Cedar Point Names CEO

Cedar Point Communications, a start-up based in Derry, New Hampshire, named Andy Paff as President and CEO. He joins Cedar Point after three years with Broadband Services, Inc., where he served as CTO. Previously, he had held senior positions with Antec (now Arris) and Worldbridge Broadband Services. Cedar Point's SAFARI C³ Media Switching System is an open, standards based, next generation voice switching system for cable system operators.
http://www.cedarpointcom.com

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BellSouth Sells its Share in Danish Carrier to Telenor

BellSouth agreed to sell its 46.5% interest in the Danish wireless provider, Sonofon, to Telenor for approximately US$600 million. Telenor currently owns 53.5% of Sonofon and shares joint control of the company with BellSouth. The deal is expected to close by the first half of 2004, pending regulatory approval by the Danish Telecom Agency and the appropriate European authorities. Upon closing, BellSouth expects to record an after-tax gain of approximately $285 million in the first half of 2004.
http://www.bellsouth.com

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Russian Carrier Deploys Terawave's PON

Firma Svyaz, a Russian service provider and systems integrator in the region of Krasnodar, has deployed Terawave's Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) system. The optical access network is being used to deliver Ethernet, E1 and voice services to government agencies, educational institutions and corporate businesses. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.terawave.com

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Siemens Chosen for Nigerian Nationwide Optical Net

Siemens was awarded a contract valued at hundreds of millions of EURs to deploy a nationwide optical network and GSM mobile network in northern Nigeria for Globacom Limited, the country's second largest carrier. The contract covers GSM base stations and switching technology to service a million subscribers within the coming months. Siemens ICN also will set up an optical network covering a length of over 2,700 km using its latest SURPASS hiT 7070 platform.
http://www.siemens.com

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Cisco's John Chambers Offers Optimistic Outlook

Business confidence is definitely improving and enterprise customers will boost their IT spending in 2004 in single digits rates, said John Chambers, Cisco Systems' CEO, speaking at the company's annual analyst meeting in Santa Clara, California. The new spending will be tied into productivity gains, said Chambers, because he believes there is a clear correlation between networking and improved business processes. The hottest areas for spending include IP telephony, optical networking, security, storage, wireless LANs and home networking. Each of these areas, Chambers believes, will grow to be $1 billion markets for Cisco. In IP telephony, Cisco plans to continue to build its ecosystem of partners. Chambers noted that the average corporate PBX is now nine years old and that many companies will be looking for the efficiency boost of a converged network. A webcast of the event is online.
http://www.cisco.com

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China Mobile selects Alcatel's Colorlock Fiber for Backbone

China Mobile, the country's largest mobile service operator, has chosen Alcatel's Colorlock single mode optical fiber for the construction of part of their national backbone network. Alcatel will supply approximately 60,000 kilometers of Colorlock fiber for a backbone connecting the cities of Jinan, Qingdao and Yantai in China's Shandong Province. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Alcatel's Colorlock fiber, fully compliant with the ITU's G.652 standard, has been optimized for long-haul and metropolitan applications.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Alcatel to provide Additional 1 Million DSL lines to China Telecom

Alcatel Shanghai Bell was awarded a contract to supply China Telecom with more than 1 million additional DSL lines. These contracts follow the earlier China Telecom orders for nearly one million lines announced in July 2003. The contract covers the delivery of the Alcatel 7300 Advanced Services Access Manager (ASAM) to China Telecom subsidiaries in 18 provinces and municipalities in southern China, including Shanghai, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Hubei, Guizhou, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian and Shaanxi, all of which are experiencing fast growth in the number of broadband users.
http://www.alcatel.com

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China Telecom Extends ADSL Contract with Nokia

China Telecom has extended an existing contract with Nokia for the supply of DSL equipment. The current agreement covers the supply of equipment for 2004 and is a supplement to the frame agreement signed in June 2003. Delivery and implementation have already begun. The contract covers the Nokia D50 as well as the Nokia D500 next-generation multi-service access platform and related services.
http://www.nokia.com

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Cisco Scales the IP/MPLS Core

Cisco Systems announced significant enhancements to its core and edge routing portfolio, including:

• new Cisco 12800 Routers, a 40 Gbps-per-slot system with complementary higher density OC-192/STM-64 and OC-48/STM-16 line cards that use the greater system capacity. The new platform supports all available Cisco 12000 Series line cards.



