Verizon Considers its Options with MCI

In response to MCI's finding that Qwest had a superior offer, Verizon said it was now reviewing its options. Under the terms of the Verizon-MCI definitive merger agreement, these include requiring MCI to continue to finalize its proxy statement and to organize a meeting of MCI's shareholders to consider the agreed transaction with Verizon. Alternatively, Verizon may elect to terminate the agreement with MCI. Upon such a termination, Verizon would be entitled to be paid by MCI a $240 million break-up fee plus an expense reimbursement of up to $10 million, and the same amounts would be payable following an MCI shareholders meeting if the Verizon-MCI transaction were not approved and an agreement was signed with Qwest.

http://www.verizon.com

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MCI Agrees that Qwest Offer is Superior

MCI's Board of Directors issued a statement concluding that Qwest Communications' latest acquisition offer is superior to the terms of the current MCI/Verizon merger agreement. Under the terms of the MCI/Verizon merger agreement, Verizon has five business days (through Friday, April 29, 2005) to respond with a revised proposal.


Under Qwest's irrevocable offer MCI's Board of Directors has until May 3, 2005, to change its current recommendation in favor of the MCI/Verizon merger agreement.




http://www.mci.com/

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AT&T Partners with NEC on VoIP Project in Japan

AT&T and NEC have jointly implemented a VoIP project for OMRON Corp. in Japan. The migration to VoIP began in November 2004, and after voice-switching testing and other preparations, over 10,000 telephones nationwide were switched in just two days.


In this project, AT&T was responsible for project management, network design, equipment/line selection, test and operational support. NEC installed VoIP equipment, including UNIVERGE SV7000 servers and VoIP gateways at all locations. The companies estimate that Omron will save $500,000 per year.


AT&T also supplies Omron with a global IP VPN linking 53 business locations in 19 European countries and 15 business locations in 9 countries in the Asia Pacific region. The VPN solution also has been extended to the U.S.
http://www.att.com

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Sierra Monolithics Announces Shipments of Dual-Band WiMAX Transceivers

Sierra Monolithics began shipping a dual-band transceiver that supports WiMax-compliant CPE. The device includes full receive and transmit paths with on-chip synthesizers and VCOs. The transceiver tunes over 2.3 to 2.7 GHz and 3.3 to 3.8 GHz. Sierra Monolithics also has evaluation kits available. The kits provide a complete RF section at 3.5 GHz suitable for half duplex frequency division duplex (FDD) or time division duplex (TDD) operation.


"Standards-based, cost-effective WiMAX modems and gateways are key to the success of the wireless broadband market," said Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel's Broadband Wireless Division. "SMI's dual-band single chip transceiver, the SMI7035, and the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface enable more cost effective WiMAX modems, which will help bring them to a broader audience."http://www.monolithics.com

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Motorola Invests in Asylum Telecom for Messaging Apps

Motorola Ventures has made an equity investment in Asylum Telecom, a start-up offering "turnkey" Internet-based communication solutions. Asylum's product portfolio includes anytime-anywhere access, voice VPN services, converged GSM/IP mobile, and instant messaging. The solution includes full OSS/BSS (Operation and Business Support Systems). Asylum sells through a global network of channel partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Asylum Telecom was founded in February 2003 and is headquartered in New York with R&D and operational support offices in Budapest, Hungary and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
http://www.asylumtel.com/

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Verizon Signs A&E for its IPTV Service

Verizon signed a long-term programming- distribution agreement with A&E Television Networks. The agreement includes rights to distribute all of A&E's networks on FiOS TV, which launches later this year. They include A&E, The History Channel, The Biography Channel, History International, Military History Channel, The History Channel en español, and Crime & Investigation Network. Also included is video-on-demand content from all of A&E Television Network services. Financial terms were not disclosed.


http://www.verizon.com

• Last week, Verizon SIGNED a long-term agreement with NBC Universal Cable for distribution of its cable and broadcast networks on Verizon FiOS TV. Two of the networks, Telemundo and mun2, will be part of the extensive lineup of Spanish- language programming available to FiOS TV subscribers.
  
