ECTA CONDEMNS COMMISSION U-TURN ON TELECOMS COMPETITION

Brussels, 12 June 2009 – New proposals from the European Commission on ‘fibre access networks’ could allow dominant firms to escape regulation, limiting choice in TV and broadband services, ECTA warns. The Commission’s proposed “Recommendation on Next Generation Access” suggests that if incumbents make a deal with just one operator, they could avoid requirements to offer cost-based access allowing their rivals to offer alternative services.

EMPIRIX LAUNCHES HAMMER SIP TRUNK TESTER - THE INDUSTRY'S ONLY SOLUTION FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS TO AUTOMATE TESTING OF ENTERPRISE SIP TRUNKING SERVICE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE

BEDFORD, Mass. USA, June 11th, 2009 – Empirix® Inc., the market leader of service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications, today announced the immediate availability of Hammer SIP Trunk Tester, the industry’s only tool for automated testing and verification of enterprise SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking services. The system offers service providers an easy-to-use, automated tool that cost-effectively verifies media quality, provisioned capacity and other Quality-of-Service (QoS) metrics during service turn-up.

Blanca Peraferrer Vayreda has joined the Cuatrecasas Barcelona office as of counsel. Before joining the firm, Ms. Peraferrer, a lawyer, was adviser to the director of the regional government's legal department.

The new of counsel has held other senior positions at the regional government, including: the legal department's chief-lawyer for litigation affairs; head of the Legal Resources and Assistance Area of the Department of the Interior's Legal Advisory Office; legal adviser in electoral law in all elections to the Parliament of Catalonia since 1992; legal adviser to different public entities and agencies dependant upon the Administration in their electoral procedures; and legal adviser in consumer law.

Hammer XMS™ chosen for real-time monitoring and flexible, end-to-end reporting

BEDFORD, Mass. USA, May 13th, 2009 – Manx Telecom, part of the Telefónica S.A. group and the Isle of Man’s largest telecommunications and Internet provider, has selected Empirix® to provide service quality assurance for its new IMS network. The Hammer XMS system from Empirix will support the transition from the existing PSTN and ISDN infrastructure to the IMS network over the next 18 months and provide ongoing service monitoring throughout the network.

DÁNIEL PATAKI, HEAD OF EUROPEAN SPECTRUM REGULATORS AND ECTA DISCUSS "BROADBAND FOR ALL”

4 May 2009: At a meeting today in Budapest, Dániel Pataki, chairman of the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG), bringing together Member States’ national spectrum regulators, and head of the Hungarian telecoms regulator NHH, and members of ECTA (European Competitive Telecommunications Association), representing European telecoms companies discussed how the so-called "digital dividend” and next generation networks such as wireless broadband can help achieve "broadband for all”. EU-wide broadband access will be key to ensuring growth and innovation in the EU telecoms sector and can benefit the economy as a whole.

Click here to view full press release (PDF 85KB)

Another European cable operator turns to Hammer XMS™ to oversee the network

Cologne, Germany & Bedford, Massachusetts, USA, April 22nd, 2009, One of Germany’s largest cable network operators, Unitymedia, has chosen Hammer XMS from Empirix to monitor its Voice-over-IP (VoIP) network. Unitymedia offers all-inclusive TV, Internet and telephone services to over 4.7 million business and residential customers in Germany’s regional states of North Rhine Westphalia and Hesse.

London, April 7, 2009 - Empirix, the market leader of service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications, has become a member of ECTA, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association.  Joining as an ‘Associate’ member, Empirix’s aim is to help ECTA’s operator members better understand and address the challenges of service quality assurance in order to meet both regulatory requirements and their own service standards.

WESTFORD, Mass., March, 31, 2009 - Sonus Networks, (Nasdaq: SONS), providing network transformation through IP communications technology, today announced that they are the latest member to join the VoLGA Forum (Voice over LTE Generic Access) and has developed a strategy for supporting mobile operators in the migration to Long Term Evolution (LTE). The overall architecture, known as Sonus MobilEvolution, combines Sonus IP-Voice and Multimedia SIP core network technology with the Sonus MobilEdge wireless access node for IP-based radio access. This enables the delivery of basic voice and SMS services from the circuit core even when using the all IP LTE radio access network, and will allow operators to build a richer communications experience to end-users through voice and multimedia.

SPAIN STAGNATES AS TELEFONICA PROFITS: BROADBAND STUDY SHOWS

Pro-competition body ECTA warns policy-makers against yielding to dominant telcos’ demands for special treatment of fibre networks. Growth and investment in high speed networks depends on competition

Brussels, 2 March 2009 – Broadband connections across the EU rose by 20% over the year, to a total of 110.5m connections, representing 22.5% of Europe’s population, according to ECTA’s latest twice-yearly EU Broadband Scorecard, published today.  But the pro-competition body warns that in countries such as Spain, where the incumbent operator, Telefonica, continues to increase its control of the market with more than 57% of all retail broadband connections, the market has stagnated with the result that Spain is languishing below the OECD and EU average with a broadband penetration rate of only 20% and low growth rates.

Click here to view full press release (PDF 169KB)

Westford, MA, February 20, 2009 – Sonus Networks, (Nasdaq: SONS), a market leader in IP communications infrastructure, has strengthened its IP Business Trunking solutions with SIPconnect 1.0 compliant status from the SIP Forum, a leading IP communications industry association, for the Sonus Network Border Switch.