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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Rieman who wrote (35142)	8/11/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: .com	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

10:33 DJ =C-Cube CEO Balkanski Sees Sales Opportunities In China NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--C-Cube Microsystems Inc.'s (CUBE) chief executive, Alexandre Balkanski, said he believes China offers "considerable" sales opportunities. Business opportunities in China are particularly ripe because the country is upgrading its cable infrastructure to digital, Balkanski told CNBC Tuesday. "China is the biggest consumer market in the world," he added. C-Cube, of Milpitas, Calif., makes digital video compression chips andsoftware. A great deal of C-Cube's digital-compression technology has been sold to mainland China, Balkanski said. Last year, C-Cube shipped "11 million units" to China, he said. -Jessica Madore; 201-938-5172 (END) DOW JONES NEWS 08-11-98 10:33 AM

To: John Rieman who wrote (35142)	8/12/1998 9:51:00 AM
From: let	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

off subject, Lot's of news out on CREAF lately, might be worth checking out.

To: John Rieman who wrote (35142)	8/12/1998 1:10:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50808

Launching another type of wireless broadband network. No towers, no balloons........... eet.com Flight tests commence for airborne LMDS service By Loring Wirbel COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The High-Altitude, Long-Operation (HALO) aircraft, which has been designed to carry a communications payload composed of an antenna array with an aggregate bandwidth of 16 Gbits/second, took a maiden test flight July 26 and will undergo a series of tests Sept. 22 in the Mojave Desert. The plane can operate in typical Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS) frequencies of 28 GHz, point-to-point frequencies of 38 GHz or other frequencies yet to be defined by the FCC, according to Peter Diamandis, president of Angel Technologies Corp., a wireless services company. Based on the Pegasus composite-based plane built by Scaled Composites Inc., HALO is designed to provide wireless broadband services in metropolitan areas. Diamandis said that some of the early HALO systems will be used to provide GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular backhaul by serving as a repeater in the sky, but that the bulk of Pegasus aircraft are expected to be outfitted with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches to offer true broadband switching services. After further tests in September, Angel and Scaled Composites will open a manufacturing plant in Montrose, Colo., to build 50 aircraft per year for the HALO system. The companies detailed their plans at the 1998 IEEE Radio and Wireless Conference (Rawcon '98) on Monday. Angel envisions flying at least one aircraft at a time on eight-hour, three-shift-a-day missions at 10-mile altitudes above all major metropolitan areas in order to provide broadband services that will complement both terrestrial LMDS services and space-based broadband switching satellites. Diamandis said that Angel deliberately opted for a piloted aircraft rather than unmanned drones or the balloon-based platforms favored by SkyBridge, a startup backed by former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig. "We considered balloons early on, but we wanted a system for which the FAA has a clearly defined mechanism for certification," Diamandis said. "Experimental drones or balloons could face years of regulatory hurdles." Each HALO aircraft will provide a 120-km "Cone of Commerce" footprint on the ground, which can be channelized in up to 15 radio beams. While the plane's signal will face the same rain attenuation problem confronted by terrestrial LMDS, Diamandis said that HALO can relay 60-GHz links to communication satellites because of the high altitude at which the plane operates. Angel will resell LMDS-like customer-premises equipment to carriers and corporate customers, and plans to partner with traditional LMDS companies. "We ourselves do not wish to own spectrum, we are negotiating with spectrum holders to share 28- or 38-GHz bands as a 'carrier's carrier,' " Diamandis said. In general, LMDS has a long way to go from the completion of the FCC's spectrum auctions last March to eventual commercial success. Even the largest bid winner in that auction, WNP Communications Inc., said that LMDS proponents have to confront some basic issues about the type of service delivered and the way it is presented to the public. Barclay Jones, chief technical consultant to WNP, said that the transition of LMDS' primary purpose from video distribution to Internet Protocol packet delivery has raised the issue of how a circuit-based service should be offered with the fixed-wireless 28-GHz standard. Many LMDS providers may try to move to a competitive local exchange carrier model and offer voice services first, but that would mean linking an LMDS cellular infrastructure directly to a telephone 5ESS circuit switch. Using LMDS for multipoint data services may be more straightforward, but the market may take longer to develop, Jones said. He cited the work of the recently formed National Wireless Electronic Systems Testbed, and said that far more standards to drive interoperability need to be developed in LMDS services. New concepts for LMDS are also in the works. At HRL Laboratories Inc. (Malibu, Calif.), for example, a team under Hossein Izadpanah is looking at moving to a pico-cellular infrastructure for a short-range, line-of-sight broadband system. Izadpanah said that this would lower the cost of LMDS equipment, but take it down to the campus and high-rise-building size formerly served by metro-area unlicensed services such as Metricom Inc.'s Ricochet wireless MAN. HRL Labs is working on hybrid fiber/radio systems that will provide bidirectional broadband Internet access to campuses and apartment buildings, integrated with traditional broadcast TV channels. The company is using off-the-shelf components for building QPSK and QAM modulators for the new system.