• new Cisco 12010 and 12006 Routers, which are 2.5 Gbps-per-slot systems offered in 10- and six-slot chassis. When coupled with the Cisco IP Services Engine (ISE) line card, the new platforms support critical IPv4 and IPv6 features such as QoS and multicast for delivering premium data and real-time voice and video services. The new chassis support all existing 2.5-Gbps line cards and can be upgraded to a 10 Gbps systems through a software key.



• a new Cisco 12000 Series Performance Route Processor-2 (PRP-2) that improves route scalability by doubling CPU performance, and increasing memory for large route tables to support up to 4 million routes.



• a new Cisco 12000 Series 1-Port Channelized OC-12c/STM-4c (DS1/E1) POS ISE Line Card that enables customers to combine dense channelization functionality for low-speed termination with high-density, high-performance OC-192/STM-64 and OC-48/STM-16 interfaces in a single chassis.



• a new Cisco 12000 Series 4-Port OC3/STM1 ATM ISE Line Card that delivers extensive traffic queuing, shaping and congestion management hardware features and transports ATM over MPLS, providing service providers an opportunity to converge ATM core traffic over an MPLS backbone.



• a new Supervisor Engine 720-3BXL system processor for the Cisco 7600 Series that enables additional Layer 2 and Layer 3 MPLS VPN and IPv6 services, and greater scalability.



• an Enhanced FlexWAN module that doubles the service performance while using existing Cisco 7200 and Cisco 7500 port adapters.

Comcast is using the latest additions to Cisco's core and edge routing portfolio to introduce new services, including higher speed Internet access, video on demand (VoD), and VoIP.
http://www.cisco.com

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Telkom Kenya Selects DIRECWAY for Broadband Satellite

Telkom Kenya (TKL), the national Kenyan telephone network provider, has purchased a DIRECWAY broadband satellite network from Hughes Network Systems, including a hub earth station and associated remote satellite terminals. The new Ku-band hub, which is located in Nairobi, is capable of providing broadband services across the entire country. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.hns.com
http://www.telkom.co.ke

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Qwest Launches Consumer VoIP in Minnesotta

Qwest Communications announced the first of a phased deployment of VoIP services to residential customers in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, making it the first RBOC to offer such a service. It will include a number or Web features, such as online voicemail, call logs, contact lists, call forwarding, etc. Qwest said it plans to provide VoIP services to additional residential and small business customers as well as to medium and large business customers during the first half of 2004.
http://www.qwest.com

• In October, Judge Michael Davis of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota ruled that Vonage is "an information service" provider and that it should not be regulated by state laws or the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. In September, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) had issued an order for Vonage to comply with laws that govern telecommunications companies. The U.S. District Court rejected the MPUC's "quacks like a duck" argument, which essentially held that because Vonage's customers make phone calls, Vonage's services must be telecommunication services.
  

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Intel to Combine Communications Groups

Intel is combining its communications-related businesses into a single organization: the Intel Communications Group (ICG). Previously, the company's communications activities were divided between ICG and the Wireless Communications and Computing Group (WCCG). The newly combined organization will be headed by Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president and general manager of ICG. ICG will assume WCCG's product portfolio in addition to its current focus on network processors, wireless LAN chipsets, gigabit networking solutions, network cards and related infrastructure technologies. WCCG products include processors based on Intel XScale technology along with chipsets, reference designs, software and other technologies built around the Intel Personal Internet Client Architecture (Intel PCA). Products also include Intel's flash memory business and digital signal processing activities.


"We continue to drive the convergence of computing and communications through our product lineup, and with this we see wireless local area networking and wide area cellular technologies coming together," said Intel CEO Craig Barrett. "Consolidation gives us better product planning and customer focus in these strategically critical areas going forward."


