Last Call For Global Crossing
The deadline for a piece of the carrier's pie ended Thursday afternoon, again. (more)

Qwest Falls Under Feds' Microscope
Federal investigators have begun a criminal investigation of Qwest Communications, company officials said on Wednesday. The local phone company and broadband communications provider said federal officials informed them of the probe late Tuesday, but the subject of the investigation was not revealed. (more)

Level 3 is Going Shopping
With $500 million in fresh funds via new investor capital, Level 3 is finding out the telecom industry's woes are to its advantage. (more)

Will WorldCom's Woes Engulf UUNet?
As WorldCom teeters, attention turns to its UUNet unit's role as the Net's top backbone provider. (more)

IDT Sets Its Sights on WorldCom Customers
IDT forges ahead in its bid to scoop up troubled WorldCom's assets and customers. (more)

Yipes! It Lives!
The former PHX Communications team takes over Yipes assets in 10 markets. The rest will be moved to E-xpedient Holdings. (more)

Venture Capital News

Ample Communications Launches with $21M in Round 2
Ample Communications, Inc., pioneer of frame processing silicon solutions for high-speed networks, said it has secured $21 million in its second round of funding in addition to its initial round of $17 million received in September 2000. CenterPoint Ventures and Rho Ventures led Ample's second round of funding. First round investors InterWest Partners, Storm Ventures and the company founders also participated in the second round.

Proceeds from Ample's first round of $17 million, received in September 2000, fueled the company's initial development and sampling of its first silicon chipsets earlier this year. Ample's Nighthawk 10 Gigabit multi-protocol frame processor and Skyhawk 10 Gigabit Ethernet frame processor devices are incorporated into several commercial communications systems scheduled for delivery by the end of the year.

Continuum Photonics Raises Over $14M in Second Round
Continuum Photonics Inc., a Billerica, Mass.-based developer of high-performance photonic subsystems and components, today announced it has closed on over $14 million in its Series B financing. New investors, Flagship Ventures and Prism Venture Partners, co-led the Series B investment round, with additional new equity participation from Harris & Harris. Series A investors Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation (MTDC), Gainesborough LLC, and private individuals also participated in the round.

This financing provides Continuum with the funds required to continue executing on its development plan and to bring demonstration units to customers. Continuum Photonics' initial product is a family of photonic switch subsystems that meet the critical needs of future dynamic optical networks, officials said. Continuum has not announced details of its DirectLight technology, although it demonstrated some of the key performance advantages of DirectLight at the recent OFC conference in Anaheim, including extraordinarily low insertion loss (less than 1db including connectors), small footprint and very low power requirements. The company expects to have demonstration units available later this year.

Product News

Juniper Helping Route China's Edge
The router maker trumps rival Cisco and plants its ERX products in two Provinces. (more)

TI Intros SONET Transceiver For OC-192 Backplanes
Texas Instruments (TI) announced a low-power SONET OC-192 transmitter-receiver for very- short reach (VSR) optical transponders. The new TI solution supplies four 2.5-gigabit per second (Gbps) OC-48 channels from a single device, enabling manufacturers of telecommunications equipment to create 10-Gbps OC-192 transponders for a fraction of the cost of OC-192 serial solutions.

TI's new SLK2504 SONET/SDH transceiver maps 16 channels of 622-megabit per second (Mbps) data into four independent OC-48 channels, two redundant OC-48 channels, or one OC-192 channel. Compliant with the Optical Interconnect Forum (OIF) SFI-4 interface and compatible with the VSR4-03.0 optical standard, the device is built using 0.18-micron CMOS technology for cost- efficiency, integration and low power consumption. A SONET transponder reference design and evaluation module (EVM) is available based on the SLK2504 and Alvesta Corporation's Model 3100 optical transceiver. Using an industry- standard 300-pin MSA form factor, the reference design/EVM enables manufacturers to develop OC-192 VSR transponders quickly and at a fraction of the cost of 10 Gigabit serial approaches.

TI's SLK2504 transceiver is sampling now, with volume production scheduled for August, 2002. The device is available in a 289-lead ball grid array (BGA) package. Planned pricing is $80 each in quantities of 1,000.

Other News

Infonet to Install Washington POP
Equinix hires communications service for multinationals to leverage networks in company's Internet Business Exchange centers. (more)

Tellabs, Telcordia to Speed Next-Gen Ethernet Services Deployment
Tellabs and Telcordia said they will define the requirements for the development of an important new feature for the Telcordia Operations Support Systems (OSSs) to help carriers speed their Ethernet service deployments. The new feature, SONET virtual concatenation, will be developed under the Telcordia Generic Feature Development Services (GFDS) Program.