Alcatel-Lucent to Delist Shares from 3 Exchanges

Alcatel-Lucent has submitted applications for the delisting of its ordinary shares from Euronext Amsterdam, Euronext Brussels and Six Swiss Exchange. The company cited small trading volumes at these exchanges compared to the total trading volumes of Alcatel-Lucent shares globally. The company's shares will continue to trade on other major stock exchanges such as Euronext Paris, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the London Stock Exchange.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Dell Offes USB Digital TV Tuner for Inspiron Mini Family

Dell unveiled a USB digital TV tuner that allows individuals to watch broadcast TV on the Inspiron Mini.

Dell will offer region-specific versions, designed to receive local broadcast standards like ATSC in the U.S., DVB-T in Western Europe, ISDB-T 1-seg (a.k.a. One Seg) in Japan, and the emerging CMMB standard in China.. Dell expects the tuner to be available later this quarter, first in Europe, followed by North America and Asia-Pacific and China. Pricing starts at $50.


Dell teamed with Siano Mobile Silicon and Hauppauge Computer Works to design the USB Digital TV Tuner.
http://www.dell.com

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UK's Average Broadband Speed -- 3.6 Mbps

UK consumers receive an average broadband speed of 3.6 Mbps, according to Ofcom. That's less than the average maximum possible speed of 4.3 Mbps across the UK and significantly below advertised headline speeds. Over 60% of UK consumers currently subscribe to packages promising speeds of up to 8 Mbps.

Ofcom also noted that speeds are slowest between 5pm and 6pm on Sundays, when use of the Internet is at its highest. Consumers in London received the fastest average speeds, with those in the north east of England, Wales and Scotland receiving on average the slowest speeds.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk

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Total Number of Mobile Subscriber Stays Flat at 105 Million in Japan

During 2008, the total number of mobile subscribers in subscribers in Japan remained relatively flat at 105 million, according to Telecommunications Carriers Association figures. The breakdown by carrier is as follows:

• NTT DoCoMo -- 54,155,100


• KDDI (au) -- 30,550,200


• SOFTBANK MOBILE -- 19,999,800


• EMOBILE -- 1,120,100

http://www.tca.or.jp/english/database/2008/12/index.html

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Lenovo Rolls Outs Nortel's web.alive Virtual World Application

Lenovo is using Nortel's web.alive application in a new online virtual store for consumers. The Lenovo "eLounge" virtual store allows shoppers to create personalized avatars to walk around the 3D virtual store and browse through products while interacting with other shoppers and sales staff from around the globe.


Shoppers can also attend product demonstrations or tutorials given by the virtual store staff. People can build social/virtual shopping communities/groups and host online shopping get-togethers with their network of friends, family and associates -- a concept defined as assisted e-commerce or social shopping.
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http://www.lenovo.com/eloungehttp://www.nortel.com/webalive

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RMI Introduces Advanced Processor for Portable Media Applications

RMI Corporation unveiled its Alchemy Au1300 Processor Family for rich media consumer devices requiring high CPU performance and low power consumption. The latest offering builds on the company's Au1250 Processor and now supports integrated 3D acceleration, performance up to 800MHz, and video decode resolution up to 720p including H.264 main profile. The Au1300 Family also includes further enhancements to power management resulting in industry-leading full-chip power rates of less than 1/2 watt at speed. The Au1300 also delivers an enhanced Media Acceleration Engine, providing hardware Bit Stream Acceleration and entropy decode that were formerly performed by the CPU core. It also adds a high performance Graphics Processing Engine (GPE) from ARM.
http://www.RMICorp.com

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AT&T Offers Subsidy for Dell Netbook with Data Plan

Dell and AT&T Mobility are offering a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook for $99 when purchased with a 2-year AT&T LaptopConnect agreement. The regular price is $449 without the subsidy. The AT&T LaptopConnect data plan costs $60 per month.
http://www.dell.com
http://www.att.com

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Telstra Invites Consultation on Rural Presence Plan

Telstra opened its Regional and Rural Presence Plan for public consultation as required under its license. Telstra must maintain a local presence in regional, rural and remote Australia to the extent that this is broadly compatible with the licensee's overall commercial interests and is not unduly prescriptive and does not impose undue financial and administrative burdens on the licensee.
http://www.telstra.com

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Panasonic's Broadband-over-Powerline to be included in IEEE Standard

Panasonic announced the approval of its Wavelet OFDM technology as part of the baseline standard by IEEE Standards Association's P1901 Working Group (IEEE P1901), enabling it coexist with other BPL (broadband over powerline) technologies. This coexistence baseline technology was proposed by CEPCA (Consumer Electronics Powerline Communication Alliance), of which Panasonic is a founding member.


