Other Broadband Developments
Broadband Daily, 8/25/2004

Colorado-based broadband service provider Usurf America 8/24 reported Q2 revenues of $2.29 mil., compared to $166K in the prior quarter. The surge resulted primarily from the company’s acquisition of Connect Paging, (dba Get-A-Phone), which provides phone services in Texas and Florida.

Swisscom subsidiary Bluewin said 8/24 that it will provide 600 homes in Switzerland with 25 channels of TV via ADSL as part of a test being conducted with Microsoft TV. The offering also includes 5 pay-TV channels, VOD and an integrated video recorder. The tests will last for about four months.

Internet phone company Vonage announced 8/24 that it has teamed with networking products provider Netgear and Cisco Systems to offer new Vonage-enabled hardware devices to its subscribers. Linksys will provide its PAP2 Phone Adapter with 2 Phone Ports or the RT31P2 Broadband Router with 2 Phone Ports, and will also soon make available a Wireless-G Router with 2 phone ports. Netgear will work with Vonage to develop a suite of broadband telephony devices, including a voice-enabled 802.11g wireless router and a wired two-port adapter/router.

Canadian mobile voice-services provider Rogers Wireless announced 8/24 that it has selected Azaire Networks as its core system provider for its hotspot services across Canada. Customers will be able to pay for the WiFi services either by credit card or on their Rogers Wireless account.

Cox Communications’ business-services unit 8/24 announced that it will offer a new tier of its business-grade broadband Internet services, which will deliver speeds of up to 6 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Cox recently added a new, higher-speed tier to it residential Internet service, as well.

Paducah Power System, a municipal electric distribution utility service in Kentucky, said 8/24 that it plans to expand its fiber-optic backbone with Alcatel’s fiber-to-the-user and OmniSwitch enterprise data infrastructure range. This is Alcatel's second FTTU deployment in Kentucky. Paducah plans to expand high-speed data, voice and video capabilities to area businesses.

Industry-consortium The DSL Forum's announced that it approved Technical Report (TR) specifications TR-092 and TR-094 during its annual meeting in Prague last week. TR-094 defines the Forum’s DSLHome home networking architecture to permit multiple users to run numerous applications and devices with various bandwidth requirements and QoS. TR-092 provides specific guidance on all the technical aspects of broadband remote access server equipment.