Industry Update

hot off the press

Verizon (Buffalo, NY) is installing more than 6,500 mi of fiber-optic cable as well as electronic equipment in Erie and Niagara counties. About 2,700 mi of fiber will be installed to expand network capacity and high-speed connections between various communities within Erie County, including Buffalo, Clarence, Clarence Center, and Akron. Another 2,600 mi of fiber will be installed later this year to expand high-speed network connections between Erie and Genesee counties. Verizon will complete installation of about 1,150 mi of fiber within the city of Niagara Falls to increase capacity and reliability of telephone and data connections there. Verizon is also investing $1.2 million to upgrade and install new air-pressure technology on underground cable systems to reduce service interruptions. Air-pressure monitoring equipment will be installed on underground cables in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Amherst, and Lockport.

Sanmina Corp. (San Jose, CA), an electronics contract manufacturer, has acquired Alcatel's manufacturing operations in Richardson, TX. The advanced manufacturing operation in Richardson is ISO 9001- and TL 9000-certified and occupies facilities totaling approximately 300,000 sq ft.

Microtest Inc. (Phoenix), a manufacturer of network test and measurement products, and Panduit Corp. (Tinley Park, IL), a network connectivity solutions provider, announced a strategic alliance. The non-exclusive arrangement between the companies is focused on enhancing marketing and service to the structured cabling industry.

Cogent Communications Group Inc. (Washington, DC), an optical Ethernet connectivity provider, and Allied Riser Communications Corp. (ARC-Dallas), a provider of data communications services, have entered into a definitive agreement for the acquisition of ARC by Cogent. In the transaction, ARC will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Cogent, and its in-building networks will be added to Cogent's national backbone and facilities.

EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. (Quebec City), a fiber-optic test, measurement, and automation solutions designer and manufacturer has entered into an agreement to acquire Avantas Networks Corp. (Montreal) for approximately $65 million. Avantas is a supplier of fiber-optic testing and optical-network performance management equipment.

Level 3 Communications Inc. (Broomfield, CO), a communications and information services company, has acquired the transatlantic network of Viatel Inc. Level 3 has purchased two fibers on the "Yellow" submarine cable connecting London and New York from Viatel. Level 3 now owns and controls 50% of the fibers on the Yellow cable. In return for the Yellow fiber pair, Level 3 has released Viatel from debts registered with the bankruptcy court totaling approximately $9 million. Viatel has also transferred 20 Gbits of capacity on the AC-1 transatlantic cable to Level 3.

Agere Systems (Allentown, PA), a communications components provider, will align its products under two new market-focused groups: infrastructure systems and client systems. The company will combine the supply-chain management and manufacturing activities of both optoelectronics components and integrated circuit devices under a new operations group that will manage manufacturing and the full supply chain across both systems groups.

Village Networks Inc. (Eatontown, NJ), an integrated IP-over-optics networking solutions provider, and Viasystems (St. Louis, MO), an electronic manufacturing services provider, announced an agreement whereby Viasystems will manufacture the electronics for Village Networks' iOPN2000. Viasystems will augment Village Networks' internal manufacturing organization, which will handle the assembly of the optical components, integrate them with the electrical components, and perform final testing of the iOPN2000 before shipping to customers.

Reseau d'informations scientifiques du Quebec (RISQ-Quebec), an educational telecommunications infrastructure and service provider, has chosen Internet routers from Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose), an Internet networking provider, to build out the core of its educational network. RISQ will deploy Cisco 12410 Internet routers on its IP backbone, creating an MPLS virtual private network in a Canadian educational and research network.

Micromuse Inc. (San Francisco), a provider of real-time fault management and service assurance software, announced that Fibernet Group plc has deployed a network-management solution based on Micromuse's flagship Netcool/OMNIbus application. Fibernet operates fiber-optic networks in the U.K. and Germany and is building a network in France. TheINetcool software is helping to provide a realtime end-to-end service uptime solution for Fibernet's total-area network (TANet) fiber-optic backbone.

