LAS VEGAS--In addition to its suite of IPTV, backhaul and mobile platforms, Ericsson this week at NXTComm08 demonstrated a 10 Gb/s Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) for IPTV, what it calls the world’s first. The system has four times the bandwidth of existing GPON making it the highest switch capacity on the market...
LAS VEGAS--Service providers must embrace the same open source economics as their Web 2.0 rivals if they are to compete in a world where computing and telecom are merging at breakneck speed, Sun Microsystems chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy said Wednesday in a NXTcomm08 keynote address...
LAS VEGAS--JDSU this week at NXTComm08 launched a test and service assurance platform focused on helping service providers manage the performance of Ethernet networks delivering wireless backhaul services...
LAS VEGAS--When asked if he was concerned about the Sprint Clearwire WiMAX venture, Verizon president and COO Denny Strigl told press conference attendees that concern was a word beyond what he felt in regards to WiMAX. While Verizon wants to stay aware of what its competition is doing, the operator is happy sticking with its 3G strategy for now....
LAS VEGAS--Broadband provider Actiontec unveiled a DSL modem for environmentally conscious service providers, in addition to two new DSL gateways targeted at the tier two and tier three markets, at NXTComm08 this week....
LAS VEGAS--Service providers are squeezing all they can out of their existing networks, even as they invest in new IP-based core networks and look to offer new access services as well, the three participants in Wednesday’s Broadband in the Loop NXTcomm keynote panel agreed. ...
LAS VEGAS--Sprint will commercially launch its first WiMAX market in September in Baltimore and turn up service in its two other trial markets, Chicago and Washington, D.C., before the end of the year, said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse during his keynote address at NXTcomm08....
LAS VEGAS--Verizon President and COO Denny Strigl took on the critics of the U.S. telecom industry Wednesday in his NXTcomm08 keynote speech, saying the U.S. leads the world in broadband and mobile “in the ways that count”...
The telecom industry is poised to “drive growth and prosperity on a global scale,” AT&T Chairman, President and CEO Randall Stephenson said in Tuesday’s NXTcomm08 keynote speech, and service providers and their vendors all have “an important role to play in making that happen.”...
Broadband is so important to the U.S. economic and well-being that the federal government and major telecom service providers need to work together to develop a broadband strategy that will also be in the industry’s best interests, Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said Tuesday in a Wiley Rein Communications and TechLaw Forum session...
Managing what Verizon calls “the fourth network” – the one inside the home, is a challenge to all service providers, the industry’s top technology executives agreed Tuesday at the ATIS TechThink CTO panel...
IMS interoperability testing will take a step forward at NXTComm08 this week as the IMS Forum on Wednesday unveils the highlights from the IMS Plugfest 5 interoperability event, held earlier this month with industry vendors and service providers...
Carriers have been slower than other industry segments to embrace outsourcing, but the network transformation that faces the entire industry is likely to speed up that process, Mike DeVito, head of Global Telecom Market-Americas for BT Global Services, said Monday at Telephony’s Insights for ILECs Summit...
LAS VEGAS -- Though it’s unknown who will next lead the Federal Communications Commission for a new president, some of the major issues facing the next Chairman are already apparent, according to panelists at the Stifel Nicolaus conference at NXTcomm08....
GestureTek, makers of camera-enabled gesture-recognition technology, is using hand-tracking applications and motion sensing to change the way consumers interact with their TV set – as actively or lazily as they want. ...
Service delivery platforms may be all the rage, but almost any way you cut it the first service delivered via an SDP will be more expensive than more traditional methods of service creation...
New Edge Networks is selling DSL-based Multi-Protocol Label Switching on a wholesale basis to its service provider customers, to enable them to offer more than best-effort service to business users...
Tandberg Television, a division of the Ericsson Group, is bringing search to the multi-screen experience with its launch of the MediaModeler Content Management System, a platform for operators to offer online video and search over their web portals...
LAS VEGAS -- Consolidation is inevitable and imminent in the independent telco sector, according to panelists at Telephony’s Insights event for next-generation ILECs...
NXTcomm08 will feature state-of-the-art conference programming by ATIS, Broadband Wireless World, FierceVoIP and FierceTelecom, and IEC, today, Wednesday, June 18, including the following sessions...
Sun Microsystem at NXTComm08 unveiled a new version of the open source MySQL database specifically built to the stringent requirements of service provider applications like subscriber databases (HLR and HSS) and service delivery platforms...
The fast-growing carrier Ethernet equipment market is shifting in anticipation of a more multicarrier environment for Ethernet services and in anticipation of burgeoning new areas such as mobile backhaul...
