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Holey Fiber!
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With the broadband world outside of the Optical Fiber
Communication 2001 show seemingly focused on slowdowns and layoffs, the thousands who
flocked to Anaheim, Calif., for OFC instead had their enthusiasm fueled by the
seemingly irresistible technology advancements and bandwidth usage trends they believe
will boost optical networking deployments over the next decade.
--April 2, 2001
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Nothing But Net
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Being responsible for a network used by more than
2.95 million subscribers isn't a job for the faint of heart. For Excite@Home CTO
Milo Medin, who recently took out time to talk with Broadband Week senior editor
Karen Brown, issues ranging from service problems to the era of multiple ISP access
to cable networks constantly loom overhead. But that does not appear to have sapped
his enthusiasm about the future of his company and broadband.
--April 2, 2001
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Hillary Broadband Bills Face Uphill Journey
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It may take more than a village to pass the series of
broadband-related bills that constitute the maiden legislative voyage for freshman
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.
--April 2, 2001
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Nortel, ADC Cut More Heads
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Nortel Networks and ADC added several thousand jobs to
the death list last week, announcing major layoffs due to what they both termed a
continuing slowdown in orders for network equipment.
--April 2, 2001
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Switched Frequency
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Backers of the HomeRF wireless home networking standard
insist their signal to consumers is not lost with the decision by major supporter
Intel Corp. to support the rival 802.11b protocol as the home wireless LAN standard.
--April 2, 2001
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Amid Staggering Demand, Fiber Slows
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One of the biggest news items in the world of fiber optics
is the struggle by fiber cable makers to meet surging demand from network builders. So why
is the biggest fiber player of all looking at a slowdown in its earnings?
--April 2, 2001
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Crash Landing
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It was rickety, 10 years beyond its design lifetime and fraught
with problems. But the 140-ton Russian Mir space station made a flashy exit as it crashed back
to the Earth March 22 in the South Pacific near Fiji. Similarly, an effort to send streaming
media video of the event met with mixed results...
--April 2, 2001
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Product Intros Flow at OFC 2001
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New chips from Broadcom Corp. and "wavelength to the building"
technology from Cisco Systems Inc. were among the new optical products introduced at the
Optical Fiber Communication 2001 conference March 19-22 in Anaheim, Calif.
--April 2, 2001
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AT&T Deal Raises DSL Questions
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AT&T Corp. was being cagey about its DSL plans after
winning approval to buy bankrupt NorthPoint Communications for about $135 million.
NorthPoint's customers, however, didn't have that luxury after the buyout left them
scrambling to find new broadband service providers.
--April 2, 2001
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Agere Finally Here
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Lucent Technologies Inc., after scaling back plans three
times for a public share offering of Agere Systems Inc. in a lackluster IPO market,
finally sold 600 million shares of its microelectronics unit for $6 each.
--April 2, 2001
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Layoff Virus Strikes Broadband
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It appears the shining world of broadband isn't immune to
the dreaded pink slip epidemic plaguing other Internet sectors these days.
--April 2, 2001
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Rough Seas Toss Chipmakers
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While fellow broadband communications chipmakers were busy
slashing jobs and revenue forecasts, LSI Logic generated some good news for itself with a
move into the consumer broadband market.
--April 2, 2001
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Fiber Vendors Focus on Intelligence
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DWDM in both the long haul and metro space. Wide
proliferation of optical switching. The introduction of 40 gigabit technology.
Optical Ethernet transport over wide area networks. Increased emphasis on optical
intelligent software to optimize the network. Those are the key technology trends
that leading fiber optic and component vendors see coming to fruition in 2001.
--April 2, 2001
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MPLS, QoS Key to Broadband Traffic Efficiencies
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MPLS. QoS. The acronyms might sound like alphabet soup,
but for broadband providers and their customers, such soup is good food for high-speed
networks and the bits and bytes that travel across them every day.
--April 2, 2001
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DWDM: The Big Bang of Optical Networking
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The wildfire of new optical networking technologies and
services sweeping the telecommunications industry was in many ways sparked by the
development of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing or DWDM. The ability to transmit
multiple wavelengths of light over a single strand of fiber greatly increased the
capacity of optical networks and has helped quench the appetite for more and more
capacity.
--April 2, 2001
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Fibering America
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Despite the collapse in the dot-com space, the
tightening venture capital market and the talk of a potential recession, broadband
service providers remain surprising upbeat of capital expenditures for 2001.
--April 2, 2001
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Zolo Trying to Make Its Mark
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Optical sub-systems manufacturer Zolo Technologies
managed to stay stealthy for more than a year, but it doesn't plan on working in
the dark any longer. That seems to make sense for a company that's all about light.
