Occam GPON gear coming in Q2
By: By Ed Gubbins
Occam Networks plans to start shipping its first gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) gear in the second quarter, benefiting from an acquisition it made last year...
Knology studies triple-play customer loyalty
By: By Sarah Reedy
As Knology fights to climb out of the red this year, the rural triple-play provider will spend much of 2008 striking a balance between competitive pricing and increasing average revenue per user on its bundle. The company has learned in recent years that bundled services don’t just increase customer ARPU, they increase customer retention...
Ekinops adds GigE rings to optical transport
By: By Ed Gubbins
Ekinops is beefing up its optical transport platform with ring-based Ethernet capabilities as the French vendor works toward a larger presence in the United States...
Amedia Networks ceases operations
By: By Ed Gubbins
Amedia Networks ceased all operations last week, the company has disclosed in regulatory filings...
New box brings open IPTV home
By: By Carol Wilson
A Dutch company is trying to bring IPTV to the masses over the Internet via a business model that uses corporate sponsorships to subsidize distribution of a key piece of hardware that ties together Internet video with existing video products...
In the Spotlight: Virtela's Bill Dodds
By: By Carol Wilson
As a managed service provider, Virtela operates a virtual network, using the physical facilities from a broad array of partners to serve multinational corporations, including the increasingly popular undersea cable routes. The recent cable cuts in the Mideast raised concerns about the security and reliability of global networks and services, which Virtela Co-President Bill Dodds discussed with Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson...
Mushroom Networks launches broadband-bonding CPE
By: By Ed Gubbins
A new broadband access equipment vendor making its public launch today promises to boost broadband speeds by bonding access lines of various types—including T-1, DSL, cable broadband and satellite...
RLEC M&A to rise in 2008
By: By Ed Gubbins
Rural carrier consolidation is expected to heat up this year, according to Jeff Gardner, CEO of Windstream Communications...
New face in space
By: By Ed Gubbins
After building the ground infrastructure for satellite broadband provider WildBlue, ViaSat believes it's learned enough about the business to voyage into space itself...
Optical homecoming
By: By Ed Gubbins
The escalation of network traffic and its ensuing consumption of bandwidth capacity have brought renewed vitality to the optical sector in recent years...
Bell Labs: Reviving an icon
By: By Kevin Fitchard
As the research arm of a monopoly, Bell Labs invented the communications world as we know it. But in today's competitive market, this venerable institution must redefine itself to survive...
What's in a node?
By: By Carol Wilson
In building fiber-to-the-node networks, telecom service providers are relying extensively on their experience with outside plant engineering while future-proofing their networks for what they know will be bandwidth-intensive applications...
Mixing satellite TV into the wireline triple-play
By: By Sarah Reedy
Where terrestrial triple-play services are not economical (in rural areas, for example), the lingering question for telcos becomes: How can they seamlessly integrate a partner’s satellite TV service with their own terrestrial services such as video-on-demand (VOD)?...
RLECs see no revenue growth in 2008
By: By Ed Gubbins
Two of the rural telco sector’s largest carriers -- Embarq and Windstream -- have predicted flat or declining revenues for 2008...
SureWest: No need to own wireless for quad play
By: By Ed Gubbins
Providers of quadruple-play services need not own the wireless part of the bundle, Steve Oldham, president and chief executive officer of SureWest Communications, said this week...
Fujitsu back in the WiMAX game—with a partner
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Fifteen months after announcing its entry into the U.S. WiMAX infrastructure market, Fujitsu has finally released its first product, a Mobile WiMAX kit tuned to the 2.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz frequencies popular both in the U.S. and at home in Japan...
TW Cable surges, Qwest slows in Ethernet services
By: By Ed Gubbins
Time Warner Cable is rapidly making gains as a newcomer to the Ethernet services market, while Qwest Communications is falling behind, according to new data from Vertical Systems Group...
Broadband Census launches grassroots effort
By: By Carol Wilson
A veteran journalist is attempting to determine for himself just how accurate the Federal Communications Commission’s rosy reports of competitive broadband services really are. Drew Clark set up his own limited liability corporation, Broadband Census LLC, to try to answer the question of how much broadband access is really available in the U.S....
Zhone, Ascend cofounder Jeanette Symons dies
By: By Ed Gubbins
Jeanette Symons, the cofounder of Zhone Technologies and Ascend Communications, died in a plane crash Friday, according to news reports...
A closer look at 40 Mb/s DSL
By: By Ed Gubbins
Rim Semiconductor turned some heads in January with a claim that its new chip can send traffic at 40 Mb/s over 5,500 feet of 26-gauge copper wire. The chip promises big jumps in bandwidth for carriers such as AT&T that are trying to cram as much traffic as they can down existing copper lines...
What MS+Yahoo means for service providers
By: By Rich Karpinski
If the telecom and Web worlds are merging, then a mega-merger on one side -- Microsoft’s proposed $44.6 billion acquisition of Yahoo -- surely affects the other. But how?...
Calient doubles down
By: By Ed Gubbins
With a new chief executive officer and new funding, Calient Networks isn’t adopting a new strategy—it’s just promising a more aggressive pursuit of its previous plans....
Qwest CEO: It’s the interface, stupid
By: By Carol Wilson
Edward Mueller’s view of the future sets him apart from most telecom CEOs. He’s not building Qwest into a company that will deliver its own voice, data, video and wireless services to its consumer customers. Instead, Mueller is pointing Qwest toward a different kind of future...
Sharedband launching bonded DSL in Seattle this week
By: By Ed Gubbins
British startup Sharedband expects to launch its bonded broadband offering in the United States this week, starting in Seattle and planning to expand throughout the country this year...
Verizon sees no slowdown
By: By Carol Wilson
Verizon today confirmed what AT&T said last week -- if there is an economic slowdown taking place, it isn’t having a major impact on the telecom business...
