Heard on the Net

News about People and Companies Influencing The Broadband Home

People News

James Armstrong has been promoted to EVP and GM of Symmetricom's Telecom Solutions Division. ( www.symmetricom.com )

Mark Cranwell has been named Director of Content Acquisition of Babelgum. Previously, Cranwell was Director, Business Affairs, for BT Vision. ( www.babelgum.com )

Ruchir Godura has been hired as Vice President, Global Customer Service and South Asia Sales at Aperto Networks. Mr. Godura was previously at Bharti Airtel, India’s largest GSM operator. ( www.apertonet.com )

Chris Gordon has been appointed Director of Product Management at Imagine Communications. Gordon was previously with EGT, a manufacturer of video processing equipment for the cable industry. ( www.imaginecommunications.com )

Dirk-Willem van Gulik, former CTO of Joost, has joined the BBC as chief technical architect of its future media and technology group. ( www.bbc.co.uk )

Curt Hockemeier, a member of Cedar Point Communications board of directors, has been named interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) following the departure of Andy Paff as President and CEO. ( www.cedarpointcom.com )

Victor Koretsky has joined Provigent as Senior Vice President Worldwide Sales and Business Development. He was previously with DSP Group. ( www.provigent.com )

Company News

Acquisitions

Arbor Networks is acquiring Ellacoya Networks, which has expertise in deep packet inspection technology and broadband service optimization. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. ( www.arbornetworks.com ) ( www.ellacoya.com )

Carlyle Group is buying half of Cinven Group Ltd.'s 70% stake in Numericable and its related operator, Completel, as part of the consolidation in telecom and cable in France. The price was just over €1 billion ($1.44 billion). ( www.carlyle.com ) ( www.cinven.com )

Ciena Corp announced the acquisition of World Wide Packets for approximately $290 million in cash and stock. ( www.ciena.com ) ( www.wwp.com )

Yahoo has acquired Maven Networks, a provider of online-video management services, for about $160 million. ( www.yahoo.com ) ( www.maven.net )

Funding

Broadband Enterprises LLC, an online video ad company, has secured a $10 million round of funding from Velocity Interactive Group. ( www.broadbandenterprises.com )

DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a provider of WiMAX broadband service, has raised over $20 million in a second round of venture financing. ( www.digitalbridgecommunications.com )

Hillcrest Labs, a developer of tools for navigating television content, has closed a $25 million Series D round of funding. ( www.hillcrestlabs.com )

ip.access, a femtocell firm, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Cisco Systems. ( www.ipaccess.com ) ( www.cisco.com )

NetStreams LLC has raised an $18.2 million Series B from its investor Austin Ventures. ( www.netstreams.com )

Sequans Communications, a WiMAX chip maker headquartered in Paris, has raised a $28 million round of equity and debt financing. ( sequans.com )

Ubicom, a fabless semiconductor firm, has raised an $18 million Series 4 round of funding. ( www.ubicom.com )

Other News

Motorola has announced a family of 3G femtocells and unveiled the first two units from a CPE portfolio that will be commercially available in the second half of 2008. ( www.motorola.com/femtocell )

Next.TV, operated by Dave Networks, has launched a private beta test of its Web video service, which is currently bundled with Hewlett-Packard’s Pavilion consumer notebooks. The beta has more than 100 video-on-demand channels provided by partners that include CBS, HSN, TV Guide and Showtime. It is scheduled to be available publicly in March 2008. ( www.next.tv ) ( www.dave.tv ) ( www.hp.com )

Sony has unveiled TransferJet, a short-range wireless technology competitor to wireless USB. TransferJet has a potential maximum data-transfer rate of 560 Mbps in the 4.48GHz band. Wireless USB offers a maximum rate of 480 Mbps. ( www.sony.net )

Tata Group, India's multi-industry conglomerate, is integrating all of its communications businesses, including telco VSNL and service providers Teleglobe, Tata Indicom and Cipris, under the Tata Communications brand. ( www.tata.com )