  The agreement includes rights to distribute Bravo, CNBC, CNBC World, MSNBC, SCI FI Channel, Trio, USA, ShopNBC, Telemundo, including Telemundo's locally owned broadcast stations, and mun2, a channel aimed at young U.S. Latinos. Also included are retransmission consent rights to NBC Universal's owned and operated broadcast stations and Universal HD, a service that features high-definition films, TV shows, performing arts, sports and special events.


• Verizon has also signed long-term affiliation agreements with Starz Entertainment Group and TVN Entertainment for its upcoming FiOS TV service.

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Ericsson Predicts 2 Billion Mobile Subscriber Worldwide by Year End

Ericsson estimated that net mobile subscriber additions worldwide were close to 100 million in the first quarter of 2005. At the end of the quarter worldwide mobile subscription penetration is 28% with a total of more than 1.8 billion subscriptions, of which almost 1.4 billion are GSM. The strong subscriber growth continues and the global number of subscriptions could pass 2 billion already by year-end.


Ericsson reported Q1 2005 net sales of SEK 31.5, up 12% over Q1 2004, but down 20% from Q4 2004 due to seasonality. The company described the year-over-year improvement as encouraging but the comparison is also somewhat favorable due to a somewhat slower start last year. Currency exchange effects negatively impacted sales in the quarter by 5%, compared to currency exchange rates one year ago. In constant currencies sales for the quarter grew by 17%.


Gross margin was 48.5% compared to 44.7% last year, a reflection of a favorable product mix as well as continuous focus on cost reductions.


Western Europe sales grew 26% year-over-year. Italy and Spain continued to show strong development and the region as a whole is benefiting from ongoing 3G deployments and GSM capacity enhancements.


Central Europe, Middle East and Africa sales for Ericsson grew 20% year-over-year with particularly good development in Africa and Eastern European markets such as Turkey and Ukraine. The growing demand for EDGE and WCDMA continues to stimulate the positive development in the region.


Asia Pacific sales for Ericsson were up by 4% year-over-year. Strong development in important markets such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan contributed to the sales growth. The development in China has been somewhat slower in the first quarter but should pick up going forward. Operators are evaluating different 3G technologies and performing large-scale trials with WCDMA as the natural choice for the dominating GSM technology. A Chinese telecom reform is expected mid year 2005 and should trigger the issuing of 3G licenses.


North America sales for Ericsson continue to be affected by the temporary slow down in capital expenditure due to operator consolidation and sales declined by 24% year-over-year. Sales should start to pick up as the 3G roll out starts later this year. During the quarter Ericsson also announced a contract to provide WCDMA equipment and telecom services to the U.S. Navy MUOS program.


Latin America continues to show a positive development and Eriksson's sales grew by 24% year-over-year through strong GSM sales. Brazil and Mexico in particular contributed to the year over year growth.


During the quarter, five new WCDMA networks were commercially launched, bringing the total to 61. Ericsson is a supplier to 36 of these networks. WCDMA subscriptions grew from approximately 16 million to more than 21 million during the quarter. The number of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO subscriptions has now reached 12 million.
http://www.ericsson.com

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Broadwing to Sell its Corvis Optical Switch Division

Broadwing is considering strategic alternatives for its Optical Convergence Switch (OCS) digital cross-connect product, including a potential sale of the product, in order to focus on its telecommunications services business.


The OCS digital cross-connect switch provides standard point-to-point, ring and mesh networking functionality that enables delivery of SONET/SDH services and is sold by the Broadwing's communications equipment division. Broadwing previously reported that its equipment sales, primarily to the U.S. government, contributed approximately 2% to consolidated company revenue in 2004.


Broadwing also announced that Jim Bannantine, who served as President of its equipment business, has resigned in order to pursue other interests. In addition, the company named Scott Widham, currently President-Carrier Accounts, to the new position of President of Sales, which merges oversight of the previously separate Carrier Accounts and Enterprise Accounts sales operations. http://www.broadwing.com

• In September 2004, Corvis changed its name to Broadwing Corporation. Last year, Corvis also acquired Chicago-based competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) Focal Communications for $210 million.



• In June 2003, Corvis and Cequel III, a St. Louis-based telecommunications and cable management firm, completed their acquisition of Broadwing Communications from Cincinnati Bell. The sale includes Broadwing's 18,700 mile national fiber network, its all-optical switching platform, a state-of-the-art network operations center and all the other network elements necessary to provide its integrated and managed broadband telecommunications services.

