Visual Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: VNWK) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Fluke Electronics Corporation, a subsidiary of Danaher Corporation, for $1.83 per share. Visual Networks will be included in the Fluke Networks business. The closing of the transaction is subject to Visual Networks shareholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary conditions and is expected to occur during the first quarter 2006.

Visual Networks, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, United States, is a leading provider of network and application performance management solutions. The company’s technologies enable enterprises to reliably and securely manage the delivery and performance of key applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP) across their infrastructures. The company had revenues of $52 million in 2004.

“We are looking forward to becoming an important part of an already successful organization that is clearly focused on our enterprise management market,” said Lawrence S. Barker, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Visual Networks. “We see tremendous opportunity to meld our managed services capabilities with Fluke Networks’ successful Enterprise Division.”

FairPoint Communications, Inc. (NYSE: FRP) today announced that it will transition from its current telecom billing provider to a new telecom billing provider. As a result of FairPoint’s settlement with its current telecom billing provider, the conversion process is expected to be completed at very little additional cost to the Company.

FairPoint’s current billing provider has contracted to sell the software underlying the Company’s current telecom billing system and has agreed not to add any new customers to its service bureau platform. FairPoint has selected Mid America Computer Corporation (MACC) as its new provider of billing services. The MACC-Customer Master platform is currently running in 223 independent telecommunications companies.

FairPoint estimates that the cost to convert all of its companies to the new telecom billing service provider will be approximately $5.5 million. FairPoint is due to receive $4.0 million from its current billing provider, and will not be required to pay $1.2 million in accrued but unpaid conversion fees. FairPoint expects to complete the conversion process for most of its companies by the middle of 2006, with all companies being converted by early 2007.

“We expect a much smoother conversion because we now have an experienced telecom billing partner in MACC and a seasoned project team who know what to anticipate as we move through this process,” said Gene Johnson, CEO for FairPoint. “Our experiences have taught us to choose vendors who have an intimate knowledge of our industry. MACC has been in operation in telecommunications billing for over 30 years. They know our business and we know them well. Our Midwest companies have been operating on the legacy MACC platform for years, so our confidence in MACC is high. In addition, MACC has dramatically increased the functionality of its platform since we initially looked at it several years ago, making it a leader in the telecommunications billing industry.”

The MACC-Customer Master platform includes features that will allow increased opportunities for FairPoint. These include enhanced target marketing capabilities, customized bills, and clear organization of customer data to assist customer service, sales and technical personnel. MACC’s systems and processes are known for good quality assurance and effective change management.

About FairPoint
FairPoint is a leading provider of communications services to rural communities across the country. Incorporated in 1991, FairPoint’s mission is to acquire and operate telecommunications companies that set the standard of excellence for the delivery of service to rural communities. Today, FairPoint owns and operates 28 rural local exchange companies (RLECs) located in 17 states, offering an array of services, including local and long distance voice, data, Internet and broadband offerings.

Air Broadband Communications, Inc., an innovative wireless IP switch-router company, today announced that it joined the WiMAX Forum(TM), the industry organization that promotes the interoperability and certification of broadband wireless products based on the IEEE 802.16 standard.

Air Broadband’s wireless switch-router solutions, based on IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN and IEEE 802.16 WiMAX, are field-proven to provide fast layer 2/3 roaming and scalability in multi-cell networks, enabling real-time applications and management capabilities. Air Broadband’s wireless switch-router implementations for WiMAX ACR (Access Control Router) provide IP Mobility, multi-vendor base stations Compatibility, wide Scalability and per flow QoS (MCSQ(TM)) improvements needed for WiMAX deployment. In addition to participating in the WiMAX Forum, Air Broadband is promoting interoperability among different base stations as well as ACRs. Air Broadband’s antenna profiling technique allows operators to mix and match different base stations in the same region for any particular preference in performance and/or price.

The WiMAX Forum is striving to create economies of scale made possible by standards-based, interoperable products that drive price and performance levels not achievable by proprietary approaches. WiMAX technology is designed to help service providers across global markets deliver economical broadband data, voice, and video services to both residential and business customers.

“We are pleased to be a member of the WiMAX Forum,” said Kenneth Kang, Air Broadband’s President. “The Forum is essential to the development of the WiMAX market, as ACR is essential to real WiMAX deployment case. Air Broadband’s real-world experience in broadband wireless switch-router will connect many base stations from many different vendors and provide IP mobility and QoS needed for all the exciting applications of WiMAX.”

