France Telecom Keynote at CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit to focus on service opportunities in connected devices

Executive Summit features the Roadmap for Connected CE

Parks Associates announced that Pierre François Dubois, Vice President, Very High Broadband and Digital Home Products, Technocentre, France Telecom Group, will present the keynote at CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit on November 4.

Mr. Dubois will discuss the key role of telcos in shaping the future of the Digital Home. He will focus on the new opportunities for Internet service providers developing as a result of the increasing number of connected devices at home.

CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit, titled The Roadmap for Connected Consumer Electronics and hosted by international research firm Parks Associates, will take place in Amsterdam at the Mövenpick Hotel.

Europe is a strong market for connected CE, and service providers continue to be active in enabling advanced services and deploying devices such as hybrid set-tops. The worldwide telco /IPTV subscriber base exceeded 20 million in 2008, and France had over 27% growth in IPTV subscribers. France Telecom has been aggressive in connecting and managing consumer services, and Mr. Dubois’s insight will be invaluable to CONNECTIONS™ Europe attendees.

Summit Speakers
ActiveVideo Europe
Affinegy
Civolution
Eyecon Technologies
Intamac Technologies
Irdeto
Loquendo
Makewave
NDS
NXP Semiconductors
Omnifone
OpenTV
OSGi Alliance
Parks Associates
RedMere
Rovi Corporation
Telcordia
Thinking Screen Media
Thomson
TVBLOB
Verimatrix

Register for CONNECTIONS™ Europe at www.connectionseurope.com.

Smart Energy Summit addresses emerging market for in-home energy management devices and services

Research firm Parks Associates to host Residential Energy Management event in Austin

International research firm Parks Associates announced plans to host the inaugural Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, in cooperation with Austin Energy, on January 25-27, 2010. The event will feature expert speakers and analysts discussing the latest developments in residential energy management (REM) and the successful strategies capable of engaging consumers in new programs for energy conservation and cost savings.

The event, taking place at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, Texas, will feature market research from Parks Associates’ landmark Residential Energy Management service and real-world expertise derived from Austin Energy's Smart Grid, the largest working Smart Grid in the U.S.

Government initiatives and stimulus funds have stoked demand for REM technologies with their emphasis on energy conservation and greater efficiency in the home. Already over six percent of all U.S. meters are smart meters, and many U.S. utilities are announcing new deployments and pilot programs, which will push the number of smart meters to almost 50 million by 2012. This event identifies the business opportunities for in-home energy monitoring and management systems, accelerated by deployment of energy smart grids.

The event agenda will focus on the roadmap for the emerging in-home energy management technology market, offering consumer and industry research and strategic insight.

For more information, or to submit to speak at the event, visit www.smartenergysummit2010.com.

Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire Starent Networks

Cisco and Starent Networks announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire Starent Networks. Starent Networks is a leading supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions targeting mobile and converged carriers. The Mobile Internet is at an inflection point as IP-enabled Smartphones and other connected mobile devices gain rapid acceptance. Service Providers have been actively investing in this market as global mobile data traffic is expected to more than double every year through 2013, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.

Starent Networks' mobile infrastructure solutions play an important role in enabling Service Providers to scale their mobile infrastructure and monetize their investments via differentiated experiences. The company provides the multimedia intelligence, core network functions and services to manage access from any 2.5G, 3G, and 4G radio network to a mobile operator's packet core network. Starent Networks' access-independent technology is deployed in CDMA2000 (1X, EV-DO), UMTS/HSPA and WiMax networks.

Prior to the close, Cisco and Starent Networks will continue to operate as separate companies. Upon completion of the transaction, Starent Networks will become the new Mobile Internet Technology Group.

CONNECTIONS Europe announces new keynote, France Telecom

Pierre François Dubois, Vice President, Very High Broadband and Digital Home Products, Technocentre, France Telecom Group will present the keynote presentation at the CONNECTIONS Europe Summit on November 4th in Amsterdam.

Pierre François Dubois started as an R&D engineer working on Intelligent Networks and Network Operations. He then held different management positions inside the Orange Group, mostly in sales and marketing. He was Marketing Director for Triple Play offers on ADSL for Orange France between 2006 and 2008. He is now responsible, for the France Telecom Group, of the strategy and development of products related to very high broadband and the digital home.

To view the CONNECTIONS Europe agenda, click here.

Cisco Helps Assure Internet's Future Amid Device Growth

Cisco announced significant enhancements to its Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture that are designed to secure the foundation of the Internet, which must accommodate the exponential increase of connected devices for highly secure, efficient video delivery and collaboration. With the new Cisco Carrier-Grade IP Version 6 (IPv6) solution, Cisco helps enable service providers to effectively deal with the bottleneck created by the imminent depletion of IPv4 addresses. This new solution complements Cisco's IPv6 portfolio, the widest and most extensive in the market.

Now spanning from the core of the network to the home, Cisco's IPv6 capabilities have been expanded and added to a wide range of the company's routers and switches. Cisco is introducing new carrier-grade IPv6 capabilities to the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System for the network core and to the Cisco Aggregation Services Routers for the network edge. These new additions provide a cost-effective and efficient means to bridge to a full IPv6 next-generation network while extending the life of existing IPv4 addresses to smoothly manage that migration.

Highlights / Key Facts:

•An IP address is required for each device that connects to the Internet, and IPv6 is designated as the successor to IPv4, the first implementation used in the Internet and still the most widely used today.
•Exhaustion of IPv4 addresses is predicted for sometime in 2011, according to various sources, including potaroo.net, a Web site that tracks IPv4 address allocation by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. IPv4 has a finite set of unique addresses, numbering approximately 4 billion, which is rapidly depleting due to the ever-growing number of Internet-connected devices and smart devices.
•The industry foresaw this and developed IPv6, which has 340 undecillion unique addresses (3.4 x 10(38)), or more than 50 billion billion billion for each person on earth, more than enough to continue to support the demand for IP addresses. However, the protocols of IPv4 and IPv6 are not directly compatible, so migrating a network from IPv4 to IPv6 requires technology solutions to preserve IPv4 while executing a carefully orchestrated, step-by-step implementation plan.
•New Cisco IPv6 offerings, which expand on the existing Cisco IPv6 portfolio, are designed to address the current gap that service providers face in their IPv6 network evolution.

For the full press release, click here.