Panasonic said its Wavelet OFDM, which is used in HD-PLC (4) products, offers lower power consumption while enabling high-speed data transmission in both home networking and utility access applications using existing powerlines, thus eliminating any need for additional wiring.


The IEEE P1901 Working Group is charged with developing the draft standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks (Media Access Control and Physical Layer). In addition to in-home, access, and coexistence technologies, a transportation technology is also under consideration.
http://www.cepca.org/homehttp://www.panasonic.com/pressroom

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Verizon Wireless Completes Alltel Acquisition

Verizon Wireless completed its purchase of Alltel Corporation for approximately $5.9 billion. Immediately prior to the closing, the Alltel debt associated with the transaction, net of cash, was approximately $22.2 billion.


The acquisition expands Verizon Wireless' network coverage to approximately 290 million people, nearly the entire United States population, and increases the company's customers by 12.9 million, after conforming adjustments and before required divestitures, making it the largest wireless carrier in the country with more than 83.7 million total customers, based on third quarter 2008 reported results from both companies. Approximately 2.1 million of those total customers are in markets that will be divested by Verizon Wireless in the coming months.


Verizon Wireless said it plans to maintain Alltel's existing GSM networks in retained Alltel markets to continue serving the roaming needs of GSM carriers' customers. Verizon Wireless will re-brand Alltel operations in the retained markets in phases, beginning in the second quarter and continuing through the third quarter of 2009, as billing conversions are completed throughout the country.


Furthermore, Verizon Wireless has placed licenses and assets for the markets to be divested in a management trust. The trust will continue to operate the markets under their current brands until they are sold to one or more buyers. As a result, these markets will not be integrated into Verizon Wireless operations.
http://www.verizonwireless.com

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Verizon Business Launches Risk-Correlation Service

Verizon Business expanded its Managed Security Services suite with the launch of a fully automated, managed-security solution that automatically calculates risk and displays the results via an online scorecard. The service prioritizes current and emerging threats -- allowing enterprises to more effectively and efficiently remediate high-risk vulnerabilities, better plan security strategy and allot security-related spending.

The global service is immediately available to managed security services customers throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The Verizon Risk-Correlation Service uses the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), the industry standard that enables enterprises to rate IT vulnerabilities including whether an attack is aiming to compromise a device's confidentiality, integrity or availability. Determining whether the intent of an attack is to cause a system-wide outage or steal confidential customer information provides valuable insight that helps identify the best remediation approach.

Verizon Business said its scorecard provides "likelihood" and "impact" scores, so customers can see the likelihood of a threat occurring and the risk to their business if the attack is successful. Additionally, the scorecard includes a confidence score. The higher the confidence score, the more information Verizon Business has obtained about the asset and threat, allowing it to make intuitive threat forecasts for customers.
http://www.verizonbusiness.com/us/security

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RMI and SPIRIT Form Strategic Partnership

SPIRIT DSP and RMI Corporation have signed partnership and platform license agreement to deliver high quality voice and video over IP for RMI's Alchemy Processor family, an advanced MIPS-compatible processor solution.


Under the deal, SPIRIT licensed to RMI its TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine bringing high quality wideband real-time voice and video to the next generation electronics based on RMI's highly integrated SoC, starting with the Alchemy Au1250, a power-optimized single-chip media processor.


TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine is a pre-integrated solution that includes a library of highly optimized speech and video codecs, voice and video synchronization tools, speech enhancement algorithms for superior voice quality and network optimizing functionality to handle varying delay (jitter) and packet loss. TeamSpirit is optimized to minimize CPU load and memory consumption, allowing OEMs to lower BOM-costs and to deliver video-enabled products at mass-market price.
http://www.RMICorp.com
http://www.spiritDSP.com

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RMI and SPIRIT Form Strategic Partnership

SPIRIT DSP and RMI Corporation have signed partnership and platform license agreement to deliver high quality voice and video over IP for RMI's Alchemy Processor family, an advanced MIPS-compatible processor solution.


