Sprint Integrates Operations for Wireless and Wireline Convergence

Sprint plans to eliminate the separate tracking stocks for its PCS and FON divisions, reflecting a decision to merge the once separate traditional phone and wireless services into a single operation. As a result, the PCS common stock will be eliminated and each share of PCS common stock will convert automatically into .50 shares of FON common stock on April 23, 2004.



Sprint said the move would facilitate its transformation into a company focused on the needs of two customer types -- business and consumer -- by removing barriers to its ability to target more effectively its customers with a full suite of integrated products and services. The integration is also expected to more closely align Sprint's capital structure with the company's evolving integrated operational focus in view of increased convergence of wireless and wireline offerings throughout the telecommunications industry.



Sprint created the tracking stocks in 1998 in connection with its acquisition of 100 percent ownership of Sprint PCS. Although Sprint created two tracking stocks, it has remained a single corporation with a single board of directors. Sprint said there are no regulatory approvals or other conditions that must be satisfied prior to the recombination becoming effective. http://www.sprint.com

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VeriSign Files Lawsuit Against ICANN

VeriSign has filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in the Central District of California against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) alleging that ICANN overstepped its contractual authority and improperly attempted to regulate VeriSign's business.



VeriSign asserts that ICANN has improperly attempted to become the de facto regulator of the domain name system and in doing so stifled the introduction of new services that benefit Internet users and promote the growth of the Internet. http://www.verisign.com

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European Commission Foresees 3% Growth ICT Sector for 2004

The European Commission expects the market for Information Technology and Telecommunications (ICT) in Western Europe to grow by more than 3% in 2004, far outstripping the level of 0.8% in 2003. The worldwide ICT market is expected to grow by well in excess of four percentage points. According to the latest report by the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), markets in France and Germany are still performing below the ICT average, while Spain is predicted to enjoy the strongest growth.



However, the report also cautions that constraints -- among them a weak economic recovery, budget restrictions, and a lack of skills and technology culture -- will inhibit ICT investment.



Besides current market analysis, EITO 2004 contains studies with special focus on convergence and the digital world, the consumer electronics market in Western Europe and the impacts of ICT on economic growth. EITO 2004 contains 352 pages of statistics, trends and information. The three parts of the yearbook present about 142 tables and 81 figures (price EUR 80). http://www.eito.com/index-eito.html

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BT Names Head of Wireless Broadband

Chris Clark as chief executive officer, BT Wireless Broadband, replacing Dave Hughes who is becoming CTO of BT Retail. Clark joins BT Wireless Broadband from BT Global Services wholesale business, where for the past three years he has led the integration of the former European joint ventures' carrier businesses with the former Concert ICS. http://www.btplc.com

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8x8 Reduces International Calling Rates

8x8 reduced its international rates for outbound calls from the U.S. to locations such as London, Paris and many other European cities to $0.02 per minute. Calls to Hong Kong, Japan and many other Asian cities are $0.02 to $0.03 per minute. 8x8 delivers its VoIP services over broadband connectionshttp://www.packet8.net

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FTTH Council Voices Support for Municipal Fiber Deployments

The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council issued a call for Utah legislators to defeat Senate Bill 66, calling it "an impermeable barrier to true broadband deployment in Utah."



"This bill was clearly drafted to kill the Utopia and iProvo FTTH initiatives. The growing FTTH market in this country today has benefited greatly from the advances made, lessons learned, and price declines created by municipal FTTH deployments. Less than a year ago, Utah was considered a 'hot bed' for FTTH and one of the country's technology leaders. Should this bill pass, Utah will be relegated to the back of the communications pack, with the population likely destined to the limitations of legacy copper or other broadband-inadequate networks," said Leonard Ray, the FTTH Council's Vice President and Vice-Chairman of the Government Relations Committee.



The FTTH Council noted that municipalities accounted for 32% of all U.S. FTTH networks as of September. "I can say with high confidence that without municipal FTTH, this industry would not be as far along today as it is and it is absolutely critical that Utah does not enact legislation that effectively blocks municipal broadband networks," DeMauro continued. http://www.ftthcouncil.org

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Sprint Expands IP Network Presence to Korea

Sprint has expanded its international IP network to include Seoul, South Korea. Sprint has also acquired a Value-added Service Provider license for the provision of corporate IP and data services to the Korean market. The expansion follows the establishment of facilities in Taiwan and New Zealand last year.



