AMD set to beat Intel on fastest chip 
Motorola joins Linux hit parade 
Cell phones: voice-access the web 
Playing the VoDSL wild card 
Communications breakthrough? 
Navigating hybrid networks 
eConvergent provides outsourced VoIP call center hosting 
Broadmedia launches CPE for Internet telephony 
Net2Phone invests in WebEx 
Rockwell patents Web callback app 
Agilent to unveil telecom switching technology 
More tech firms decide smaller is better 
Rogers and Excite open portal 
Icrave stops net broadcasts 

Advanced Micro issued a news release stating it will announce on March 6, that it has "commenced shipments of 1GHz [gigahertz] AMD Athlon processors.  "Analysts had said they expected both Intel and its scrappy rival Advanced Micro to launch their first processors running at one gigahertz this week.  A call to Intel yesterday afternoon was not returned.  Both companies sped up their product plans, analysts said, in order to capture the boasting rights for being first to the market with a chip that runs at 1 billion cycles per second.

Motorola joins Linux hit parade
Source: ZDnet

Motorola Computer Group said it will ship its own version of the Linux operating system, named High Availability Linux, or HA Linux.  The Motorola Inc. division claimed HA Linux will offer 99.999 percent availability, a rating commonly called "five nines," amounting to no more than five minutes of downtime per year.  HA Linux is aimed at large, high-end telecommunications applications that require extreme stability, such as call servers and IP gateways.  David Peters, Motorola director of strategic partnerships, said the HA Linux project came in response to specific requests from its telecom customers. "Our partners wanted a Linux that met their particular needs," he said.

In order to meet availability requirements, the HA Linux will permit hot-swapping of system components such as processors, I/O controllers and power supplies. Other new additions include active-standby support and an intersystem communications interface, intended to minimize disruption while switching between CPUs. The new OS will support Intel- and PowerPC-based servers.  Motorola said it expects to ship HA Linux in May.

Cell phones: voice-access the web
Sources: ZDnet & Msnbc

Telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies Inc. has introduced technology called PhoneBrowser that allows mobile phone users without personal computers to access information from the Web using spoken commands.  Lucent also announced an initial customer trial of PhoneBrowser with DriveThere.com, a business that provides information and services for motorists via a Web portal.  For service providers such as a wireless carrier or a Web portal, PhoneBrowser will build, host and manage Web-speech applications, offering these customers a variety of ways to leverage the new access capability.

"We believe the wireless Web will reach its full potential only when customers can use the most simple, natural and mobile human interface -- speech," David Stahl, a director in Lucent's New Ventures Group, said in a statement. The highway information database to be used in the test was developed by St. Louis-based Ultradata Systems, a provider of highway travel information and a one-third owner in DriveThere.com.  Typical PhoneBrowser customers will include wireless carriers, Internet service providers and Web portals, Lucent said.

Playing the VoDSL wild card
Source: ZDnet
 
Digital Subscriber Line technology has been viewed as a data dream for delivering faster Internet access over phone lines, but it is morphing into a technology that could dramatically change the local service competition business model.  A handful of companies scattered across the nation are offering or will soon offer services based on new voice-over-Digital Subscriber Line (VoDSL) technology, which can carry up to 16 voice services over a single phone line, as well as high-speed data. This new technology is launching yet another group of new players, or competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). These companies can appeal to small to midsized businesses and residential customers with a package of services that includes highly desirable, always-on, fast Internet access, but also comes with lucrative local and long-distance voice services.

"Service providers of all kinds - incumbents, CLECs, long-distance companies - are in some phase of trialing this technology," says Jennifer Stagnaro, vice president of marketing at CopperCom, which makes a voice gateway product for VoDSL. "But the nimblest players are the ones who were already in voice services and are now becoming integrated communications providers by added DSL."

