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Bell Atlantic
offers ISPs single-number access Bell Atlantic offers ISPs single-number access Source: Newsbytes & Digitalmass Bell Atlantic has offered Internet service providers and businesses a way to give customers dialup access using the same number, no matter where they are. Using Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface (ISDN PRI) links, Bell Atlantic's Advanced Intelligent Network will connect consumers, mobile Web surfers and on-the-road professionals to their ISP or local area network. Bell Atlantic is offering numbers under the little-used 500 area code system set up for more than five years to direct calls to a particular phone line. For example, a call from anywhere in Bell Atlantic's region to order a pizza from a large chain would be automatically directed to the outlet closest to the caller. Now the same system is available for ISP and LAN hookups, Bell Atlantic spokesman Jim Smith told Newsbytes. "Our network will feed these data calls to that high-capacity pipe and off they go," said Smith. "That avoids the necessity of having a number in every local calling area." Bell Atlantic says it is the first company to offer ISPs and corporate networks a way to give customers single-number, dial-up access for its Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, or any combination of regional calling areas. Bell Atlantic can be found on the Web at .
CRTC Decision 2000-86 approves CTV's purchase of 80% in NetStar Communications, subject to conditions that include the sale of the Sportsnet specialty channel within one year. BCE, whose offer to buy CTV is conditional on approval of the NetStar deal, has reserved comment.
Along with fiber-optic network partner MetroMedia Fiber Network, the company will initially aim its services at businesses, which are close to urban fiber networks and have considerable demand for high-speed, high-quality video. The company cites university telemedicine, teleconferencing or the long-distance video connections used by television stations as possible candidates. The company also will add consumer applications such as video-on-demand services as the market matures, it says. The Lucent technology would take advantage of the huge bandwidth available on MetroMedia's fiber network to make an end run around much of the public Internet's blockages, and then use software developed inside its Bell Labs to streamline the delivery of the video. As one example, a GeoVideo browser will allow customers to tailor their connections to receive HDTV-quality video or higher, depending on their connections, or have up to 16 windows open simultaneously receiving different videoconferencing signals.
New Redback hardware helps ease network traffic Source: Cnet Redback Networks, a high-speed Net equipment firm, introduced products to handle traffic in the busiest telecommunications networks. The new equipment will begin generating sales during the second quarter, the company said. GTE, a Redback customer that's being purchased by Bell Atlantic, is trying the products. The product line will help phone, cable and Internet companies handle 10 times as many simultaneous connections as earlier versions. The company's shares have soared more than 27-fold since an initial stock sale in May 1999, as telecommunications service providers buy more equipment to keep pace with demand for faster online access. Nortel Networks, Siemens and other rivals have already introduced similar products that manage more online traffic, Kaufman Bros. analyst Barry Sine said.
Deltathree.com, which had 1.7 million subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter, generates its revenue by routing calls on its network and from banner advertising. The company offers features such as fax, voice mail and email that can be checked by phone or computer. The company said it has research and development offices in Jerusalem, where it employs 80 of its 125 workers. Most of the remaining employees are in New York.
Lasers have promise when compared to competitors such as fixed wireless technologies because of the far greater speeds at which they can transmit voice and data traffic. Lasers can deliver communications at least 10 times faster than most fixed wireless systems and do not require expensive regulatory licenses. Some experts suggest there simply is not enough wireless spectrum to supply similar download speed rates. "The pros are very short install times. It doesn't take any time at all to establish a connection," Chris Nicoll, director of infrastructure analysis at market watcher Current Analysis, said. Laser service providers install receiver equipment near a window in their customers' offices, while originating the signal from a nearby office building, often rented with the sole purpose of housing the service provider's gear. The equipment uses lenses, similar to those found in telescopes, to project the invisible beams of light. But some industry experts say susceptibility to foul weather leaves lasers far from an ideal solution. Heavy rain, snow, sometimes turbulence in the air and particularly fog can attenuate laser signals and cause outages or slow connection speeds, experts say. If the human eye has difficulty seeing through the weather conditions, such as in thick fog, so will the lasers, experts say.