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Nokia Sees Overall Mobile Device Market at 740 Million Units for 05

Nokia now expects the overall mobile device market for 2005 to reach about 740 million units, compared with its previous estimate of approximately 10% annual growth, from an estimated 643 million units in 2004. The overall market is also expected to grow in value, but to a lesser extent. Volume growth is expected to continue to be driven by replacement and upgrade sales in more developed markets, with the availability of new features, services and cameras, and by new subscriber growth in developing mobile markets. In infrastructure, Nokia continues to expect the overall market in 2005 to be slightly up compared with 2004 in EUR terms.


According to Nokia estimates, year-on-year volume growth for the mobile device market in the first quarter came in ahead of expectations at 20%, with Nokia growing at about the same pace as the market. Despite some weakness in 3G devices at the industry level, this marked a strong start for the year.



Nokia's first-quarter 2005 net sales increased 17% to EUR 7.4 billion, compared with EUR 6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2004. At constant currency, group net sales would have increased 19%. All business groups contributed to the year-on-year sales growth.


Nokia's first-quarter operating profit grew 10% year on year to EUR 1.1 billion, compared with the first quarter 2004 (EUR 1.0 billion) with an operating margin of 15.1% (16.1%).


Operating cash flow for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 was EUR 1.3 billion, compared with EUR 0.9 billion in Q1 2004, and total combined cash and other liquid assets were EUR 12.6 billion, compared with EUR 11.5 billion at 31 December 31, 2004. As of March 31, 2005, net debt-to-equity ratio (gearing) was -94%, compared with -79% at December 31, 2004.


For the first-quarter 2005, the total mobile device sales volume achieved by the Mobile Phones, Multimedia and Enterprise Solutions business groups reached 53.8 million units, representing a year-on-year rise of 20% and a sequential decline, mainly due to normal seasonality, of 19%. Overall market volumes for the same period reached an estimated 170 million units, representing 20% annual growth and a 13% sequential decline. In smartphones, the total industry volume for the first quarter reached an estimated 10 million units, while Nokia's own smartphone volumes grew to 5.4 million units, compared with 1.8 million units in the first quarter 2004.


Global mobile subscription growth also continued, as total global subscriptions rose to an estimated 1.8 billion by the end of the quarter, backed by the ongoing strong momentum in new growth markets such as India, Russia, China and Brazil.


Nokia's year-on-year volume growth in China was positively affected by stronger seasonal market growth in the first quarter, and our expanding distribution system, competitive product portfolio, brand strength and quality products. In Europe/Middle East/Africa, market growth in the first quarter 2005, particularly in new growth markets, combined with an improved product portfolio, drove Nokia volumes, compared with the first quarter 2004.


However, in North America, and now in Latin America, Nokia's year-on-year volume decline primarily reflected operator migration from TDMA, which was a strong market for us in the first quarter 2004, to GSM and CDMA, where the company's relative position is not as strong.


Nokia's estimated market share for the first quarter was 32%, flat year on year and down compared with 34% in the fourth quarter 2004. Strong sequential market share gains in China, followed by Europe/Middle East/Africa, were more than offset by substantial market share losses in North America and Latin America. The seasonal strength of the Korean and Japanese markets in the first quarter 2005 also adversely impacted our market share, as Nokia does not have a material presence in those markets.


The average selling price for Nokia's mobile device business was EUR 110. This was supported by proportionally higher sales of high-end products from our multimedia and enterprise businesses in the first quarter 2005.
http://www.nokia.com

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Hong Kong Broadband Launches 1 Gbps Home Service for US$215/month

Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) officially launched its 1 Gbps symmetric service for the residential market. Approximately 800,000 households, out of a total of 2.2 million households in Hong Kong, are wired to receive the service. The 1 Gbps symmetric service is priced at US$215 per month.


HKBN noted that its 1 Gbps service is up to 166x faster downstream and 1,950x faster upstream than the advertised bandwidth of the incumbent's ADSL service.


