Thursday, September 30, 2004

Alvarion Halts interWAVE Acquisition

Alvarion called a halt to its acquisition of interWAVE, a provider of compact mobile GSM and CDMA network equipment and services, citing interWave's recent financial results as well as anticipated results going forward. Alvarion said it would be willing to discuss with interWAVE concluding a transaction on different terms.



Alvarion said it is expecting to report third quarter results in line with guidance and that its own outlook remains strong.



For its part, interWAVE issued an announcement stating that it believes there is no material adverse effect or any other basis, legal or otherwise, for Alvarion to not comply with its
obligations under the merger agreement. http://www.alvarion.com
  • In July, Alvarion agreed to acquire interWAVE Communications International in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $56 million.

  • interWAVE is a provider of compact mobile GSM and CDMA network equipment and services, primarily aimed at low density markets in developing regions, as well as specialty vertical applications. The company's solutions are deployed in over 50 countries by more than 100 operators, mainly local and regional cellular operators. interWAVE, which is based in Mountain View, California with engineering facilities in China and Ireland , had 12-month trailing revenues of about $39.4 million.


  • Alvarion is a leading supplier of wireless broadband solutions and is actively involved in WiMAX initiatives. The company said interWAVE's fixed and mobile cellular solution complements its own eMGW residential voice and data solution serving regions of the world where wireline infrastructure is missing or inadequate.

DenseLight Offers G.984 compliant GPON-ONU Transceiver

DenseLight Semiconductors released new GPON transceivers for the ONU side in Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON). The new ITU-T G.984 compliant GPON transceiver is capable of achieving 2.5Gbps downstream & 1.25Gbps (burst mode) upstream transmissions. It is designed to operate at the Optical Network Unit (ONU) side, supporting FTTB/C/Cab (fiber to the building/curb/cabinet) network configurations.



DenseLight said it provides a complete implementation of the G.984 physical media dependent (PMD) specifications in the transceiver. For instance, the G.984 defined power-leveling function has been implemented to enable a reliable burst mode operation between the ONU and the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) side operating in a Class B optical distribution network (ODN) environment. http://www.denselight.com

Newly Reorganized Siemens Communications Group Begins Operations

The newly reorganized Siemens Communications Group started operations on October 1. Siemens Communications Group was created through the merger of the former Siemens fixed and mobile communications units -- IC Networks and IC Mobile -- making it one of the world's largest suppliers in the telecommunications sector. In terms of sales, Siemens Communications rank third with Motorola, behind Nokia and Cisco.



The new Group, which is currently represented in more than 160 countries, is headed by Lothar Pauly and subdivided into the three segments Carrier Networks, Enterprise Networks and Devices, with a total of eight divisions. Its Group Executive Management has five members: Lothar Pauly is the Group President and is also in charge of fixed and mobile networks in the carrier segment; Michael Kutschenreuter is responsible for finances; Anton Hendrik Schaaf holds the post of Chief Technology Officer and also oversees the Group's carrier service business; Andy W. Mattes is responsible for enterprise business; and Thorsten Heins heads the Devices unit.



Devices


The Devices segment is subdivided into the three divisions Mobile Devices, Customer Premises Equipment and Wireless Modules, which offer a portfolio of multifunctional devices for fixed networks, mobile networks and wireless access, thus enabling a wide range of mobile solutions. The Devices portfolio includes mobile, cordless and system telephones, broadband modems and radio modules.



Carrier Networks

The Carrier Networks segment consists of the three divisions Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks and Carrier Services. Carrier Networks provides the complete infrastructure, applications, turnkey solutions (including broadband) and a full portfolio of professional services for mobile network and fixed network operators. On the basis of its fixed/mobile convergence concept, Siemens offers operators of hybrid networks common platforms, applications and broadband solutions for all access types and services.



