FTC Clears Ciena-ONI Deal
Optical-network maker expects $900 million, all-stock deal to close in second or third quarter. (more)

Asia Global Crossing Delays Payment
The beleaguered carrier is taking an extra 30 days to look for potential buyers before the interest on senior notes loan comes due. (more)

Nasdaq Halts Metromedia Trading Another day, another spate of bad news for the debt-laden long-haul fiber carrier. (more)

Metromedia Defaults...Again
With $3.3 billion in debts, the long-haul fiber carrier is in negotiations with creditors on how to restructure after it missed another loan payment. (more)

XO's Forbearance Agreements Expire
Broadband provider says creditors will take no action as company continues restructuring efforts (more)

Cisco Faces $1.3 Billion Fraud Lawsuit A federal judge in Miami paves the way for a suit by a defunct telecommunications and VoIP host and service provider owned by a prominent Venezuelan family. (more)

Venture Capital News

NanoOpto Secures Additional $4M
NanoOpto Corp., which is applying proprietary nano-optics and nano-manufacturing technology to design and manufacture components for optical networking, announced today that it has closed on an additional $4 million completing its Series A round of venture financing. The new financing comes from two funds within the Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) network as well as matching investments from existing equity partners Bessemer Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and U.S. Trust's Excelsior Venture Partners III, LLC. This additional $4 million brings the total financing raised by NanoOpto to date to $20 million.

Product News

Alcatel's 'Non-Stop' Router
It's an industry standard practice to guarantee 99.999 percent uptime availability, though the reality is most have a tough time delivering on that promise. Alcatel believes it has an answer to that conundrum. (more)

Alcatel Brings Broadband to the Home Alcatel has launched a Fiber-To-The-User (FTTU) optical fiber cable and connectivity solution to deliver ultra high-speed communications right to the premises of subscribers. The new offering, Alcatel 6620, enables service providers to connect individual users to extraordinarily powerful optical FTTU systems. When coupled with Alcatel's systems, service providers can have a comprehensive Alcatel package from long-haul all the way to individual residences. Opening up a new world of applications for subscribers, the Alcatel 6620 allows service providers to consolidate their business and significantly increase revenues by bundling voice, data and video into one medium.

Bay Microsystems Ships Montego
Bay Microsystems announced the first customer shipment (FCS) of its flagship programmable packet processor device Montego, described as the world's first single chip OC192c/10G network processor and traffic manager. Part of Bay's Internetworking Processor (InP) family, Montego is ideally suited to scale from access and metro-edge to metro-core and long-haul markets for carrier class products such as access concentrators; voice, wireless and xDSL gateways; multi-service switches and routers; cable head ends and intelligent optical (DWDM, SONET) transport equipment. Montego enables network systems OEMs to build next generation equipment that meets the carriers' needs for guaranteed performance levels with support for both legacy and emerging protocols.

Other News

Training Grants Sought for Ex-TyCom Workers
N.H. Gov. Jeanne Shaheen is asking the feds for $734K to help 1,000 laid off telecom workers prepare for and find new jobs. (more)