HKBN Premium bb1000 service is being offered on the same metro Ethernet infrastructure that delivers the company's Mass Market bb100 (symmetric 100 Mbps for US$34/month) and Entry Point bb10 (symmetric 10 Mbps for US$16/month) services.
http://www.ctinets.com/

• HKBN is installing more than 10,000 Cisco Catalyst LAN switches and more than 800 Cisco routers in buildings throughout Hong Kong. Category 5e copper cables are wired from the LAN switch cabinet to the apartments of each target customer. Fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) was deployed between the buildings using the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Transport Platform (MSTP) and Cisco Catalyst 4507R Switches.



• HKBN is also using a Cisco Optical Core network. The deployment includes the Cisco ONS 15454 SONET/SDH Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP); Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500, Catalyst 3350, and Catalyst 2950 series switches; and Cisco 2600XM Series routers. Cisco's ONS 15454 MSPP enables the carrier to converge its legacy voice and data services and a new pay-TV service into a single platform, and at the same time offer Layer 2 and 3 IP services using Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)-ready ML Series line cards. The network enables HKBN to deliver up to 200 digital pay-TV channels via MPEG-2 at 4.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps with DVD visual quality. Its service also features interactive pay-TV elements and enables PC or TV connection with the aid of a set-top box.

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Thomson Acquires Cirpack for its Softswitches

Thomson has acquired Cirpack, a privately-held developer of class-5 softswitching solutions based near Paris. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Cirpack claims 45 telco and ISP customers in 15 countries. The customer list includes Free, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group and the second largest French ISP, which is using a joint solution from IBM and Cirpack to deliver a consumer VoIP service over unbundled DSL lines. The residential VoIP is provided as an add-on to the company's ADSL service in the areas where Free has deployed its own DSL infrastructure.


Cirpack's softswitch platform can host a range of high-density network interfaces (IP, ATM, TDM) and supports multiple local signaling protocol variants simultaneously (ISDN, SS7, VoIP, VoATM). It can be configured to manage voice transit services (Class-4) as well as subscriber services (Class- 5). The company partners with IBM Global Services.


Cirpack was established in 1998 and funded by Siparex Ventures, Iris Capital and Endeavour L.P. It has approximately 60 employees.


Thomson said the acquisition would complement its existing offerings in IP telephony, remote management and access products and gateways for triple play services. Just last month, Thomson acquired Inventel, a European supplier of home gateways for fixed broadband operators and wireless operators. Cirpack will be part of Thomson's Access Platforms & Gateways Business Unit within the Systems & Equipment Division.


Among its broadband activities, Thomson is a leading supplier of DSL customer premise equipment (CPE) and set-top boxes.
http://www.cirpack.com
http://www.thomson.net

• In February 2005, CIRPACK released software enhancements for its Class-5 telephony platform enabling wireline telecom operators to deploy TISPAN-compliant architectures. This allows migration of legacy PSTN to global VoIP networks capable of delivering new voice services such as fixed-mobile convergence according to 3GPP's IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). The TISPAN committee is the ETSI core competence centre for migration of fixed networks from circuit-switched to packet-based networks with an architecture that can serve in both. In a TISPAN architecture, Cirpack switches control IMAP (Integrated Multiservice Access Platforms) using H.248/Megaco to deliver POTS and ISDN telephony from the same access platforms as DSL services.



• In November 2004, Thomson acquired EADS DCS' Video Over IP integration business. Based in Lyon, France, the EADS DCS team has expertise in the design, systems integration and management of IT infrastructure above the IP layer (system administration, messaging, portals and web services), with an emphasis on TV and Video On Demand (VOD) over xDSL solutions.

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Verizon Online Partners with Movielink on Downloads

Movielink and Verizon launched a co-branded movie downloading service providing Verizon Online's consumer DSL and FiOS Internet Service customers access to Movielink's extensive film library.


Movielink is a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios. Movielink content offerings are drawn from the current releases and vast libraries of those studios as well as from those of Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, Artisan and others, on a non-exclusive basis.