Enterprise Networks

This segment comprises the two divisions Enterprise Systems and Enterprise Services. Enterprise Networks provides enterprise customers with real-time communications systems and applications, solutions (including security) and a full range of professional services designed to help them improve their business processes. With presence-based applications such as HiPath OpenScape, the common HiPath 8000/ SURPASS softswitch platform bridges carrier and corporate networks and supports enterprises in boosting their productivity. http://www.siemens.com/communications

Siemens to Resell Huawei's Enterprise Gear

Siemens Communications signed a cooperation contract with Huawei. The deal covers Huawei's network infrastructure products for enterprise customers, and will primarily cover the Huawei portfolio for Quidway routers and switches. Siemens Communications said this cooperation pact with Huawei reinforces its multivendor strategy for Enterprise network infrastructure. http://www.siemens.de/hipath
  • In February 2004, Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) and Huawei Technologies have formed a joint venture company to develop, manufacture and market TD-SCDMA technology. The companies are investing a combined US$100 million in the new venture, which will be based in Beijing. Siemens mobile will hold 51% in the new company and Huawei will hold 49%.


  • Huawei has a joint venture with 3Com that supplies enterprise networking solutions, including routers and LAN switches.

CompTel/ASCENT Speaks Out Against AT&T Wireless + Cingular Merger

The CompTel/ASCENT Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of CLECs, said consumers should expect to see the cost of wireless and landline phone services rise by $3 billion annually if the merger of Cingular and AT&T Wireless is approved. CompTel/ASCENT predicts that prices of both wireless and landline telephony services to rise because of the enhanced market power that will be wielded by the combined wireless company and its majority owners, BellSouth and SBC Communications.



CompTel/ASCENT noted that Cingular and AT&T Wireless are the second- and third-largest mobile telecom carriers, respectively, and together serve 40% of the U.S. mobile market. This is 10 percentage points more than the current largest mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless. Post-merger, a total of 70% of all wireless subscribers in the U.S. will be in the hands of monopoly landline carriers Verizon, BellSouth and SBC.



CompTel/ASCENT is urging the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice to impose conditions on the proposed merger in order to mitigate some of the "anticompetitive" effects. http://www.comptelascent.org

Hitachi and NEC Launch "ALAXALA Networks" Targeting Core Routing/Switching

Hitachi and NEC launched ALAXALA Networks Corporation, their new joint venture routing/switching company. ALAXALA Networks will specialize in backbone routers/switches for telecommunications carriers, government/public sectors and large corporations. ALAXALA's activities will cover development, design, manufacturing, sales/marketing to maintenance and services.



ALAXALA inherits core technologies from both Hitachi and NEC. The company is launching sales of its "AX series" router/switch through business partners. Hitachi and NEC will both promote ALAXALA products through their own integratedhttp://www.alaxala.comIn June 2004, Hitachi and NEC first announced plans to establish a new company specializing in core backbone routers and switches for telecommunications carriers, government and public sectors and large corporations.

Terayon's President and CTO Steps Down

Shlomo Rakib has resigned his position as Terayon's President and Chief Technical Officer but will continue to serve as a member of the company's Board of Directors. http://www.terayon.comIn May 2004, company co-founder Dr. Zaki Rakib stepped down as CEO of Terayon Communication Systems to spend more time with his family.

Level 3 Acquires Sprint's Wholesale Dial Internet Access Business

Level 3 Communications has acquired Sprint's wholesale dial Internet access business for $34 million in cash. The acquired business provides dial-up Internet access to leading ISPs throughout the U.S. The companies have entered into a transition services agreement for the migration of customers onto the Level 3 network, which Level 3 expects to complete in mid-2005. During the migration period, a portion of the cash collected from these customers will be treated by Level 3 as a reduction in purchase price, as opposed to revenue.



Sprint plans to continue providing dial IP services to its enterprise and small-business customers as part of its remote access service product offering. Under a separate agreement, Level 3 will provide Sprint with wholesale dial IP network services in support of this service. http://www.sprint.comhttp://www.Level3.com

Redback Trims Q3 Revenue Outlook

Redback Networks trimmed its financial expectations for Q3, saying it now expects revenue for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2004 to be between $20 million to $22 million. The company said that while it has seen momentum for its next-generation SmartEdge platform by some of the top telecommunications carriers and service providers in the world, it also experienced a delay in customer orders and, in particular, a softness in orders for its SMS family of products and in North America. http://www.redback.com

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

CoManage Enhances its TrueSource to Address Access Line Revenue Leakage

CoManage has enhanced its TrueSource data integrity management system with a new solution for addressing access line costs and associated revenue leakage. The CoManage TrueSource solution for Cost & Revenue Assurance Data Integrity Management helps identify discrepancies between how services are billed and how they actually are configured in the network.



