Tech Watch: Wisair raises $20m; Bezeq says two million use ADSL

Wisair president and CEO David Toshiba said the new funds would enable the company to focus on expanding its sales channels and move to production shipment of its chipsets.

By AVI KRAWITZ
tech watch 88 (photo credit: )
tech watch 88
(photo credit: )
Tel Aviv-based Wisair, a provider of Ultra Wideband and Wireless USB chipset solutions, said Tuesday it has raised $20 million in its third round of fundraising. The round was led by Apax Partners, and included contributions from existing investors Bynet, Intel Capital, RAD Group's founders, Vertex and new investor Tomen Electronics, and other strategic investors. The funding follows Wisair's participation in the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where it demonstrated its Wireless USB Hub reference design and high performance 480 Mbps operation. Wisair president and CEO David Toshiba said the new funds would enable the company to focus on expanding its sales channels and move to production shipment of its chipsets. Bezeq has launched a new television campaign celebrating the fact that there are over 2 million broadband users in Israel surfing the Internet with ADSL technology. The local statistics are in line with global trends where around two-thirds of the 200 million broadband users worldwide connect with ADSL technology, Bezeq said. Wireless broadband solutions provider Alvarion Ltd. said African broadband provider Gulfsat Madagascar, would expand its current network using Alvarion's BreezeMAX system. Gulfsat has been providing broadband services to its corporate clients since 2003, using Alvarion's BreezeACCESS OFDM system operating in 3.5 GHz, and the addition of the BreezeMAX network, also operating at 3.5 GHz, is part of the operator's strategy to target residential subscribers with greater coverage and increased capacity. Gulfsat will deploy Alvarion's BreezeMAX PRO customer premise equipment which uses the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 WiMAX chip. Ra'anana-based Orca Interactive, a developer of middleware and applications for IPTV, has released its Orca RiGHTv 4.5 product, to evolve the middleware's architecture into a Service Delivery Platform, a service creation and delivery system. The company said the new architecture is designed to accelerate time to market of interactive TV applications and services. Multimedia conferencing company Radvision has brought to market version 4.0 of its session initiation protocol (SIP) toolkit for real-time communication applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging. The upgraded Radvision SIP Toolkit 4.0 was developed to address carrier-side applications, such as soft switches, gateways, and application servers and can support millions of busy hour call attempts. Airport City-based Audiocodes has launched its AudioCodes Open Solution Network partner program, establishing a world-wide collaborative ecosystem to include select independent software vendors (ISVs), value added resellers (VARs), distribution channels and technology partners. The company said the program would give participants access to a number of benefits, including lead referrals, early technology developments, technical support and training as well as networking and marketing opportunities.