Octasic Provides Echo Cancellation for ZTE's 3G
Sunday, January 04, 2009 PacketVoice
ZTE has selected Octasic's echo cancellation and voice quality enhancement (VQE) solutions for its 3G products. Specifically, ZTE's 3G Platform Division has selected Octasic's OCT6100 devices for integration into its high-density Base Station Controllers (BSC) for GSM networks.
ZTE's ZXG10 iBSC is based on an all IP platform and has integrated the Octasic OCT6100 solution including Tandem Free Operation (TFO). Also known as Vocoder bypass, TFO is specified by the 3GPP standards group to help improve voice quality in mobile-to-mobile calls. By allowing voice to cross the network without unnecessary decoding and re-encoding, better voice quality is possible. Octasic provides support for TFO with its echo cancellation solutions for 2G and 3G systems. Octasic's carrier-grade echo cancellation and VQE solutions reduce system costs by offering unparalleled area density and low power consumption.
Separately, Octasic noted a number of company milestones and continued growth. The company broadened its customer base internationally and increased sales in China by 32 percent in 2008, despite challenging economic conditions. Throughout 2008, Octasic expanded its international presence with the hiring of new sales representatives for North America, Korea, and China, and announced EuroSemi GmBH as the company's official representative in Europe. In addition, the company grew its engineering workforce by an impressive 22 percent.
Octasic achieved several other important milestones in 2008:
The company began shipping its Vocallo multi-core gateway digital signal processor (DSP) platform -- the industry's first DSP based on an asynchronous architecture that delivers the highest performance-to-power ratio available today.
Building on the Vocallo media gateway platform for voice, Octasic added video capabilities to create a true off-the-shelf media gateway solution. Support for MPEG-4 and H.263 transcoding allows customers to build mobile video gateways at a higher density, thus reducing their cost per port.
Octasic was chosen by Mitel to provide echo cancellation for the Mitel 5000 Network Communications Solution and Axxess Converged Communications System.
http://www.octasic.com
Xobni Raises $7 Million for MS Outlook Plug-in
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Start-ups
Xobni, a start-up based in San Francisco, closed $7 million in second round funding for its Microsoft Outlook plug-in. The software offers lightning fast search and organization of an Outlook inbox. Xobni (which is "in-box" spelled backwards) has evolved from a private, invite-only beta to publicly available software that's been downloaded over 1.5 million times. Xobni has evolved from a private, invite-only beta to publicly available software that's been downloaded over 1.5 million times.
The funding round was backed by new investor Cisco Systems, as well as Xobni's existing investors - Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico.
http://www.xobni.com
Deltacom Expands GigE, 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps Wavelength Services
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Service Providers
ITC^DeltaCom has extended its GigE, 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps wavelength services availability to a number of new markets across the Southeast. The wavelength services are now available in the following new markets: Wilsonville and Mobile, AL; Savannah, Augusta and two additional carrier hotels in Atlanta, GA; Lake City, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Tampa, Ocala, Archer and Pensacola, FL; Columbia and Greenville, SC; and Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, NC.
The company said its network upgrade is ahead of schedule with the completion of its Infinera DTN optical network systems deployment. Deltacom expects to complete the deployment of additional SONET equipment and to build out a number of metro markets by mid-year 2009.
ITC^DeltaCom, which is based in Huntsville, Alabama, has a fiber optic network spanning approximately 15,800 route miles, including more than 11,800 route miles of owned fiber.
"We were able to complete the DTN deployment a month earlier than originally planned," said Tony Tomae, Deltacom's Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
http://www.deltacom.com
Japan's Global Access Tests 100 GbE with Infinera
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Optical
Global Access Limited (GAL), which owns and operates a network linking Japan's major cities and cable landing points on the Japanese coast, completed a trial of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) using Infinera's platform. During the test, 100 GbE traffic was sent over a live network between Tokyo and Osaka, a round trip of about 1,200 km. This 100 GbE demonstration showed that GAL's existing network based on the Infinera Digital Optical Networking system can carry 100 GbE traffic using Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization paradigm.
Last year, GAL deployed an Infinera Digital Optical Network. The Infinera DTN is a Digital ROADM for long-haul and metro core networks, combining high-capacity DWDM transport, integrated digital bandwidth management, and GMPLS-powered service intelligence in a single platform.
http://www.infinera.com
2Wire Debuts Modular Broadband HomePortal
2Wire unveiled its HomePortal GEM modular platform for enabling broadband service providers to quickly deploy a wide range of new services, ranging from cordless phone DECT base stations and femtocells, to home control interfaces and intelligent home servers. The platform is designed for incremental expansion through physical modules as well as software, applications, and management systems.