CoManage said service providers often lease circuits from numerous carrier partners to provide out-of-region connectivity. But it is often difficult to confirm that in-bound access bills for these circuits accurately match the actual configuration of the circuits, which can lead to overcharges for access circuits. Additionally, revenue leakage can occur when on-net end-customer services are underbilled because it is difficult to compare the actual provisioned circuit with the end-customer billing records.



Both of these problems are data integrity issues, caused by poor visibility into the actual configuration of the network and services. It is compounded by the fact that business and operations support system (BSS/OSS) databases often must be updated manually. As a result, the systems used to confirm billing can be greatly out of sync with the network itself.



CoManage's TrueSource discovery and reconciliation technology identifies leased circuits as they actually are provisioned, updates circuit inventory, and automatically compares circuits to carrier access bills. This enables line grooming and optimization, with cost reductions amounting to an estimated 8 percent or more of a service provider's access cost. TrueSource also addresses underbilled end-customer private line services by identifying service configurations in the network and validating end-customer bills. This enables carriers to find unbilled or underbilled circuits, permitting a typical carrier to recover an estimated 7% of its private line revenue stream previously lost to revenue leakage. http://www.comanage.net
  • CoManage's TrueSource has been selected for data integrity management by AT&T Wireless, British Telecom, Sprint and Verizon, among others.

Esmertec Partners with Korea's ETRI for Digital Home R&D

Esmertec, a supplier of software solutions for mobile phones and embedded devices, will partner with Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) to jointly research and develop technologies for the digital home and next-gen personal communications devices.



In the first joint project, ETRI will be implementing Esmertec's leading runtime platform, Jbed, on their home-networking reference solution. This reference solution will be provided to home networking device manufacturers.



ETRI is a non-profit government-funded research organization. Esmertec is based in Zurich. http://www.esmertec.comhttp://www.etri.re.kr

NETGEAR Offers Home Powerline, Wireless 802.11g Combination

NETGEAR introduced a 54 Mbps Wall-Plugged Wireless Range Extender Kit that could be used to extend an existing wireless network to the back yard, pool house, or a former "dead" zone in the house. The first step is for the user to connect the NETGEAR Wall-Plugged Ethernet Bridge to an existing router, from any vendor, to activate all of the home's wall outlets with Internet connectivity. To complete the network extension, the user needs to plug the NETGEAR Wall-Plugged Wireless Range Extender into an electrical outlet near where the wireless network previously did not reach.



NETGEAR is using Intellon's powerline chips. http://www.netgear.com

Sprint and SUNET Set Internet Data Speed Record

Sprint and the Swedish National Research and Education Network (SUNET) were awarded a new Internet Land Speed Record for bulk data transfer over the public Internet.



The new record of 4.31 Gbps was set on 12-September-2004 when 1,830 gigabytes of data took about 60 minutes to travel 18,013 miles/28,983 km without data loss over Sprint and SUNET networks between California and Sweden. The data path spanned two continents and traveled three times across the Atlantic Ocean. An IPv4 single stream transmission record of 124.935 Terabit-meters per second was set. Further details are online. http://proj.sunet.se/LSR3/

QUALCOMM to Acquire Spike Technologies

QUALCOMM agreed to acquire Spike Technologies, a start-up based in Milpitas, California with facilities in Bangalore, for $19 million in cash. Spike Technologies, founded in 1994 by Nikhil Modi and Pradeep Vajram, specializes in physical design for deep submicron process technologies, circuit development, and design and verification engineering for pre-silicon design debug and analysis. The company will be integrated into QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies (QCT) and help QUALCOMM further address the increasing demand for faster time to market of more feature-rich products in 90 nanometer (nm) and below process technologies. http://www.qualcomm.com

AT&T and Vonage Cut Price of Broadband Phone Services

AT&T cut the price of its CallVantage residential VoIP service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month. The price includes unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and to Canada.



