Czech-Based CD-Telematika Selects ECI Telecom to Build Nationwide Optical Fiber Network
ECI Telecom, a global provider of next-generation network solutions, announced today that it was selected by CD – Telematika a.s. (CD-T) to develop and implement a national high-capacity next generation optical network across the Czech Republic. The new network will allow CD-T to significantly increase bandwidth capacity, better route data traffic on the network, and provide highly reliable services over resilient optical infrastructure spread country-wide.
CD-T currently operates over 3,500 km of fiber optic lines throughout the country, supporting the second largest IP Network in the Czech Republic. CD-T provides services to large customers such as Czech Railways and its subsidiaries, as well as many telecom operators, including the operator of the CESNET academic network and other public administration bodies.
Highlights:
CD-T, a leading carrier-of-carriers operator in the Czech Republic, is deploying a national wide optical network to enhance the quality and reach of services to its customers The network will be capable of delivering high-performance IP services, allowing CD-T to respond to growing bandwidth demands, as well as improving reliability and scalability of their service capabilities Deployment of CD-T’s nationwide optical backbone was concluded in record five weeks from start to finish, demonstrating the agility and flexibility of ECI’s 1Net framework. This project expands on the seven-year strong relationship between the two companies and underscores ECI’s proven experience in deploying optical backbones
Utilizing ECI’s XDM(R) Next-Generation Optical Networking Platform, CD-T will be able to extend its optical backbone to support greater bandwidth and capacity. The platform’s innovative design meets all the requirements of modern transmission networks in a single platform featuring:
40 x40Gb/s fully tunable channels Multi-degree WSS ROADMs, allowing for faster response to customer’s bandwidth demands and service needs as well as dramatically reducing the operational costs of the network Full OTN layer support resulting in service transparency, extended reach and end-to-end reliability. 80 x 40G/100G channel-ready, future-proofing the network for growth and capacity
Executive Perspectives:
“We selected ECI’s XDM solution for its field-proven reliability and the flexibility it provides as a future-proof platform, providing sufficient capacity for data-intensive services and enables us to better innovate and expand our offerings moving forward. Having established a strong mutual relationship during the seven years, we are confident in the company’s technological leadership and exceptional service support.” Jeronym Prochazka, Project Manager, CD — Telematika a.s.
“Carrier-of-carriers in today’s market require flexible and customized infrastructure solutions to address current and future business challenges. Our long-term experience in deploying next-generation optical backbones coupled with our comprehensive understanding of this market enabled us to quickly deploy the ideal network solution for CD-T and position them for future expansion.” Oren Marmur, Head of Optical Networking Line of Business, ECI Telecom
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About CD – Telematika a.s
CD-Telematika is a strong and stable company in the domestic market that provides its customers with complex telecommunications, telematic and ICT solutions and services. CDT owns and operates one of the most dense fiber network in CZ consist of 3500km dark fiber and more than 350 PoP’s in CZ.
CDT operates own DWDM, Ethernet, IP, MPLS and Voice services with a strong focus on Carriers and Wholesale partners. CDT is well established ICT partner for government and Railway sector in CZ. For more information, please visit www.cdt.cz
About ECI Telecom
ECI Telecom delivers innovative communications platforms to carriers and service providers worldwide. ECI provides efficient platforms and solutions that enable customers to rapidly deploy cost-effective, revenue-generating services.
Founded in 1961, Israel-based ECI has consistently delivered customer-focused networking solutions to the world’s largest carriers. The Company is also a market leader in many emerging markets. ECI provides scalable broadband access, transport and data networking infrastructure that provides the foundation for the communications of tomorrow, including next-generation voice, IPTV, mobility and other business solutions. For more information, please visit www.ecitele.com.
Certain statements contained in this release may contain forward-looking information with respect to plans, projections or future performance of the Companies mentioned. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, product and market acceptance risks, the impact of competitive pricing, product development, commercialization and technological difficulties as well as other risks.
