India's Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will be leveraging UTStarcom for the deployment of 1.3 million lines of UTStarcom's iAN8K B1000 IP DSLAM solution in approximately 900 cities throughout India. This announcement comes after UTStarcom announced a three-year contract to deploy its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV solution with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) in India. (See UTStarcom Scores IPTV Deal with India's MTNL)

India is expected to see large increases in broadband uptake and estimates approximately 20 million subscribers by 2010. "Through this network, we aim to deliver real-time applications, high-speed Internet and effectively handle ever-increasing traffic of broadband subscribers," said Mr AK Sinha, chairman and managing director at BSNL.

Telco Systems' EdgeGate CPE 232 and 482 IP media gateways, which provide broadband Internet access, VoIP, and IPTV to the consumer's home over fiber, were selected for use in fiber-to-the-home projects funded by the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) following review by the RUS Technical Committee for telecommunications products.

Calix will see a an increased presence in Canada thanks to its selection by Téléphone Guèvremont, a Quebec-based ILEC, and by Maskatel and Téléphone Drummond, CLEC affiliates of Téléphone Guèvremont. The project will utilize Calix C7 multiservice access platforms to extend new fiber transport facilities to Drummondville, Quebec, overbuilding the current operator. From there, the Calix C7 will deliver voice, high-speed internet access, and eventually IPTV services over short 1.5 Km loops using ADSL2+ and VDSL2 technology. Greenfield locations will be built out using 2.4 Gbps gigabit passive optical network fiber to the premises facilities.

Net Insight has rolled out the Nimbra 360 multiservice access/edge switch. The solution integrates transport of Digital Terrestrial and Mobile Television services with transfer of highly accurate timing information, eliminating the need for GPS receivers.

With four built-in multirate SONET/SDH SFP ports and one Gigabit Ethernet port, the product is ready for demanding applications already in its basic configuration. In addition, up to 16 DVB-ASI ports or other combinations of multiservice access and trunk interfaces are available using the two slots for plug-in modules.

Etex Telephone Cooperative, Inc., a local exchange carriers in Texas, has purchased multiple products of Occam Networks's Broadband Loop Carrier system to provide its customers with Triple Play.

Etex is planning a mixed copper and fiber triple play deployment.

Nokia and Siemens unveiled the proposed product portfolio plan of their future 50:50 joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks, strongly underlining their intent to create an industry leader that will meet the needs of customers in the converging telecommunications industry. The planned merger to create Nokia Siemens Networks is expected to close in the first quarter 2007.

The proposed portfolio plan covers the six future business units for Nokia Siemens Networks and includes a single, lead solution for: IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), mobile and fixed softswitches, Media Gateways (MGW), Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC), Intelligent Networks (IN), Packet Core, Mobile TV (DVB-H) and IPTV, and Converged Charging, among other solutions.

The Register has an interesting write-up about the Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE) Study Group and their findings for ethernet power management. It is estimated that Energy-Efficient Ethernet could save a total of $450 million every year in just the U.S. alone, with even more significant savings worldwide.

"We're going to look at ways to reduce power consumption by switching to lower speeds during periods of low link-utilisation," said EEE Chair Mike Bennett.

Amedia Networks announced the development of a gigabit passive optical network gateway with built-in home networking capabilities and a personal media library. The HG-G1000 is being designed to provide the integrated functionality of an in-home Broadband Home Router, an outdoor Optical Network Terminal, and integrated battery backup. Simply put, telecommunications companies can offer the HG-G1000 as a single, “in-home” gateway appliance for subscribers – with no required outdoor-hardened optical or electrical components. This significantly reduces installation costs, relative to the multiple equipment unit (ONT plus BHR plus battery backup) solution, by eliminating outdoor installation and media required to interconnect multiple products, while also providing means to utilize existing home television and telephone wiring within the connected home.

RawFlow, a provider of live P2P streaming technologies, has partnered with ChinaCache, the largest content delivery network (CDN) in China. RawFlow and ChinaCache will jointly promote Peer-To-Peer technology in the China market. ChinaCache will deploy the technology for its media delivery network and serve customers with P2P live broadcasting. China has the world's second largest internet population, with more than 132 million connections and 42 million broadband subscribers; making internet broadcast an incredibly attractive medium.

Juniper Networks, Inc. and Intelliden, Inc. announced that they will deliver a Dynamic Network Automation solution for high bandwidth IP services. By integrating Juniper Networks Service Deployment System (SDX-300) platform and Intelliden's Dynamic Resource Provisioning solution, the joint DNA solution will link end-to-end policy and real-time network resource management by extending intelligence to the network core. The DNA solution will help communications service providers deliver broadband services with enhanced quality of experience (QoE), greater service reliability and higher scalability while containing operational costs.

This week at CES, Amedia Networks, Inc. showcased its Broadband Entertainment Center, an all-in-one gateway, home networking appliance, and personal media library. Amedia designed the Broadband Entertainment Center to replace the computer as the media hub and central point of networking within the connected home.

Some of the features the Broadband Entertainment Center includes are:

• Store, organize, and search all types of multimedia content -- from movies, to home videos, to music, to games -- within a personal media library right on their residential gateway
• Play that content on virtually any television, monitor, or networked device
• Serves as a modem, router, wireless access point, VoIP adapter, and more within a compact device
• Wireless HDTV transmission via Ultrawideband (UWB) to various home entertainment and media devices throughout the home
• Quality-of-Service (QoS) console, allowing subscribers to prioritize their entertainment and communications services to avoid disruption of quality or speed
• The built-in software operating system allows subscribers to surf the Web on their televisions
• Deliver proprietary or third-party software programs and networking capabilities to subscribers, such as in-home messaging, remote home monitoring, a virtual family calendar, personalized family firewall, and much more.

Actiontec Electronics unveiled an expanded line of IPTV-capable consumer premises equipment for service providers of all sizes and infrastructures. The company now offers a full range of CPE products to support carriers' triple play initiatives, becoming the first vendor to support every major WAN and LAN distribution standard including VDSL2, ADSL2+ bonded, MoCA, HomePlug AV and HPNA3.

The new products follow last year's release of a fiber-based router that was adopted by Verizon for its FiOS broadband and TV services.

Free (Iliad Group), an IPTV service provider in France, is to roll out the first and largest optical fiber network in France based on the Cisco Internet Protocol Next Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture and using Cisco Ethernet fiber-to-the-home (E-FTTH) technology.

According to Free's plan, the first phase of the fiber project will connect more than 2 million people in the city of Paris via the largest fiber network in Europe. Free announced that residents will have access to broadband speeds that could exceed 50 megabits per second for 29.99 euros per month, and benefit from advanced services such as high-definition IPTV, video on demand, multimedia communication and Web 2.0 services.

Juniper Networks, Inc. announced that Chongqing Telecom, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Telecom and one of China's largest telecommunications service providers, has deployed Juniper Networks E320 Broadband Service Routers to cost-effectively address growing demand for high-speed Internet, IP television (IPTV), video on demand and other advanced IP services to their extensive customer base. With the ability to efficiently support large numbers of high-bandwidth subscribers on a single platform, the E320 enables Chongqing to introduce innovative new services while keeping costs per subscriber low.

Redback Networks Inc. has won the second phase of a broadband network upgrade with largest provincial carrier in China. Guangdong Telecom will use Redback's SmartEdge family of multi-service edge routers to deliver broadband internet, IPTV and virtual private network (VPN) services for up to four million homes and businesses.