Mpower Communications, once known as MGC Communications, is a case in point. A voice services CLEC with operations in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Nevada, it is now deploying VoDSL technology in all of its markets and experiencing dramatic growth, says John Boersma, senior vice president of engineering and network operations. The company already had voice switches in place, so it only had to add DSL gear at each central office (CO); voice gateways to peel the voice off the DSL line and send it to a voice switch; and integrated access devices at the customer premises that take in both voice and data and put them onto the DSL access pipe.  "This improves our economics tremendously, because we only have to lease one or two copper lines from the phone company and we can offer a typical travel agency up to eight voice lines, for example," Boersma says. "Plus, it gives us control over the customer, and it lets us offer high-speed Internet access to small to midsized businesses that haven't been exposed to it, yet."

Communications breakthrough?
Source: Comsoc

The Optical Domain Service Interconnect is a group of over 50 service providers and equipment suppliers seeking to establish guidelines for the blending of electrical and optical network components. Optical networks are able to handle an ever-increasing amount of traffic. New technology is making broadband pipes highly intelligent, according to Jeff Kiel, Sycamore Networks' vice president of product marketing. But a standard has not yet been created that will allow the management tools that run such pipes to communicate with the optical layer. ODSI intends to introduce a standardized process that would enable electrical-domain management tools to be grasped in real time by the underlying optical transport devices; the consortium intends to do this by extending current standards. Avici Systems, Chromatis Networks, and Tachion Networks are among the consortium members. The group must first decide which standard should be extended. The resource reservation protocol and the lightweight directory protocol are the two being considered. RSVP is essentially a transport layer protocol, while LPD is a component of the multiprotocol label switching standard developed to offer QoS for IP networks. 

Navigating hybrid networks
Source: Comsoc  

Optical networking may hasten a speedier Internet. But it also requires network engineers to uncover new ways to maximize efficiency on next-generation networks. Traffic engineering, the act of outlining routes across a network, becomes troublesome when the infrastructure contains foreign elements. The most daunting task seems to be applying traffic engineering techniques to optics. Carriers must uncover the best way to include optical switches in their traffic engineering strategies. Network engineers must find a way for routing information to be communicated between electronic and optical equipment. 

Automated communications between data and optical equipment is being developed by industry standards consortiums and router and switch suppliers. Equipment makers are also incorporating proprietary features into their equipment, providing assistance with traffic engineering in hybrid electrical and optical networks. Avici Systems and IronBridge Networks are among the suppliers that have introduced such features. 

eConvergent provides outsourced VoIP call center hosting
Source: iLocus

eConvergent, solutions provider for e-business customer interaction, has incorporated hosted IP telephony into its call center solution.  The provider will utilize Qwest's fiber optic private network together with Cisco's VoIP gateways, and functionality from Interactive Intelligence's "all-in-one" communications software solution, the Enterprise Interaction Center(EIC).  Blending IP telephony and interaction management capabilities into the solution provides e-business customers the flexibility to incorporate a human touch while doing business online.  eConvergent will blend functionality from EIC to add Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), softphone, skills-based routing, fax, and remote access functionality.

eConvergent's VoIP is sent to the customer through eConvergent's private Frame Relay network using Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) - and not over public Internet - to ensure service levels are maintained and security is assured.

Broadmedia launches CPE for Internet telephony
Source: iLocus

Broadmedia, a new vendor and a service provider, has announced the availability of it Customer Premises Equipment (VoIP gateway), for a phone-to-phone Internet-based long distance service.  The service is available for $99 a month on a pre paid basis. The equipment has a routing table for different destinations and debits the account as the service is used. For an additional $65 per month, Broadmedia provides installation, management and maintenance of the gateway.

Broadmedia has established PSTN termination services in over 200 International locations, giving the service a worldwide reach.  The service is designed for single-site corporations, SOHOs and other business environments where a direct site-to-site Internet telephone connection isn't possible.  Customers do not need to purchase any new network or computer equipment. Broadmedia provides the Internet gateway hardware either on or off the customer premises as part of the service. Because the Internet Gateway is located at the dialing party's premises instead of at a local dial-in POP, there are no local access charges to incur.