Nokia today announced its plans to expand its mobile device production in Dongguan, China. This expansion will provide more capacity and flexibility to meet the growing market demand worldwide, especially China and Asia. Dongguan is a strategic location for Nokia’s global supply network for mobile devices. Increasing capacity in Dongguan will help Nokia to improve its competitive position in the fast-growing Chinese and Asian markets.

Nokia anticipates the factory expansion will begin production in the third quarter of 2006, and expects to ramp up gradually, with the work force reaching approximately 1900 employees when production is at full scale. The expanded production facilities will be located adjacent to Nokia’s existing facility.

“Our already well-established presence in Dongguan made the decision to expand the manufacturing facility easy. Dongguan is an elementary part of our global manufacturing network as a cost-efficient and well-functioning facility, and we believe that the expansion will further benefit our customers in the highly competitive and rapidly growing Chinese and Asian markets,” said Raimo Puntala, Senior Vice President, Operations and Logistics, Nokia.

Nokia currently has nine mobile device factories globally. In addition, the Nokia Chennai plant in India is planned to be operational in the first half of 2006. Nokia has six R&D units, four manufacturing sites and widespread operations in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The total number of Nokia employees in China area is nearly 6,000.

SunCom Wireless has selected Ericsson’s (NASDAQ:ERICY) Mobile Softswitch solution for its next generation core throughout the operator’s footprint in the southeastern United States. Additionally, the two companies will conduct IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) trials to prepare the operator’s network for next generation capabilities.

Under the agreement, SunCom has begun to deploy Ericsson’s Mobile Softswitch solution to carry voice and data traffic in 3GPP Release 4- compliant network architecture. After just two months of installation and smooth implementation, the softswitch started full commercial operation in September; full deployment is scheduled for completion in 2006. Ericsson is also providing network design services, training and on-site support.

The IMS trial will help SunCom prepare to deploy rich communication services – such as video telephony, conference calling, document-sharing web pages (collaboration) and presence management – in its IP network. Ericsson’s UMA solution, Mobile@Home, allows the delivery of services from the mobile network – such as voice, voicemail, SMS, MMS and GPRS – using broadband and unlicensed radio spectrum such as WiFi or Bluetooth.

Angel Ruiz, head of Ericsson North America, says: “SunCom is already seeing the benefits of reduced transmission costs. Ericsson’s Mobile Softswitch design, with its distributed architecture, has made the SunCom transport network more efficient.”

“The network enhancements this architecture supports will help SunCom achieve convergence between the circuit-switched and packet-switched components of its networks, which is necessary for an efficient evolution to all-IP,” Ruiz adds.

SunCom Wireless Vice President of Engineering Scott Basham says: “Ericsson’s reputation for providing high-quality switching equipment and its commitment to meet a demanding deployment schedule won them the business. They exceeded our expectations by providing the first phase of softswitch deployment, from purchase order to commercial service, in fewer than 120 days. Twenty percent of SunCom’s network is now on Ericsson’s softswitch, and it has performed flawlessly. Partnering with Ericsson and their MSS solution has proven to be a sound business decision.”

Ericsson was the first vendor to deploy softswitch solutions for telephony networks and leads the industry with 55 fully commercial networks. Today, Ericsson has 30 live, commercially deployed mobile softswitch networks on all continents.

Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world.

About SunCom Wireless
SunCom Wireless, based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, is licensed to provide digital wireless communications services in an area covering 14.3 million people in the Southeastern United States and 4.0 million people in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

BEA Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS), a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced results for its fiscal third quarter. For the third quarter ended Oct. 31, 2005, BEA reported record total revenues of $291.5 million, up 10% from $264.4 million in last year’s third quarter. For the third quarter, BEA reported license revenues of $121.3 million, up 6% from $114.9 million a year ago, and services revenue of $170.2 million, up 14% from $149.5 million a year ago. For the third quarter, on a generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) basis, BEA reported operating income of $49.7 million, compared to $49.7 million a year ago. BEA reported GAAP third quarter net income of$37.1 million, up 11% from $33.5 million a year ago, and GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.09, up from $0.08 a year ago. BEA generated third quarter cash flow from operations of $65.4 million, up 19% from $55.1 million a year ago.

BEA reported third quarter non-GAAP net income of $42.7 million, up 17% from $36.5 million a year ago, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.11, compared to $0.09 a year ago. Non-GAAP results exclude certain acquisition-related expenses, net gains or losses on investments in equity securities, facilities consolidation and other non-recurring charges. A reconciliation of non-GAAP adjustments is summarized on pages six and seven of this release. For full details on BEA’s reported results, see the financial tables accompanying this release.

