Mpower to Acquire ICG's California Customers, Network

Mpower Communications will acquire ICG Communications' network assets and customers in California for $13.5 million in stock. The deal includes ICG's California retail and wholesale customers; a 1,412 route mile state-wide self-healing DWDM and SONET-based fiber ring connecting San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Bakersfield, San Diego, Anaheim and Los Angeles; 915 route miles of fully-survivable metropolitan SONET-based fiber rings in San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles which connect 128 commercial buildings, 33 of Mpower's existing collocations and 11 ICG collocations that will be added to the Mpower footprint. The acquisition is expected to contribute in excess of $30 million in revenue and $8-$10 million of operating income (excluding expenses related to depreciation and amortization of the acquired assets) in 2006.



In connection with the acquisition, Mpower also announced that telecom investment funds Columbia Capital and M/C Venture Partners, through their ownership of ICG, will invest $2.5 million in cash for 1,988,894 shares of Mpower Holding's common stock. http://www.mpowercom.com

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ADC to Sell Metrica Service Assurance Software Platform

ADC will sell its Metrica service assurance software group to WatchMark Corp. for $35 million in cash and 3.2 million shares of WatchMark common stock, which represents less than five percent ownership of WatchMark. The Metrica service assurance software group, which has about 250 employees, provides solutions to help service providers improve service quality, lower operational costs and optimize network usage and capacity. The applications include Metrica Performance Manager, which provides a complete view of network quality and usage; Metrica Service Manager, which enables the delivery of new services to drive growth; Metrica Service Assurance Framework, a modular and open framework that ensures Metrica solutions support innovation and competitive differentiation; and Metrica/NPR, which allows users to manage data from multiple vendors and forecast performance trends. In the first three quarters of ADC's fiscal year, Nov. 1, 2003 - July 31, 2004, Metrica sales were approximately $21 million with an operating loss of approximately $2 million, after direct expenses only. In ADC's fiscal year ended October 31, 2003, Metrica generated sales of approximately $30 million and an operating income of approximately $5 million, after direct expenses only.



Watchmark, which is based in Bellevue, Washington, provides wireless service providers with software tools necessary to deploy and monitor services at the network, application and customer levels.



ADC said the sale will enable it to focus on its core strengths as a global network infrastructure company. http://www.adc.com

• In June 2004, ADC agreed to sell its customer care and billing software division to Intec Telecom Systems, a supplier of Operations Support Systems (OSS) for fixed, mobile and next-generation networks, for $74.5 million in cash. Intec will assume control of ADC's customer care and billing software offerings including approximately 600 employees, current relationships with existing software customers and related facility space. ADC's customer care and billing software platforms include Singl.eView, a complete revenue, transaction, billing and service management solution that resides at the core of the OSS and business support systems (BSS).



• In May 2004, ADC sold its IP Cable Business Unit to BigBand Networksfor an undisclosed sum. ADC will become a minority interest holder in BigBand Networks as part of the agreement. The acquisition does not include the Homeworx cable telephony system that had also been a part of the business unit. ADC's Cuda CMTS (cable modem termination system) is a widely deployed and carrier-class platform for switching and routing of advanced IP services, and the FastFlow Broadband Provisioning Manager is a server suite that activates and configures such services.



• In March 2004, ADC agreed to acquire the KRONE Group, a global supplier of copper- and fiber-based cabling products, from GenTek Inc.. The deal was valued at approximately $350 million, of which ADC will pay cash of approximately $291 million and assume certain defined liabilities consisting principally of KRONE's pension obligation for its German workforce.