Sprint's Asia-Pacific network reach includes Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. Sprint currently has 1,100 points of presence in more than 100 countries around the world, with network expansion into India planned for 2004. http://www.sprintworldwide.com

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SBC Now Offering LD Services

The U.S. General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service (FTS) awarded a contract modification to SBC Global Services Inc., allowing it to compete for the first time for the long distance services of federal government agencies across the nation. Along with long distance voice and data services, SBC companies will now offer the federal government SBC PremierSERVsm Network Management Services. http://www.sbc.com

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Nortel Networks Passes U.S. DoD VoIP Interoperability Test

Nortel Networks announced that it was the first networking vendor to pass voice over IP (Internet Protocol) interoperability testing for the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC). Certification is required for all products that support voice, data or video communications connecting to the Defense Switched Network. The JITC-tested voice over IP solution from Nortel Networks includes: the Succession 1000M platform, the BayStack 460-24T-PWR Power over Ethernet Switch, the Contivity Secure IP Services Gateway, the Passport 8600 Routing Switch. http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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NTT Com Deploys Inter-AS Diagnostics to Monitor Routing Anomalies

NTT Communications is deploying a new inter-AS diagnostic system in its OCN Internet backbone service to monitor and diagnose anomalies in routing information between multiple ISPs. The system, which was developed by NTT Laboratories, is believed to be the first such automated inter-domain monitoring tool in use in a commercial Internet service.


NTT said that routing anomalies between "Autonomous Systems (AS)" until now could only be analyzed manually by network operators with specialized skills. It is difficult for network operators to constantly monitor huge volumes of routing information that change from moment to moment in order to discover dangerous anomalies at an early stage. There have been numerous incidents of malicious activity in this respect and the most significant Internet vulnerabilities are seen in the context of DNS and BGP.


NTT's ENCORE system places agents with monitoring and diagnostic capabilities at each ISP, integrates the information gathered by these Agents to infer routing information behavior, and analyzes the causes of anomalies. When an abnormality is detected through regular monitoring, the system diagnoses the anomaly and identifies the factors inhibiting communications. http://www.ntt.co.jp

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Verizon Reaches Tentative Labor Agreements With Two Unions

Verizon reached tentative agreements with both the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on new, three-year contracts covering approximately 400 employees in 10 states. The employees work in a division called the National Buried Service Wire Group and are responsible for the location and placement of underground telecommunications facilities and equipment.


The new contracts, which run through March 2007, provide for a 12% general wage increase over the life of the contracts, with annual increases of 4%. Verizon noted improvements to several benefit packages and said a new element of the contracts states that covered employees in the group will have a streamlined process for applying for future Verizon job openings in construction, maintenance and installation functions. http://www.verizon.com

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Siemens Launches Fixed-line MMS Phone

Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) introduced a fixed line MMS phone for the home market. The cordless phone combines a high-resolution color display and an integrated digital camera. Borrowing another mobile feature, the Siemens' Gigaset SL740/SLX740isdn offers picture CLIP to personalize a phone book with snapshots that can be associated with specific incoming callers. http://www.siemens.com

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Alcatel and Korea's SK Telecom Debut Photo-Music-Video Service

SK Telecom, the largest mobile operator in Korea, introduced a photo-music-video (PMV) service at the 3GSM World Congress 2004 in Cannes, France that was developed jointly with Alcatel. The service enables users to produce and send personalized video content to mobile phones or an email address. The message combines digital photos with music and video they like, as well as text and desired effects. The service leverages the Alcatel Mobile Multimedia Service (MMS) platform.


SK Telecom launched trial PMV service in Korea in December 2003 and plans to launch the service commercially in April.


