KPNQWEST TO ACQUIRE EBONE/GTS IN PRE-NEGOTIATED BANKRUPTCY AGREEMENT
KPNQwest agreed to acquire Ebone and Central Europe businesses of Global TeleSystems (GTS) in a pre-negotiated bankruptcy deal valued at EUR 210 million plus the assumption of certain debt.  The consolidation of the Ebone fiber network would add ten more cities to KPNQwest’s long-haul reach, including 7 cities in the UK.  It would also extend KPNQwest’s metro footprint with the addition of 14 citywide networks, each with a minimum of 96 fibers, and would add 15 more data hosting centers, giving the carrier of a total of 30 such facilities in Europe.  KPNQwest said the Ebone infrastructure would essentially complete its physical network ambitions, enabling it to end its construction programs.  In financial terms, KPNQwest will issue approximately EUR 210 million of new convertible bonds and assume an estimated EUR 435 million of net bank debt and capital lease obligations.  The company said it had the support of a sufficient number of Ebone bondholders, but the deal is still subject to legal and regulatory approvals.  In addition, Qwest and Anschutz will acquire 10% of KPN's stake in KPN Qwest.  Qwest also receives an option to acquire all of KPN's stake in March 2002.  http://www.kpnqwest.com/html/frames.html
KPNQwest, October 21, 2001

• Ebone claims 250 ISP and telecom customers, 4,000 enterprise customers and 14,000 dial-up users.  The company has a total debt of 2,345 million euros.
   
• In January, Global TeleSystems renamed its main business "Ebone," reflecting the existing name of its pan-European IP backbone. The renaming encompassed the company's 20,000 km fiber network as well as its carrier and ISP services.  Ebone was originally founded in Copenhagen in 1991 as Europe's first Tier 1 IP backbone, and subsequently was acquired by GTS in 1998.
   

  Some other recent Network Acquisitions from Bankruptcy Proceedings

  AT&T agreed to purchase essentially all of Excite@Home's broadband access business assets for $307 million in cash as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding filed by Excite@Home earlier this month.

  iBeam filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy papers in September.  On the same day, Williams Communications agreed to acquire all of the company’s assets for $25 million in cash, including all of iBEAM's customer contracts, facilities and equipment.

  WorldCom acquired key DSL assets from Rhythms Communications for $40 million from a US Bankruptcy Court in September.

  AT&T acquired substantially all of the assets of NorthPoint Communications for approximately $135 million in a bankruptcy court proceeding in March.

MOTOROLA ENHANCES ITS C-PORT NETWORK PROCESSORS AND DISCLOSES ROADMAP TO 10GBPS
Motorola introduced a series of enhancements for its C-Port network processor family and disclosed plans to scale the architecture from OC-48c speeds today to 10 Gbps by mid-2003.  Motorola’s C-port architecture features a C language-based programming environment. The new C-5e Network Processor, which is targeted at high-performance edge and access switching platforms, provides full-duplex OC-48c support and greater than three times the processing capability per watt than the first generation of the processor.  Motorola is also announcing a new 5Gbps, multi-protocol Traffic Management Coprocessor (TMC) for supporting fine-grained QoS.  The chip will provide multiple protocol, micro-flow level traffic management for up to 256K independent queues, including per-queue policing and shaping.  It will also feature a three-level scheduling hierarchy and active queue management capabilities designed for enforcing differentiated services.  Future plans call for scaling the architecture to 10 Gbps, although the company believes the current economic environment will delay volume deployments of equipment requiring advanced packet processing at 10 Gbps rates by at least a year.  Motorola claims over 60 design wins for its C-5 NP architecture, including in high-function edge routers, VoIP gateways and cable head-end equipment.  http://www.motorola.com/semiconductors
Motorola, October 22, 2001

• In February 2000, Motorola acquired C-Port Corp., a start-up from North Andover, Massachusetts, for approximately $430 million in stock.