“For the second quarter in a row, we achieved year-over-year and sequential license revenue growth in Q3. Our license revenue growth rate accelerated in Q3, and we forecast accelerated license revenue growth again in the fourth quarter,” said Alfred Chuang, chairman and chief executive officer, BEA Systems, Inc. “Congratulations to the entire BEA team, and especially the Americas team, on a great quarter. The Americas team delivered our highest revenue performance ever in the Americas, and grew revenue 17% over last year, their third consecutive quarter of double digit growth. Our WebLogic Server business continued to grow faster than industry analyst projections for the app server market. In addition, contribution accelerated from our new product lines, particularly our new AquaLogic product family. We had our first multi-million dollar stand-alone order for our new AquaLogic Service Bus, and our AquaLogic product family contributed to seven out of our 19 $1 million license deals.”

“BEA is on the move. We are making strides in executing our focused strategy to deliver innovative and robust infrastructure software to our customers. Our product strategy includes enhancing our entire product portfolio while delivering a new product family that builds on our performance lead in the core application server market and opens opportunities for BEA in new growth markets,” said Chuang. “In the core product set, we are delivering innovative new features that make it easier for customers to build, deploy and manage large-scale mission-critical systems. We are expanding the core application infrastructure into new growth areas, such as SIP support for VOIP and the triple-play opportunity in the telco market, as well as edge server technology for the RFID market. And we have built a new service infrastructure layer, the AquaLogic product family, to support SOA. To supplement our internal development, we have expanded our technology portfolio and development teams with acquisitions such as Plumtree, Compoze, ConnecTerra, M7 and SolarMetric. In addition to the talent these acquisitions have added to our technology and development teams, they have also added important new customer and partner relationships.”

Estimates for the year 2005 from Teleseeq, InfoCom’s market intelligence solution, show BT with the lowest market share among the 5 countries studied, dropping to about 66.6% from 67.3% in 2004. France Telecom will still hold a significant share of the market at 85.2% while Telecom Italia will have 83.9% of the market followed by Spain’s Telefonica with 80.5% and Deutsche Telekom with 79.9% (all figures are based on a net revenue evaluation incl. wholesale activities).

About Teleseeq
Teleseeq is a decision-making tool developed over a long history of data collection and analysis. Teleseeq provides comparable and reliable data at your fingertips to help you with strategic research and planning. Teleseeq ensures that you maintain a competitive edge in the telecommunications industry.

Teleseeq provides key information for:

Competitor tracking
Commercial forecasting
Consumption analysis
Pricing & cost analysis
Trends identification
Market potential evaluation

About InfoCom
InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with almos 20 years experience providing strategic planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications and multimedia industry. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based perspective on the telecommunications and multimedia environment contributes to decision makers understanding of market dynamics, trends and opportunities in the key markets.

3G Americas today announced that Telefonica Moviles, the second-largest multinational wireless operator in the world, is appointed to its Board of Governors effective January 1, 2006. Telefonica Moviles joins a distinguished Board that is comprised of seventeen leading operators and manufacturers who support 3G Americas’ mission to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to 3G and beyond.

Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas, commended the election saying, “Telefonica Moviles is a strong addition to our Board of Governors, and we welcome its added strategic insight as a leading global wireless carrier with operations in thirteen Latin American and Caribbean countries. We value the contribution that Telefonica Moviles will bring to our Board’s initiatives to continue the GSM momentum and its evolution to 3G in the region.”

“Telefonica Moviles was the first operator to launch EDGE services in Latin America in October 2003, and we look toward continuing to improve the advancement and future development of the GSM evolution throughout the region,” said Daniel Arias, Director, Regulations Division, Institutional Relations and Social Responsibility for Telefonica Moviles. “The opportunity to work strategically with an organization such as 3G Americas will help Telefonica Moviles to provide a cohesive and harmonious delivery of advanced wireless services across the continent in the many countries in which we operate.”

3G Americas’ Board of Governors members include: Andrew Corporation, Cingular Wireless (USA), Cable & Wireless (West Indies), Ericsson, Gemplus, HP, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Openwave Systems, Research In Motion, Rogers Wireless (Canada), Siemens, T-Mobile USA, Telcel (Mexico), Texas Instruments and, now, Telefonica Moviles.