Tropic Networks Inc. (Andover, MA), a company that develops optical packet networking systems for MANs, has secured $10 million in capital financing. Silicon Valley Bank, GATX/MM Venture Finance Partnership, and Transamerica Commercial Finance Corp. provided the financing.

Sphera Optical Networks Inc. (Edison, NJ), a metro core network provider, contracted, designed, and successfully implemented a 10-Gbit/sec SONET circuit in New York to a major U.S. carrier in 14 days. Delivery of such services has traditionally taken anywhere from 60 to 90 days. Under the contract, Sphera provided optical connectivity between two New York carrier hotels over its DWDM metro ring supplied by ONI Systems Corp. (San Jose).

Norlight Telecommunications Inc. (Brookfield, WI), a supplier of wholesale carrier transport solutions and data-communications services, announced a service upgrade with Merit Network Inc. (Milwaukee, MI), a non-profit organization that promotes advanced Internet services for research and education. Norlight will upgrade MichNet, Merit's IP backbone network, with OC-48 links. Merit provides Internet connectivity to Michigan's publicly funded universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, libraries, state agencies, and cultural and research organizations. This upgrade will enable these organizations to use next-generation Internet applications and technologies.

EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. (Quebec City) has officially changed the name of EFOS Inc. to EXFO Photonic Solutions Inc. EFOS, a Toronto-based company acquired in March 2001, is a precision light-based adhesive spot-curing technologies company.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (Palo Alto, CA) and Corning Cable Systems (Hickory, NC) announced an agreement designed to provide the communications industry with a supply of new parallel-optics solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, both companies will work together to provide joint customers with strategic access to Corning Cable Systems' passive optical technologies and Agilent Technologies' active parallel-optics modules. Corning Cable Systems and Agilent will jointly market and support parallel-optics solutions.

Circadiant Systems Inc. (Allentown, PA), an optical testing company, has secured $10 million in its second round of private funding led by TL Ventures and also unveiled plans to deliver a new class of equipment that will substantially change optical testing. The company will offer optical component and equipment vendors a consolidated, automated, and intelligent testing platform to conduct standard everyday tests.

EPIK Communications Inc. (Orlando, FL) a bandwidth capacity provider, has signed a contract with AT&T Wireless worth approximately $9 million. EPIK will provide AT&T Wireless with a high-capacity circuit (OC-48) on its southeast network for a minimum of four years.

EngineX Networks (Richardson, TX), an optical technology design and implementation firm, has been selected by Looking Glass Networks Inc. (Oak Brook, IL), a facilities-based provider of high-bandwidth, flexible metropolitan data transport services for carriers and enterprise customers, to perform installation, test, and activation services on Looking Glass's optical-networking equipment in Dallas, Seattle, and Atlanta.

Kestrel Solutions Inc. (Mountain View, CA) has been awarded a master purchase contract by a regional Bell operating company (RBOC) for Kestrel's optical transport products, the TalonMX family. Under the terms of the deal, Kestrel is providing TalonMX products for key applications across the RBOC's network, as well as its element-management system for centralized control of the network.

Broadwing Communications (Cincinnati, OH), a subsidiary of Broadwing Inc., announced that McAfee.com (Sunnyvale, CA), a provider of Web security services, has become the first commercial customer for the carrier's point-to-point optical Gigabit Ethernet service.

ENSR International (Westford, MA), an environmental and energy development services firm, has completed the $1.5-million environmental permitting of Sierra Pacific Communications' Silver State East fiber-optic project. Created in partnership with Touch America, the proposed 600-mi fiber-optic network will enable communications for data, voice, and image transmission to the public, businesses, cities, and towns between Reno, NV, and Spanish Fork, UT, primarily along U.S. Highways 50 and 6.

