Qwest Wins Federal Contract for Frame Relay Network

Qwest Communications was awarded a new contract to provide a Department of Labor (DOL) agency with Frame Relay service under the new Multi-Tiered Security Profile (MTSP) program. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.qwest.com

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SBC Urges Consumers to Maintain Landline Phones for Safety

In the wake of last week's blackout affecting 50 million people in the U.S. and Canada, SBC Communications is urging consumers to maintain at least one corded landline phone in their homes and businesses to ensure reliable voice and data communications during a disaster. Additionally, SBC pointed out that its DSL and dial-up Internet services continued to be available during the blackout for users with battery-powered notebook computers.
http://www.sbc.com

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Cisco Teams with Taiwan on National IPv6 Laboratory

Cisco Systems is collaborating with Taiwan's National Information and Communications Initiative Committee (NICI) on IPv6 research. NICI is establishing a national standards laboratory for testing IPv6-compatible products. Cisco is supplying its Cisco 7609 Router and providing consulting expertise.
http://www.cisco.com

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ADC Reports Sales of $189M, Outlines Four-Part Strategy

ADC reported quarterly sales of $189 million, compared to $192 million in the prior quarter and $235 million for the same period last year. There was a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.02 GAAP and $0.00 Pro Forma. Some other highlights: 36% of quarterly sales were from outside the U.S., and gross margin was 39%, compared with 14% for the same quarter last year.


ADC also outlined a growth strategy with four objectives: (1) improve organic growth through market share gains, new product development and expansion into adjacent and related markets; (2) develop partnerships and alliances to penetrate new channels and market opportunities; (3) continue to drive cost-efficient operations to improve profit margins and cash flow; and (4) evaluate ADC's portfolio to identify and pursue opportunities for higher growth and profitability. This may include acquisitions in areas of core strengths, as well as placing less emphasis and possibly divesting product lines in areas that are not central to ADC's long-term strategy and core business.
http://www.adc.com

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Riverstone Names Nortel Exec as its New CEO

Riverstone Networks named Oscar Rodriguez as its new president and CEO, replacing Romulus Pereira, who will continue to serve as chairman of the company. Rodriguez previously served as president of Nortel Networks' Enterprise Solutions and Intelligent Internet divisions. Formerly, Rodriguez served as president and COO of Arris Interactive, an equipment supplier for the cable industry.
http://www.riverstonenet.com

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SAVVIS Builds VPN for Lions Gate Entertainment

SAVVIS was selected to provide managed private IP VPN and Internet services to Lions Gate Entertainment, a producer and distributor of motion pictures, home entertainment, television programming, animation and video-on-demand content. The network will be used to link the company's U.S. and Canadian facilities, and for videoconferencing, corporate e-mail, digital asset management, and viewing of "digital dailies," the day-by-day progress being made on a particular film.
http://www.savvis.net

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Larscom and TANDBERG Television Announce MPEG Partnership

Larscom and TANDBERG Television announced a co-marketing agreement targeting MPEG transport solutions. Under the deal, TANDBERG Television can bundle its MPEG-2 Encoders and Integrated Receiver Decoders with Larscom's Orion 2000 Inverse Multiplexing (IMUX) solution over ATM to transport high-definition MPEG contribution video from remote sites to network distribution hubs. Larscom's IMUX solution can be used to combine multiple T1 or E1 lines into a larger trunk.
http://www.larscom.com
http://www.tandbergtv.com

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Juniper Supplies MPLS Network for China's Jiangxi Government

Juniper Networks was selected by the Government Information Centre in China's Jiangxi Province to supply an advanced network for delivering MPLS-based VPN services. The network will be based on Juniper's M-series router portfolio, including its M5 and M20 models. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.juniper.net

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DBS Now Accounts for 20% of U.S. TV Market

One in five television households in the U.S. now receive their television programming through the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service of either DIRECTV or EchoStar's DISH Network. DIRECTV's July second-quarter subscriber count was 11.56 million, up by 181,000 in three months. DISH Network currently has 8.8 million subscribers, up by 270,000 net new subscribers in the last quarter. The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association said that in the first six months of 2003 the DBS industry had net additions of 1.01 million subscribers, while the top ten cable operators showed net losses of about 80,000 net basic subscribers.
http://www.sbca.com

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Edgewater Launches SOHO Appliance supporting SIP or MGCP VoIP

