Adtran (Huntsville, AL ) enhanced its Carrier Ethernet capabilities by acquiring all of Luminous Networks’ (Cupertino, CA) intellectual property and worldwide product rights. In addition to integrating the Luminous technologies into existing and future products, Adtran will also continue to manufacture certain Luminous products.
Digital Lightwave (Clearwater, FL) and PE.fiberoptics (Berkshire, UK) announced a strategic sales and marketing partnership whereby Digital Lightwave will sell and distribute PE.fiberoptics’ range of portable chromatic dispersion and polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) analyzers exclusively in the U.S. and on a nonexclusive basis in certain other territories.
Following a February merger agreement, CTC Communications (Waltham, MA) and Choice One Communications (Rochester, NY) announced they are jointly acquiring Conversent Communications Inc. (Charleston, WV), an integrated communications provider with facilities and customers in the Northeast as well as in West Virginia. According to the companies, the combined, privately held company will be the second largest competitive communications provider in the U.S., with a heavy regional focus in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest regions. The combined network will include 10,000 route mi of fiber and approximately 700 unique collocations. The acquisition will be partially funded with an equity investment from Columbia Ventures Corp. (the sole shareholder of CTC Communications) and a corresponding equity investment from existing Choice One shareholders or their affiliates. The name of the combined communications company has not yet been determined.
Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (Bristol, TN), a full-service utility provider for the municipality of Bristol, deployed ETI Software Solutions’ (Norcross, GA) Triad service activation system to automate the provisioning of an FTTP network and digital television services. The utility expects to roll out digital cable television and broadband Internet services to more than 20,000 business and residential customers over the next 4 years via its FTTP network.
FiberZone Networks (Bethesda, MD), a provider of automated connectivity systems for managing physical fiber-optic infrastructure, closed its second round of venture financing. The deal was led by Novak Biddle Venture Partners, with the participation of existing investors Portview Communications Partners and Stage One Ventures. The $8 million round brings total investment in FiberZone to $11 million; the company says the funding will allow it to enter the market later this year, following its beta trials with “tier one” customers.
FTTH and broadband aggregation technology provider PacketFront (Stockholm) signed a frame agreement with OpenNet (Stockholm), the communications operator to Svenska Bostader, a Swedish real estate company. Worth 40 million SEK ($5 million), the agreement covers 20,000 Swedish households and will run over the next two years. Also, Internet por Fibra S.A. de C.V. (Interfibra-Monterrey, Mexico) deployed PacketFront’s automated broadband services platform in several low-income housing projects in Mexico. In partnership with local property developers, the Mexican carrier says it is using PacketFront’s FTTH system, including the company’s BECS control and provisioning system and Access Switching Routers (ASRs), to offer differentiated Internet services, IP telephony, and IPTV services to more than 4,000 residences.
Siemens (Munich, Germany) signed a contract with Finnet Group (Helsinki, Finland) for the delivery of a “turnkey” fiber-optic network based on DWDM technology. The network is to boost Finnet’s transfer capacity to up to 40 Gbits/sec on existing paths of all wavelengths to meet demand generated by an expanding number of broadband connections and increased data traffic on Finnet’s core network. The contract covers the delivery of hardware and software components of Siemens’ Surpass hiT 7500 MSPP, as well as the platform’s installation and implementation across a distance spanning between the cities of Helsinki and Oulu.
Vertilas GmbH (Garching, Germany), a supplier of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) diodes, completed a third round of financing with results totaling €3.6 million. The company says it plans to use the new capital to advance the commercialization of its products. In addition to High Tech Private Equity GmbH, the main investor of the company’s first two financing rounds, the third round included KfW Mittelstandsbank as a new investor.
To offer 4-Gbit/sec networking options to business customers as part of its data transport services, Telekom Austria (Vienna) deployed ADVA Optical Networking’s (Munich, Germany) Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 2000 system. The platform was deployed for Telekom Austria by Siemens Austria (Vienna). Prompting the deployment was the service provider’s involvement in a project to enable a backup data center over a 50-km fiber-optic connection for Sony DADC Austria AG, part of Sony’s worldwide CD manufacturing network.
The London Internet Providers Exchange (Lipex) deployed Force10 Networks’ (Milpitas, CA) S50 data center switch to build a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) peering network among five Internet exchange points in London. The switch supports 48 line-rate GbE ports and two 10-GbE uplinks, providing Lipex with enough capacity to upgrade its backbone network to 10-GbE; Lipex expects to leverage the switch’s stacking capabilities to expand to this capacity.
Seikoh Giken (Chiba, Japan) and NEC Tokin Corp. (Tokyo) signed a letter of intent regarding the transfer of NEC’s optical device business to Seikoh.
The Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL-New Delhi) selected ECI Telecom’s (Petah Tikva, Israel) optical networking platforms for the expansion of the authority’s Gail-Tel South network. ECI’s equipment is supporting a long-haul SDH regional network expansion of thousands of kilometers designed to increase GAIL’s capacity to deliver services as a “carrier of carriers.” GAIL deployed ECI’s converged optical platform, including the company’s XDM MSPP, its BroadGate-40 platform for bandwidth management utilization, and its LightSoft network management system.
Oki Electric Industry (Tokyo) achieved experimental 160-Gbit/sec data transmission over a distance of 635 km in a field trial conducted as part of a project consigned by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT-Tokyo). For the trial, Oki used an optical test bed provided by Japan Gigabit Network II (Tokyo); in the experiment, “high vision video” transmission was conducted by connecting to a photonic network provided by Japan’s University of Electro-Communications (Tokyo). The university generated a 10-Gbit/sec optical signal including the video data; this transmission was then boosted to 40 Gbits/sec through TDM technology provided by Anritsu (Kanagawa), which also assisted in extracting data from the experiment. The 40-Gbit/sec signal was then inputted into Oki’s individual modulation optical time division multiplexing module, which converted the signal into 160-Gbit/sec optical data. The experiment, hosted by NICT as part of a project entitled “Research and Development on Ultra-high-speed Backbone Photonic Network Technologies,” took place in December 2005 in cooperation with the Research Promotion Council of Keihanna Info-Communication Open Laboratory.
Glimmerglass (Hayward, CA) partnered with Terilogy (Tokyo), a provider of service assurance software, to market and distribute the Glimmerglass line of intelligent optical switches to telecommunications and networking customers in Japan. Terilogy also invested $1 million in Glimmerglass to support the global expansion of the company’s business. Glimmerglass says the partnership expands its reach into the Japanese market while building on a pair of consecutive investments, made within the past six months, by NTT Leasing (Tokyo).Alcatel (Paris) and Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) entered into a definitive merger agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Lucent shareowners will receive 0.1952 of an American Depositary Share (ADS) representing ordinary shares of Alcatel (as the combined company) for every common share of Lucent that they currently hold. Upon completion of the merger, Alcatel shareholders will own approximately 60% and Lucent shareholders will own approximately 40% of the combined company. The combined company’s ordinary shares will continue to be traded on the Euronext Paris, and the ADSs representing ordinary shares will continue to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The board of directors of the company will comprise 14 members and will have equal representation from each company. Also in the merger, Lucent announced that it will form a separate, independent U.S. subsidiary, under Bell Labs, holding certain classified contracts with U.S. government agencies. This subsidiary is to be separately managed by a board to be composed of three independent U.S. citizens acceptable to the U.S. government. The transaction is expected to be completed in 6 to 12 months.
PMC-Sierra (Santa Clara, CA) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Passavé (Santa Clara), a developer of system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor platforms for the FTTH and PON access markets. The acquisition price of approximately $300 million is expected to be paid through the issuance of PMC-Sierra common stock. The deal was expected to close last month, conditioned upon the receipt of normal governmental rulings. PMC-Sierra expects the acquisition will be neutral to earnings in the near term and accretive in three quarters based on expected revenue growth.