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Siemens Invests in Chinese start-up Zero Global

Siemens Mobile Acceleration has made an equity investment in Zero Global,a Shanghai-based start-up that specializes in mobile enterprise software. Zero Global is developint technology that enables sales force, marketers and service groups to access Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) as well as Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) while on the road. Siemens Mobile Acceleration is the only investor in the first round of funding. http://www.siemensmobileacceleration.com

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Xten Surpasses 500,000 Softphone

Xten Networks has surpassed the 500,000 installation milestone for its SIP Softphone client. The company also announced the release of a new eyeBeam SIP softphone for MAC OS Xhttp://www.xten.com

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First HyperTransport 2.0 Products Enter Market

The first wave of HyperTransport Specification 2.0 compliant devices have started to enter the market, eight months after the specification was released.



HyperTransport Specification 2.0 is a chip-to-chip interconnect technology offering performance levels of up to 2.8 Gigatransfers/second and mapping to PCI Express. Products conforming to HyperTransport Specification 2.0 support up to 22.4 Gigabytes/second aggregate bandwidth. The new products include HyperTransport-enabled 64-bit processors, I/O chipsets, silicon IP, and development tools. http://www.hypertransport.org

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Nextel Adds 550,000 Subscribers in Q3, ARPU at $69

Nextel Communications ended Q3 with approximately 15.3 million total subscribers including 14.5 million Nextel subscribers and 800,000 Boost Mobile subscribers. During the quarter, Nextel added 550,000 new subscribers, average revenue per user (ARPU) was $69 and customer satisfaction improved as churn was reduced to 1.5%. In addition, Boost Mobile added 195,000 subscribers during the third quarter.



Nextel reported Q3 revenue of $3.40 billion, up 18% from last year's third-quarter revenue. Operating income before depreciation and amortization was $1.32 billion, up 17% from last year's third-quarter. Third-quarter 2004 income was $586 million, or $0.53 per share, up from last year's third-quarter income of $346 million, or $0.33 per share.



"Nextel is experiencing strong demand for its wireless services across all sectors and especially higher growth in government, high-end individuals and our Boost Mobile business," said Tim Donahue, Nextel's president and CEO. http://www.nextel.com

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HomeNet Selects NetCentrex VoIP for iProvo

HomeNet Communications, a full-service Triple Play Provider, selected the NetCentrex platform to deliver VoIP services to HomeNet's iProvo subscribers. iProvo is an open, municipally-owned fiber to the home (FTTH) initiative in Provo, Utah. HomeNet Communications was selected as iProvo's first service provider. After the initial iProvo win, HomeNet Communications and NetCentrex anticipate expanding to other broadband markets by hosting telephony services for additional FTTH markets. http://www.netcentrex.net

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TI Unveils Digital TV Chip for Cell Phones

Texas Instruments unveiled a single chip solution for cell phones. Code-named "Hollywood," the new chip integrates a tuner, OFDM demodulator and channel decoder processor. It interfaces with TI's OMAP multimedia processors for 2.5G and 3G handsets. The chip will use TI's 90-nanometer process technology. Samples are expected in 2006.



TI's Hollywood chip will support newly established and open digital TV broadcast standards, including Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), which was developed for Europe and is expected to extend to North America, and the Japanese specification, Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial (ISDB-T). Dedicated wireless networks supporting these standards are expected to feature high-quality live broadcast TV (24-30 frames per second) paired with full audio. In comparison, cellular alternatives typically offer one-to-15-frames-per- second streaming capability. The new digital broadcasting networks are expected to support pay-per-view programming, interactive television, and menu/guide systems. http://www.ti.com/wireless

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Nokia: Consumers Increasingly Giving Up Their Fixed Line Phones

An estimated 45 million consumers in the U.S., Germany, Great Britain and South Korea are now making all their voice calls from their mobile phone instead of fixed line home phones, according to a survey conducted by MORI on behalf of Nokia.



The study on Fixed-to-Mobile Substitution (FMS) also suggests mobile could challenge fixed line connections for data access in the home, too. On average, those who claim they are certain or very likely to adopt a wireless service for data expect this to happen in 1 to 2 years.