--April 2, 2001
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Getting Friendly with Customers
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The new enhanced services division at broadband systems
provider ADC Inc. wants to get more personal. That comes across when one speaks with
the company about its new adaptive communications services offering and the buzzwords
begin to flow: Congeniality. Usability. Adaptability. Friendly.
--April 2, 2001
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Gazing Into Crystal
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While it may take a clairvoyant to predict which optical
switch technology will deliver on the promised economies of pure optical networks,
several companies are looking at crystals, and investing a lot of hard cash, to find
the answer.
--April 2, 2001
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Souped Up DSL
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For some time it has been viewed the DeLorean of
DSL--a flashy, high-octane technology that proved impractical and too expensive
for large-scale residential rollout. But Very High Speed DSL is making a comeback
with a different market aim, according to at least one company.
--April 2, 2001
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Line Sharing Creeping Ahead
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As the competitive DSL market continues careening on
its financial roller coaster ride of the last six months, the market focus for the
rest of this year will start shifting to the DLECs left standing. Of particular
importance could be their progress in line sharing.
--April 2, 2001
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Time Warner Telecom Not Convinced On Gigabit Ethernet
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Time Warner Telecom Inc., one of the more successful
competitive exchange local carriers, is putting its faith in fiber rather than
gigabit Ethernet or other newer approaches for delivering last-mile broadband
connectivity and services.
--April 2, 2001
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Broadband Awareness Grows, Understanding Remains Fuzzy
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Four out of 10 U.S. consumers have heard the term
"broadband"... they're just not too sure what it means.
--April 2, 2001
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Supercharged HFC
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Delivering IP data at 100 megabits per second over existing
hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) plant--all of it out-of-band. At Westford, Massachusetts-based
Narad Networks Inc., this is the objective.
--April 2, 2001
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ITV Features Keep Checking Into Hotels
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It's one of the pioneers of consumer broadband entertainment
services, and the business of offering hotel room interactive television services to
travelers remains on the leading edge of consumer ITV offerings. While such applications
as personal video recording may only be creeping into the mainstream consumer market,
hospitality iTV leaders expect advanced services to spread widely among their clients.
--April 2, 2001
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Building Next-Gen Networks
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AT&T Corp.'s decision to switch wireless technologies
for its third generation networks will delay into next year much of the spending by its
affiliate carriers to upgrade their own networks.
--April 2, 2001
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Changing Channels In Texas
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Businesses that tap into television station KHLM in
Houston, Texas, aren't necessarily spending their workday watching "Leave It to
Beaver" re-runs. Instead, they're using Channel 43 as a high-speed Internet access
connection and business tool.
--April 2, 2001
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Healthy Feed
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The key to surviving the Internet Great Depression
is to employ old-fashioned business practices in a newfangled market, according to
the CEO of one broadband streaming media news portal.
--April 2, 2001
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Interactive Frontiers
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It seems fitting that a science program is being used
to explore the science of interactive TV. The Public Broadcasting Service, which has
been doing a fair amount of interactive TV experimentation of late, is embarking on a
new interactive frontier with its show, Scientific American Frontiers.
--April 2, 2001
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From Ivory Tower to Optical Marketplace
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It's not every day that technology companies are
spun out of major universities. But the pioneering work in optical electronics at
the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom has served as the foundation
for the creation of Southampton Photonics, a new fiber optics components
manufacturer.
--April 2, 2001
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Courage Key to Fixed Wireless Broadband
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Using fixed wireless systems offers new ways to achieve
last-mile broadband connectivity is making slight inroads in the previously all-mobile
wireless focus of the CTIA Wireless convention.
--April 2, 2001
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Broadside:
Dressing For Success
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Bill Menezes: Some of the more interesting news
I've seen in the past few days was a Reuters story about the apparent demise of the
"business casual" corporate dress code. The shift apparently stems from the dot-bomb
implosion and subsequent suspicion of anyone who tries to cultivate a cutting-edge
mystique by dressing professionally as if they were attending Cirque du Soleil rather
than running a company.
--April 2, 2001
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Always On:
Road Runner Just Scratches the Surface at AOL-TW
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Gary Arlen: Busby Berkeley designed some pretty
fancy footwork for Warner Bros. movies 60 and 70 years ago. His campy excesses may
become a model for the digital impresarios of the company in which "AOL-Time" prefixes
the Warner name.
--April 2, 2001
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Through the Pipe:
Service Provider Survival
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John Holobinko: Businesses don't survive just on
their total revenue. They survive based on the gross margins they generate on that
revenue. If revenue from a customer is $5,000 per month but the gross margin generated
is $100 per month, that is not a very sustainable business model for a service
provider.
--April 2, 2001
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