Radvision inks deal with Microsoft
Radvision Ltd, an Israel-based video and telecommunications company has inked deal to provide video conferencing system with Microsoft. As soon as the deal was finalized the company’s shares were up by nearly 8% at US$7.0.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
According to Radvision, it will offer a combination of hardware and software products, which will be integrated with Microsoft Lync, the latter’s instant messaging product, which was previously known as Microsoft Office Communicator.
Through this agreement, Radvision will provide advanced connectivity between the Microsoft unified communication platform and standards-based video conferencing solutions extending the video capabilities throughout the enterprise. Both Radvision and Microsoft will invest resources and have stakes in development, sales and marketing of the joint solution. Customers will have access to innovative communications capabilities leveraging the unique expertise of both companies resulting in higher productivity and lower costs of doing business.
According to Scott Morrison, Research Vice President at Gartner, Gartner estimates that there were more than 1.5 million room-based video conferencing endpoints in circulation by 2009. Vendors that do not include video in a coherent UC platform road map are less likely to succeed in the long term. Those that meet the UC needs of their customers are more likely to be able to ‘lock in’ video as part of their UC capabilities.
According to Warren Barkley of Microsoft, Microsoft and Radvision bring customers an interoperable UC solution that allows users to merge their choice of HD video conferencing and tele-presence systems with the simplicity of UC at the desktop. With the Microsoft and Radvision solutions, customers can have confidence that their existing and new investments in video communications will interoperate within the UC environment.
According to Boaz Raviv, Chief Executive Officer of Radvision, Radvision has a long history of providing advanced video conferencing and connectivity capabilities to Microsoft’s real time communications platforms. Through this latest initiative, Radvision and Microsoft will bring together the winning combination of solution features and benefits requested by the market today.
Israel’s telecommunications regulator orders to cut down the interconnection fees
Israel’s telecommunications regulator has ordered mobile operators to cut interconnection fees by nearly 73%.
According to Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon, interconnect fees will drop to US$0.0181 a minute at the start of 2011 from US$ 0.066 now. Fees will turn down further to US$0.0167 per minute from 2012, to US$0.0156 from 2013 and to. Termination fees for text messaging will also fall sharply.
The decline is based on the final proposals by Nera Economic Consulting, which examined the cost pricing model of mobile network components.
According to Kahlon, reducing interconnection fees will save the public about US$264.27 million a year, considerably lower the price of a call from landlines to mobile phones and increase competition to support the entry of new mobile companies.
According to Market leader Cellcom, the cuts would reduce its annual EBITDA next year by US$110.99 million and net profit by US$ 84.56672 million.
Cellcom inflates its revenue balloon with the profit of 17.7%
Cellcom Israel Ltd. has announced its financial results for the second quarter revenues were up by 5.2% to US$436 million compared to the previous year. EBITDA rose by 7.1% to US$176 million while the EBITDA margin of 40.3% was up from 39.6% a year ago and net income totaled US$84 million. Basic earnings per share for the quarter were US$0.85.
Subscriber base increased around 28,000 during this quarter, all post-paid subscribers reaching approx. 3.341 million at the end of June 2010. 3G subscribers reached approx. 1.076 million at the end of June 2010, net addition of approx. 39,000 in the second quarter 2010.
The Churn Rate in this quarter was 4.9%, compared to the last year. Average monthly subscriber Minutes of Use (“MOU”) were 338 minutes, an increase of 2.4%.
According to Amos Shapira, Chief Executive Officer, in the second quarter of 2010, Cellcom showed a strong performance with solid growth in revenues, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, operating income, net income and subscriber base.
Furthermore, airtime minutes grew 5.6%, year over year, in the second quarter compared with a 3.4% growth last year. Service revenues grew 5.5%, year over year, this quarter. In the second quarter 2010, the company continued to expand the 3G subscriber base, reaching 1.076 million at the end of June 2010, representing 32.2% of the total subscriber base.