An application software development kit (SDK) and snap-on hardware modules enable the expansion.
Network operators can develop their own applications for the modular GEM platform or use third-part providers. The first wave of GEM applications is expected to include technology from companies such as Logitech, OpenDNS, and SharedBand. New third-party applications will include home surveillance, home automation, digital media server, and digital life backup services, among others.
2Wire features a TR-069 standard-compliant management system that could support and manage a variety of devices on the home network, including off-the-shelf digital cameras, NAS disks, motion sensors, and music players.
Expansion modules that will be offered for use with the HomePortal GEM platform include:
GEM Topaz -- DECT base station cordless phone system
GEM Sapphire -- home control interface, consolidating control of the digital home
GEM Emerald -- intelligent home server, simplifying personal media and data management
GEM Ruby -- femtocell mobile base station, improving mobile phone coverage in the home
GEM Amethyst -- 3G wireless WAN, delivering broadband over a 3G link
"The HomePortal GEM is a powerful, elegant, and flexible gateway solution, designed to meet the current and future needs of both service providers and end users," said Pasquale Romano, president and CEO of 2Wire. "Its modularity establishes a low base unit cost while providing flexible expansion options for additional revenue-generating services. This new platform, combined with our application software development program, will define, optimize, and extend the capabilities of the digital home for years to come."http://www.2wire.com
Huawei to Open R&D Center with Telecom Italia
Huawei Technologies and Telecom Italia signed an agreement to establish a Network Innovation Centre (NIC), which will work in close relation with Telecom Italia research and innovation labs (TILab) to develop new technologies for the carrier. The NIC will focus on research on green ultra-broadband network, Quality of Services, Quality of Experience, Fixed Mobile Convergence etc. to provide more services and better experience to users in Italy. http://www.huawei.com
China's State Council Issues 3G Licenses
Sunday, January 04, 2009 BroadbandWireless
China's State Council issues 3G licenses to the nation's top three mobile operators.
The licenses employ all three major standards, including the domestically developed TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), WCDMA and CDMA 2000. China Mobile will use TD-SCDMA, while China Unicom and China Telecom will use WCDMA and CDMA 2000, respectively.
http://english.gov.cn
Freescale Targets $200 Netbooks with 1GHz ARM
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Silicon
Freescale Semiconductor marked its entrance into the fast-growing netbook market with a solution based on the new i.MX515 processor featuring ARM Cortex-A8 technology,. Freescale's solution includes Ubuntu software, components and resources for OEMs. The new i.MX515 provides up to 2100 Dhrystone MIPS and can scale in performance from 600MHz to 1GHz. Freescale is also including a new power management IC, an ultra low-power audio codec and Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe's Flash Player for mobile phones and devices.
"As was evident in the 2008 holiday season, the netbook market has exploded due to consumer demand for affordable and compact devices that allow users to conduct routine tasks like social networking or shopping on the Web," said Philip Solis, principal analyst at ABI Research. "The netbook market is still in its infancy, and it represents a huge market opportunity for companies like Freescale. As advanced platforms for netbooks become increasingly available, price points will drop and the market will expand."http://www.freescale.com
PCTEL Acquires Wi-Sys for GPS Antenna Optimization
PCTEL, which develops propagation and optimization solutions for the wireless industry, has acquired Wi-Sys Communications, an Ottawa, Canada based company that specializes in GPS antenna and receiver technology, for $2.1 million. Wi-Sys' core products include a family of magnetic and fixed mount GPS antennas, OEM antennas and integrated GPS receiver-antennas to address GPS requirements at all levels of integration in military, public safety, marine and commercial applications. In 2008, Wi-Sys' proprietary products and technology generated approximately $2.2 million in revenue.
http://www.antenna.pctel.com
LG Electronics Unveils Broadband TV with Netflix
Sunday, January 04, 2009 TTP
LG Electronics unveiled its broadband-enabled HDTVs with Netflix streaming software embedded directly in the TV. The new LCD and plasma "Broadband HDTVs" will display movies, TV episodes and high-definition (HD) content from Netflix. An Ethernet port enables the broadband connection. LG's new LCD and plasma HDTVs will join the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player, the first Blu-ray disc player to stream movies instantly from Netflix.
http://us.lge.com
Industry Conference Schedule for Q1 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Financial
to 11-Jan-09
to 04-Feb-09
DesignCon
Clara, California
3GSM
OFCNFOEC
CompTel's
Spring 2009 Convention & Expo
to 05-Mar-09
to 03-Apr-09
http://www.convergedigest.com/conferences.asp
Force10 and Turin Networks to Merge
Sunday, January 04, 2009 Packet Systems
Turin Networks and Force10 Networks announced a merger agreement. The deal combines leading equipment suppliers for the service provider and enterprise data center markets.