Datum Inc. (Irvine, CA), a carrier-class synchronization solutions supplier, announced an agreement to provide the synchronization technology for the optical networks division of Siemens Information and Communications Networks (Siemens ICN-Boca Raton, FL). Siemens ICN is an integrated voice and data networks provider for enterprises, carriers, and service providers. Under this agreement, Siemens customers will profit from the complete product range of Datum's synchronization equipment. As a result, SONET/SDH backbone infrastructures are controlled under the Siemens transport network-management system, negating the need for separate transmission and synchronization supplier management functions.

Genuity (Woburn, MA), a network service provider, has selected Juniper Networks Inc.'s (Sunnyvale, CA) M160 Internet backbone routers to provide scalable, dedicated access services for its Internet advantage customers. Genuity's customers can quickly upgrade in increments from OC-12c/STM-4 (622-Mbit/sec) up to OC-48c/STM-16 (2.5-Gbit/sec) speeds as their needs evolve; they can also gain the flexibility of signing up and paying for only the level of service they need. Juniper Networks Inc. is a provider of next-generation IP infrastructure systems.

Network Photonics Inc. (Boulder CO), a wavelength switching systems developer, announced the details of its CrossWave switching technology. CrossWave technology enables the switching of DWDM wavelengths by integrating demultiplexing, switching, and multiplexing into a single, purely photonic operation. That results in lower cost and space requirements by eliminating the need for external DWDM multiplexers and repeated OEO conversions.

edgeflow Inc. (Kanata, Ontario), a wavelength networking company, announced the completion of a $24-million Series A round of funding. The funding will be used to expand the company's activities in sales, customer service, marketing, and product development. The lead investors in this round were Sierra Ventures and Newbury Ventures. New investors include Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Primaxis Technology Ventures, RBC Capital Partners Telecom Fund, BTG, and Pan Dacom Networking AG of Germany.

NetCarrier Inc. (Lansdale, PA), an integrated communications services provider, announced plans to provide voice and data services to nearly 80 commercial properties in the Philadelphia area. NetCarrier is acquiring high-speed fiber-optic networks in office buildings in downtown Philadelphia, Malvern, Horsham, the Lehigh Valley, and Mt. Laurel, NJ, from UrbanMedia of California. NetCarrier will provide tenants in the buildings with communications solutions, including services such as broadband Internet access and voice communication.

YottaYotta (Seattle) a yottabyte net-storage company, has completed a round of investments totaling $26 million, with funds from key international players in storage, networking, and software infrastructure. Investors in this round include: Banc of America Securities of Palo Alto, Noble Networks of New York, Bombardier Trust UK of London, Davenport Capital Ventures of Boston, The Grosvenor Funds of Washington D.C., Optical Capital Group of Columbia, Morgan Keegan of Memphis, Desjardins of Quebec City, and TechnoCap of Montreal.

VPIsystems (Holmdel, NJ), a developer of platforms for the communications industry, has retained Stephen Evangelides for its expanded optical software training program. VPIsystems is introducing two-day training sessions that focus on applications in component, subsystem, and system design, as well as advanced WDM system design. Evangelides will lead the WDM design program.

Qwest Communications (Denver) announced a major purchase agreement with free-space optics (FSO) vendor LightPointe Communications (San Diego). The deal represents a leap forward for FSO technologies, which to date have been generally sold only to small carriers and private enterprises. LightPointe has also won strategic investments from both Cisco and Corning, has entered into a MEMS technology strategic alliance with Texas Instruments, and was awarded a U.S. patent related to all-optical FSO technologies.

Williams Communications (Tulsa, OK), a broadband provider to bandwidth-centric customers, and WorldCom (Clinton, MS), a business data and Internet communications provider, have signed a letter of intent to enter a three-year commercial business transaction to purchase network capacity. When completed, this agreement will give WorldCom an option to cost-effectively grow its backbone network, and Williams Communications will receive the option to purchase local network capacity from WorldCom in more than 100 major metropolitan cities in the U.S., Europe, and Pacific Region.