Separately, the company announced that Ron Smith, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Intel's WCCG unit, will retire early next year.
http://www.intel.com

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Spirent Adds PPPoE Testing for its Avalanche

Spirent Communications announced new software for its Avalanche product line that enables equipment manufacturers and service providers to effectively test real application traffic running over Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE). The solution could be used to test Video on Demand (VoD), bandwidth on demand, premium services and differentiated service offerings from an end-user perspective. The PPPoE testing feature in the new Network Edition 6.1 software release offers high rates of PPP session setups, large user handling capabilities, configuration for multiple types of common authentication and the ability to simulate multiple classes of users and measure the quality their user experience as defined by application-specific metrics. The solution supports a wide range of applications over PPPoE, including web browsing, video streaming, file transfer and e-mail access.


Spirent's Avalanche platform can generate in excess of 50,000 HTTP requests per second, and supports HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1, HTTPS, RTSP/RTP (Apple QuickTime), RealSystem streaming, Microsoft Windows Media 8 and 9 Series, SMTP, POP3, DNS, Telnet and FTP. In addition, Avalanche can generate Distributed Denial of Service attack traffic inline with any mix of multi-protocol traffic.
http://www.spirentcom.com/avalanche

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Global Crossing Emerges From Chapter 11

Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia) consummated its acquisition of Global Crossing, enabling the a newly restructured Global Crossing to emerge from Chapter 11 proceedings. ST Telemedia invested $250 million in Global Crossing for a 61.5% equity share of the company. In addition to its $250 million equity investment, ST Telemedia has agreed to purchase $200 million in senior secured notes that originally were to be distributed to former creditors. Under the final, amended plan of reorganization, the $200 million cash injection by ST Telemedia was used by Global Crossing to pay its creditors.


As a result of the bankruptcy process, Global Crossing's long-term debt and convertible preferred stock was reduced from roughly $11 billion at the end of 2001, including approximately $1 billion of Asia Global Crossing debt, to $200 million of debt post-emergence.


Global Crossing said it is now positioned to become a market leader in global data and IP services. It has an annual revenue base of nearly $3 billion. The company's operating expenses from continuing operations have been reduced by approximately 63% from a peak annualized spend of approximately $2 billion at the beginning of 2001 to an estimated current annualized level of just over $700 million.
http://www.globalcrossing.com
http://www.sttelemedia.com

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BT Launches Consumer VoIP over Competing Cable Modems

BT launched a consumer VoIP service that runs over competing cable modem services. Customers are provided with a broadband VoIP adapter that enables them to access the BT network without having to reconnect their telephone line to BT through the circuit switched network. BT's "Broadband Voice" service is initially being marketed in areas where there is a heavy concentration of NTL and Telewest cable modem subscribers. The service costs £7.50 per month, allowing customers to make as many UK evening and weekend calls of up to an hour for no extra charge. Daytime calls will be charged at 3p per minute, with a 5p minimum charge.


"Broadband Voice takes the battle for customers right to the door of our rivals," said Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail.
http://www.btbroadbandvoice.com

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Global Telecom Regulators Set Course for Universal Access

Telecom regulators from more than 80 countries met in Geneva as part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to discuss the steps that nations could take to bridge the digital divide and ensure universal access to communications. The 4th annual Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) agreed on a list of best practice regulatory guidelines for achieving this universal access. They called for regulatory reform at the highest level of government and urged political leaders to treat communications as a tool for development rather than a source of government revenue. The GSR Universal Access Best Practice Guidelines will be delivered to the World Summit later this week. Some of the key principles include:

• promote greater competition, more open markets, and spark investment.



• urge governments to grant technologically neutral licenses and not to favor any particular technology, whether fixed line, wireless, etc,



• apply the lessons learned from developing countries' initial experiences with mobile cellular services to a broader range of communications services to foster universal access.



• push for communications services to be provided in a competitive framework, encouraging new technologies for offering both innovative services and affordable pricing options (e.g., pay as you go options such as prepaid cards) to a wide range of end users.



• encourage low-cost technologies that will achieve long-term financial self-sustainability, greater use of public access options that respond to the needs of local users,



• encourage government measures such as tax incentives, reduced customs tariffs and national manufacturing of equipment.



