* McMillan joins World Wide Packets
Scott McMillan, a former executive of Riverstone Networks (now part of Lucent Technologies), has joined World Wide Packets as senior vice president of operations.
 
Prior to Riverstone, McMillan held senior management positions with Compaq and Memorex Corp.
World Wide Packets specializes in “active” fiber-to-the-premises gear. Among deployments, its LightningEdge products are being used to support the “iProvo” project in Utah.

* Gruber joins Whaleback board
VoIP vet Rubin Gruber has joined the board of directors for Whaleback Systems, a maker of IP-based PBX systems.

Gruber most recent was the co-founder and chairman of softswitch and VoIP systems vendor Sonus Networks. He recently retired from the Sonus board.

Gruber also founded several other companies, including VideoServer Inc. (now ezenia).

* Valista bows payment software
Valista has announced the general availability of the latest release of PaymentsPlus, a payment software system designed to support any type of mobile, Internet and broadcast content services, supporting a variety of payment options including direct-to-bill, premium SMS, credit/debit cards, Person-to-Person (P2P) payments, stored value, proximity payments, loyalty programs and electronic vouchers.

The company claims PaymentsPlus is the only solution that enables split payments in a single transaction. For example, funds can be shared with intended recipients while also paying the service provider’s transaction charges in real-time.

* AT&T expands Wi-Fi access around the globe
AT&T has expanded its global Wi-Fi reach into Europe through a relationship with the Swiss company WeRoam, which aggregates access through contracts with wireless ISPs around the world.

With access to the WeRoam network, AT&T now has more than 10,000 hot spots in Europe, with the vast majority in France, but also in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, and Ireland. Also through WeRoam, AT&T now can offer Wi-Fi access in Israel, Brazil, Japan and Taiwan.

* Sunrise Telecom debuts IPTV triple play service tester
Sunrise Telecom has introduced its Home Test Toolkit (HTT) test set, designed specifically to facilitate the deployment of triple-play bundles based around IPTV video. The company said the HTT test set has already been selected by a Tier 1 telephone service provider the company did not identify. Sunrise Telecom’s reference to FTTN, rather than to FTTH, suggests the customer is either AT&T or BellSouth.
 
The unit provides automatic go/no-go test routines for VDSL, Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA) networks, RF video, Ethernet, 802.11x wireless, copper loop fault identification, POTS (plain old telephone service) testing, and in-house wiring identification and testing. The HTT can upload detailed results of an installation test via Ethernet or wireless Bluetooth interfaces.