. The service will be run from data centers on each coast, and will provide unlimited local and long-distance services. Key features will include online voicemail, do not disturb, call logging, call forwarding and personal conferencing. Pricing was not disclosed.


Earlier adopters are expected to include work-at-home, college students, teenagers and other tech-savvy consumers. AT&T plans to offer a similar service for small businesses.


AT&T said it is well positioned for VoIP because it is the largest carrier of IP traffic in the world, carrying one petabyte a day over its network. Its consumer distribution channels are the largest in the industry, as AT&T claims 40 million customer relationships. The company noted that there are 23 million broadband accounts in the U.S. currently.


"VoIP is the most significant, fundamental new technology shift in telecommunications in decades and will deliver tremendous value to all customers by leveraging the efficiencies and advanced communications capabilities of IP-based technology," said David Dorman, AT&T's Chairman and CEO.
http://www.att.com

• Beta test Sign-up page for AT&T's consumer VoIP service. http://beta.ataclick.com/



• In September 2003, AT&T first disclosed plans for a "bring your own access" consumer VoIP service in remarks by David Dorman at the Morgan Stanley Global Media & Communications Conference in Boston.

Read More

"We're on the verge of a VoIP revolution..." AT&T's David Dorman

The telecom industry is undergoing a radical transformation that is "like rebuilding an airplane in flight," said AT&T Chairman and CEO David Dorman at the Credit Suisse First Boston Media and Telecom Week conference in New York. Dorman argued that AT&T is best positioned as provider of choice in this new environment due to its scale, financial strength and industry leading brand, customer base and product portfolio.


Regarding the company's newly announced VoIP strategy for businesses and consumers, Dorman observed that "convergence is creating an increasingly complex operating environment for service providers, which must offer multiple protocol management and expertise -- and be able to transition legacy networks and systems to the leading edge without sacrificing current performance." He continued "....we're on the verge of a VoIP revolution. AT&T -- more so than others -- has the skills, scope and scale to effectively build the VoIP utility."


AT&T considers itself a "voice application service provider" that enables any application to work across any geography, said Dorman. "We intend to be the market leader in VoIP services"


Dorman laid out four layers of convergence that are transforming the business:

• Standalone services such as local and long distance voice are converging into bundled offers



• Circuit switched technologies are converging into packetized platforms



• Multiple legacy transport networks are converging into unified networks based on an IP core



• Multiple, manually intensive billing and provisioning systems are converging into unified, automated systems

AT&T has allocated $3 billion for CAPEX in 2004. The company plans to retire 270 legacy systems by 2005. Over 100 such systems were retired this year.


Dorman said business customers are "responding well" to an aggressive new pricing strategy introduced in November. AT&T is also looking forward to an improved economic and industry environment in 2004.
http://www.att.com

Read More

ECI Telecom and Nortel Networks Team on Broadband Access Solutions

ECI Telecom has entered into a strategic relationship with Nortel Networks to deliver broadband access networking solutions capable of triple play services (voice, video and data). The agreement provides a framework for the two companies to cooperatively engage in sales and marketing activities that leverage Nortel Networks' global experience with ECI's broadband access products and market presence.
http://www.ecitele.com

Read More

ST Sees Momentum in UK's Free-to-View Digital Terrestrial TV

STMicroelectronics has shipped a total of more than 2.5 million chipsets for the Digital TV Receivers, or Digital Converter Boxes (DCBs) as they are also known, that allow consumers in the UK to receive Freeview digital terrestrial TV channels on their analog TV receivers. The Freeview service offers UK consumers free digital TV and radio channels, as well as a range of interactive services and a sophisticated Electronic Program Guide, all via a standard TV aerial. Over 20 manufacturers are currently supplying digital converter boxes to the UK market.
http://www.st.com

Read More

RADVISION Announces New H.323 Toolkit

RADVISION introduced a new H.323 Protocol Toolkit for use in developing products supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. H.323 uses H.245 as the call control protocol. This functionality, which is similar to the use of SDP in SIP-based communication, enables communicating devices to establish multimedia channels based on common capabilities. What differentiates H.245 from SDP is its support of multi-party session operation for voice, video, and data collaboration between multiple end points. These include support of a high ranked terminal (called Chair Control) that can control others and also the sharing of voice, video, and data channels between multiple parties during a conference.


The new RADVISION H.323 Protocol Toolkit v4.2 features version 10 of the H.245, which was ratified on July 2003. The new version adds support for the useful dual-video feature, enabling endpoints to switch dynamically during a session between camera and another resource such as Power Point presentation or a video clip. It also adds protection against Denial of Service (DOS) attacks.
http://www.radvision.com

Read More