Edgewater Networks introduced a customer premise appliance for the SOHO market that is designed to resolve NAT/Firewall traversal problems and provides QoS for voice and data traffic over xDSL and cable modem links. It supports up to 5 concurrent SIP, MGCP or SCCP VoIP calls, PPPoE, WAN DHCP and can manage bandwidth using different upstream and downstream link speeds as required by ADSL. It is also remotely manageable and automates the configuration of IP phones through an integrated DHCP server.
http://www.edgewaternetworks.com

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Birch Telecom Selects CIENA's DN 7100 Multiservice Switches

Birch Telecom selected CIENA's DN 7100 Multiservice Switches to converge Frame Relay, ATM and CES (Circuit Emulation Service) traffic onto a single backbone. Initial deployments are planned across Texas and Oklahoma. Financial terms were not disclosed. Birch Telecom serves 50 metro markets across 11 states.
http://www.ciena.com

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Metro Ethernet Forum Cites Progress on is Services Model

The Metro Ethernet Forum announced technical progress resulting from its quarterly meeting last week in Denver. The organization's Metro Ethernet Services Model document advanced to the letter ballot stage. Once a document reaches the letter ballot stage it is essentially complete, needing only a final vote to make it officially approved. Also, the Ethernet Services Definitions specification is expected to move to letter ballot at the October 2003 MEF Technical Committee meeting; and the Ethernet Traffic Management specification could move to letter ballot by the January 2004 MEF Technical Committee meeting.


The Metro Ethernet Forum announced the addition of eight new members: Tellabs, Foundry Networks, Scientific-Atlanta, Marconi Communications, Ensemble, Transwitch, Axerra Networks, and ADVA Optical.


Also, the Metro Ethernet Forum appointed a new board of directors, headed by Board Chairman Mark Fishburn, vice president of technical strategy at Spirent Communications. Nan Chen, vice president of corporate/product marketing for Atrica, will continue serving as MEF President.
http://www.metroethernetforum.org

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Westell Launches ADSL2, ADSL2+ and Reach Extended ADSL2 Modems

Westell Technologies expanded its family of WireSpeed modems with two new distinct product lines based on the new ITU standards for ADSL2, ADSL2+ and Reach Extended ADSL2 (READSL). The rollout includes a "ProLine" of modems featuring Westell's patent-pending Dynamic Multi-Hybrid and Power Spectral Density technologies, which help service providers overcome troublesome issues associated with in-home wiring and bridged taps that may affect service delivery and performance. A "WireSpeed LiteLine" is a lower cost option. The new products are currently undergoing testing in customer labs and will be available for volume shipment in October. ADSL2, ADSL2+ and Reach Extended ADSL2 (READSL) will be available via a software upgrade in January 2004.
http://www.westell.com

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Cisco Introduces New Catalyst Switches for Access and Aggregation

Cisco Systems introduced new versions of its Catalyst 3750 and Catalyst 2970 switch families aimed at access and aggregation applications.

• The new Catalyst 3750G-12S switch offers 12 SFP Gigabit ports and delivers 32 Gbps of performance. It also features Cisco's StackWise technology. List price is $7,995.


• 
  
  The new Catalyst 2970G-24TS Series switch is aimed at small and medium businesses and enterprise branch offices. It features 24 10/100/1000 ports and four small form-factor pluggable (SFP) uplinks. List price is $5,495

To date, Cisco has shipped more than one million Gigabit Ethernet ports to its Catalyst switching customers.
http://www.cisco.com

• In April 2003, Cisco Systems introduced a new stackable switch platform featuring greater resiliency and Gigabit Ethernet performance. The Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series uses a new “Cisco StackWise�? architecture that provides a 32 Gbps stack interconnect for unifying up to nine individual switches. The interconnected switches behave as a single, logical, convergence-optimized unit. The Catalyst 3750 provides stackable resiliency through advanced failover in hardware and software; unified services with distributed forwarding and QoS; automated configuration; performance to handle Gigabit Ethernet connectivity; and IPv6 readiness in hardware.

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Optical Solutions Launches BPON and GPON Compliant FTTP

Optical Solutions introduced a new FiberPath 500 fiber to the premises (FTTP) system that uses either BPON (ITU G.983, 622 Mbps downstream/155 Mbps upstream) or GPON (ITU G.984, 1.2 Gbps downstream/622 Mbps upstream) standards. The network protocol is software selectable.


Optical Solutions' FiberPath 500 architecture is based on a central office (CO) FiberDrive Optical Line Terminal (OLT), and features an integrated GR-303/TR-08 voice gateway for interface directly to all the commonly deployed Class 5 switches. The FiberDrive OLT has an aggregate capacity exceeding 9 Gbps. A passive optical network (PON) is used to drive the FiberPoint Optical Network Terminal (ONT) unit installed at the subscriber's residence or business.