Nortel Networks said
its forthcoming 10 Gigabit Ethernet products will deliver as much as a 25x
improvement in network price/performance. Utfors,
a leading Swedish Internet and telecommunications operator, will deploy the
Nortel Networks' system to build "Europe's first end-to-end Ethernet
network." Canada's Bell Nexia
will also deploy end-to-end optical Ethernet to offer its customers 10/100/1000
Mbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet-based VPNs. Financial terms of the Utfors and Bell
Nexia contracts were not disclosed. Nortel
Networks' optical Ethernet portfolio will include:
In return, Qwest, which will own the data centers, will receive $2.5 billion from IBM to lease 25 percent of the space in each, making the computer giant an anchor tenant. The $2.5 billion also allows IBM to use Qwest's network. Data centers are giant warehouses where computer servers and high-speed telecommunications connections create a nerve center for Web based business operations. The two companies plan to lease space to businesses who want to run their own online operations, or they could manage Web sites on behalf of businesses, which is called Web hosting in industry jargon. The alliance was nonexclusive, and IBM said it might eventually look to partner with other telecommunications companies in other regions. Qwest said last fall it would house computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co.'s own ambitious Web business push in Qwest data centers.
Government lawyers spent much of the weekend reviewing Microsoft's latest offer, which published reports said included promises to separate the company's Internet browser software from its dominant Windows operating system. The proposal, faxed on Friday, was sufficiently complex that some of the Justice Department's top technical experts were called to evaluate it.
Rather, the problem is that thousands of Bay State Net users who crave faster speeds will find out they live in the wrong place. In Bell Atlantic territory, DSL is promised to work only if you live within about 15,000 feet of a so-called central office equipped for the service. Normally that's a windowless brick building in your nearest downtown or town center with a Bell logo on the side. About half of Bell's 270 Massachusetts central offices now have the necessary equipment. But even if your home is inside the nominal DSL zone, your line still may not qualify because there is some piece of obstructing hardware between you and the DSL-ready central office. Or your line may be in a cable bundle with too many other DSL lines or data lines and face interference. Enter Elastic Networks, a new company spun off from Nortel Networks. Elastic is offering a system it says can overcome all those obstacles, extending the reach of DSL up to 21,000 feet or more and blasting through devices such as "bridge taps" and "wire gauge changes" that normally thwart the delivery of DSL. The system, whose development included tests at the Boston Sheraton Hotel and the Seaport Hotel in South Boston, could also offer a cost-effective way to bring DSL into apartment buildings, hotels, and offices without needing a basement-to-roof rewiring job. DSL works by adding electronic equipment to exploit vast amounts of capacity on existing, standard copper telephone lines that go unused by voice traffic, creating an "always on" link to the Net. Up to 8,000 feet from a central office, Griffith said, the technology can deliver 4 megabits per second in both directions, which is expected to soon grow to 6 to 10 megabits. At maximum current limits of about 21,000 feet, the service still delivers close to 400 kilobits per second, or nearly eight times more than a dial-up modem. And one beta-test participant in North Carolina, who lives 30,000 feet from the nearest central office, says he is getting 330 kilobits per second, Griffith said.
Israel-based BreezeCOM, manufacturer of wireless access products, opened at $35 a share - 167% above the issue price - at its Nasdaq debut om March 23rd today. Trading under symbol BRZE, the company had earlier revised its issue price from $15 to $20 due to over subscription. BreezeCOM raised $100m thorough its IPO. Most of BreezeCOM products use spread spectrum radio transmission, digital signal processing and wireless packet switching technology. In the VoIP area, BreezeCOM produces wireless VoIP solutions. The company has teamed up with Cisco to design BreezePHONE, a wireless local loop (WLL) solution based on VoIP technology. In addition, BreezePHONE enables high speed wireless Internet Data access. BreezeCOM has also partnership with SpectraLink in VoIP area. The vendor has three main product lines: BreezeACCESS for service providers
in licensed and unlicensed frequency bands, BreezeNET for wireless campus
networks in unlicensed bands and BreezeLINK for point-to-point T1/E1
connectivity.
Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates' vision of advanced speech recognition was unveiled on 21 March at the company's seventh annual Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference in Miami. Attendees witnessed the first public demonstration of MiPad, a device that blends voice recognition and pen input in a high-speed, wireless, Web-enabled device. The prototype showed off Microsoft's "Dr. Who" voice-activated interface technology that could end up in products including cellular phones, wrist watches, and palm-top computers. Using only clicks and voice commands, Microsoft's Steven VanRoekel called a meeting, invited a person, set a time, and designated a place. Then he told the device, "Forget it," and details of the meeting vanished from the conference room screen, to the cheers of the conference attendees. X.D. Huang, the senior researcher with the speech technology group at Microsoft Research, said this technology will likely end up in some type of Microsoft product, but would not give a timetable for its introduction.
IBM Corp. reported on 22 March that it is providing researchers and developers with a new type of supercomputer that uses the Linux alternative operating system and has the computational power of the traditional IBM, Cray, and SGI supercomputers–power they previously could not afford. The Los Lobos computer system, which is actually a supercluster of 256 IBM Netfinity PC servers, will be used by the National Computational Science Alliance, a coalition of 50 academic, governmental, and private research entities that includes the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, the system's eventual site. The servers, which are linked by special clustering software and high-speed networking hardware, will process 375 gigaflops (375 billion floating-point operations per second), which is enough for it to rank 24th among the worlds 500 fastest supercomputers. It will also offer about 2.5 terabytes of hard disk space, roughly the equivalent of that contained in 1250 average desktop computers. The Los Lobos system–the first of six such systems reported to be in the works–is perceived as an endorsement of the potential of Linux and the genesis of its use in a broader range of applications.
Cisco closes as world's most valuable company Source: Teledotcom Cisco Systems, the biggest maker of equipment that powers the Internet, closed on Friday with a higher stock market value than Microsoft, making it the most valuable company in the world. Cisco ended the day with a market capitalization of $579.2 billion, slightly ahead of Microsoft's $578.2 billion. Shares of Cisco closed up 1 9/16 at a record 79 3/8, while Microsoft eased 3/16 to 111 11/16. Both stocks trade on the Nasdaq. Stock in Cisco (stock: CSCO) has continued to climb steadily through the year, gaining one-third in value. Shares of computer-software giant Microsoft have languished amid concerns over the government's pending antitrust case, easing 10 percent from its peak. Microsoft (stock: MSFT) stock jumped Thursday amid reports that the company was nearing a settlement of the case in which the government has charged it with abusing its monopoly position. Some analysts see Microsoft being hampered by the terms of any upcoming settlement, and are starting to make Cisco their core holding among large capitalization technology stocks. Microsoft, while still a strong generator of corporate profits, derives much of its income from desktop applications and operating systems. While the Internet has boosted demand for Microsoft's products, Cisco, whose routers carry most of the traffic, is seen as a bigger beneficiary of the Net's growth, and its earnings gains have far outpaced Microsoft's in recent quarters.
Structus Technologies announced on March 27th an acquisition from Marconi Communications of backbone switches with capacities of up to 10 gigabits per second. The iron goes into the core of a backbone Structus is building to enable municipalities to set themselves up as virtual Internet service providers (ISPs) and CLECs. Start-up Structus has taken in private financing and money from Marconi, which has matched every dollar Structus has raised from angels with an undisclosed multiple. Structus' backbone goes live April 1, interconnecting tier-two cities in the rural areas where the Covad Communications and America Onlines of the world don't dare tread. Even if other service providers were to compete with Structus, they would need to come to local electric municipalities with more than just wholesale dial-up; Structus' service bundle includes everything from back-office services, such as billing, to affinity marketing programs. Munimarket insiders said there's huge demand for the services Structus is bringing into the countryside. The motivation for electric utilities is often political: to attract business to the area. The long-term strategy is to steal business away from incumbent telephone and cable companies. Most utilities have realized that video services are the cash cows, Salter said. "Ninety percent of them get into the market to compete against the local cable TV provider."
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