Carrier Channel: News Briefs

Posted: 4/2003

News Briefs

* Dynegy Inc., the power and
natural gas company that operates a 16,800-mile optically switched mesh network
in North America, says it expected to have exited the telecom business by the
end of the first quarter. Dynegy recently announced the sale of its broadband
network reaching 32 cities throughout Western Europe to an affiliate of
London-based private equity firm, Klesch & Company, for an undisclosed sum.
The struggling telecommunications industry has marked one of several problem
areas plaguing Dynegy, which posted an annual net loss of $2.8 billion. Dynegy
Global Communications posted a $548 million net loss in 2002. Operating losses
for the year totaled $745 million.

* A federal bankruptcy court has
approved a $38 million bid from CenturyTel Inc. to acquire the assets of Digital
Teleport Inc., a regional fiber-optics communications company. Under terms
of the asset sale approved Feb. 13 by Judge Barry S. Schermer of the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, CenturyTel
will assume all existing contracts with customers and with most suppliers. The
transaction is to be completed during the second quarter this year.

* ITXC Corp. has chosen the Cisco
Systems Inc. AS5000 Universal Gateway and PGW 2200 Softswitch VoIP offerings
as the basis for its worldwide ITXC.net intercarrier voice network currently
spanning more than 175 countries. ITXC’s legacy switches and older equipment
that are part of the existing network footprint are being taken out of service
and replaced with equipment from Cisco.

ITXC is installing Cisco’s Voice
Infrastructure and Applications Solution (Cisco VIA) as it builds the next
generation of ITXC.net. ITXC’s patented BestValue Routing technology uses the
Cisco VIA equipment to route voice calls with consistent carrier grade quality
across the public Internet.

ITXC.net originates and terminates
voice and fax traffic using Cisco AS5000 Universal Gateways. With SS7 signaling
capability from the Cisco PGW 2200, ITXC is able to eliminate traditional
telephony switches in its network, yet maintain signaling compatibility with the
switches used by its customers around the world.

* BellSouth Interconnection
Services is rolling out Native Mode LAN Interconnection (NMLI) Gigabit
Ethernet Service for wholesale customers for interconnection of local area
networks (LANs). GigE is the next step in the evolution of BellSouth’s NMLI and
the first service of this type to be deployed as part of BellSouth’s High Speed
Transport Service portfolio. BellSouth already offers NMLI to retail customers.

BellSouth’s GigE also offers the
increased bandwidth needed to support the convergence of IP, video, multicast
and data applications across multiple LAN environments for interstate traffic
applications. In addition to GigE speeds (1,000 Mbps), BellSouth offers NMLI at
10Mbps and 100Mbps. GigE also offers an incremental migration to higher speed
networking and an upgrade opportunity for current Ethernet installations

* France Telecom has signed
its 14th GRX-to-GRX interconnection agreement. Among the carriers France
Telecom’s GRX is interconnected with are Aicent Inc., Belgacom NV, British
Telecom plc, PT ComunicaAes (formerly Marconi Corp. plc), REACH, Singapore
Telecommunications Ltd., and others. These interconnections take place at the
GRX Peering Amsterdam (GPA) exchange point, which has housed the main GRX
providers since its creation in 2001.

* Wholesale carrier Genesis
Telecommunications Group has licensed ExtractCDR from Equinox Information
Systems to filter and convert raw switch data and billing records into
usable formats for export into most billing systems, spreadsheet and database
applications.