Comsat Completes Acquisition Deal
Lockheed Martin retains 19 percent interest in managed fiber, wireless and satellite network. (more)

Williams Emerges from Bankruptcy
Williams Communications Group Inc. announced today that it has completed its financial restructuring and has emerged from Chapter 11 proceedings as WilTel Communications Group Inc. (more)

XO Kills Deal With TelMex, Forstmann
Bankrupt broadband company says stand-alone plan has approval of all parties, including the previously unhappy Carl Icahn. (more)

Product News

Altera Partners with Nuvation for Gigabit Ethernet to OC-192 Solution Development
Altera Corp. and Nuvation Research Corp. announced an agreement to develop a complete Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to OC-192 solution. The solution will aid in the development of systems that can transport data between high-speed local networks and existing optical infrastructure used for long-haul and metro area communications systems.

Nuvation, which also joins the Altera Megafunction Partners Program today, is working with Altera and Intel Corp. to complete what will be the industry's first bridge between Intel's multiport Gigabit Ethernet MAC's and OC-192 POS/GFP Framer devices using the SPI-4 Phase 2 interface.

This solution includes Intel's IXF1110 10x1Gigabit Ethernet MAC, Intel's IXF18101/2 OC-192c POS and GFP Framer, and Altera's APEX II and Stratix devices. The Altera device performs channelization/dechannelization between the 10 channels of Gigabit Ethernet and General Framing Protocol (GFP) of the OC-192 Framer, utilizing Nuvation's GEOS-10i Gigabit Ethernet to SONET IP Core, which is available now on the Altera IP Megastore(TM) web site. License fees are $25,000 for a netlist version.

Toshiba Unveils 2.5Gbps Small Form Factor Optical Transceivers
Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) rolled out four new 2.5 gigabit per second (Gbps) small form factor (SFF) optical transceivers. Developed by Toshiba Corp. (Toshiba), the new family of transceivers are multi-source agreement (MSA) compliant and are designed for use in short- and intermediate-range optical networks including metro- (MAN) and local area networks (LAN), synchronous optical network (SONET), synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and Fibre Channel.

Designed to meet the performance and size demands of networking applications, the new Toshiba SFF transceivers provide designers with high performance at 1.25Gbps and 2.5Gbps data rates while utilizing the common +3.3V power supply.

The introduction of these new devices marks Toshiba's entry into the small transceiver market for local area networking and further expands its optical communications device family that includes 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps transponders, transmitters and receivers, officials said.

Toshiba's new SFF transceivers designated the TOTR310-D, TOTR360-D, TOTR310-F and TOTR210, are housed in a 20-pin MSA-compliant package for seamless deployment in high-speed optical networks. The TOTR310-D and the TOTR360-D are coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) modules that operate in the 1300 nanometer (nm) and 1550nm ranges using Distributed FeedBack Laser Diodes (DFB-LD). The TOTR310-F is a 2.5Gbps device with an integrated 1300nm Fabry-Perot laser diode (FP-LD), and the TOTR210 SFF transceiver utilizes an 850nm Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL).

Other News

Nortel Networks and SBC Reach Multi-Year Optical Agreement
Nortel Networks said that SBC Services, Inc., an affiliate of SBC Communications Inc., has signed a multi-year amendment agreement to purchase Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5100 Multiservice Platform for its network.

By utilizing this multi-protocol platform, SBC can expand its managed wavelength services including high-speed Optical Ethernet and storage services throughout its 13-state territory. This agreement builds on a contract SBC signed with Nortel Networks last year to support its Multi-Service Optical Networking (MON) service using Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5200.

The addition of Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5100 will enable SBC to make further enhancements to its network infrastructure to support a broader range of services such as storage area networking (SAN) and Gigabit Ethernet.

OPTera Metro 5100 is designed for smaller bandwidth requirements that extend wavelengths to the customer premise effectively. OPTera Metro 5200 is a higher scale, survivable platform for metropolitan access and interoffice applications. Strong connection management and ring-to-ring interconnection enable seamless interworking between wavelengths originating on OPTera Metro 5100s located on customer premises and core OPTera Metro 5200s.

Optinel Announces Successful Completion of Field Trial With Adelphia
Optinel Systems, a privately held provider of optical communication systems for the cable television industry, today announced that Adelphia Communications has successfully completed its field trial of Optinel's PLEXiS MFX Transport System. These successful results mark the first major field trial for the Optinel system, officials said.

The field trial involved long-distance optical transport of live digital video signals in their native format over Adelphia's Northern Virginia ring. The field trial also demonstrated a drop and forward network architecture utilizing Optinel's Fractional Optical Multiplexer, which enables all-optical sharing of traffic among several sites. Optinel's PLEXiS Transport System exceeded all customer requirements for critical performance metrics, while proving to be significantly more cost effective than SONET-based optical transport alternatives for video transport.

Optinel's PLEXiS MFX Transport System offers MSOs a scalable and cost-effective bandwidth expansion solution for headend interconnection, video-on-demand, high speed data and cable telephony applications.

MapInfo To Provide Fiber Network Planning And Analysis Data
MapInfo Corp. said it will augment its suite of industry-leading location-intelligence solutions with GeoTel's comprehensive fiber data sets, giving customers the premier solution for determining the optimal infrastructure to support new services in a selected area.

Organizations in the communications, real estate and economic development and urban planning industries, as well as consulting and business intelligence firms, can use communications infrastructure data to drive insightful business decisions.

GeoTel's fiber data sets for the locations of colocation facilities, Internet exchanges, carrier networks and metro fiber routes, coupled with MapInfo's communications offerings, let users visualize their entire network and other carriers' assets, see current areas of market penetration and view competitive threats. With the infrastructure data, organizations outside the communications industry can determine where to locate new buildings, the potential for economic development in a specific area and the extent of communications services currently available in a particular geography.

With GeoTel fiber data sets and MapInfo's location-intelligence solutions, communications companies can pinpoint where to expand network coverage, such as areas with strong demand for high-speed services, and reduce the total cost of customer acquisition by determining the ideal infrastructure requirements to reach those customers.