ARCOS Caribbean Network Suffers Two Fiber Cuts

The Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System (ARCOS) suffered two separate undersea fiber cuts within days of each other, affecting services to seven Latin American countries. New World Network, the principal owner of ARCOS, said services to Belize, Nicaragua, Panama and Colombia have already been restored. Emergency repair crews continue working around-the-clock to fully restore services over the ARCOS network to Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. National and inter-regional communications were unaffected.



"This is the first time in our company's history that we have experienced nearly simultaneous cuts on the same ring," said Fred Wiener, president and CEO of New World Network. "Our system is designed for automatic protection and restoration against a single cut, and the system performed perfectly following the initial fiber fault."



The first of the two unrelated cable cuts occurred Nov. 11 in an undersea fiber cable between Cancun, Mexico, and Miami, Florida, in the United States. The cut occurred in relatively shallow waters about 12 km east of Cancun. http://www.nwncable.com

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France Telecom divests its Stake in STMicroelectronics

France Telecom divested its 3.3% stake in STMicroelectronics through the sale of 30 million STMicroelectronics shares in a block trade transaction. France Telecom still owns 26.4 million shares underlying the bonds mandatorily exchangeable for STMicroelectronics shares due 6 August 2005. http://www.ft.com

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BT to take full Ownership of Italy's Albacom

BT reached agreement with its three joint venture partners in Albacom to increase its ownership in the company to 100%. Albacom is the second largest telecoms operator in the Italian business market, behind Telecom Italia, with an 11% share of the data services market. Albacom provides data transmission, voice and Internet services to more than 240,000 Italian businesses and to international companies active in Italy. In consideration for the 74% of Albacom not already owned, BT will pay to the other shareholders a minimum of EUR 116 million. The other partners in Albacom are ENI, BNL and Mediaset. http://www.btplc.com

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Juniper Scales Core Networks with its T-Matrix

Juniper Networks unveiled its TX Matrix platform, a central routing and switching element that enables its core T-640 router to scale to a multi-chassis design capable of delivering over three billion packets-per-second throughput.



The new product, which is aimed at the core networks of the very largest IP backbones, enables multi-terabit scalability while preserving the existing platforms and routing code. Juniper's TX Matrix utilizes the same ASICs and JUNOS routing system software as the existing T-series platforms. The TX Matrix platform combines a fully redundant architecture and no single point of failure with the high availability features of JUNOS software, such as Graceful Routing Engine Switchover (GRES), In-service Software Upgrades (ISSU) and Bi-directional Forwarding Detection (BFD).



The T640 routers can be connected to the TX Matrix platform at distances up to 100 meters apart, allowing for both local and distributed deployments. http://www.juniper.net

• Juniper's T-series core routing platform, which was introduced in April 2002, is deployed in over 75 service provider networks.

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Intelsat Regains Control of Americas-7 Satellite

After a week of intensive recovery efforts, Intelsat regained contact and control of its Americas-7 satellite, which experienced a sudden and unusual electrical distribution anomaly on November 28.
Service restoration is underway, with several key customers expected to be operational on 03-Dec-04. The exact cause of the anomaly is still being investigated, in cooperation with Space Systems/Loral, the satellite's manufacturer, and Loral Skynet, each of whom participated in the recovery effort. http://www.intelsat.com/

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Native6 Offers IPv6 Training Programs

Native6, a privately-held professional training company based in Seattle, announced a comprehensive update to its "Building IPv6 Networks" course, the completion of a major IPv6 training program for Cisco Systems, the IPv6 Accelerate Program, and the availability of a new Native6 course, "IPv6 for Programmers".



Over the course of 2003 and 2004, Native6 IPv6 experts delivered the Building IPv6 Networks course to several U.S. Department of Defense agencies including the Joint Interoperability Testing Command (JITC), the Army's Electronic Proving Ground (EPG), the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), the Marine Corps Network Operations and Security Command (MCNOSC) and the Navy IPv6 Project Office, Office of the Chief Engineer, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR). In addition, U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine personnel and contractors have participated in the Native6 Building IPv6 Networks Course.