Separately, Vonage said that it would cut the price of its unlimited VoIP service to $24.99 a month. http://www.att.comhttp://www.vonage.com
  • In May, Vonage trimmed the price of its Residential Premium Unlimited Plan from $34.99 per month to $29.99 per month.

NetCentrex Exceeds 1 Million Residential VoIP Lines

NetCentrex has exceeded 1 million Class 5 end-to-end VoIP CPE-based lines. The company said its carrier customers are currently activating over 3,000 lines per day. This figure includes Fastweb, the largest residential triple play VoIP deployment worldwide.



Citing figures from the Quarterly Broadband Residential Market Analysis from Dataxis, NetCentrex said there are already over 4.6 million VoIP subscribers worldwide, meaning that NetCentrex softswitch technology is managing over 20% of the current subscriber base. http://www.netcentrex.com

8x8 Adds Virtual and Toll Free Numbers to Business VoIP

8x8 added several new optional features for its Virtual Office Internet-based PBX service including
virtual phone numbers, toll free numbers, and switchboard operator console.



Virtual Phone Numbers allow subscribers to provide local inbound telephone numbers from areas outside of their main number or extension DIDs. The Operator Software Console Application, available for $19.95 per month with a $9.95 activation fee, providing a receptionist with a graphical overview of the users on the virtual office service and a simple way to manage an organization's telecommunication activity. Switchboard works on a PC in conjunction with the Internet and the Virtual Office telephones. Additionally, Switchboard enables operators to have:

  • Direct status view of extension's status: DND, On-line, idle


  • Click to call, click to transfer call control


  • Direct transfer to extension and voice mail


  • Supervised transfers


  • The Packet8 Virtual Office service costs $39.95 per extension, per month.
http://www.8x8.com

Voiceglo to Offer its VoIP Service Through Friendster Site

Friendster, a popular, free online community website, will begin offering a privately-labeled broadband phone service powered by Voiceglo. Users are assigned a U.S. phone number that can be used through any Internet-enabled computer anywhere in the world for peer-to-peer calling.



Friendster currently has over 9 million members. http://www.voiceglo.com

Telefónica Selects Metro Ethernet from Lucent / Riverstone

Telefónica de España selected the combined Ethernet solution from Riverstone Networks and Lucent Technologies for the next phase of its multimedia broadband service deployment. The project will integrate Riverstone's carrier Ethernet routers with Lucent DSL access concentrators to aggregate broadband traffic onto a converged Ethernet infrastructure. This includes Riverstone's RS 8000 and RS 38000 carrier Ethernet routers and Lucent's Stinger FS+ DSLAMs. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.lucent.comhttp://www.riverstonenet.com,

Lucent and Riverstone Enter Ethernet Alliance

Lucent Technologies and Riverstone Networks have formed a partnership to deliver Ethernet solutions for new and existing carrier networks. Specifically, Lucent will integrate Riverstone's MPLS-based Ethernet routing equipment with Lucent systems, software and professional services. Riverstone's equipment also complements Lucent's access and metro optical networking solutions. The agreement is non-exclusive.



The companies said the combination of Lucent optical, data and access systems and Riverstone Ethernet routers could be used by carriers to offer converged DSL-based multimedia services, Ethernet-based corporate VPNs, and enhance the value of existing ATM and Frame Relay services with high-bandwidth Ethernet. http://www.lucent.comhttp://www.riverstonet.com
  • In June 2004, Riverstone Networks introduced an "Ethernet Edge Router" that combines the standard elements of a multiservice edge router - an IP/MPLS control plane, multiple interface types, and the ability to converge traffic over MPLS. The new ASIC-driven Riverstone 15008 Ethernet Edge Router employs a distributed and modular operating system architecture that allows the router to detect and restart errant protocols without affecting the rest of the system. Riverstone said router software outages and reboots currently account for nearly half of all network failures. The Riverstone 15008 hardware also provides redundant control modules and switch fabrics. It also supports resilient network designs with technologies like MPLS Fast Reroute and Service loop detection and prevention.