AT&T (Parsippany, NJ) has been awarded a six-year, $100-million contract by Siemens Business Services (Munich), a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG, to manage the company's information technology network infrastructure throughout the U.S. and Canada. AT&T Solutions, the company's networking professional services arm, will transform the IT infrastructure supporting nearly 500 sites at 18 Siemens operating companies in North America. AT&T Solutions will provide managed networking services, wide-area networking management, and data and voice transport services.

Corning Inc. (Corning, NY) announced Corning International Corp. has entered into an agreement to acquire slightly more than 25% of TRANSVOK (Russia), a manufacturer of optical-fiber cable. Corning Cable Systems (Hickory, NC) will manage the equity venture. Corning will fulfill TRANSVOK's optical-fiber requirements and will assist the equity company in pursuing potential markets in Russia.

BTexact Technologies (Adastral Park, Martlesham, UK), BT's research and technology business, has opened an independent commercial carrier-grade testing and evaluation facility for next-generation network equipment. BTexact will provide equipment vendors and service providers with independent testing and evaluation services previously available only within BT. Initial focus will be on core network terabit and optical routing and switching.

KPNQwest (the Netherlands), a data-communications and hosting company, has won a contract to provide international bandwidth services to Sonera Carrier Networks Ltd. (Helsinki, Finland), an international network operator. The 2.5-Gbit/sec "Colour Fibre" services, based on DWDM, will be based on the capacity of the recently lit KPNQwest Nordic EuroRing and the KPNQwest Eastern, Western, Channel, and German EuroRings.

AIXTRON (Aachen, Germany) announced that Genoa Corp. (Fremont, CA), a next-generation optical semiconductor company, has selected and installed two AIX 2000 planetary reactors for use in the production of its recently launched "linear optical amplifier" (LOA). The LOA is a chip-based amplifier capable of simultaneously amplifying multiple wavelengths of light in today's fiber-optic communications networks. According to the company, the AIX 2000 planetary reactor is used to precisely grow more than 100 epitaxial layers that the breakthrough device requires during its fabrication.

Minerva Networks (Santa Clara, CA), a provider of carrier-class video-networking solutions, announced that NovaMedia (Reykjavik, Iceland) selected Minerva's IP television solution to deliver media services to Reykjavik's population of 200,000 residences. NovaMedia, a solution provider in the field of digital broadcasting, will use the country's fiber network to deliver a lineup of broadcast-quality live television channels and video-on-demand (VOD) over an entirely IP-based infrastructure. Gold Television (GoldTV-Milan, Italy), a provider of broadband television services, has also selected Minerva IP television headend technology for its broadband television network. GoldTV will utilize Minerva IP television headends connected to a fiber DSL network to deliver broadcast-quality live television and VOD services to residences in the Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto regions of northern Italy.

Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) has signed a multiyear contract with France Telecom (Paris) to be a supplier of a 10-Gbit/sec optical network. Under the terms of the agreement, Lucent will supply the Wave- Star TDM 10G, which enables carriers to transmit information across a single wavelength of light on a fiber at a speed of 10 Gbits/sec. The WaveStar system also has a self-healing ring architecture that instantly reroutes information in the event of a fiber cut.

Callahan Associates (London) has selected a consortium led by Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ontario) for an upgrade of its cable network in Baden-WÜrttemberg, Germany, to enable delivery of communications services for both business and residential subscribers beginning in summer 2002. Nortel Networks is expected to deliver a complete cable upgrade solution-including VoIP-for the European market. The consortium will supply infrastructure to enable Internet access, high-performance video, IP services, data transmission, voice telephony, digital TV programming, and interactive TV for residential customers and businesses.

Marconi (London), a communications solutions provider, announced a partnership with IRIS Networks, a consortium of 11 independent telephone companies, to provide high-speed optical connectivity to communities across the mid-southern U.S., including Tennessee and Alabama. IRIS selected Marconi solutions to increase its bandwidth and upgrade traditional routes with an optical portfolio. The increased capacity will allow IRIS to meet demand requirements in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Huntsville without affecting the traffic already being carried.

Alcatel (Paris) announced that its 7670 routing switch platform (RSP) has been selected by Belgacom (Brussels), a telecommunications solutions supplier, to expand its nationwide ATM network. The Alcatel 7670 RSP will allow Belgacom to scale its existing Alcatel multiservice ATM network up to 450 Gbits/sec to meet demand placed on the core by the explosion of IP traffic. Belgacom will deploy additional Alcatel 7470 multiservice platforms to carry advanced IP services and aggregate DSL traffic.

Hutchison 3G (London), holder of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System license for the largest block of spectrum in the U.K., announced an agreement with 186k (Berkshire, England), a next-generation communications company, to provide a nationwide fiber-optic network and collocation services. Under a separate agreement, Hutchison 3G has chosen Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ontario) to provide 10 Gbits/sec per channel DWDM optical equipment to light 186k's fiber-optic network and to provide the connection between the fiber network and Hutchison 3G's wireless network. 186k's 20-year agreement will provide Hutchison 3G with dark-fiber capacity across its entire network, which will span nearly 2,000 km and connect 20 major centers of demand across the U.K.

Unisphere Networks Inc. (Westford, MA), an IP infrastructure provider, announced that Guangdong Telecom (Hong Kong) has selected its ERX-1400 edge router for the ability to expand its existing residential and commercial broadband network in China. Installation of the ERX-1400s occurred during August 2001 in the 12 major cities of Guangdong Province. The ERX 1400s will also be deployed in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, two of China's special economic zones. Unisphere also announced that Chunghwa Telecom (CHT-Taipei, Taiwan) has selected its ERX-1400 edge router to implement IP multicast and edge aggregation functions for CHT's new "movies-on-demand" (MoD) network in Taiwan. Unisphere Networks' IERX technology will support up to 6,000 IP multicast destinations per ERX edge router. CHT offers subscribers advanced services to maintain appropriate levels of service.

Alcatel (Paris) announced a $20-million contract to supply DWDM/SDH and network-management equipment to Sichuan Unicom (China). This end-to-end optical transmission network expansion will connect to Sichuan Unicom's province-wide GSM network and will increase network flexibility.

The University of Tsukuba (Tokyo) has selected Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ontario) to build a university optical network in Japan based on DWDM. Nortel Networks' solution for the University of Tsukuba will include the OPTera metro 5200 multiservice platform and Passport 8600, a carrier-grade routing switch to support Gigabit Ethernet.

Williams Communications (Tulsa, OK), a broadband provider for bandwidth-centric customers, will provide network services across the Japan-U.S. undersea cable network. The 21,000-km Japan-U.S. network is capable of handling circuit-switched or packet-switched communications. Japan-U.S. landing points include U.S.-based stations in Manchester and Morro Bay, CA, and Makaha, HI; and Shima South (Mie Prefecture), Maruyama (Chiba Prefecture), and Kitaibaraki (Ibaraki Prefecture) in Japan.

Ericsson, a comprehensive communications solutions provider, announced that China Netcom (China) awarded the company a second broadband MAN contract for seven additional cities in China-Wuhan, Changsha, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Foshan, Dongguan, and Shunde. Under this contract, Ericsson will deliver the internally developed AXI 540-7 edge routers to each of these cities. Ericsson will provide to China Netcom all the necessary implementation, training, and maintenance services, plus Blackdiamond and Summit 48i Ethernet switches from Extreme.

Powercor Australia (Melbourne, Australia), an electricity distributor, has signed a supply agreement for optical communications equipment and support services from Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ontario) for a new, carrier-grade telecommunications network that is expected to deliver data services to customers in the region's major urban and rural growth centers. Powercor Australia plans to deploy Nortel Networks' OPTera metro 4000 multiservice platform, an optical transport system that addresses a broad range of multirate application needs in SDH-based access, metropolitan, and regional backbone networks.