With an exclusive focus on IPv6, Native6 courses cover a broad range of subject matter at a level of depth and understanding unparalleled in the IPv6 education market. The five-day Building IPv6 Networks course has been completely updated and now provides participants with an even more comprehensive overview of the IPv6 protocol, and how it is being supported within the larger network infrastructure. http://www.native6.com

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Supreme Court to Review “Brand X�? Cable Modem Decision

The United States Supreme Court agreed to review the 9th Circuit's "Brand X" cable modem decision. In a statement, FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell said "High-speed Internet connections are not telephones, and I'm glad the Supreme Court has agreed to review the 9th Circuit's ruling that they are. The 9th Circuit's decision would have grave consequences for the future and availability of high-speed Internet connections in this country. "http://www.fcc.gov

• The FCC's declaratory ruling, which was issued 15-March-2002, classified cable modem service as an “information service�? rather than a “cable service.�? As an interstate information service, cable modem service would therefore be subject to FCC jurisdiction rather than state or local rules.



• In October 2003, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court vacated the FCC declaratory ruling that had classified cable modem service as an "information service without a separate offering of a telecommunications service." The FCC promptly appealed the decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has now declined to review the lower court's ruling.



• The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to review a lower court's ruling that had overturned the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an "information service." The case originally arose regarding whether local municipalities could require cable operators to open their networks to other ISPs.



• In August 2004, the FCC filed papers to appeal the “Brand X�? cable modem case to the Supreme Court.

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Alcatel, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom Set Optical Record

Working under the framework of the TOPRATE European research project, Alcatel, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom completed a successful field trial of terabit transmission capability over an existing fiber link. The goal of the research project is to investigate advanced ultra-high channel bit rate transmission technologies (170 Gbps or more per channel) and to demonstrate Terabit per second (1 000 Gigabits per second) network transmission capacity over installed fiber infrastructure.



The trial resulted in a point-to-point DWDM transmission of 1.28 Tbps over a 430 km standard (ITU-T G.652) single mode fiber link in France Telecom's network in the Marseille area. Test results were achieved using eight densely packed optical transmission channels, each carrying a record bit rate of 170 Gbps (160 Gbps plus an overhead so as to allow bit error detection and correction). The channel bit rate is 16 times higher than standard 10 Gbps DWDM channels. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://dbs.cordis.lu

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mmO2 Deploys 3G on Isle of Man with Lucent

mmO2's subsidiary, Manx Telecom, is deploying a 3G UMTS network on the Isle of Man using equipment from Lucent Technologies. The deployment will include HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) technology as well as Lucent's IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) solution. The HSDPA-enabled network will initially offer data speeds of 3.6 Mbps - a limitation of initial mobile device implementations - and ultimately will support data speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps. http://www.lucent.com

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Cogent to Acquire Verio's T-1 Internet access customers

Cogent Communications will acquire the majority of Verio's T-1 Internet access customers and associated equipment. The transaction includes more than 2,400 business customers. In the coming weeks, Cogent will begin migrating the 2,400 dedicated access customers to Cogent's 80 Gigabit Tier 1 optical backbone. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.cogentco.com/

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Cogent 4th Anniversary of its Metro Ethernet Network

Cogent Communications marked the fourth anniversary of the lighting of its fiber optic network. Cogent has grown to serve over 5,000 business customers. This represents approximately 8% of all U.S. Internet traffic, based on a comparison of data with the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. Its 21,000 mile fiber optic IP network spans 11 countries on two continents. The ISP established a peering program to interconnect with approximately 650 other ISP networks.



The company announced that it has directly connected the 1,000th on-net building to its network, at 53 State Street, the heart of Boston's financial center. http://www.cogentco.com/

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MCI Agrees to Management Buyout of Brazilian IT Unit

MCI agreed to sell Proceda, its non-core IT outsourcing business in Brazil, in a management buyout transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, which is immediately effective, MCI is selling all of its shares in Proceda to the company's management and its partner Votorantim Novos Negocios for $3 million cash and the assumption of approximately $10 million in debt. http://www.mci.com

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MERA Enhances SIP Features in Its Session Controller

MERA Systems announced the availability of SIP registrar functionality in its MVTS Session Controller. The SIP registrar allows dynamic registration of SIP endpointshttp://www.mera-voip.com

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Nortel Announces Optical Projects in China, Philippines

Six power companies spread across China are building a secure optical network using equipment from Nortel to deliver advanced communication services like real-time power control data management, high-speed Internet access and multimedia applications. The deployment will use Nortel's Optical Metro 3500 Multiservice Platforms with Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) and Optical Metro 4150 STM-4 SDH solutions to converge TDM private line and IP broadband data services onto a single infrastructure.



The Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and its subsidiary, Smart Communications (SMART) have also chosen Nortel for an expansion of its domestic DWDM backbone. Under the sixth expansion, PLDT is deploying Nortel Optical Long Haul 1600 and Optical Cross Connect DX systems to light up another wavelength of 10G capacity. PLDT is deploying a number of Optical Metro 4100/4200 systems in different parts of the country. For its metro Manila optical network expansion, SMART is deploying a Nortel Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 solution complemented by Optical Metro 4150 multiplexers. In a separate project designed to address the evolving capacity requirements of SMART's GSM subscriber base, Nortel will also expand the wireless operator's optical infrastructure to upgrade the Loop6 portion of its metro Manila network. http://www.nortel.com

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NTT Field Tests 100 Mbps MIMO-OFDM Technology

NTT is launching a field test of 100 Mbps wireless technology in the Yokosuka city area, Kanagawa, Japan. NTT Network Innovation Laboratories has developed a system that combines MIMO (multiple input multiple output) and OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) technologies). MIMO uses multiple sets of antennas, both in the transmitter and the receiver. The design uses a space division multiplexing (SDM) technology in order to achieve transmission rates of more than 100 Mbps. http://www.ntt.co.jp

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VSNL and NTT Com Extend VPN Partnership

In partnership with Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), NTT Communications will extend its MPLS-based Arcstar Global IP-VPN service in India with the opening of its second POP (in Bangalore) by the end of January 2005. The first node was established in Mumbai in May 2004. http://www.ntt.com/

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Nielsen Counts 54.5 Million Broadband Users in Europe

The number of people in Europe surfing the Internet over a broadband connection reached 54.5 million in October 2004 -- an increased of 60% from 34.1 million a year earlier -- according to the latest report from Nielsen/NetRatings. The total number of Internet users in Europe (including dial-up) reached 100 million.



In terms of broadband usage, Italy enjoyed the highest growth rate, followed by the UK, France and Switzerland. http://www.netratings.com/

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City Network Announces DSL Modem Deal with China Telecom, China Netcom

Beijing Putian Hexin, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based City Network, obtained ADSL modem supplier agreements with two of China's largest telecommunications companies: China Telecom and China Netcom. City Network, through Beijing Putian Hexin, has already successfully supplied more than 300,000 units of ADSL modems to China Telecom Co. and to China Network Communication Corp. since July 2003, which has generated over US$7 million in total revenues. Beijing Putian Hexin has also shipped over 60,000 ADSL modems to the Hainan Island Provincial Telecom Corporation this past year and has also secured orders from Hainan Telecom for 2005. http://www.citynetwork.com.tw

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MSN Expands its Communications Applications

Microsoft's MSN released a new version of MSN Messenger, updates to MSN Hotmail featuring deeper integration between the services and the introduction of a blogging tool called MSN Spaces -- a dynamic online scrapbook where consumers can share photo albums, personal music lists, etc. The MSN Messenger and MSN Hotmail services will automatically notify online contacts when a person's Space has been updated with new content. http://www.msn.com

• MSN Messenger currently reports more than 145 million active users worldwide each month.

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Alcatel Selected for 3G Trial Network in Beijing

China Netcom selected Alcatel Shanghai Bell to deploy a 3G field trial network in Beijing. The deployment includes Alcatel's end-to-end Evolium UMTS solution based on products from Evolium SAS, Alcatel's joint venture with Fujitsu. This solution includes UMTS Multi-standard Base Stations (Node B), a Radio Network Controller (RNC) and the core network elements. http://www.alcatel.com

• Alcatel deployed a similar 3G trial network with China Telecom earlier in the year.

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