As business services shift into the IP realm, service providers are looking for new ways to differentiate their service offerings and finding vendors eager to help them...
Geoff Burke, director of field marketing for Calix, has been talking about IPTV for a long time because his company makes the network equipment that can help providers deliver this new service into the home. But now when he talks about IPTV, it’s rather personal — he’s an AT&T U-verse subscriber...
As senior vice president of technology for Verizon, Mark Wegleitner is something of a fixture at NXTcomm and has been participating in the annual chief technology officer panel with considerable regularity...
Consolidation is expected to continue in the telecom service provider space, particularly among smaller players, panelists at the Stifel Nicolaus conference agreed. But conditions in the overall economy are forcing potential acquirers to view potential targets in a new way, one in which the value of telecom assets is, more than ever, in the eye of the beholder...
Cox Business today announced that it is the first cable MSO to join the SIP Forum, hoping to bring the needs of its business customers into the conversation around SIP trunking...
Soapstone Networks demonstrated its service control plane framework for assuring carrier Ethernet service via a live, multi-vendor network running on the NXTComm08 show floor....
LAS VEGAS -- Accedian Networks on Tuesday announced the availability of an element management system (EMS) promising to enable what the company calls “real-time service level agreements (SLAs)” for Ethernet and IP services....
Embarq no longer has a wireless business, and it has no intention of pursuing IPTV. It’s even outsourcing network operations. But what Embarq does have — voice and DSL — is plenty for the carrier to work with to create a new generation of innovative applications, said Dennis Huber, senior vice president for corporate strategy and development for Embarq, at Insights for Next-Generation ILECs, a Telephony Live Event at NXTcomm...
Las Vegas is all about the gaming industry, and increasingly the gaming industry is all about networked applications, as casinos take advantage of new IP/Ethernet-based converged voice/data/video networks to track literally everything that happens inside their doors...
LAS VEGAS -- Alcatel-Lucent today unveiled a method for transporting business services through metro networks that combines the vendor’s familiar multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) with Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) -- a Layer 2 technology whose use represents a departure for the vendor...
While the traditional concept of quad play as the bundle of voice, data, Internet and wireless offerings is often the simplest way to define it, for independent telecom service providers operating in rural markets, the flex play is usually always more important. Adding additional revenue-generating services is often the most feasible and profitable path to take, according to a panel of industry vendors speaking Monday at Telephony’s Insights conference...
Nortel, in partnership with Microsoft, today announced a fully hosted carrier solution for unified communications (UC) in the small and midsize businesses (SMB) sector. The platform leverages the Nortel Communications Server 2000, an IP multimedia softswitch, and Microsoft’s Hosted Messaging and Collaboration Version 4.5...
IPTV technology provider Amino today introduced the AmiNET130M, a fully digital high-definition IPTV set-top box, at the NXTcomm08 conference in Las Vegas. The new STB supports only HDMI video outputs, no analog, and is both cheaper and simpler to install than earlier HD boxes...
Ethernet, already a staple in metropolitan America, is rapidly making its way to its rural neighbors. According to an Insight’s panel of rural service providers and vendors, the Ethernet market for business in rural America is growing, and most companies are indifferent as to if it’s over copper or fiber – just as long as its fast...
Spirent Communications today unveiled the Spirent Tech-X Flex, a handheld network and service quality tester to identify and troubleshoot IP Video services within the consumer’s home. The product tests service quality over Multimedia over Coax (MoCa networks), as well as Ethernet and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN)...
Owners of Independent telecom companies should have their businesses valued by a company that specializes in that task five years before they want to sell it. That was the advice of Allen Oppenheimer, president of business brokerage A.M. Oppenheimer, addressing attendees of a VIP lunch at the Insights conference presented by Telephony Magazine at NXTcomm on Monday...
Verizon Business has been building for eighteen months and will roll out in the first quarter of 2009 a new “on-demand” computing service that will let its large enterprise customers pay-as-they-go for core computing resources, Verizon executives detailed at the NXTcomm08 show on Monday...
In what is still a crowded IPTV middleware field, Minerva Networks claims to be gaining momentum and is backing up those claims with significant new customer announces and with new capabilities for Minerva’s iTVManager Release 3.2...
NEC has selected Genband’s G9 Converged Media Gateway for its femtocell portfolio, giving Genband key exposure to NEC’s customers Asia and South America. ...
When Charlie Vogt took over as president and CEO of what was then known as General Bandwidth in 2004, he announced a strategy for making the company a dominant player in the media gateway business that included expanding its product set, increasing revenues and developing partnerships with other equipment makers. ...
