George Maier has been appointed vice president of marketing at Artel Video Systems (Marlborough, MA), which manufactures broadcast-quality fiber-optic video transmission equipment. He has held a variety of sales and marketing positions at a half-dozen video-equipment manufacturers. Maier is responsible for providing strategic market and product direction and for developing a global sales strategy as Artel drives to expand its markets.
Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs, Louisville, CO) has added staff to bolster its expertise in cable data modem equipment and wireless communications. David S. Harrison, Brian Reilly, Thomas E. Moore, Pamela D. Anderson and Michael G. Laflin have joined CableLabs as project managers and engineers--and, in Laflin`s case, as lead member of technical staff. Although its venue is cable TV, the company has launched several initiatives in the last year to strengthen its presence in telecommunications and data communications.
Philips Semiconductors (Sunnyvale, CA) has appointed Cees Jan Koomen vice president and managing director of the company`s Communications and Multimedia Business Group, which includes product lines in multimedia, digital TV, data communications, wireless, audio and video. He comes from the home office in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he has worked for more than 20 years in engineering and technical management.
B-Line Systems Inc. (Highland, IL) has acquired the assets of Electronic Metal Products Inc. (EMP, Aurora, CO), a maker of electronic enclosures for the original equipment manufacturer, industrial and telecommunications markets. The acquisition will allow B-Line--which makes support systems and enclosures for the electrical, mechanical and telecommunications markets--to broaden its line of products and strengthen its coverage of the customer premises and telecommunications markets. B-Line will retain the EMP brand.
Alcatel Cable (Clichy, France) plans to increase its production capacity for optical fiber by 50%, to more than 6 million kilometers by the end of 1997. The increase will result from process and technology improvements, as well as the recent opening of manufacturing facilities in Dourvin, France, and Claremont, NC. Alcatel also announced a 5% to 8% price increase for singlemode optical fiber--which was effective May 1.
Uniphase Corp. (San Jose, CA) has signed a letter of intent to acquire two affiliated companies--GCA Fibreoptics Ltd. (Oxford, UK) and Fiberoptic Alignment Solutions Inc. (FAS, Chicago, IL)--for approximately $8 million in stock and cash. If the sale goes through, the companies will operate as divisions of Uniphase Telecommunications Products, a maker of fiber-optic transmitters and modulators for the cable-TV and telecommunications markets. GCA and FAS manufacture fiber-optic components, including connectorized and pigtailed lasers for telecommunications and data-communications applications.
Tektronix Inc. (Beaverton, OR) has launched an expanded portfolio of complimentary and fee-based system support services that are automatically available to purchasers of the company`s video and networking products. Highlighting the TekCare offering is hot-line service guaranteed to respond within 30 minutes. Additional components of the program include extended warranty support, on-site help from technical representatives and training services.
Richard M. Lee has been appointed president and general manager of PCS Solutions, the 50/50 joint-venture company formed by PCS Wireless and ADC Telecommunications Inc. (Minneapolis, MN) earlier this year. Lee comes to PCS Solutions from PCS PrimeCo/US West (Denver, CO), where he was most recently executive director of engineering.
Caoilte Inc. (McDonough, GA) announced that it has formed an alliance with Hellermann Broadband Systems (Plymouth, England) to market Hellermann`s reenterable outside-plant enclosures. These fiber-optic enclosures will augment Caoilte`s product line of fiber-optic termination products for the telephone and cable-TV markets.
Steven A. John has been named executive director by The Society for Information Management (SIM, Chicago, IL). John, who has been associate executive director since 1994, replaces Henry S. Givray, who stays on as senior staff advisor of the 2700-member society of information-technology professionals.