Optical Solutions is offering five different versions of its customer premise device, the FiberPath 500 ONT. The line-up offers a choice of either two or four POTS lines, one 10/100 BaseT port and 1 CATV port. All models support switched digital video services, while two of the models support RF video overlay services. Using a standard FSAN single-fiber network design, the FiberPath 500 fully supports RF video deployments including those with RF return set top boxes. RF performance exceeds 48 dB carrier-to-noise ratio at 20 kilometers/12 miles on a fully loaded PON.


A business version of the FiberPoint ONT provides 20 POTS lines, 4 10/100 BaseT Ethernet, 8 T1s and 4 CATV ports. All ONT models are powered by 120 volt, 60 Hz AC power via an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). They also provide battery backup for 8 hours after disruption of local AC power. Battery charge and end-of-life are monitored and reported through the FiberPoint ONT to the management system.
http://www.opticalsolutions.com

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Mexico's Avantel Selects Alcatel's Softswitch Solution

Avantel, an independent Mexican telecom carrier owned by Grupo Financiero Banamex and MCI, selected the Alcatel 5020 NGN Softswitch solution, the Alcatel 7505 Media Gateway and Alcatel's network management to enhance its current IP network. The equipment will be used for new IP telephony, video telephony, IP Centrex, voice VPN and other such premium services. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Loral Confirms EchoStar Acquisition Offer

EchoStar Communications has submitted a bid to acquire Loral's six North American satellites, as well as the balance of Loral's FSS fleet and its satellite manufacturing assets. In a press statement, Loral confirmed that it had received the EchoStar offer and that it would evaluate the bid consistent with the procedures of the U.S. bankruptcy court overseeing its Chapter 11 proceedings.
http://www.loral.com

• In July, Loral Space & Communications and certain of its subsidiaries filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions. In a related transaction, Loral agreed to sell six satellites and the rights to their orbital locations to Intelsat for up to $1 billion. Intelsat said the proposed acquisition of the Loral assets would complement the Intelsat global network, which includes capacity on 26 satellites. The Loral satellites would add complete coverage of the North American market and increase Intelsat's customer base in the cable television and broadcasting segments. Of the six satellites to be purchased, four are operational, serving cable television, broadcast and private data network customers in North America. Two satellites are currently under construction and are scheduled to be launched into North American orbital locations in the coming year. Intelsat would assume responsibility for launch and insurance-related costs for one of the satellites currently under construction and would make a $100 million secured down payment on a future satellite to be built by Space Systems/Loral to Intelsat's specifications.

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Lucent Awarded $80 Million CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Contract in Korea

KTF, a leading Korean wireless service provider with over ten million subscribers, awarded a US$80 million contract to Lucent Technologies to supply a 1xEV-DO network that will cover Korea's second largest metropolitan area, Busan, and most of Kyungnam province including Ulsan city. This network will enable KTF to offer enhanced voice services and super-fast data services to businesses and consumers at speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps. Under the contract, Lucent will provide Flexent Modular Cell 4.0 base stations, mobile switching centers and related software. Additionally, Lucent Worldwide Services will provide a variety of professional services such as installation, integration and system quality assurance to KTF.
http://www.lucent.com

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TeliaSonera Deploys BroadVision Customer Support Portal

TeliaSonera is using BroadVision's commerce solution to provide personalized sales, marketing, service and support to its customers. BroadVision's portal helps reduce call center customer support costs. BroadVision claims 40 other telco service provider customers.
http://www.broadvision.com

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Aegis Announces Multi-Cavity Tunable Thin Film Filter Chip

Aegis Semiconductor announced a low-cost, multi-cavity tunable thin film filter chip that could be used in reconfigurable networks. The filter, tunable over the 35 nm of the C-band, was built using the Active Thin Films technology platform developed by Aegis -- a platform that enables the manufacturing of tunable components at the size, reliability, and price of passive components. Aegis predicts that equipment vendors will be able to use the technology to build a reconfiguarable, optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) at a price similar to that of a fixed OADM.
http://www.aegis-semi.com

• In March 2003, Aegis announced the first product in its Active Thin Films platform -- the 'mosquito' Optical Channel Monitor (OCM). The device comes from application of a single cavity, Fabry-Perot, Active Thin Films filter stack.

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