Turin Networks is a leading provider in the wireless backhaul aggregation market with products deployed in more than 60 thousand North American cell sites. Force10 Networks has the industry's second highest revenue share for total 10 Gigabit Ethernet, as ranked by the Dell'Oro Group. Industry analyst firm IDC projects two million 10 GbE ports will be deployed in data centers worldwide next year, while data center Ethernet switching revenue will grow at a CAGR of 8% to reach $6.4 billion in 2012. The combined companies will have more than 1,300 customers worldwide, including a number of top-tier service providers and premier enterprise data centers.
The merged company will operate under the name of Force10 Networks and be based in San Jose, California. Henry Wasik, president and CEO of Turin Networks, will become the president and CEO of the combined entity. Current Force10 Networks president and CEO James Hanley will assume the role of president, field operations with responsibility for sales, marketing, services and business development. The merger is expected to be finalized by March 2009, pending the completion of legal and regulatory filings.
http://www.force10networks.com/http://www.turinnetworks.com
Cisco Introduces Media Experience Engine
Sunday, December 07, 2008 Packet Systems
Cisco introduced its Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3000, a media processing appliance that helps enterprises to simplify live and on-demand media sharing across PCs, mobile devices and other digital screens, by formatting video and rich media for viewing on any device.
The platform provides the ability to encode a single source of content so that it is playable on any device. It also delivers real-time post production and processing capabilities such as watermarking, voice and video editing, text and image overlays and noise reduction to create customized broadcast quality video experiences.
Cisco is positioning the Media Experience Engine as the first in a series of products for transforming enterprise networks into "medianets."
"The Internet and IP networks as we know them are changing," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies group. "In the near future, 90 percent of consumer network traffic will be video and rich media, and new medianet technologies and devices will drive the evolution not only to new networks, but immersive new experiences made possible by combining video, rich media, voice and data on a single networked platform. As businesses look to reduce costs and increase productivity, medianet solutions will enable new methods of networked collaboration and virtualization, such as seamless language translations over Cisco TelePresence, which will eliminate communication barriers in the workplace."http://www.cisco.com
AppTrigger Introduces Ignite Application Session Controller – ServiceExtender
Sunday, December 07, 2008 PacketVoice
AppTrigger continues to enhance its Ignite Application Session Controller (ASC) , which ensures "any to any" application connectivity between legacy and next generation networks,
as well as competing architectural agendas between vendors. AppTrigger's platform resides between the application layer and the control plane with the purpose of delivering call/session control, signaling, switching and media capabilities.
Newly released Version 10.0 of the platform introduced ServiceExtender capabilities, enabling service providers to extend existing revenue-producing voice services to NGN/IMS build outs while also enabling Next Gen applications the ability to leverage the large subscriber base within their legacy networks. AppTrigger said its new ASC ServiceExtender provides benefits for both "old to new" as well as "new to old" application extension. Specifically, the ASC ServiceExtender provides:
Flexibility: Service Providers retain control of their applications versus a more vendor dependent model
Simplicity: Easy to manage and adapt via toolkit versus complex, proprietary solutions
Cost Savings: Greater savings in both CAPEX & OPEX as opposed to traditional stove piped solutions.
http://www.apptrigger.com
ECI Telecom Extends Ethernet MPLS Capabilities to Access Transport
ECI Telecom has enhanced its BroadGate (BG) line of micro MultiService Provisioning Platforms (µMSPP) with MPLS capabilities.
ECI's BG-20 and BG-30 platforms are compact solutions for cellular,utilities, and access operators. It provides a full set of MPLS Layer 2 capabilities plus an entire range of Ethernet over SDH, Ethernet over PDH, PCM, PDH, and SDH services, allowing carriers to leverage their legacy SDH installed base while offering a mix of PCM and carrier class Ethernet services to their customers. Both the BG-20 and BG-30 supports full triple play services, IPTV, VoD, VoIP, and HSI for residential NGN applications. They can serve as an access aggregation platform and as an MSAG (Multi Service Aggregation Gateway) CLE platform. The BG offers enhanced video handling and P2MP multicast tree connectivity, which enables highly efficient bandwidth savings for broadcast TV/IPTV services, as well as star VPLS for IPTV and IGMP control messages.