Umniah, as a new GSM/GPRS/EDGE operator in the Jordan market, has proven its capabilities by acquiring 200,000 plus subscribers in its first three months of operation.

To gain market share, Umniah simplified and accelerated service activation and provided flexible convergent billing for its pre- and post-paid subscribers. Working with HP, Umniah deployed HP OpenView Service Activator to automatically configure network equipment to set up and manage mobile services.

The solution enabled Umniah to deliver and provision new services more quickly — and consolidate provisioning on a single platform, which reduced cost and complexity. The HP solution also linked directly to Umniah’s customer relationship management (CRM) application, so subscribers can customize services in real time.

With HP OpenView Internet Usage Manager, Umniah can mediate all billing data, pre- and post-paid, into its billing system and CRM application.

“Umniah is committed to providing its customers with the fast, easy activation of services and billing flexibility that other operators lack. The HP OpenView solutions and OSS expertise have been a key part of that effort,” said Michael Dagher, managing partner, Umniah. “By delivering new services to customers faster, with the billing choices they want, Umniah can provide a better customer experience — and reduce our own operational costs.”

The HP OpenCall Media Platform, already widely deployed, has now been expanded to incorporate the MRF capability in emerging IMS networks. Current and planned capabilities include audio and voice services (interactive voice response, voicemail, conferencing) as well as a wide range of multimedia, collaborative and interactive services such as video mail, video conferencing, participation TV and music sharing.

A key feature of the HP OpenCall Media Platform MRF is that it can support the real-time, simultaneous blending of voice, data and multimedia services on IMS networks. For example, in an IMS network, wireless users can create an audio or video conference, share photos and messages and provide location-specific information — all in one integrated session that is seamless and easy for the callers.

By bundling sets of services that support people’s on-the-go lifestyles, operators anticipate that IMS-based networks will help increase average revenue per user. Also, the layered, standards-based IMS architecture enables operators to streamline infrastructure, reduce costs and converge wireline and wireless networks.

HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) today unveiled products that will help the world’s telecommunications providers evolve to the all-digital networks that are needed to offer blended voice, data and multimedia services across wireless, wireline and broadband networks.

In the software arena, HP introduced a powerful media server, the HP OpenCall Media Platform Media Resource Function (MRF), that provides a foundation for advanced multimedia and interactive services in emerging Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks.

In the operations support system (OSS) market, HP announced that Umniah, a new, fast-growing mobile operator in Jordan, is using HP Integrated Service Management and HP OpenView products to streamline service activation and subscriber provisioning.

“With both IT and telecom expertise, HP is in a unique position to help our customers evolve their legacy networks toward IP-based technologies,” said Marc Rotthier, vice president, Network and Service Provider Business — EMEA, HP. “Few if any companies can match HP’s array of software, service-oriented architectures, carrier-grade platforms, end-user devices, partners and global integration services.”

Comptel Corporation, a leading convergent mediation, charging, provisioning and network inventory software vendor, has deployed Comptel Online mediation solution for SMS services to Indosat a leading telecommunication and information provider in Indonesia. The system was delivered by Comptel jointly with PT Lintas Teknologi Indonesia and Comptel’s associate company Tango Telecom. The value of agreement has not been announced.

Comptel Online Mediation solution for SMS is based on Comptel OnlineLink® and Comptel SMSLink™ products using Tango Telecom’s signalling technology with network level pre-delivery control function for SMS services. The solution enables Indosat to perform flexible online charging for all SMS traffic and services. In addition it provides an instant SMS delivery architecture with full scalability to meet the demanding requirements of the Indosat network. Solution provides capability to massively increase the capacity, performance and flexibility of the existing SMS infrastructure.

The system has successfully handled in excess of 106 million SMS attempts over the two days of recent Eid Al Fitr celebration which creates the highest peak traffic of the year in Indonesia. The system has provided higher quality of service to Indosat’s customers during the busy period that is challenging the network capacity.

The solution was chosen by Indosat after rigorous, fair and highly competitive evaluation and it was deployed in timely fashion. The solution has been integrated effectively across multiple sites utilising Indosat’s existing infrastructure. The new SMSC architecture is implemented with sophisticated real time charging and rating capability and is able to provide advanced new services rapidly to Indosat’s growing customer base. Furthermore, the solution improves effectively the promptness of the SMS deliveries, which is essential to improving further the ever important customer satisfaction.