Net2Phone invests in WebEx
Source: iLocus

Net2Phone has made a strategic equity investment in WebEx, the company that facilitates meetings on the Web. The two will also integrate their Web-based communications services into each other's offerings.  The integrated services will allow Web-based conferencing and enable users to instantly share applications, presentations, documents and browsers in real-time with integrated voice technology from a PC or Phone.  Net2Phone's unified messaging application will be integrated into WebEx's Web-meeting environment, allowing Web-Ex users to have one universal "Inbox'' both on the web and telephone to access voice mail, e-mail, and faxes.

In return, Net2Phone will add a button to its dialer enabling users to utilize WebEx's real-time data collaboration services.  By clicking on the button, Net2Phones users will be able instantly start a WebEx meeting where they can review, create, and share documents, presentations, and applications with integrated IP video over the Web.

Rockwell patents Web callback app
Source: Commweb

Rockwell Electronic Commerce  has been awarded a patent for their technology permitting Web-based customers to make direct contact with call center representatives via the Internet. Internet customers can request personal phone calls from online businesses with the click of a "Call Me" or "Contact Me" button on the company’s Web site.

When customers prefer to speak with a company representative, they click the Web site’s "Call Me" button. A prompt then comes up, asking the customer to type in their name, phone number and a convenient time to receive the call. The message is transmitted over the Internet to an application that dials the customer’s phone number at the requested time to connect a service representative or sales agent with the customer. If the application encounters a busy signal, the predictive dialer redials the customer's number until it connects.  Rockwell Electronic Commerce is including this new patent in its licensing program.

Agilent to unveil telecom switching technology
Source: Cnet

Agilent Technologies has developed telecommunications switching technology that can route optical signals carrying voice, data or video without converting them from photons to electrons, speeding up the industry's move to an all-optical network.  Agilent said in a statement that commercial prototypes of the technology, called the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform, will be available by the end of 2000. The company said it will unveil the product at the Optical Fiber Conference in Baltimore on March 7th.

The growth of Internet applications is spurring the need for increased capacity on telecommunications networks and improved optical switches to manage the growing traffic, Agilent said.  "As demand for communications explodes, the communications industry is being forced to make more rapid decisions about how networks are configured," said Tom White, general manager of Agilent's Communications solutions group.

More tech firms decide smaller is better
Source: Cnet

Lucent Technologies' bid to crystallize its core mission this week by spinning off its slow-growth businesses, and Cabletron Systems' recent move to break itself into four companies both highlight an evolution toward more focused operations.  "It may well signal a new trend in the way businesses deal with their less-profitable divisions," market watcher Zona Research said. "We expect the spin-off trend to gain momentum as established companies trim their sails to better compete in the Internet marketplace."  Communications companies are also recognizing a difference between their corporate and service provider customer bases. Corporate needs are simple: Build a network that works. Though the same premise encompasses the service provider market, customers here are looking for a wide variety of technologies and services that will allow them to better compete in what has become a cutthroat market.

This difference in customer needs, along with technology trends that promise to break down the barriers between private networks and service provider networks, have forced a re-examination of businesses. With corporate networking relegated to an essentially commodity function, nifty new technologies are most often launched in service provider networks--often targeted at those same corporate customers.  Furthermore, the slew of successful start-up public offerings have bolstered the view that the market is interested in more communications-oriented stock plays, not less.

A common theme has emerged: Unlock assets from a larger parent company in order to better focus a business and take advantage of an explosion of interest in technology stocks.

Rogers and Excite open portal
Source: Angustel

The Excite Canada Partnership, a 50:50 joint venture of Rogers Communications and Excite@Home, has launched a new portal, Excite.ca. Rogers will spend $1 Million to promote the site.

Icrave stops net broadcasts
Source: Angustel

IcraveTV.com has stopped rebroadcasting television programs on the Web. U.S. and Canadian broadcasters have agreed to drop their lawsuits against the Toronto start-up.