A year after talking about providing hosted VOIP for service providers, Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) has announced just such an engagement with Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) to host and manage its Sprint IP Voice Connect service that includes local, long distance, traditional PBX, and Centrex services for enterprise customers in the U.S. and internationally. (See Lucent Pushing Services.)

Thomson S.A. (NYSE: TMS; Euronext Paris: 18453), which has been acquiring its way deeper into the telecom market, announced a number of new products and enhancements today, and said it was on course to generate €1 billion in revenues in 2006. When it acquired softswitch firm Cirpack in April 2005, the company said it was aiming to double its revenues from €400 million as part of a two-year plan to make a mark in the telecom sector. (See Thomson Buys IPTV Player and Thomson Buys Cirpack.)

Today the French firm announced some new residential gateway features and DECT phone products, and enhancements to its IPTV middleware platform, Smartvision. The firm is a major player in the emerging home gateway segment and has developed a home hub with BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA). (See BT Gets a Gateway and Home Gateway Group Puts on Specs.)

But can Thomson deliver to the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) 's target of a product at just €70 per unit? (See Telcos, Vendors Battle Over Gateway.)

Yes, says Bruno Fabre, CEO of Thomson Telecom, though it will take some time before any company can deliver to the full expectations of the carrier-led HGI, which is still formulating its specifications.

Thomson also today unveiled a new line of IP set-top boxes, the IP2000 series, that incorporates support for MPEG-4 Part 10, the new iteration of the compression codec also known as AVC and H.264 that, the IPTV sector believes, will help bring MPEG-4 into mainstream deployment. That's important for service providers, as MPEG-4 allows about twice as many streams of standard definition video to be delivered across a broadband connection as the widely deployed MPEG-2 standard.

The IP2000 series also supports high definition (HD), and, importantly, is based on system-on-a-chip technology that reduces the unit cost of the set-top boxes, an important breakthrough for MPEG-4 and HD-capable products. Thomson uses ST17000 silicon from STMicroelectronics NV (NYSE: STM) for its system-on-a-chip design.

Fabre says this is Thomson's first system-on-a-chip MPEG-4 Part 10 IP set-top device (SOSMPFPTSTD) and that the unit cost is much lower now than before, though he wouldn't commit to any specific numbers. It will be commercially available in July.

The Home and Office Communication Devices division of Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) also unveiled its SOSMPFPTSTDs today here at CeBIT, the Gigaset HD360 IP and Gigaset HD860 IP products.

Other CeBIT news today includes:

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading