Update

Allied Telesyn (Bothell, WA), provider of Ethernet networking equipment for the access edge, announced that its RG223 Residential Gateway has been chosen as the customer premises equipment in the phase-one rollout of fiber to the premises services for the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA). Covering Salt Lake City and 17 surrounding cities that encompass some 250,000 households and 35,000 businesses, UTOPIA is one of the larger fiber to the home and business projects launched to date. In the first phase of the UTOPIA project, which is scheduled to begin early next year, project consultant Dynamic City will oversee deployment of an all-fiber network to as many as 15,000 homes and businesses. Once phase one is completed, the project will expand to include tens of thousands of other homes and businesses in the area. UTOPIA will wholesale fiber-network capacity to service providers, delivering 100/1,000-Mbit/sec edge connectivity through a 5.6-terabyte core switched network fabric.

Optical access systems vendor Wave7Optics (Alpharetta, GA) and utility company Jackson Energy Authority (JEA-Jackson, TN) are teaming up to build a fiber to the premises network. Upon its completion in 2005, the network will pass 31,000 homes and businesses in JEA's electric service area. Wave7 received an initial $15-million purchase order to deliver its Ethernet standards-based Last Mile Link optical broadband equipment through 2004. The vendor is scheduled to begin delivering network equipment in December and JEA anticipates it will initiate deployment in the first quarter of next year. JEA expects to begin connecting customers to its new service, which will include over 250 analog and digital cable TV channels, ultra-high-speed (up to 500-Mbit/sec) two-way business and residential Internet connections, and full-feature POTS and IP telephony (as a carrier's carrier for local competitive local exchange carriers) as early as the second quarter of next year.

Arroyo Optics (Santa Monica, CA), manufacturer of wavelength management products for telecommunications equipment, and Lightcross (Monterey Park, CA), maker of integrated silicon-based optical products for telecom equipment, agreed to merge. Under the agreement, the merged company will be called Arroyo Optics, which will comprise technologies and products developed with more than $50 million of combined research and development capital provided by private equity investors. The merged company will offer two product platforms to DWDM equipment manufacturers: Arroyo Optics' UltraFilter all-optical filters, which are designed for wavelength blocking, dynamic channel equalization, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing, and wavelength routing applications, and Lightcross's silicon-based optoelectonic ICs and modules. Lightcross chief executive Robert Barron will become CEO, chairman, and president of the new company.

Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA) and Huawei Technologies (Beijing) signed an agreement to stay the litigation currently pending in a Texas district court. Cisco's suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas last January, alleges that Huawei unlawfully copied and misappropriated Cisco's IOS software, including source code; copied Cisco documentation and other copyrighted materials; and infringed on numerous Cisco patents. Under the agreement, Huawei will continue to abide by the terms of the Preliminary Injunction Order, forbidding the company and its subsidiaries, Huawei America and FutureWei Technologies, from selling or distributing products that copy Cisco's intellectual property. Cisco and Huawei have agreed on a course of action that they expect—upon full implementation and pending completion of an independent expert review process—will lead to the end of the lawsuit. To address Cisco's concerns, Huawei has voluntarily made changes to some of its router and switch products. The parties have agreed on a process for reviewing these changes. All other terms of the agreement are confidential. 3Com, which intervened in the lawsuit and has partnered with Huawei to sell the company's technology in markets outside of China, also agreed to the process set forth in the agreement for the resolution of claims pending in the litigation.

Marconi (London) through its U.S. subsidiary, Marconi Communications Federal (Pittsburgh), announced the sale of several BXR-48000 multiservice switch-routers to the U.S. government. This sale, worth about $9 million, includes hardware and installation services for the BXR-48000s. Further details were not made public. Marconi's BXR-48000 is a 480-Gbit/sec (960-Gbit/sec half-duplex) switch-router with a patented payload-agnostic striping architecture that eliminates the technological risk associated with scaling multiservice packet networks. Designed with the flexibility to operate as an all-IP router, MPLS switch, or ATM switch, or all three simultaneously, the BXR-48000 supports mission-critical traffic and applications while allowing a smooth migration to a multiservice packet infrastructure. The federal government bought the first of its BXR-48000s in September 2002. It has also purchased Marconi's 10-Gbit/sec ATM interface for the BXR-48000, which supports Type 1 encryption. This rate of encryption is the fastest speed currently possible with commercially available technology. The government is currently evaluating the IP/MPLS capabilities of the BXR-48000.

Ciena (Linthicum, MD) entered into a reseller agreement to market, sell, and support the Laurel Networks (Pittsburgh) flagship ST200 service edge router to service providers worldwide. Under the agreement, Ciena also will integrate Laurel's ST200 into its LightWorks ON-Center management suite. The ST200 complements Ciena's existing Layer 2 multiservice switching solutions with a Layer 3 implementation of IP/MPLS networking. With Laurel's ST200 in its portfolio, Ciena can now offer service providers an integrated solution that supports a variety of services over unified MPLS infrastructure. The Ciena partnership is part of Laurel's plan to rapidly grow market penetration in key global markets.

Five IC companies—Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC), IBM, Infineon Technologies, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx—joined forces to create the Unified 10-Gbit/sec Physical-Layer Initiative (UXPi), a program of the IEEE-ISTO, which provides a legal and administrative platform for UXPi operations to progress. UXPi's goal is to advocate a common 10-Gbit/sec physical layer standard across multiple markets to simplify and accelerate the implementation of next-generation 10-Gbit/sec systems. UXPi is laying the groundwork for a common 10-Gbit/sec standard by solidifying the physical/electrical layer of the 10-Gbit/sec chip-to-chip and backplane interface—participating in, supporting, and supplementing the efforts of standards bodies. The initiative's efforts will enable standards bodies to focus on developing the protocols necessary to serve the unique needs of their respective markets rather than focus on the lower layers defining and testing a 10-Gbit/sec physical standard. UXPi plans to work with numerous contributing and adopting companies to develop, refine, and make the specification available.

Russian carrier OJSC Rostelecom (Open Joint-Stock Co.—Moscow) awarded Siemens Information and Communication Networks (Munich) a contract to supply and install optical transmission technology. Rostelecom is operating a 5,000-km transmission link between Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk and will use Siemens's Surpass hiT 7500 platform for the long-haul segment and Surpass hiT 70xx series for the metro domain. The new link is expected to accommodate the carrier's traffic growth by significantly boosting transmission capacities. As part of the contract, Rostelecom will monitor the entire transport network (metro and backbone) using Siemens's network management system.

Alcatel (Paris) completed a 10-Gbit/sec terrestrial and undersea project for PT Comunicações, a subsidiary of Portugal Telecom Group. Based on the company's 10-Gbit/sec DWDM and SDH terrestrial- and undersea-network technologies, the undersea network called CAM Ring enables PT Comunicações to provide its customers with enhanced transmission of domestic broadband traffic from Madeira and Azores islands to the Portugal mainland. The 1,120-km undersea network incorporates Alcatel's undersea line of DWDM terminals. To interconnect CAM Ring's landing points in Ponta Delgada (Azores) and Funchal (Madeira) to Lisbon, Alcatel also implemented its 1670 SM 10-Gbit/sec SDH optical multiservice node system for long-distance terrestrial applications. An additional undersea cable leveraging Alcatel's unrepeatered systems links Madeira to the island of Porto Santo. The terrestrial and undersea equipment is managed by Alcatel's unified network management platform. In addition, Alcatel upgraded a 24-km section of the Sea-Me-We3 consortium's network cable in the southern North Sea. An Alcatel-operated cable ship, the Ile de Sein, carried out marine operations in an area where deep cable burial provides optimal protection because of the extremely high level of shipping activity in the area. A new cable section was installed 2.5 m below the seabed, along a new route close to the current Sea-Me-We 3 route. This achievement represents the deepest plow burial performed in the North Sea. The CS Peter Faber, also operated by Alcatel, performed associated marine cable activities, including recovery of the existing old cable section. Alcatel has had a cooperative relationship with Sea-Me-We3 since 1997, participating in the deployment, upgrade, and maintenance of the consortium's undersea-cable network. Alcatel won a contract as the sole supplier for the terrestrial portion of the network.

Following the acquisition of the photodiode (PD) business line of former Opto Speed, Swiss optical components manufacturer Albis Optoelectronics AG is re-launching a portfolio of PD chips and receiver subassemblies. The company took over all assets associated with the PD business line of former Opto Speed, including intellectual property, key employees, the equipment, and the 2,000-sq-ft cleanroom facilities located in Rueschlikon near Zurich. Financing for the company is from private individuals, including the founders and senior management. The company was founded in August by Dr. Markus Blaser, former PD product-line manager at Opto Speed, and Dr. Joerg Wieland, president and CEO of Helix AG. Albis will have a strong focus on the development of highly advanced indium phosphide-based PD products for 10-Gbit/sec short-reach data communications. The company offers high-speed single-channel and array PD products designed to support 2.5-, 10-, and 40-Gbit/sec links as well as analog microwave applications.

Systems integrator NTT Data (Tokyo) selected Terabeam (Redmond, WA) to provide its free-space optics (FSO) and high-frequency millimeter wave broadband wireless systems after the completion of extensive testing in Japan over the past year. Terabeam's Elliptica series provides carrier-grade FSO connectivity at Fast Ethernet (100-Mbit/sec) and OC-3/STM-1 (155-Mbit/sec) speeds. Gigalink offers short- and medium-range outdoor connections using the 60-GHz radio frequency at Fast Ethernet, OC-3/STM-1, OC-12/STM-4 (622-Mbit/sec), and Gigabit Ethernet (1.25-Gbit/sec) capacities. NTT Data, established in May 1988, is part of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group of companies.

GuangZhou Pantong Information Broadband Network, known as Panyu Cable, partnered with Ethernet passive-optical-network (PON) vendor Salira Shanghai to develop advanced telecommunications networks. Panyu Cable has agreed to deploy the Salira 2000 platform in the Panyu district of GuangZhou to deliver IP-based voice, video, and data services to business, residential, and governmental subscribers. In addition to broadband services, Panyu Cable will use Salira's products to deliver IP-based broadcast TV and advanced services like video on demand to its existing base of cable subscribers. Salira is conducting interoperability testing with an undisclosed headend and set-top box manufacturer for the Panyu Cable deployment. The Salira 2000 consists of the Salira 2500 high-density optical line terminal and Salira 2300 multicustomer optical-network unit. The initial Panyu deployment will involve five Salira 2500 systems with upwards of 10 PON blades per system. Each PON blade then supports a family of Salira 2300s. System deployment has commenced and involves a few high-rise buildings; it will continue for the next 12–18 months. The majority of subscribers are located within a 5–10-km range, but a few units are at 20 km, the maximum distance the Salira platform supports. The deployment's initial phase will serve 260,000 customers in the 1,300-sq-km Panyu district, which has a population of one million.

Laurel Networks (Pittsburgh) announced that KT Corp. (formerly Korea Telecom, Seoul) is deploying its ST200 service edge router to deliver advanced Internet services at the edge of KT's KORNET network. Laurel's ST200 enables KT to leverage its metro Ethernet network to provide business customers with a high-speed upgrade path from TDM-based DS-3 circuits to 100-Mbit/sec or 1-Gbit/sec Ethernet connectivity. KT chose Laurel after the ST200 won a competitive benchmark test that included thorough testing of IP routing, forwarding performance, quality of service, and security (including denial of service prevention). Further deployments of the ST200 are planned in points of presence throughout South Korea's major business centers.