Fixed operator strategies - 7/9/05

Illiad/ Free (France) is buying Altitude Telecom (France)for about €20m. Altitude gives it a company with the only nationwide WiMAX license, and an early experience in VOIP over broadband wireless.

Interoute buys Via Net.Works, a pan-European hosting and managed services specialist, for $18m. The move increases Interoute sales by about 50% and adds 12,000 new customers onto Interoute's books.

VSNL (India) will buy a stake in Tata Power Broadband for $55m and get access to its broadband fiber-optic network.

France Telecom and Atrica jointly developed their revolutionary Virtual Private LAN Service with Traffic Engineering (VPLS-TE) capability. Atrica's bandwidth-conditioned VPLS-TE delivers guaranteed SLAs and hard QoS with sub-50ms service protection and is user-configurable, based on different traffic patterns. A commercial service based on the VPLS-TE technology should be launched within the next 12 months.

Skype is dealing with Chinese internet portal Tom Online to create a 49%/ 51% JV for voice over internet marketing. The famous Skype software will be translated in Chinese and distributed by the JV. The move highlights Skype's interest in Asia.

Telefonica has raised its stake in China Netcom to 5%, for around €178m.

T-Com (Germany) is offering customers broadband services in a WiMAX field trial (provided by Alvarion).

Vonage has has exceeded one million lines in service on its network.