Agere Systems (NYSE:AGR) a corporate descendant of AT&T, has
significant operations in the telecommunications chip market along with a complete line of telecom chips. In the telecom chip
market it does a brisk business. Last year its telecommunications segment contributed $268 million the company’s
$1.9 billion total revenues. So far though the company has been relatively quiet about its VoIP customer premise chip activities,
although it has given significant attention to solving the carrier traffic surge that is expected from VoIP, IPTV and on-line
gaming activity.
Agere offers a VoIP chip through its web site and has reported that
UTStarcom has been developing a phone based on the 802.11 WiFi VoIP phone chip. Agere originally introduced its VoIP WiFi chip set in 2003. Since then it has approached the VoIP market, as well as
the IPTV and HDTV markets from the infrastructure side with its APP line of 5Gbps network processor chips. The company has
won several accounts with the APP. Among them, in September 2005, was Zhone Technologies, Inc., (NASDAQ:ZHNE), which selected
the Advanced PayloadPlus APP300 network processor for the design of its Very-Fast-Rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL-2) equipment.
David Markowitz, vice president of marketing at Zhone, indicated that Agere’s solution was applicable to VoIP applications
and IPTV and HDTV applications, "VDSL2 is an enabling technology required to provide the universal bandwidth needed to deliver
triple play services including VoIP, IPTV and HDTV applications. We recognize the need for high performing and flexible traffic
processors and have chosen Agere's network processor to meet the challenging and evolving requirements in this space."
Agere credits the APP, along with the hardware and software platform
that comes with it, with the capability to reduce the amount of code needed for broadband applications in the order of 80
percent, which saves in development time. According to Agere, the platform can save network equipment companies tens of million
of dollars in development cost.
Agere also has worked with Nortel Networks in the adoption of its
APP platform as well as a growing number of others.