NISHAN DELIVERS NEW 16-PORT IP STORAGE SWITCHES
Nishan Systems introduced a 16-port version of its multiprotocol IP Storage switch designed for scaling storage area networks and/or extending them across wide area networks.  Nishan’s new IPS 4000 Series IP Storage switches, like its existing products, combine wire-speed Gigabit Ethernet performance and interoperability with Fibre Channel and SCSI end systems.  The Nishan's IP Storage switches interoperate with existing Fibre Channel switches and SCSI end systems, along with native IP Storage protocols, including iSCSI and iFCP.  Each of the IPS 4000’s 16 ports can be user-configured to support Fibre Channel interfaces or Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.  http://www.nishansystems.com
Nishan Systems, October 22, 2001

• Last month, the "Promontory Project," a multivendor industry initiative named after the location where America's first transcontinental railroad was joined, demonstrated a coast-to-coast IP storage link at speeds of 2.5 Gbps using a 10 Gbps packet over SONET connection. The project was designed to show the feasibility of long-distance backup, recovery, and mirroring at 1, 2.5, or 10 Gbps. The storage protocols used were iSCSI and iFCP.  The tests used Nishan’s IP storage switches along with Adaptec server adapters, Dell servers and storage devices, Hitachi Data Systems’ Fibre Channel storage devices, IBM’s iSCSI storage devices, Intel’s server connectivity products, Qlogic’s server technology and Qwest’s transcontinental 10 Gbps optical network and hosting centers.
   
• Nishan Systems was founded in October 1998 and is led by Aamer Latif, who previously was President and CEO of Amati Communications, an early developer of ADSL.  In October 2000, the company announced the closing of $50 million in third round funding

FIBERSPACE DEBUTS ITS OPLL WAVELOCKER TECHNOLOGY
fiberspace, a start-up based in Woodland Hills, California, introduced a patented optical phase locked loop (OPLL) technology designed for improving laser stability while providing fast, accurate tunability across the ITU grid.  The fiberspace wavelength locking technology, which uses a unique rapid frequency feedback loop mechanism, provides laser stability of +/- 100 MHz, representing a 25X improvement over conventional means.  The increased laser stability could be leveraged for closer WDM spacing (higher channel counts) on new or existing DWDM systems without significantly impacting the fiber infrastructure.  In addition, the fiberspace technology provides a fast tuning response of <100ns, compared with >2s for lasers with conventional wavelockers.  Beta versions of the product are expected in Q2/Q3 2002.  http://www.fiberspace.net/
fiberspace, October 22, 2001

• fiberspace has raised over $15 million in venture funding from Morgenthaler, JP Morgan Chase Capital and others.
   
• fiberspace is led by Dr. Leonardo Berezovsky, who previously served as the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AHI Healthcare Systems, Inc., a physician practice management firm. 

NETSCREEN LAUNCHES GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR NETWORK SECURITY
NetScreen, a provider of ASIC-based firewall systems, announced a Global Alliance program intended to promote interoperability and customized security solutions for enterprises and carriers.  NetScreen’s list of initial partners includes dynamicsoft, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Internet Security Systems, Micromuse, NetIQ, Radware, Recourse Technologies, Riverstone Networks, Trend Micro and Websense.  As part of the program, NetScreen has established an Alliance Integration Lab for testing high performance security implementations.  The resulting solutions would provide a tighter coupling of NetScreen’s products with systems that offer intrusion detection, antivirus, denial of service protection and other attack blocking technologies.  http://www.netscreen.com
NetScreen, October 22, 2001

COVAD REACHES 346,000 DSL ACCOUNTS
As of September 30, Covad Communications was serving 346,000 DSL circuits, up 4% from June 30, 2001. The net increase of 13,000 lines during the quarter reflects the discontinuation or migration of lines previously served on the company’s discontinued Bluestar network. This increase is also after  the continued disconnection of subscribers from some of Covad's financially troubled resellers.  http://www.covad.com/companyinfo/pressreleases/pr_2001/101901_press.shtml
Covad, October 21, 2001

Guest Column

Exploding growth in bandwidth demand being generated by the Internet and e-commerce presents yet another challenge to today’s long-haul telecommunications service providers. They are realizing that their traditional SONET/SDH ring networks cannot efficiently handle the tremendous growth and dynamic nature of optical bandwidth demand and are looking to new technologies that give them the tools to build a more efficient mesh-based optical network.

Read the Full Column
http://www.convergedigest.com/columns/0110boca/0110g-mmclaughlin1.htm

Daily Journal For Broadband Networking
Copyright 2001 Converge! Media Ventures Inc.
All Rights Reserved. ISSN 1084-2438
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