Under the deal, SPIRIT licensed to RMI its TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine bringing high quality wideband real-time voice and video to the next generation electronics based on RMI's highly integrated SoC, starting with the Alchemy Au1250, a power-optimized single-chip media processor.


TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine is a pre-integrated solution that includes a library of highly optimized speech and video codecs, voice and video synchronization tools, speech enhancement algorithms for superior voice quality and network optimizing functionality to handle varying delay (jitter) and packet loss. TeamSpirit is optimized to minimize CPU load and memory consumption, allowing OEMs to lower BOM-costs and to deliver video-enabled products at mass-market price.
http://www.RMICorp.com
http://www.spiritDSP.com

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Microsoft Enhances its Mediaroom IPTV with "Anytime" Features

Microsoft has enhanced its Mediaroom IPTV platform with "Anytime" features that allow viewers to watch TV on their own time. In addition to existing Mediaroom features, such as video on demand, DVR Anywhere and Remote Digital Video Recording, the new Mediaroom Anytime features enable viewers to access previously aired shows directly from the Interactive Program Guide or immediately restart currently airing shows without any preplanning or prior DVR recording.




In addition, Microsoft announced that the Mediaroom platform has reached nearly 2.5 million subscriber homes worldwide, an increase of more than 1.5 million new connections in the past year.


New Mediaroom Anytime feature set, service providers now have the ability to offer their customers the following benefits:

• Restart Anytime -- the ability to rewind or restart the currently airing program from any point, regardless of whether the show is being recorded or the TV was switched off or tuned to another channel.



• Live Anytime -- the ability to scroll backward in the Interactive Program Guide to watch previously aired programs. These previously aired programs also can be made accessible through the service provider's video on demand library.



• Download Anytime -- enables viewers to download on-demand movies and programs to their set-top boxes so they can watch them anytime regardless of bandwidth constraints. For example, viewers could watch high-definition programs on low-bandwidth networks.

SingTel plans to trial Mediaroom Anytime features -- Restart Anytime and Live Anytime -- and aims to offer the service to its mio TV subscribers in 2009.

"Television is no longer a one-way broadcast experience. With powerful software and network connectivity TV is evolving to deliver richer, more immersive ways for consumers to watch anything, anytime and anywhere," said Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president of the Connected TV Business Group at Microsoft. "These latest developments of the Mediaroom platform demonstrate how Microsoft is leading this transformation from broadcast to connected TV and shaping the consumer experience and expectation of TV."http://www.microsoftmediaroom.com

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MediaFLO Plans to Expand its FLO TV in More Than 100 Markets in 2009

Qualcomm's MediaFLO USA division announced plans to expand its FLO TV service across more than 100 markets in 2009. The market launch schedule will commence within weeks of the February 17, 2009 digital television (DTV) transition date and continue throughout the year.


MediaFLO USA also noted some interesting mobile TV user trends. Metrics show that FLO TV viewers are spending an average of more than 20 minutes per day watching television on their phones. This is comparable to the average time U.S. cell phone users spend per day talking on their cell phones, according to CTIA's Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey.


FLO TV's most dramatic viewership increases in 2008 occurred during live events, illustrating the service's immediacy and its resonance with today's mobile consumers:

• Viewership increased 103 percent over the daily average during this year's epic U.S. Open golf championship playoff featuring Tiger Woods
  and Rocco Mediate.



• FLO TV's dedicated Olympics channel, available exclusively on AT&T Mobile TV, was the most-watched channel on the AT&T Mobile TV service during the live Olympics coverage.



• Live coverage of Hurricane Ike helped spike viewership by 31 percent during the storm.



• On Election Day, FLO TV subscribers spent an average of 22 percent more time watching TV on their phones.

http://www.flotv.com

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Verizon FiOS TV Now Offers 100 or More HD Channels

Verizon FiOS TV is now providing 100 or more channels of high-definition (HD) television in every market where the TV service is offered.