The new service offers a full library of titles, including a special selection of hit films for 99 cents or less from Movielink. Verizon customers can purchase and download licensed movies offered by Movielink and store them on their hard drives for up to 30 days. The movies may be watched on a PC, a television connected to the PC, or a laptop computer during a 24-hour viewing period.
http://www.movielink.com/http://www.verizon.com/

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Alcatel Selects Motive for Triple Play Digital Home Management

Alcatel signed a joint marketing and development agreement with Motive focused on the remote management of home networking devices that deliver Triple Play services. Motive's software is widely used by Internet service providers for installation and customer support. As part of this relationship, the companies will enhance their existing products by jointly developing, marketing and selling a single software solution for automating the deployment, configuration and support of advanced home networking devices called residential gateways, regardless of vendor, platform or operating system.


Financial terms were not disclosed.


"Effective home network management is a must-have for service providers to profitably deliver Triple Play services. Our agreement with Motive is a further step in making these services a reality for our customers and their end-users." said Michel Rahier, who is in charge of Alcatel's fixed communications activities.
http://www.alcatel.com
http://www.motive.com

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University of Tokyo Establishes 7.2 Gbps Transcontinental Download Rate

The University of Tokyo, Chelsio Communications, a supplier of 10-Gigabit Ethernet server adapters and protocol acceleration technology, and an international team of engineers established the world's longest 10 Gigabit per second link ever recorded for the transmission of Internet data by connecting two AMD Opteron processor-based servers over three continents, spanning 17 time zones and reaching more than half way around the world. Each server was equipped with a Chelsio 10 Gigabit Ethernet Protocol Engine with TCP/IP offload technology. A transfer rate of 7.21 Gbps was sustained using a single TCP stream and standard 1500-byte Ethernet frames over trans-continental link, breaking the world record. At this transfer rate and distance, a full-length DVD can theoretically be transferred anywhere on the earth in under 5 seconds.


At 10 Gbps rates, it's widely accepted that CPU throughput limits performance. Chelsio said its TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) technology enables higher CPU throughput. The company also described AMD's Direct Connect Architecture as the best approach of directly connecting CPU, memory, and I/O resources.

http://www.chelsio.com

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Fujitsu Unveils WiMax Chipset

Fujitsu Microelectronics America (FMA) unveiled its highly integrated WiMAX system-on-chip that complies with the IEEE802.16-2004 standard. and is designed for both base station and subscriber station implementation in licensed or license-exempt bands below 11GHz.


Fujitsu's chipset uses an OFDM 256 (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) PHY that supports channels from 1.75MHz up to 20MHz, and can operate in TDD or FDD modes, with support for all available channel bandwidths. A programmable frequency selection generates the sample clock for any desired bandwidth. When applying 64QAM modulation in a 20MHz channel and using all 192 sub-carriers, the SoC's data rate can go up to 75Mbps. Uplink sub-channelization is also supported.


The Fujitsu WiMAX SoC incorporates sophisticated processing power, including a main RISC engine that implements the 802.16 upper-layer MAC, scheduler, drivers, protocol stacks, and user application software. Also on board is a secondary RISC/DSP that functions as a co-processor, which executes lower-layer MAC functions, offloading processing from the upper-layer MAC and enhancing total performance. A multi-channel DMA controller handles high-speed transactions among agents on a high-performance bus.


Fujitsu said its WiMAX SoC also incorporates radio control and all required analog circuits, along with a comprehensive set of integrated peripheral functions. To ensure security, the chipset uses DES/AES/CCM encryption/decryption engines for the 802.16 MAC privacy sub-layer. The chip also includes a memory controller, an Ethernet engine for interfacing to the network, and high-performance DAC/ADC for flexible baseband interface.


Pricing for the WiMax chipset begins at $45 each in 1,000-unit volumes. A complete reference design, including all required software and hardware for a cost-effective system solution, is also available. http://us.fujitsu.com/micro/WiMAX

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ZTE and Fujitsu Collaborate on WiMAX

China's ZTE Corp. has selected Fujitsu's WiMAX SoC solution for its WiMAX-certifiable equipment. The two companies have been collaborating to develop base station and subscriber station equipment that complies with the 802.16-2004 fixed WiMAX specifications. Fujitsu and ZTE will complete the full bring-up and implementation of ZTE's WiMAX compliant systems.
http://us.fujitsu.com/micro/WiMAXhttp://www.zte.com.cn/

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Netflix Tops 3 Million DVD-by-mail Subscribers

Netflix ended the first quarter of 2005 with approximately 3,018,000 total subscribers to its DVD-by-mail service, representing 56 percent year-over-year growth from 1,932,000 total subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2004 and 16 percent sequential growth from 2,610,000 subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2004.


