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Juniper and Extreme
headed the same direction
"We sell to the same customers, so we want to make sure our customers have seamless interoperability," said Extreme's marketing vice president George Prodan. Extreme sells most of its high-speed switching equipment to businesses, but 20 percent of its revenue last quarter came from service providers, Prodan said. Juniper makes high-speed routers used in the Internet's "core," or backbone, through which most Net information travels. Extreme's technology is used by service providers to connect their networks to each other. Extreme's initial success was built largely on providing equipment to corporations. But with the success of competitor Foundry Networks in the service provider market, the company may be looking to extend its technology. Optical Networks wins $125 million in funding and contracts Source: Cnet Start-up Optical Networks, a maker of equipment for metropolitan areas, announced a $75 million infusion of cash and $50 million in customer contracts, two signs that the firm may be the latest beneficiary of investor largesse. The San Jose, Calif.-based company specializes in technology that happens to be the hottest niche in the networking market, and it shows. Optical-based networking systems are thought to be a panacea for network operators that can't keep up with the capacity demands of their customers, because the technology can turn a single strand of fiber into a "fat" pipe capable of handling huge amounts of data at high speeds and low cost. Optical Networks is specifically addressing the aging metropolitan layouts that zip data around various cities. Boosting speed in this area of network systems is thought to be vital for delivery of data and Internet traffic, because providing bandwidth closer to residential areas and office complexes can only feed the desire for more capacity-gobbling applications, such as videoconferencing. In North America alone, the market for optical networking and associated technology based on dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) is expected to grow from $3.1 billion in 1999 to $15.2 billion in 2003, according to market researcher Ryan Hankin Kent. Profit squabble mars wireless Web future Source: Cnet Over the last several years, a group of companies led by Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Phone.com have convinced much of the world it has the best plan for turning wireless phones into mini Web browsing devices. The group's members have pooled their technology, and even gained enough power to pull a reluctant Microsoft into their camp. But on Wednesday, January 19th, one of these companies--wireless Net software developer Geoworks--broke ranks with the announcement it would begin charging steep licensing fees for use of its technology, a move to latch on to the Net's fast-growing profit potential. It's the first time that one of the members has publicly sought profit from the others--but unlikely the last. Analysts say it is a disastrous sign and the industry's quick growth could be slowed, with other companies that own pieces of the technology also seeking to boost their own share in the wireless Net's profits. Geoworks said it would charge royalty fees of up to 10 percent of some companies' per-user revenues--a potentially lucrative stream targeting companies from Phone.com to Microsoft. The WAP Forum members say Geoworks is playing by the rules, however. Geoworks recognizes that its action has ruffled feathers in the community, but says it won't charge any company that makes less than $1 million, in an attempt to continue encouraging innovation. Investors await two wireless IPOs Source: Cnet After a holiday lull, the market for initial public offerings should roar back to life next week with the debut of two wireless companies. 724 Solutions, which allows banks to offer wireless services to customers via digital mobile phones and pagers, and interWave, an equipment provider for wireless communications, are expected to sell their shares mid-week. Because the market for wireless stocks is red-hot, the IPOs could post stellar first-day gains. 724 and interWave represent the early wave of wireless IPOs this year--but not the largest. AT&T's mobile phone division may fetch up to $10 billion when AT&T sells a 20 percent stake to the public as a tracking stock. 724 Solutions hopes to raise up to $78 million, based on the high end of its $11 to $13 pricing range and the 6 million shares it expects to sell. The company, which is being underwritten by Credit Suisse First Boston, expects to sell the shares to institutional investors Tuesday and begin public trading Wednesday under the ticker "SVNX." Meanwhile, interWave is also expected to be a strong performer. The company sells compact wireless communications systems that use the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard. These systems allow employees to connect to their company's private telephone network via wireless devices.
Level 3 to trial SIP along with 3Com Level 3 and 3Com are to begin immediately conducting one of the first US-based IP telephony trials using session initiation protocol (SIP) technology. Since becoming a proposed standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in March 1999, SIP has gained significant support among telecom equipment vendors and carriers. SIP is an open, Internet-friendly protocol used to easily initiate, manage and terminate interactive sessions, including voice, across a wide area network (WAN). It enables Custom Local Area Signaling Service (CLASS) features, such as call blocking, caller ID and call forwarding, to be deployed over IP networks. By using SIP-based technology to reduce the time associated with deploying new features from months to less than a week. The trial is divided into two major phases. Beginning immediately, the first phase is designed to integrate and test the hardware and software components at an enterprise level and will be conducted independently by 3Com and Level 3 at their respective facilities. In phase two, the companies will enable calls over Level 3's voice test network using 3Com SIP telephones and proxy server. When the testing is successfully completed, the two companies expect to develop commercialized applications to bring to the US market. Global Crossing delivers IP wavelength link across Atlantic Source: iLocus Global Crossing has announced IP connectivity via an optical wavelength link, intended to carry commercial traffic between London and New York at 2.5 gigabit per second. The super carrier's transatlantic link uses Cisco Systems' gigabit routing platform, the 12000 Series Gigabit Switch Router, which will permit transoceanic customers to access IP transit services. The 12000 Series' support of Multicast, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), and IP CoS, enables greater support of services ranging from VPNs, real time services, to content services. In addition the 12000 Series' low latency switching architecture ensures SLA integrity. Global Crossing's transatlantic system, Atlantic Crossing 1 fiber optic system link the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. Atlantic Crossing 1 uses wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology to meet the capacity demands that have developed in the high-volume North Atlantic corridor. Global Crossing currently operates its US Internet backbone at OC-48c (2.5 Gbps) and OC-192 (10 Gbps) speeds.