• recognize that universal service funds are one option that complements regulatory reform when developed as a mechanism within a broader market-oriented approach to achieving universal access.

http://www.itu.int

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Nokia's Jorma Ollila Calls for Universal Access Goal by 2015

"The ambition of universal access is to create, by 2015, an information society in which half the people of the world, an estimated 4 billion, will have access to tools and services that help them interact more, know more and achieve more," said Jorma Ollila, Chairman and CEO of Nokia, in a speech for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Ollila said that achieving this Universal Access must be a mutual goal and responsibility of the private sector, the public sectors and civil society as a whole. Nokia estimates that only 1.2 billion people worldwide have access to data, voice and personal communications.
http://www.nokia.com

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Alcatel Evolves its Market Strategy

The financial picture for major carriers is much more improved in the last two years as evidenced by their reduced debt loads, restructured balance sheets, and restored free cash flows, said
Hubert de Pasquidoux, Chief Operating Officer, Alcatel North America & CEO, Alcatel Canada, speaking at the Lehman Brothers' Fifth Annual T3 Conference in New York. However, the carriers must keep their eyes on the top line of their balance sheets, as fixed voice revenues continue to erode, mobile voice business are maturing, and new data services often cannot make up the difference. Instead of simply looking for CAPEX savings, today's marketing strategies must emphasize the reduction in customer churn, building customer loyalty and increasing both ARPU and network usage. De Pasquidoux outlined three main drivers in future communications markets: Broadband & Entertainment, Portable Services, and End-customer ownership. Alcatel believes broadband has already become a mass-market phenomenon.


Alcatel's response to the changing market conditions can be summarized as follows:

• downsize in-line with the market contraction


• maintain and expand its global reach


• overhaul company processes to reflect a "One Company" vision


• optimize the supply chain and outsource manufacturing

De Pasquidoux said Alcatel's goal is to evolve from a "carrier equipment supplier" to a "communications solutions provider." The company is especially keen to maintain its leading position in broadband access. He also predicts that the trend towards telecom outsourcing will continue.
http://www.alcatel.com

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Tekelec Selects Octasic VoP Processors for the SanteraOne

Tekelec has selected Octasic to supply echo cancellation silicon for its SanteraOne platform.
Octasic's voice processing engines feature uniquely designed capabilities specialized for key VoP requirements. Its line of echo cancellation devices offers densities of 128, 256, 512, or 672 channels, with 64 or 128 ms tail echo cancellation available for all capacities. The base devices offer standard echo cancellation and VQE features, including high quality noise matching, manual gain control, adaptive level control, acoustic echo control, and G.168 tone detection. Other devices in the series are available with features such as: adaptive noise reduction, advanced tone detection, tone generation, full capacity conferencing, announcement playback, and ADPCM compression.


SanteraOne is a carrier-grade integrated voice and data switching solution delivering key applications such as full-feature IXC tandem, class 4/5, PRI offload, packet/cell switching and voice over broadband (VoB) services on a single platform.
http://www.octasic.comwww.tekelec.com

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Verio Launches North American IPv6 Gateway Services

Verio announced the availability of the first large-scale IPv6 commercial service in North America. The NTT/VERIO IPv6 Gateway Services, which are delivered over the newly upgraded NTT/VERIO Global IP Network, consists of three different solutions:

• IPv6 Native Service, which offers customers a dedicated IPv6 connection,


• IPv6 Tunneling Service, which uses an existing IPv4 connection, and


• IPv6 Dual Stack Service, which delivers a balance of both native and tunneling services.

Verio's IPv6 service offers many of the same features as IPv4 connectivity, including fixed or burstable bandwidth, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Domain Name System (DNS). Additional future enhancements will allow customers to benefit from many features exclusive to IPv6, including augmented VPN capabilities. Unlike IPv4, enhanced capabilities allow for full integration of the IPsec framework in IPv6.


Verio said it has seen interest in its IPv6 Gateway Services from downstream ISPs, universities, research institutions, next generation application providers and organizations that focus on wireless technologies.
http://www.verio.com/access/ipv6.cfm

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