Expand Networks has announced that its advanced WAN Optimization technology is "supporting satellite communication services for one of the world's most important centers for global science research, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego."

According to Expand officials, "deployed across one of the largest U.S. academic fleets, Expand's Accelerators are improving the performance of critical applications and communications over low-bandwidth, high-latency satellite links, enabling communications between the ships and shore." 

Earlier this month TMC's Anil Sharma reported that Expand Networks announced two additions to its Accelerator product family: the 3830 and 3930 models.

Officials with Expand said that the additions deliver advanced WAN optimization in the industry's most compact form factor, Sharma said: "The Accelerators outscale competitive offerings to set new standards for price/performance at the branch office."

After noting that HD television and HD radio are realities, a new study from ABI Research remarks that "it is ironic that the telephone, patented in 1876, is the last of the three to get the quantum leap in quality that High Definition provides."

The study from ABI Research finds that about 487 million mobile subscribers will use HD-enabled handsets over upgraded networks in 2015.

Not bad for a market virtually nonexistent today, is it? The ABI report finds that "growth is expected to ramp up quickly in 2013, and then skyrocket starting in 2014." So why then? 

"The upgrade to HD voice is not especially expensive," says ABI's principal analyst Fritz Jordan. "Newer 3G networks -- those deployed since about 2005-2006 -- can already use the new format and require only a software update and a changeover to HD handsets."

News of Qwest's impending purchase by Century Link sure did spread like an oil slick, and according to a post on TBI's Master Agent blog in late April, it went with "a cloud of misinformation and speculation" settling over us all.

Some say the sale is great for business, the blog noted, "providing a larger footprint for agents to sell products and services. Others aren't so sure, citing Century Link's previous inability to penetrate the B2B marketplace (though isn't that why Qwest makes sense?)."

At the time, the blog wrote that "the name Qwest will undoubtedly survive a while in the business marketplace," but the name of the new company will be CenturyLink: "There will be no new names, as Century Link is confident enough that their brand will carry into new territories and marketplaces. This was reaffirmed by Glen Post of Century Link during the conference call announcing the acquisition."

Reuters recently reported that CenturyTel's first-quarter results topped Wall Street expectations, giving investors high-hopes for the success of its planned acquisition of Qwest Communications International:

For network operators looking at adaptations to their network, information systems, operations and business models, Alcatel-Lucent officials would like to make the case for IP transformation.

"To stay competitive, you are looking to rapidly introduce new services for consumers and businesses, reduce operational costs and enhance the end-user experience," Alcatel-Lucent officials maintain, and few could disagree. Of course at the same time, networks and IT are migrating to an all-IP world.

And large-scale IP transformation, done correctly, requires a broad set of inter-related activities to address business impact, modeling and opportunity assessment.

Alcatel-Lucent's consulting services, including their Market Advantage Program, might be able to help you with some of the major tasks associated with that, such as assessing and capturing market opportunities, the ability to analyze and recruit the right developers for your business and network strategy and run market trials and launch new services, as well as choosing the right business models.

Still, no matter how much consulting help you get and who you get it from, delivering the experience that end users and ecosystem partners want will probably require a shift to open business models. This sounds scary - major change does, or should - but it can create opportunities to develop partnerships with new revenue models and shared risks and rewards as well as opportunities to outsource some parts of your network or operations.

There's great opportunity for network providers today to monetize their subscriber data.  But you're wondering what are some of the advertising applications available to you, network operator, that you can use?

Alcatel-Lucent might have something of interest. They've recently unveiled their Optism Mobile Advertising product, a new offering to let mobile operators create "media inventory" -- available ad space -- and provide advertisers with access to "willing and highly targeted audiences."

Optism is engineered, Alcatel-Lucent officials say, to help mobile operators develop new business models and offer more personalized experiences to their subscribers: "It also helps advertisers reach wider, yet more targeted audiences through responsive, permission and preference-based mobile marketing," which is aggregated across multiple mobile operators.

"Fragmentation and lack of scale have acted as a brake on mobile advertising, deterring the advertising community and slowing overall growth," said Eden Zoller, principal analyst, Ovum Consumer Practice.

Company officials are pushing a key feature of Optism as being its media arm, which they say "brokers relationships between mobile operators and advertisers," the advantage here being that it simplifies the media selling process for aggregated operator inventory.