Alcatel said its Linux-based MMS platform, featuring three 2.4 GHz, dual-processor Intel Xeon processor-based rack-mounted servers, can process over 150 MMS messages per second -- the equivalent of over half a million MMS messages per hour. http://www.alcatel.com

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Brazil's Vivo Selects Marconi for Wireless Network

Vivo, the largest mobile operator in South America, selected Marconi for a network expansion that includes wireless access and SDH optical backbone equipment. Marconi is also providing antennae systems and network installation and commissioning. The network will improve Vivo's capability to carry its customer's mobile traffic over its own network, reducing its dependency on incumbent operators for the transportation of its customers' call traffic. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Vivo is a joint venture between Telefónica Móviles and Portugal Telecom with more than 20.5 million customers at the end of 2003, which represents 45% of the current Brazilian mobile market and the 56% of its areas of operations. It's cellular footprint covers 86 percent of the Brazilian territory and includes 19 Brazilian states and Federal districts. http://www.marconi.com

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Barton Replaces Tauzin on Key Congressional Committee for Telecom

Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) will replace William "Billy" Tauzin, (R-La) as the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, which oversees telecommunications related issues in the U.S. House of Representatives. In recent years, Tauzin has been an outspoken critic of the FCC and its decision to allow state commission to set rates for unbundled network element (UNE). In 2002, he sponsored the Tauzin-Dingell Broadband Legislation (H.R. 1542), which was widely seen as favoring the Regional Bell Operating Companies. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 273 to 157 to approve the legislation, but the U.S. Senate never acted on the bill and it was never signed into law. http://www.house.gov

• Speaking at the USTA Telecom show in Las Vegas in October 2003, Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas) predicted that Congress most likely will not consider any major new telecommunications legislation in 2004 due to the presidential election and other higher priority issues. Barton, who sits on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said it is "obvious that we need to revisit the Telecom Act of 1996." Whereas many people anticipated that the Telecom Act would lead to extensive facilities-based competition, Barton said FCC policies had instead led to the mess of UNE-p. Barton suggested that we "may need a legislative fix" for other industry issues, such as the challenge of how to increase broadband penetration rates in the U.S. and what to do about the Universal Service Fund.

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AFC Adds Former AT&T Exec to its Board

Frank Ianna, retired president of AT&T Network Services, was elected to AFC's board of directors. The election brings the number of AFC board members to seven. http://www.afc.com

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Sonim and Sony Ericsson to Collaborate on Push to Talk Over Cellular

Sonim Technologies, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, has entered into a global strategic partnership Sony Ericsson focused on Push-to-Talk applications. Sonim and Sony Ericsson will collaborate to integrate Push-to-Talk capability in Sony Ericsson phones, based on the Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) standard.


The PoC specification aims to provide consumers and business users a seamless Push-to-Talk experience, and the ability to access the service with any enabled handset anywhere around the world. http://www.sonimtech.comhttp://www.SonyEricsson.com

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Sonim Raises $28 Million for its Push-to-Talk Technology

Sonim Technologies, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, announced $28 million in Series C financing for its Push-to-Talk technology for wireless networks. Sonim develops valued-enhanced applications for GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA and CDMA 2000 networks. Its Push-to-Talk solution is compliant with the recently announced Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) specification. The new funding cam from Accel Partners and from the existing investors, funds advised by Apax Partners, 3i Partners and BV Capital. http://www.sonimtech.com

• Earlier this month, Sonim Technologies announced separate strategic partnerships with Samsung and with Sony Ericsson.

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Ixia Extends Conformance Testing to High-Speed PoS

Ixia introduced a new virtual network interface card (VNIC) driver for its IxANVL protocol conformance testing software that enables testing over OC-48 and OC-192 Packet over SONET (POS) networks. The new VNIC driver expands the complete IxANVL solution to all high-speed network interfaces, including Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, ATM, Sync Serial, Async Serial, T1/E1 and now high-speed POS. http://www.ixiacom.com

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Orange France and RIM to Launch BlackBerry Services

Orange France will begin offering the BlackBerry wireless service over its GSM/GPRS network. BlackBerry from Orange France will provide mobile professionals with push-based access to their corporate email system via an advanced handheld, in addition to phone capabilities, Internet access and organizer. http://www.rim.com

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