update

XO Communications (www.xo.com) has signed a multiyear agreement worth up to $3 million to provide 800 miles of dark fiber between Atlanta, Richmond, and Washington, DC to the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative(MBC; www.mbc-va.com), an organization that is helping to bring advanced open-access broadband services to rural communities in Southside Virginia.

ANDA Networks(www.andanetworks.com) has closed an additional $10.5 million round of equity funding, which will be used for global expansion to support international customer Ethernet deployments. The round’s largest investors include Venrock Associates, Highland Capital Partners, and Crimson Investment, along with 14 other “large financial institutions.”

RBN Inc.(www.rbni.com) has closed its most recent round of funding and has completed a recapitalization of the company. The financing round was co-led by new investor Jolimont Ventures and existing investor Allen and Buckeridge (both Australian technology funds). The funding comes on the heels of a good fiscal year during which RBN doubled its revenue, driven by carrier demand in North America and Europe.

Nistica (www.nistica.com) a new optical subsystems developer, has received Series A funding from PA Early Stage, Technoloy Venture Partners, and other investors. According to the company it has developed a new class of intelligent optical modules to enable edge networks to scale at healthy margins and rapidly deliver bandwidth for consumer multimedia and enterprise wavelength services.

Siemens Communications (www.siemens.de/communications) will work with Belgacom International Carrier Services (ICS; www.belgacom-ics.be) to develop what it claims is the first telecom network based on reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology in continental Europe. The fiber-based network, dubbed PEN4FUTURE, will link 16 European telecom nodes and enable Belgacom ICS to offer its customers transmission capacity up to N×40-Gbit/sec wavelengths.

Spanish telecom provider TeleCable is supplying Cajastur, a large regional savings bank in Spain, with Nortel (www.nortel.com) technology and services to securely connect its 100 bank offices across three major cities in the Asturias region.

Rostelecom(www.rt.ru/en), Russia’s national long-distance telecommunications operator, has launched a new fiber-optic line from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk to the city of Heihe in Heilongjiang province, China. The high-speed, terrestrial, cross-border link was constructed using DWDM equipment with initial throughput capacity of 2.5 Gbits/sec-to be further expanded up to 400 Gbits/sec-to interconnect Rostelecom’s network with China Telecom’s network.

MobiCom (www.mobicom.mn), a Mongolian mobile communications service provider, has upgraded its Cisco Internet Protocol next-generation network (IP NGN) architecture by deploying Cisco Systems’ (www.cisco.com) ONS15454 SDH multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP). The ONS 15454 enables MobiCom to increase revenues by converging its mobile and Internet traffic into a unified optical transport platform. In addition, the international business arm of Taiwan’s largest telecommunications company, Chunghwa Telecom, also has selected Cisco’s ONS 15454 MSPP to help propel its rapid expansion into overseas markets in Asia, Europe, and the United States.

Luminent (www.luminentoic.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of MRV Communications, has agreed to acquire HG Genuine Opto (www.genuine-opto.com), a subsidiary of Huagong Tech(HG Tech). HG Genuine Opto is the second-largest optical transceiver manufacturer based wholly in China. Luminent will pay $40 million in cash and 15% of Luminent’s common stock to be outstanding at the time the acquisition closes. Assuming the transaction closes as expected, MRV will own 85% and HG Tech will own 15% of the resulting company. In the event that certain conditions following the closing are not met, HG Tech has the right to sell its interest in Luminent back to MRV for $45 million in cash or stock.

ADVA Optical Networking (www.advaoptical.com) has agreed to acquire privately held Movaz Networks Inc. (www.movaz.com). ADVA will acquire all outstanding shares and options of Movaz via a combination of shares and cash. ADVA will issue 6,526,529 shares of common stock via a capital increase, and a cash component of approximately $6.0 million will be paid. In addition, a cash earn-out component equivalent to 1 million ADVA shares could become payable within 12 months after closing under certain conditions. The acquisition is expected to close this month. Half of the to-be-issued shares will be tradable immediately upon issuance, and half six months later. On a U.S. GAAP basis, ADVA expects earnings per share accretion from mid-2007 onward.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) selectedFibroLAN (www.fibrolan.com) to supply systems for a newly installed fiber-optic backbone network. The FibroLAN equipment supports video surveillance applications, data transfers, and connectivity for the public announcement system used in the MTA’s 70 subway and light-rail stations spread throughout the city and its suburbs. The new system improves antiterror and security monitoring by the MTA. FibroLAN also was chosen recently by the major Australian carrier, Telstra, for a large fiber-to-business deployment, in which Telstra is providing broadband access to schools, banks, government facilities, and other large enterprise customers over its fiber-optic network.