“We are delighted to be able to announce the deployment of our market leading Online Mediation solution with Indosat, one of the largest such deployments worldwide. It is a key vote of confidence in the Comptel OnlineLink and Comptel SMSLink products, and we look forward to strengthening our cooperation with Indosat and to helping them to consolidate their position as a leading operator in the huge Indonesian market”, said Kari Miettinen, Vice President and head of Comptel’s APAC business, Comptel Corporation.

“Lintas has played the key role of system integration for this project. Key success factors for this large project have been our long relationship with Indosat, our competent local resources and the robust and advanced technology provided by Comptel and Tango and also I am proud of the team that worked round the clock with the Indosat team to ensure that solution was implemented on-time and supported during the critical period”, said Subagia Handaja, President Director, Lintas Teknologi Indonesia.

LEAD IP Systems Ltd, an innovative developer and supplier of IP-Telephony access solutions for broadband service providers, has introduced a new set of ISDN services for IP-Telephony operators.

One of the unique ISDN services is the Advice-Of-Charge (AOC) which allows the operator to provide billing information and metering services to hotels, hospitals, call centres etc. allowing customers to preserve capital investment in their internal billing systems.

Supporting AOC for both ETSI and Italtel standards, metering as well as currency formats, LEAD’s PowerGate CPE locally generates metering messages to the customer’s billing system.

Additional ISDN services such as DDI (Direct dialling into PBX extensions), MSN (Multiple numbers), Caller-ID, Trunk hunting and Trunk grouping, provides an IP-Telephony solution which fully replaces existing ISDN lines.

“We found out that ISDN installation tends to be more complex than POTS one. LEAD’s PowerGate CPE includes a built in ISDN wizard which indicates potential wiring, PBX or ISDN configuration errors.” said Oded Tubias, LEAD product manager, “This dramatically reduce the installation period and allows customers an easy and transparent switch from existing Telco lines to the alternative IP-Telephony access service.”

The PowerGate can further synchronise itself to existing Telco ISDN lines, offering multi-source service to the PBX – both traditional and IP. PowerGate comes in with 2 BRI (PowerGateD2+) or 4 BRI (PowerGateD4+) supporting 8 simultaneous calls per CPE with additional cascading of more units using the sync channel.

About LEAD IP Systems
LEAD IP Systems Ltd. an innovative developer and supplier of IP-Telephony access solutions for broadband service providers. LEAD provides an advanced multi-service Telephony, telecommunications systems and technologies for service creation, provisioning, management, SIP SoftSwitch and billing mediation. LEAD IP’s strategy is to offer breakthrough solutions that lavarage service providers services. The Company’s premier product, LEADsystem(TM), empowers service providers to create and provision new and differentiated revenue-generating services, rapidly and with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership and upfront investment. LEAD IP Systems Ltd., headquartered in Misgav, Israel, is a wholly owned subsidiary of LEAD Corporation Inc. located in, part of the BATT Corporation group.

Cablenet Ltd. is pleased to announce, that the Bulgarian Communications Regulation Commission was awarded with a WiMax license on Nov. 9, 2005, after the company won the tender organized by the Bulgarian authorities.

The Company will be providing services under the brand name of Max Telecom.

In its first months of activity the Company will focus on fixed network substitution, providing broadband for domestic and business customers. Max Telecom will be a Company with low overhead costs, with a small but highly motivated staff, and with some of the best value for money in equipment available today. This will mean that Max Telecom will be able to substantially undercut present fixed network access fees and line rental charges.

In addition to supporting existing businesses at lower prices, Max Telecom will additionally develop as a telecommunications operator in its own right. The Bulgarian market is ready for consolidation of a lot of the smaller operators into entities that have economies of scale. A WiMax licensed company is in an ideal position to act as a consolidator, and Max Telecom will be looking hard at how to do this.

Max Telecom has already completed the first round of its equipment tender process, with no less than 10 companies providing offers, and is now proceeding with a short list.

Max Telecom plans to roll out a nationwide network based on the mobile 802.16e standard. During 2007 we expect to see data devices – such as laptop computers and PDA’s – that will take advantage of the technology which is seen as a complement to 3G cellular with phones to match.

John Munnery, who will serve as Executive Director of the company stated, “Finally we can introduce to the Bulgarian telecommunications market the sort of competition which is now driving tariffs downwards all over Europe. We will bring to the Bulgarian market a new dimension in fast data access, whether it is in replacing expensive links, or allowing a cheap upgrade for dial-up Internet customers to Broadband.”