New Stuff 0710/12

Metro Interconnect, extending the reach of data-center customers in large metro areas, is the latest offering from zColo, a Zayo Group Company; the product launch is in conjunction with the close of AboveNet, an acquisition Zayo Group completed July 2. Metro Interconnect uses dark-fiber cross-connects to extend a customers’ reach from zColo sites to major in-market carrier hotels and data centers. Initial Metro Interconnect sites include New York City/northern New Jersey; Boston; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Seattle; and Los Angeles. Phase 2 will address Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis and Pittsburgh…Transaction-management provider Openet is marketing its Interaction Gateway, enabling operators to extend Policy and Charging Control (PCC) system capabilities to the device for improved customer experience and optimization of network resources. The gateway evolves the previous Subscriber Engagement Engine (SEE) and its real-time insight of usage and spend with communication between an operator’s existing PCC infrastructure and a specialized on-device Interaction Agent for policy enforcement. “Chatty” apps that constantly query the network for updates are lessened, it appears, and mobile device battery life can improve by as much as 50 percent, the company claims. Such mobile-infrastructure resources as DHCP IP address allocation and AAA capacity also can be preserved…VIPedge, a cloud-based business-telephone solution from Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division, allows companies to pay a scalable monthly service fee as an alternative to the capital purchase of an on-premises telephone system. Together with its IPedge and Strata CIX phone systems, VIPedge gives SMBs and enterprises a choice of cloud, IP or converged business telephone systems at a average cost of $29.99/month…The LTE Antenna Reference Design for Smartphones, covering the global LTE bands, is available from U.K.-based Antenova to “overcome the difficulty of covering all the LTE frequency bands without the use of switches or tunable active components, resulting in a significantly lower-cost LTE MIMO (Multiple-In-Multiple-Out) antenna system for smartphones”…Digital-media toolmaker Telestream beefed up its Wirecast live video production and streaming software to allow its partners to integrate Wirecast directly into their live streaming services.  With this release, Wirecast now offers three partnership levels: Destination, Co-Branded and Fully Branded Partnerships.