Microsoft today announced major new additions to its Microsoft Mediaroom ecosystem, including three systems integrators, two testing and quality assurance companies, and a new encoder partner in Harris...
In conjunction with NXTComm08, Allot Communications today introduced a series of new deep packet inspection (DPI)-based products with partners including PeerApp and Qosmos. The joint products allow Internet video and voice-over IP (VoIP) applications, respectively, to leverage DPI in new services and improved user experience...
June Bower, vice president of marketing for consumer entertainment for Alcatel-Lucent, spoke with Telephony Associate News Editor Sarah Reedy to dispel the biggest myths surrounding the often-elusive teen market and to help discover what teens really want...
In a recent interview with Telephony Senior Editor Kevin Fitchard, Sprint Nextel CEO Hesse discussed the challenges Sprint faces as well as Sprint’s investment in WiMAX and the carrier’s reputation of being a maverick in the industry...
Staff members of the Telecommunications Industry Association, with USTelecom the sponsors of the NXTcomm08, will be wearing green shirts to promote the TIA’s major efforts to address environmental issues affecting its members....
Broadband, as a word, is becoming slipperier and perhaps less meaningful every day. Increasingly over the next few years, the term is likely to refer to such a diverse range of offerings that any two people with “broadband” could have vastly different experiences...
It may be some time before we think of the networks of Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless -- or those of AT&T and AT&T Mobility -- as single unified platforms, but NXTcomm08 vendors are looking to help them down the convergence path. The first stop on the way is the femtocell...
Motorola said today it plans to initially build its Long Term Evolution platform for the 700-MHz and 2.6-GHz frequencies, targeting spectrum held by major US and European cellular operators....
Two new products announced today by Calix are aimed at helping service providers address the surge in demand for bandwidth by increasing both capacity and flexibility at the edge of the network....
Six vendors and operators have agreed to collectively pool their patents related to WiMAX in an effort to create a transparent intellectual property environment that encourages the WiMAX embedded devices market....
As IPTV is being deployed at mass scale by large telecom service providers around the globe, the service is quickly morphing from a video service to compete with cable and satellite into a whole-home communications and entertainment system that ties the TV set into the voice and computing systems consumers are already using...
Some equipment vendors set to unveil new carrier Ethernet gear at the NXTcomm08 trade show next week are spilling the beans a week early, including Redback Networks, RAD Data Communications and Aktino....
In its latest effort to unify wireline and wireless services, Verizon Business now offers enterprise customers a single portal from which to manage both accounts....
NXTcomm08 promises to talk about what is, rather than what could be. Nowhere is this more important than in the oft-hyped, oft-disappointing arena of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). At this year’s conference, exhibitors will tell you that FMC -- and the more general idea of convergence -- is today being defined by the services it enables, not by the paltry array of devices available today. And, they’ll tell you, there is cause for optimism...
NXTcomm08 won’t be the same old telecom trade show. Whereas in years past the topics permeating the show floor revolved around buzz, hype and surmising about the future potential of technologies, this year’s show will be all about where the industry is today -- how to deploy technology, interoperate it with other networks and how to bring together a community of buyers, suppliers and investors to ultimately change the way everyone does business...
Sharedband is making progress bringing its bonded-broadband offering up to speed, billing US customers for the first time in May while it works to sign up more...
Alcatel-Lucent was a double winner today as NXTcomm announced its 2008 Eos Awards, honoring companies for the best new technologies or enterprise solutions in 12 categories of wireless, broadband and next-generation technologies for public and enterprise networks...
Comverse today announced a new version of its core billing platform today featuring a single data model and product catalog, new capabilities that will allow service providers to take a more strategic approach to billing and feature bundling, the company said...
As IP services proliferate, keeping them up and running to the same uptime and quality metrics as traditional telephony services is becoming a challenge for all service providers...
Verizon Communications is considering expanding its fiber-to-the-premises network beyond its original target of 18 million homes, according to the company’s chief financial officer...
The transition to all-IP networks is a foregone conclusion, and a technological certainty. Less certain, however, is how service providers will make their profits in the all-IP universe, and avoid being relegated to the packet pipe. At NXTcomm08 (June 15-19), exhibitors will be very much focused on answering this all-important question by showing how to deliver profitable IP-based services to both the business and consumer markets...
Standards have always been a critical part of the telecom industry’s progress, but in the last few years, that process has changed, according to the woman who leads North America’s leading telecom standards leadership organization...
