• Verizon intros FiOS TV in Yorktown, Va.
By Traci Patterson
Verizon is introducing its FiOS TV service in Yorktown, Va. FiOS TV is available now to approximately 2,800 homes and businesses in parts of Roberts Trace, Running Man, Sinclair Manor, the Woods of Tabb and Wythe Farms.
The company also offers FiOS TV in Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, as well as much of northern Virginia and the Richmond area.
Verizon currently provides FiOS TV in parts of California, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington State.
• Sprint appoints AT&T veteran to board
By Maisie Ramsay, Wireless Week
Retired AT&T veteran Frank Ianna has been appointed to Sprint Nextel’s board of directors after serving on Clearwire’s board since 2008. Sprint owns a majority stake in Clearwire.
“[Frank Ianna’s] broad telecom experience gives him particularly strong insight into the operational and strategic issues facing Sprint as we work to improve our performance and build greater value for shareholders,” said Sprint Nextel Board Chairman James Hance.
Ianna, 59, worked at AT&T for 31 years before retiring in 2003. He currently serves as CEO and director of Attila Technologies, which provides wireless communication solutions to first responders through continuous broadband-on-demand services and devices.
• Exfo launches PON-optimized OTDR
By Traci Patterson
Exfo Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. has released the FTB-7300E passive optical network (PON)-optimized optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) for characterization of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks and live-fiber troubleshooting.
The FTB-7300E FTTx OTDR, based on its high dynamic range and high resolution at low pulses, can generate a sharp trace within 15 seconds for end-to-end characterization of an optical link, even testing through a 1x 64 splitter, according to Exfo. It also features a power meter option and live port testing (1625 nm or 1650 nm, out of band) that enables field technicians to troubleshoot a live PON without interfering with other signals at 1310, 1490 and 1550 nm.
The FTB-7300E FTTx OTDR – which can be hosted inside the FTB-500 platform, FTB-400 Universal Test System or FTB-200 compact platform – will be showcased at The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) and The National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC). OFC/NFOEC 2009 is being held March 22-26 in San Diego. The company’s new test platform for installation and maintenance applications on optical networks, as well as its new optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) to assist network operators in their deployment of current and next-generation optical networks, will also be on display at OFC/NFOEC 2009 (story here).
• Grab Networks intros Anystream Agility 2G
By Traci Patterson
Grab Networks has introduced Anystream Agility 2G, a next-generation video preprocessing, encoding, delivery and reporting suite designed to increase customers’ capacity, eliminate the risk of failure without recovery, and provide a new, flexible, user-friendly interface for the creation of the next generation of video production and management capabilities.
With Anystream Agility 2G, Grab Networks customers can meet the challenges of greater throughput, better and faster availability, and more rapidly changing distribution requirements that are inherent in the current on-demand video marketplace, the company said. Agility 2G can also convert thousands of videos in real time.
“We are the only company that can handle the scale required to meet the needs of the next wave of video on the Web,” said Fred Singer, CEO of Grab Networks. “Agility 2G reaffirms our commitment to our enterprise software line and complements Grab Networks’ already powerful and continually expending suite of solutions geared to solving the problem of getting a majority of the most valuable video content available online and generating revenue.”
