* Sorci shores up GENBAND sales
IMS and VoIP network gear supplier GENBAND has hired Jack Sorci to head up the company’s worldwide channel sales efforts.
Sorci, late of Alcatel and Sylantro, will serve as GENBAND’s vice president, business development and channel sales.
Sorci, who reports to GENBAND President & CEO Charles Vogt, joins the company following recent acquisitions of BayPackets and Siemens Networks’ digital central office circuit-switch business.
* Amdocs to help DirecTV combine OSS with BSS
DirecTV has signed an agreement that it will remain a customer of Amdocs through 2012. Amdocs will continue to provide DirecTV with business support systems (BSS), such as billing and customer management. In an expansion of their relationship, the two will work on a roadmap for DirecTV to enhance its operations support systems (OSS) and integrate its BSS and OSS systems to enable the delivery of additional services, including interactive television and advanced broadband services.
* EGT taps industry vet for eastern sales region
EGT Inc. has hired David J. Eng as eastern division vice president of sales. Eng has more than 25 years under his belt in the industry.
Prior to arriving at EGT, Eng held the post of senior director of cable business development for Tandberg Television, where he led the sales effort for the company’s video compression business in the North and South American cable markets. Eng also served in a similar role at C-COR Inc. in video technology sales, eventually rising to corporate vice president of the company’s Americas business.
* Minacom introduces 24-hour VoIP stress testing
Minacom has begun long-duration stress-testing for VoIP services. Service providers can go to Minacom to test speech-quality with test calls up to 24 hours in duration.
VoIP quality has steadily improved over the past year, Minacom attests, yet is still found to suffer several minutes into a call as jitter buffers in telephone adapters, session border controllers and media gateways fill to capacity and begin dropping voice packets.
Also, Minacom said, excessive network traffic can cause short-term VoIP quality problems when frequent routing changes result in delayed, lost, and out-of-order packets.
* CBS gets its own YouTube channel today
YouTube launched the CBS Brand Channel today. Content initially available on the virtual channel includes clips from “Late Show with David Letterman,” “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” “NCIS” and “CSI: Miami”; archival sports footage; and clips from “CBS News First Look with Katie Couric,” including Web-only updates from Couric. Additional content from CBS network shows and programs from CBS’ cable channels will follow.
* Sunrise Telecom joins HomePNA’s board
HomePNA added a new board member and announced the participation of four new member companies. Test and monitoring equipment supplier Sunrise Telecom was given a seat on the alliance’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, joining the alliance were Netopia, Zhone Technologies, UTStarcom and component manufacturer MCR Group.