Of the 3,018,000 total subscribers at quarter end, 96 percent or 2,887,000 were paid subscribers. The other 4 percent, or 131,000, were free subscribers. Paid subscribers represented 95 percent of total subscribers at the ends of both the first quarter of 2004 and the fourth quarter of 2004.


Household penetration in the San Francisco Bay Area rose to 9.8 percent of households at the end of the first quarter of 2005, up from 7.2 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2004 and 9.0 percent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2004. Overall household penetration outside the Bay Area reached 2.6 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2005, up from 1.7 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2004 and 2.3 percent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2004.


Subscriber acquisition cost for Q1 was $37.89 per gross subscriber addition compared to $35.12 for the same period of 2004 and $36.18 for Q4 2004.


Churn for the first quarter of 2005 was 5.0 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for the first quarter of 2004 and 4.4 percent for the fourth quarter of 2004.


Revenue for Q1 2005 was $154.1 million. GAAP net loss was $8.8 million, or $0.17 per share.
http://www.netflix.com

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Broadcom Posts Revenue of $550 Million

Broadcom reported Q1 net revenue of $550.3 million, an increase of 2.0% from the $539.4 million reported for the fourth quarter of 2004 and a decrease of 4.0% from the $573.4 million reported for the first quarter of 2004. Net income (GAAP) for Q1 2005 was $69.2 million, or $.19 per share (diluted), compared with GAAP net income of $71.1 million, or $.20 per share (diluted), for the fourth quarter of 2004, and GAAP net income of $39.9 million, or $.12 per share (diluted), for the first quarter of 2004.


"We were pleased with our progress in the first quarter as revenue increased over the fourth quarter of 2004 and the company again generated strong cash flow from operations, leading to record levels of cash and marketable securities," said Scott McGregor, Broadcom's President and CEO.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Qwest Increases its Acquisition Offer for MCI

Qwest Communications issued a new bid to acquire MCI, offering $16.00 in cash (excluding MCI's March 15 dividend payment of $0.40 per share) and 3.373 Qwest shares (subject to adjustment under a collar which fixes the value of the Qwest shares at $14.00 provided Qwest's share price is between $3.32 and $4.15) per MCI share.


MCI's Board of Directors said it would review the revised proposal.

Qwest's previous proposal contained $13.50 in cash (excluding MCI's March 15 dividend payment of $0.40 per share) and 3.373 Qwest shares (subject to adjustment under a collar which fixes the value of the Qwest shares at $14.00 provided Qwest's share price is between $3.32 and $4.15) per MCI share.


MCI also said that under its March 29th merger agreement with Verizon, each MCI share would receive cash and stock worth at least $23.10, comprising $8.35 (excluding MCI's March 15 dividend payment of $0.40 per share) as well as the greater of 0.4062 Verizon shares for every share of MCI Common Stock or Verizon shares valued at $14.75.


http://www.mci.com

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Time Warner and Comcast to Acquire Adelphia

Time Warner and Comcast finalized a deal to acquire Adelphia Communications for $12.7 billion in cash and 16 percent of the common stock of Time Warner's cable subsidiary, Time Warner Cable Inc. The transaction is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court where Adelphia bankruptcy proceeding is pending.


Adelphia, which ranks as the fifth largest MSO in the U.S., serves approximately 5.2 million basic subscribers in 31 states.


Under the deal, Adelphia's stakeholders will receive $9.2 billion in cash and 16 percent of Time Warner Cable's common equity from Time Warner. In addition, Comcast will pay Adelphia $3.5 billion in cash.

Under proposed transactions between Time Warner and Comcast, the two companies will swap cable systems to enhance their respective geographic clusters and unwind Comcast's investments in Time Warner Cable and Time Warner Entertainment Company.

Bill Schleyer, chairman and CEO of Adelphia, said, "After extensive review of all options for the company, Adelphia's Board of Directors has determined that this transaction delivers the maximum value to its bankruptcy constituents. We believe that this option is superior to Adelphia emerging as a standalone company."http://www.comcast.com
http://www.adelphia.com

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