MCI WORLDCOM AND SPRINT'S DSL + MMDS ACTIVITIES
In July, MCI WorldCom reached more than 1,000 Points of Presence (PoPs) in its DSL network deployment, giving it a presence in 22 metro areas across the US.  At the time, MCI WorldCom said it would bring its count of DSL PoPs to 1,500 by year-end and to 2,000 by the end of next year.  MCI WorldCom has also committed to purchase 100,000 lines of DSL-based services from Rhythms NetConnections to supplement its own network.

In April, MCI WorldCom acquired CAI Wireless Systems for its MMDS licenses in Boston, New York City, Long Island, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Rochester, Albany, Baltimore, Buffalo, Hartford, Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Pittsburgh, Providence and Syracuse.

Earlier this year, Sprint purchased Videotron USA (a subsidiary of Montreal's Le Groupe Videotron), People's Choice Television and American Telecasting Inc. for their MMDS broadband wireless licenses.  The acquisitions were expected to provide Sprint ION with a geographic footprint covering 24.2 million US households.  The acquired licenses covered the following cities: Albuquerque, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, Greenville (SC), Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Spokane, St. Louis, the Tampa Bay area, Toledo and Tucson.

INTEL ACQUIRES IPIVOT FOR $500 MILLION, ITS 8^TH NETWORKING ACQUISITION THIS YEAR
Intel plans to acquire privately held IPivot, a start-up offering network appliances for eCommerce sites, for $500 million in cash.  IPivot offers two product lines:  intelligent traffic management devices that accelerates SSL processing operations on secure Web servers; and Multi-Site Directors, which ensure that web hits are passed to fastest responding web server.

IPivot's Commerce Director 8000 traffic management device regains the speed lost by servers processing secure transactions by delivering up to 150 times faster SSL processing.  By using proprietary technology to perform cryptographic processing and key management transparent to the server, the Commerce Director 8000 can support up to 600 SSL connections per second.  The device also combines Layer 4 through 7 application/content awareness to speed up response times and eliminate error messages for secure transactions.  A smaller version of the product is available.

IPivot's Multi-Site Director 9000 enables geographically redundant sites or virtually redundant sites within the same data center.  All servers connected to the Multi-Site Director 9000 are allowed to respond to a user request. The content from the one that responds fastest is passed through to the user and the others are ignored.

Intel plans to sell the IPivot equipment directly to OEMs and through its Internet Service Provider (ISP) channel program.  IPivot was founded in May 1997, with $4.2 million in first round venture funding from Enterprise Partners and Doll Capital Management.  The company is based near San Diego, California.  
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/Cn100599.htm  
http://www.ipivot.com/
Intel, October 5, 1999

INTEL'S RECENT NETWORKING ACQUISITIONS

* IPivot, network appliances for eCommerce sites, October 1999, $500 million in cash

* the Telecom Component Products (TCP) division of Stanford Telecommunications, silicon components for cable modems and head-end equipment, September 1999, undisclosed cash

* Olicom A/S's development group in Denmark, intellectual property and engineering team focused on LAN solutions, September 1999, price not disclosed

* NetBoost, hardware/software accelerator for policy-based networking, September 1999, price not disclosed

* Softcom MicroSystems, network access processor designed for full OC-12 cell rate performance for 64 byte packets, July 1999,   price not disclosed price

* Dialogic Corp., computer telephony software, network interfaces and media processing boards that run on Intel-based servers, June 1999, approximately $780 million. 

* Level One Communications, a developer of LAN/WAN silicon devices, March 1999, about $2.2 billion in stock. 

* Shiva, remote access and VPN products, October 98, $185 million in cash

In September, Intel unveiled a major initiative to increase its presence in the networking silicon business through an Internet Exchange (IX) Architecture that could be applied to a range of core and edge networking devices.  Intel also established a $200 million venture fund for network communications.