The study also found that the most fertile market for FMS is the young professional group, who use their mobile phone for most of their voice calls. These mobile users are more likely to be male; middle to high income, and make a large volume of voice calls. http://www.nokia.com

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Agere Licenses ARM Processor for System-on-a-Chip Applications

Agere Systems has licensed the latest ARM11 family cores for use in its system on a chip (SoC), application- specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and application-specific standard (ASSP) products.
Agere is already a leading provider of ARM technology in its semiconductors.



The ARM11 family is based on the ARMv6 32/16-bit architecture and features the ARM TrustZone extension for improved device security and the ARM Thumb-2 instruction set enhancement for high performance, high density code. ARM11 family cores achieve high frequencies (335-550MHz) without compromising ARM's leadership in silicon area and power efficiency. http://www.agere.com/

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Telmex Selects UTStarcom for IP DSLAMs

de Mexico (Telmex) selected UTStarcom to supply its IP DSLAM to complement its current network. Revenue from this contract announcement is anticipated in 2005. Additional financial terms were not disclosed. UTStarcom said the contract reflects is globalization strategy. http://www.utstarcom.com

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University of Washington Chooses Looking Glass Dark Fiber

The University of Washington selected Looking Glass Networks' dark fiber to support research and education in conjunction with Pacific Wave, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and other high-bandwidth networking initiatives. The dark fiber will be used to extend a connection from certain submarine cable landing points in Oregon and California to Seattle. Looking Glass' Seattle network provided the capacity and connectivity to the key carrier and data aggregation locations the University of Washington required. http://www.lglass.net

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EarthLink Reaches 1.3 Million Broadband, 4.0 Million Narrowband Users

EarthLink reported Q3 revenues of $344.0 million, a 1.0% decrease from the third quarter of 2003. Net income was $37.6 million, or $0.24 per share, compared to $3.5 million, or $0.02 per share, from Q3 2003. Some highlights:

• Net subscriber additions of 67,000 during Q3, ending the period with 5.4 million paying subscribers.



• Added 74,000 net broadband subscribers during the quarter and ended the quarter with 1.3 million broadband customers, an increase of 34% from a year ago.



• Broadband subscribers now represent 23.7% of the total subscriber base. Broadband revenues were $104.9 million, an increase of 12.7% over the prior year quarter.



• Added 133,000 net subscribers through PeoplePC Online, EarthLink's value-priced narrowband service, while it experienced a decrease of 136,000 net subscribers in its more mature premium narrowband service. The company ended the quarter with 4.0 million total narrowband subscribers, an increase of 3.4% from the third quarter of 2003. Total narrowband subscribers included 758,000 PeoplePC Online subscribers as of September 30, 2004 compared to 295,000 as of September 30, 2003.



• EarthLink ended the quarter with 149,000 web hosting accounts, a decrease of 9.1% from a year ago.

http://www.earthlink.net

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Verizon Expands FTTP Sites, to Hire Up to 5,000 to Accelerate Rollout

Verizon announced FTTP deployment to homes and businesses in Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- bringing to nine the total number of states where work is under way. The company had previously announced FTTP deployment in California, Florida and Texas as part its plan to pass some 1 million homes and businesses with the new technology this year. Verizon plans to pass some 2 million additional homes and businesses with the new technology next year.



Verizon expects to make an $800 million capital investment in FTTP this year.



In addition, the company said it has invested in some 40 new operations support systems to handle everything from electronic processing of customer FiOS orders to remotely diagnosing and correcting problems.



Verizon also announced plans to hire between 3,000 and 5,000 new employees by the end of 2005 to help build the network. http://www.verizon.com

• Verizon's FiOS broadband Internet access services offer download speeds of up to 5 Mbps, 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps, with upstream speeds of up to 2 Mbps for the first two products and 5 Mbps for the third. The 5 Mbps service sells for $34.95 per month, when purchased with a package of Verizon services, and $39.95 when purchased separately.