Verizon noted that more than 1.6 million customers currently subscribe to the all-digital service, which is available for sale to more than 8.2 million homes and small businesses in 14 states.
http://www.verizon.com/fiostv

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Wi-Fi Chipset Sales Grew 26% to 387 Million in 2008

Wi-Fi chipset sales jumped 26 percent in 2008 to 387 million, according to new statistics released today by the Wi-Fi Alliance and In-Stat. Highlights from the In-Stat findings examining Wi-Fi chipset sales by category:

• Cellular-Wi-Fi Phones: 56 million units shipped (up 52 percent)



• Stationary Consumer Electronic Devices (gaming consoles, digital televisions, set-top boxes, printers): 48 million units shipped (up 51 percent)



• Portable Consumer Electronic Devices (handheld games, cameras, portable music players): 71 million units shipped (up 33 percent)



• Notebook PCs, Mini Notebooks, Ultra Mobile Devices, Mobile Internet Devices: 144 million units shipped (up 23 percent)

For 2009, the Wi-Fi Alliance and In-Stat expect Wi-Fi sales momentum to come from cellular Wi-Fi handsets, portable consumer electronics, home networking, and mobile PCs. All handheld gaming devices shipped in 2009 will have Wi-Fi. Moreover, the 12 percent growth rate predicted in the mobile PC market will be driven by uptake of new alternatives to notebooks known as mobile internet devices or netbooks. These increasingly-popular devices, which all include Wi-Fi, bring internet connectivity and basic computing functions in a smaller, more affordable form factor.


"Wi-Fi has solidified its position as an essential technology for the home and the enterprise in 2008, and we expect our strong growth trajectory to continue," said Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance. "Wi- Fi is a feature that users have come to expect in a wide array of products, and device makers are including Wi-Fi in everything from handsets to mini- notebooks to media players."http://www.wi-fi.org/

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Broadcom Introduces MoCA-Integrated Set-Top Box Chip

Broadcom introduced its first high definition (HD) set-top box (STB) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions with Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) integration. MoCA uses a subscriber's existing in-home coax cable to create a home media distribution network.


"Because coax is already in the bulk of U.S. homes, Broadcom's MoCA-integrated solutions are a low cost and efficient way to network the next generation digital home to enable whole-home media distribution," said Dan Marotta, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom's Broadband Communications Group. "These solutions satisfy the growing demand for whole-home DVR services, including the ability to record and watch digital content anywhere in the home, while also reducing the cost and complexity of deployment."


The new products include the Broadcom BCM7420 and BCM7410 video decoder SoCs with integrated MoCA technology. The BCM7420 features a dual high definition 1.0/1.1+ MoCA modem, a physical layer (PHY) device and an on-chip radio frequency (RF) transceiver to securely access, store and share multiple types of digital media content. The BCM7410 provides the same capabilities as the BCM7420, but provides single HD media center system integration and/or client STB services (also with an integrated MoCA modem) for a cost effective gateway or client system. Both video decoder SoCs combine 1080p/60 video quality, an integrated 1394a media access controller (MAC) and PHY interface, Tru2way-ready with on-chip MCARD support, and a 3D graphics engine for an advanced user interface.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Broadcom Announces Integrated Wi-Fi Router Chip

Broadcom introduced a new single-chip Wi-Fi router solution for small, entry-level models. The Broadcom BCM5356 chip integrates everything needed to build a router onto a single chip, including an 802.11 media access controller (MAC) and baseband, a 2.4 GHz radio, a 333 MHz MIPS 74K CPU core, a 5-port Fast Ethernet switch and physical layer (PHY) device, and several options for system memory interfaces. The new Wi-Fi chip also integrates the highly efficient CMOS power amplifier that has shipped in millions of devices and provides the same level of output power as solutions with external power amplifiers.


Broadcom said that due to its extreme integration and 65 nanometer (nm) CMOS process technology, the BCM5356 consumes 25 percent less power of previous 802.11g solutions. It also features a unique "Green Wi-Fi Mode" that reduces a router's overall power consumption by dynamically adjusting system parameters, based on the router's typical usage patterns. In addition to saving power, the BCM5356 decreases the amount of metal and ceramic material that is used to build a Wi-Fi router. It not only requires fewer components and interconnects, but also enables the use of 2-layer printed circuit board (PCB), rather than the typical 4-layer PCBs.
http://www.broadcom.com

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Marvell Adds Single Stream 802.11n Device

Marvell introduced a low-cost 802.11n single stream Wi-Fi solution designed for a broad range of mainstream consumer devices, such as digital cameras, printers, gaming platforms, etc. The Marvell 88W8786 is designed to support bit rates up to 150Mbps and to support STBC and various aggregation schemes for increased range and robustness, providing high throughput.
http://www.marvell.com

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