CDMA catching up on GSM as Bluetooth is born New forum
to iron out softswitch standards DSL is ready to go home Alberta satellite gateway completed GlobalStar Canada, a satellite-based telephone company, has completed its terrestrial gateway in High River, Alberta, and begun service trials in Western Canada.
Toronto gets ad-based "free phones" Toronto-based Courtesy Telecom is installing public phones that provide free local calls. The service is financed by display ads surrounding the phone.
Transmeta's long awaited chips are here Transmeta CEO Dave
Ditzel announced two products he hopes will compete with both Intel’s
franchise in the laptop computer market and Palm Computing’s dominance in the
hand-held computing market. The first chip, named TM 5400, will
power notebook computers running Microsoft’s Windows or virtually any other
operating system at 700 MHz. That’s slightly faster notebook processors on the
market today, but the real advantage will be extended battery life. Ditzel said
a Transmeta powered notebook might have twice the current battery life of
current notebooks. The second chip, named TM 3120, is
designed for so-called mobile Internet computers. It runs the Linux operating
system at 400 MHz and promises to let users view Web pages as complex as they
can see with the most powerful desktop computers. The processors are
software based which Ditzel said allows them to run on as
little as one watt of power — compared to 15 or 20 watts for existing laptop
processors. Ditzel said the most critical part of
Transmeta’s processors is the translation software, which allows any software
written for the Intel platform to run on Transmeta’s chips. He called the
technique “code morphing” software, using Very Long Instruction Word
techniques that allow 128-bit-wide commands to be sent to the processor.
That’s twice as wide as Intel’s 64-bit chip. Source: Newsbytes Internet appliances hitting the market are in just as vulnerable to viruses as a home computers or workplace computing systems, and Computer Associates is on the job. Handheld scanners made by Symbol Technologies Inc., will be equipped with InoculateIT, the widely-used anti-virus protector made by Computer Associates International Inc., in a deal announced on January 25. InoculateIT will be preinstalled in the Symbol scanners to guard against viruses that constantly threaten all online devices. "They're equally vulnerable," CA's security business manager Simon Perry told Newsbytes. InoculateIT offers uniform anti-virus protection down the line. "An organization is able to run the same anti-virus solution from their Symbol handheld device all the way to their e-mail server, desktops and laptops," Perry said. "The same solution goes all the way through the enterprise." Computer Associates' aim is to ensure that the Symbol handheld scanners are protected on the Windows CE platform from viruses and malicious code, the companies said. This is not the first time Symbol and Computer Associates have partnered, nor the last. Symbol's Spectrum24 wireless network is managed by CA's Unicenter TNG; Symbol's PDF417 bar-code technology has been integrated with Jasmine ii, CA's intelligent information infrastructure. The two companies plan to extend security and anti-virus support to additional Symbol mobile-computing products in the future, Perry said, declining to give details.
Cisco releases first products of new platform Cisco reps have announced the first products of the new Cisco 6700 multi-function access platform. The platform is for Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), Interexchange Carriers (IXCs) and Internet Communication Providers (ICPs). The first products in the 6700 MFAP are the Cisco 6732 Full Access Device and the Cisco 6705 Integrated Access Device (IAD). The Cisco 6732 product is for central office and remote terminal applications and serves large service provider applications.The 6705 IAD interoperates with the Cisco 6732 chassis and is for remote terminal and customer premises equipment applications. Key features of the Cisco 6700 Series MFAP include integrated voice and data, TDM and ATM protocol interface support and GR-303 and TR-008 traffic grooming. The platform complies with all relevant Telcordia, NEBS and UL standards and is certified for co-location with Class 5 switches using GR-303 and TR-008. List pricing for entry-level configurations of the Cisco 6732 Full Access Device and the 6705 IAD is $9,000 and $5,000 respectively. Both products are available now. |
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