Hutchison Whampoa lining up in profits
Hutchison Whampoa has revealed a higher-than-expected 12% rise in first-half net profit and are expecting 3G mobile-phone business to turn to the positive side.
The 3G division has been focusing on investors, as its losses have long been a pull on the corporation’s earnings. The company assures that it will make profits with its 3G operations by 2011.
The company’s net profit for the six months ended June 30 grew from HK$5.76 billion last year to HK$6.45 billion. The profits were more than the average HK$4.51 billion forecast of six analysts.
The company’s unexpected result was mainly because its 3G operations came in better than the market anticipated, but whether the recovery is sustainable will depend on how well its 3G operations in the U.K. can compete.
Hutchison’s 3G operations cover the U.K., Italy, Australia, Austria, Hong Kong and Sweden, and has more than 27.8 million subscribers.
Hutchison’s input to Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd., Li’s property flagship and Hutchison’s controlling shareholder with a 49.97% stake, rose 12% to HK$3.22 billion from HK$2.88 billion.
ARPU enlarged by 1% compared to last year. Apart from the consequence of the depreciation of Euro against other European currencies and Australian dollar, ARPU declined 4% compared to last year, largely owing to an improved proportion of mobile broadband access customers.
Excepting any major unfavorable market growth or regulatory developments, the management expects the 3 Group to make a positive contribution to the Group’s full year EBIT results this year.
The Group’s established mobile operations in Indonesia, Vietnam and its Sri Lanka and Thailand operations reported total revenue of HK$1,195 million and LBIT of HK$869 million for the period, a decline compared to the EBIT of HK$166 million for the similar period last year – largely reflecting the shrank contribution from its Israeli telecommunications operation which was disposed of in October 2009.
India lifts ban from Chinese equipment vendors
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The ban imposed on the Chinese vendors by the Indian government has been lifted but all their equipments will have to go through rigorous security checks before certification. The decision has been taken after two days of prime ministerial talks, which also involved India’s home and telecom ministries and the country’s Intelligence Bureau and National Informatics Center (NIC).
Diplomatic and trade row which has been raged between India and China after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) told operators that it would not give security approval for the purchase of Huawei or ZTE networking gear in April has been ended by the agreement.
According to the new plan, for the next 12 months Chinese-made infrastructure will need to be certified by international security audit firms, such as Canada’s Electronic Warfare Associates, US-based Infoguard and Israel’s ALTAL Security Consulting and mobile operators on the other hand will have to provide bank guarantees as part of a self-certification process of imported telco infrastructure.
Partner Communications net profit rises 13.9% (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 13.9% year-on-year increase in net profit at ILS337 million (USD91 million) has been reported by Israeli mobile network operator Partner Communications in the financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2010. Significant improvement in profitability parameters has been attributed as the reason behind the good performance.
A turnover of ILS1.587 billion for the three-month period has been generated by the telco which is up 12.4% against 1Q 2009 while EBITDA of the company reached ILS619 million, a 12.1% y-o-y rise. Partner has expressed its criticism against Ministry of Communications’ (MoC’s) decision to reduce mobile termination rates, announced earlier this month.
According to the company, the proposed legislation was out of line with previous Ministry policies as well as worldwide common practices and it might have a material adverse impact on its earnings and it intend to take all the necessary measures to mitigate it, inter alia, by reviewing the cost structure and generating additional revenues from the fixed line business.
Cellcom suffers loss of 9% in net profit (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 9% year-on-year decline in net profit has been reported by Israeli mobile network operator Cellcom and the loss can be attributed to increased financial costs. A net profit of ILS314 million (USD85 million) has been posted by the telco for the three months ended March 31, 2010. It has gone down from ILS348 million in the same period a year earlier.
3% rise in the revenue has also been recorded which went up to ILS1.414 billion while EBITDA also increased, rising 1.8% against 1Q 2009 to ILS638 million.
21,000 wireless customers have been added by Cellcom in the first three months of 2010 to bring its overall base to 3.31 million. The number of 3G customers rose by 40,000 in the quarter to 1.037 million.