A Canadian start-up company with a Greek name is introducing a new approach to delivering broadband services designed to streamline delivery and pump up revenues for service providers...
Sprint and Clearwire’s renewed engagement didn’t just boost WiMAX’s profile in the U.S. According to global vendors, it enormously benefited WiMAX worldwide, giving operators who were on the fence about WiMAX the confidence to deploy their networks...
Microsoft this week released a beta version of its Microsoft Mediaroom Presentation Framework to the 150 software developers that are part of the Microsoft program, allowing them to now directly import Web Services content into IPTV applications...
Zayo Bandwidth has stitched together networks from three different acquisitions to light a new optical network in the Northeast that the company claims will offer lower latency because it takes an especially direct route...
Vendor Openet this week debuted two new OSS/BSS products to help service providers move to more dynamic pricing models, opening the doors to new service offerings that take advantage of network capabilities like quality of service and real-time service delivery...
Verizon Business today announced a major new push into professional services, making products out of things the telecom giant is already doing for many of its enterprise customers...
The latest results from a multi-year Ovum study, commissioned by Cisco Systems, confirm the telecom market’s move to managed services, a strategy that Cisco has embraced for its service provider customers...
MU Security today announced a major change in its corporate strategy, as well as a new name – MU Dynamics -- to reflect the broader role the company wants to play in helping service providers prevent network downtime. ...
Embarq’s severance of its partnership with Sprint Nextel for the wireless portion of its bundled offerings raises questions about to what extent the company will remain true to the strategy of fixed mobile convergence laid out by former CEO (now Sprint CEO) Dan Hesse...
The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OVMC), an organization of 850 local broadcasters, today submitted its viability report findings giving Samsung and LG the stamp of approval to pursue mobile TV based on the best of both manufacturers’ competing standards...
As vendors and service providers prepare for the NXTcomm conference in Dallas next month, news of growing IMS contracts and deployments represent a strong step forward for this up-to-now languishing technology...
With energy prices on the rise and global warming accelerating at an alarming rate, “going green” is no longer a fad. The telecom industry is serious about making changes, which is why conference producer iHollywood Forum opted to host the first-ever Communications Goes Green forum in conjunction with NXTcomm08...
Carriers including Verizon, BT, Vodafone and new member China Mobile will be among the host test sites for the MultiService Forum's global interoperability demonstration of next-generation networks...
Broadweave Networks, a provider of fiber-based triple-play services in greenfield developments, has acquired the municipal fiber network of Provo, Utah, vowing to improve the operation by replacing its open-access wholesale model with one in which Broadweave both owns the network and offers services over it...
In a move to differentiate its television offering, third-largest cable provider Cox Communications today announced it has chosen NDS to implement a next-generation video user interface (UI)...
As the only Bell carrier without a wireless arm, Qwest Communications can claim a unique intersection with the wireless world and a unique view of the technologies and trends now bridging the wireless and wireline worlds. Qwest’s Chief Technology Officer Pieter Poll explores this terrain, lending his views on a range of pertinent technology issues, including femtocells, open access, fixed-mobile convergence, wireless broadband and more...
FiberNet is embarking on a $2-million network expansion project to add capacity to its network and connect new metro markets just as the company is reporting an increase in higher-bandwidth optical transport services not seen in some time...
Cogent Communications is making sweeping changes in its sales force to reduce churn and boost productivity following the lowest quarterly sales productivity numbers in the company’s history...
MagicJack founder, and inventor of its technology, Dan Borislow, doesn’t like the term voice-over IP (VoIP). He thinks it has a negative connotation in an industry prone to struggles. Why not call it what it is – really, really cheap phone service? ...
Operations support services “transformation” projects are beginning to move off the drawing board and into production, with executives behind those efforts warning colleagues they'll take longer than expected, fail without employee and exec level buy-in, and put greater pressure on IT to contribute to top-line growth, according to service providers at the recent B/OSS World Show in Chicago
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That’s one less “j” Web VoIP provider for service providers to worry about. But with subscriber claims seemingly easier to come by than revenues, it’s not clear the Jangls, Jajahs and Jaxtrs of the world have incumbent service providers quaking in their boots just yet, anyway....
When it comes to fiber-to-the-home technology in North America, passive optical networks get all the attention. But FTTH based on active Ethernet technology is quietly growing more prevalent...
The Metro Ethernet Forum continues its important work on a range of industry standards fronts. Perhaps one of the forum's most auspicious efforts is its most recent one: the formation of a new wholesale access group assembled to author a set of standard procedures for ordering Ethernet services on a wholesale basis...