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Alcatel and Fujitsu Show High-Speed Downlink Packet Access

Alcatel and Fujitsu launched a live HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) demonstration system in France. The system is designed for bringing data speeds of up to 14Mbps into existing W-CDMA networks. HSDPA will enable operators to support a considerably larger number of high data-rate users on a single radio carrier. The system, which was developed by Fujitsu based on technical specifications provided by NTT DoCoMo, is located at Alcatel's 3G Reality Centre (3GRC) in Vélizy, France. http://www.alcatel.com

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France Telecom to Offer Cisco Solutions to Multinationals

France Telecom will offer Cisco-based IP services to multinational companies based in France. The agreement makes France Telecom a Cisco Gold Certified Partner. The companies said they are currently cooperating both on the core of hardware technologies (DSL, LAN switching, mobile wireless and routing) and on advanced technologies (IP telephony and security). Common agreements signed in 2003 and 2004 include BNP, EUR-Information (Crédit Mutuel CIC group) and Société Générale, among others. http://www.cisco.comhttp://www.francetelecom.com

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Telkom SA Expands Deployment of Alvarion Equipment

Telkom South Africa has placed additional orders for Alvarion's MGW broadband fixed wireless access equipment to complete a country-wide,1.9 GHz wireless network project initiated in 2003. Over the past year, Alvarion's 1.9GHz systems have been deployed in five communities (Hekpoort, Pretoria, Upington, Bloemfontein and Grahamstown). Additional systems are being installed in suburban and rural areas lacking in existing telecom infrastructure and to upgrade others requiring replacement systems. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.alvarion.comhttp://www.telkom.co.za

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Net2Phone Launches Wi-Fi VoIP Service

Net2Phone introduced a Wi-Fi Handset that enables service providers to offer wireless VoIP connectivity into Net2Phone's VoiceLine broadband telephony service. The service enables both inbound and outbound calling and allows users to choose from a U.S. local, U.S. toll-free or U.K. toll-free telephone number, no matter where they reside globally. In addition, the XJ100 supports a wide range of telephony features, including voice mail, Caller ID and call forwarding. Net2Phone said it expects to add a softphone client shortly. http://www.net2phone.com

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Infonet Expands IP MPLS Network in India

Infonet Services Corporation has expanded its IP MPLS network in India, including new nodes in Bangalore and New Delhi. Infonet India (a partnership between Infonet Services Corporation and i2i, a leading provider of communications services to major businesses in India) is now offering international IP VPN Secure, IP VPN Internet, IP Voice and IP Video VPN, Call Center, Frame Relay and ATM services.



In addition, Infonet has opened a call center and introduced videoconferencing services to India. http://www.infonet.com

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Packet Design's Route Explorer Offers MPLS VPN Visibility

Packet Design introduced new "VPN-aware" version of its Route Explorer appliance, giving service providers visibility into the layer 3 virtual private network infrastructure. Route Explorer/MPLS VPN incorporates the IETF RFC 2547bis standard, which uses both BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and MPLS. The new system adds support for MP-BGP (Multi-protocol BGP).



By applying layer 3 route analytics to VPNs, Packet Design said its Route Explorer lets service providers visualize -- in real time and without the overhead of polling -- how individual VPNs are overlaid on their network infrastructure. Specifically, they can monitor:

• reachability within the customer VPN, ensuring that VPN prefixes are being properly distributed between relevant provider edge (PE) routers for each customer site;



• privacy, guarding against unwanted route "leakage" or mingling of information between customer sites;



• policies, knowing whether VPN prefixes are distributed in accordance with customer-specific requirements, such as a full-mesh or hub-and-spoke.

A single Route Explorer unit installed in the service provider's backbone network peers with provider edge routers and immediately begins monitoring all customer VPNs. By dynamically tracking VPN routing information -- e.g., all PE routers participating in the VPN and every prefix being "advertised" from every customer site -- the system automatically generates a baseline of each customer's VPN. A graphical "dashboard" then displays any deviations from the baselinehttp://www.packetdesign.com

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