ECI said the MPLS-enhanced BG platform complements its other MPLS-based and MEF-certified platforms, the XDM family of MSPPs and the 9000 family of Carrier Ethernet Switch Routers (CESR), delivering end-to-end, access to core, carrier-class Ethernet services. The entire product line is centrally managed by ECI's LightSoft unified network management solution.http://www.ecitele.com
RightScale Raises $13 Million for Cloud Computing Management
Sunday, December 07, 2008 Start-ups
RightScale, a start-up based in Santa Barbara, California., raised $13 million in its second round of venture capital funding for its cloud computing management.
RightScale enables companies to create Web solutions running on cloud computing providers such as Amazon EC2 that are scalable, reliable, easy to manage, and affordable. RightScale said it can help organizations to deploy mission critical applications in a matter of hours using "cloud-aware" server templates. The automated RightScale platform requires little knowledge of cloud architecture to deploy, manage and dynamically scale even complex, multi-cloud applications.
RightScale will use the proceeds to accelerate product and market development of its cloud computing management platform to meet growing demand, including support for new clouds and expansion into additional geographic markets.
The new funding was led by Index Ventures. Current investor Benchmark Capital, which led RightScale's first round of venture financing, also participated in this round. In addition, RightScale announced that Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer has joined the company's board of directors.http://www.RightScale.comRightScale is headed by Michael Crandell (CEO and founder), who has worked as CEO or EVP for 10 years in Internet-based, software-as-a-service companies, including eFax (Internet fax) and Celebros (e-commerce search). Its technical team included Thorsten von Eicken (CTO and founder), who previously was Chief Architect at Expertcity.com and Citrix Online, makers of GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and GoToAssist; and Rafael H. Saavedra (VP of Engineering and founder), who previously was Director of Software Development at Expertcity/Citrix Online where he was in charge of the Applications group.
Alvarion Announces 11% job Cuts
Sunday, December 07, 2008 Service Providers
Alvarion, a leading supplier of WiMAX and wireless broadband solutions, plans to reduce its global workforce by approximately 11%, from a base of about 1000 employees. In addition, Alvarion is implementing company-wide measures including management salary reductions. The combined initiatives are expected to generate annual cost of goods and operating expense savings of about $15 million.
"We have not experienced order cancellations or push-outs so far in Q4, but we see lengthening sales cycles, and we remain cautious about the potential effect of the economic climate on WiMAX-related spending decisions as we move through next year," said Tzvika Friedman, president and CEO of Alvarion.
Mr. Friedman continued. "Therefore, our operating plan for 2009 contains twin goals of continued revenue growth from strong, well-funded operators, and a lower breakeven point to help preserve our profitability and financial flexibility if business conditions worsen. Our plan calls for lowering our non-GAAP operating profit breakeven point (which excludes stock-based compensation expense and any one-time charges) to below $70 million in revenue per quarter, based on a lower gross margin level of about 45%. Equally important, our plan also maintains our capability to grow revenues as much as 15% over 2008 without increasing fixed expenses, assuming business conditions will support such growth. We believe this plan appropriately balances both short-term uncertainties and long-term prospects."http://www.alvarion.com
Strix Systems Garners Strategic Investment
Sunday, December 07, 2008 Wi-Fi
Strix Systems, which supplies high-performance wireless mesh networking, announced the inflow of strategic investments from global investors. Financial details were not disclosed. Strix Systems plans to increase the size of its U.S. and international sales, support organizations and increase its marketing and educational resources to spur the adoption of wireless mesh networks worldwide.
Strix Systems also announced a new engineering organization at a state-of-the-art R&D center in India, enhancing the company's global reach and support network. This new center will play a key role in accelerating the company's development of new wireless mesh networking products and services.
Recently the company announced a number of new products including Strix Hot Zone Systems (HSx), the Integrated Wireless Video System (IWVS) and the Mobile Wireless System (MWS) as well as key technology partnerships with Milestone Systems, Federal Signal, ICOP Digital, Panasonic, etc.
Strix Systems also announced significant installations worldwide for strategic public safety projects including border-to-border wireless mesh network coverage for Brookline, Massachusetts; public safety video surveillance for Pittsburg, California; video surveillance for homeland security at the Boston Marathon; as well as highway and railway projects including San Diego's North County District; and internet access deployments in six countries in Africa.http://www.strixsystems.com