TelecomWeb News Digest back issues from August 2005:
Prez Quits As Nokia Sets Executive Succession.
Aug 01, 2005 ... Nokia Chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila, the man credited with turning Nokia into the world's Number One cellphone manufacturing powerhouse in a little more than a decade - much to Motorola's chagrin - will retire Oct. 1, the company's board said today. Outlining a succession plan that will ...
Alltel Digests Western Wireless.
Aug 01, 2005 ... Alltel today completed a $6.5 billion merger with Western Wireless Corporation (WWC); the Little Rock, Ark.-based company is issuing approximately 54.3 million shares of common stock in addition to paying $933.4 million in cash for WWC plus assuming an estimated net debt of $2.1 billion ....
T-Mobile Reportedly Tops Tele.ring Bidding.
Aug 01, 2005 ... According to press reports out of Austria, Deutsche Telekom's wireless subsidiary T-Mobile - looking to strengthen its stagnating position in the Austrian wireless market - has made a $1.6 billion bid for mobile and fixed telecom service provider Tele.ring - a premium bid of about 10 ...
Cox VoIP Targets More Markets.
Aug 01, 2005 ... Cox Communications, the largest cable company in the United States, today disclosed it will be expanding availability of its VoIP offerings in at least five regional markets before the end of 2005. The carrier says its IP telephony offering, branded Cox Digital Telephone, is expected to ...
Nera Bags Second BGAN Broadband Order.
Aug 01, 2005 ... Nera subsidiary Nera Satcom announced its second major order in just a matter of days for broadband satellite terminals used with Inmarsat's forthcoming Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service. The equipment will go to the MVS Group, which has ordered 1,000 broadband satellite ...
Broadwing Inks Wholesale Deal With Nat'l Reseller.
Aug 01, 2005 ... Broadwing Communications today signed an agreement for privately held AireSpring and its national group of sales agents to resell communications services over the carrier's nationwide fiber network. The wholesale partnerships involve Broadwing-supported local connectivity, ...
Senate Bill Expands USF Subsidy To 'Broadband'.
Aug 02, 2005 ... U.S. Senate legislation has been drafted to expand the carrier contribution base for the Federal Communications Commission-mandated universal service fund (USF) and to create a portion of the program geared specifically to subsidize broadband deployments in underserved rural/small telco ...
MCI Grabs Totality In Managed-Services Buy.
Aug 02, 2005 ... Interexchange carrier MCI today signed an agreement to acquire Totality Corp., a San Francisco-based provider of remote managed services for business- critical applications and infrastructure; the company concentrates on the retail, finance, healthcare, entertainment, transportation and ...
TowerStream, Vonage Team To Cut Out LECs.
Aug 02, 2005 ... VoIP provider Vonage and wireless broadband house TowerStream have teamed to offer TowerStream's business customers VoIP service, with the marketing cry being the elimination of any need for traditional local exchange carriers at all. Under the pact, TowerStream will hawk Vonage ...
Alltel Takes On ADC's FTTx Line.
Aug 02, 2005 ... Telecom system and software distributor Alltel Communications Products has signed on to handle ADC's OmniReach line of passive and active component products sold to service providers for end-to-end FTTx solutions. The agreement calls on the Alltel unit to handle the Minneapolis-based ...
Cameraphone Companies Click.
Aug 02, 2005 ... In a marriage of futuristic service providers, Fla.-based NeoMedia Technologies Inc., a developer of wireless services and technologies that provide automatic links to Internet-based information, says it plans to buy Mass.-based Mobot Inc., a two-year-old provider of mobile visual and ...
Czechs Check Out Broadband.
Aug 02, 2005 ... Czech carrier Cesky Telecom says the appetite for broadband services is growing across the country and not just in such urban centers as Prague - driven by growing availability and the desire for "always on" connections. The carrier says that the number of broadband Internet users in ...
FCC Meeting May Blunt International 'WhipSaws'.
Aug 03, 2005 ... The Federal Communications Commission's monthly open meeting tomorrow (Aug. 4) may see a Notice of Inquiry into anti-competitive conduct and circuit disruption by foreign carriers on U.S.-international routes (sometimes called "whipsaw" acts in the trade); details have not yet been ...
Alcatel Draws Four Aces: MAN, DSL, IPTV & GSM.
Aug 03, 2005 ... Alcatel, in the space of barely 24 hours, has disclosed a string of broadband and wireless contract wins at carriers in Belgium, China, Armenia and Egypt plus a deal with Israel's Amdocs to craft a joint end-to-end IPTV solution. The first of the deals cover DSL, where Alcatel claims ...
MCI Speeds U.S. Wholesale VoIP Rollout.
Aug 03, 2005 ... MCI today disclosed it is moving up availability of its wholesale VoIP offerings in the United States to "immediately" from the initially planned timeframe of "later this year." The interexchange carrier says the VoIP wholesale line's carrier IP termination and SIP gateway services are ...
ICOA Hot-Spot Buying Spree In High Gear.
Aug 03, 2005 ... ICOA, which has been on an aggressive acquisition bent to build itself into one of the nation's major players in the hot-spot market, has closed its seventh acquisition in fewer than two years, buying Santa Monica, Calif.-based Cafe.com. The deal, whose total value was not disclosed, is ...
SAN Supplier Brocade Recruits Big Blue.
Aug 03, 2005 ... Storage area network (SAN) equipment maker Brocade Communications Systems today says IBM is adding its new 4Gb/sec SilkWorm-brand SAN director and entry- level switch models under private label. The SAN equipment is part of the computer manufacturer's TotalStorage product portfolio, said ...
No Worries: FastWeb Welcomes TI Competition.
Aug 03, 2005 ... Telecom Italia's entrance into the Italian digital television (DTV) market is being welcomed by one of its main competitors, FastWeb. FastWeb, which has long been one of Europe's pioneers in terms of telcos offering TV services, believes it will benefit from having Telecom Italia in the ...
$35B Sprint/Nextel Deal Gets FCC Nod.
Aug 04, 2005 ... Sprint and Nextel Communications late yesterday received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asset-transfer approvals on their estimated $35 billion merger, with few significant conditions except commitments on select RF spectrum deployments and Sprint's already-decided spinoff of ...
First Skype/DECT Phones Hit U.S. Shores.
Aug 04, 2005 ... Wireless phone distributor Brightpoint signed a deal with Danish equipment maker RTX Telecom's U.S. subsidiary to bring what is believed to be the first Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication (DECT) cordless phone to the United States - and it's going to be a U.S. version of the ...
Report: The Rise Of Broadband Value-Added Services.
Aug 04, 2005 ... Driven by spending on security services, the worldwide market for business broadband value-added services (BVAS) grew by an impressive 60 percent last year, according to a new study by U.K. research house Point Topic. Total market size reached a run rate of $3.7 billion by the end of the ...
CSC Nabs South African Bank Business.
Aug 04, 2005 ... Telkom South Africa and El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) inked a five-year, $275-million network outsourcing contract awarded jointly by South African financial service/banking customers Old Mutual and Nedbank. Under the terms of the agreement, ...
More Hot Spots For The Sunshine State.
Aug 04, 2005 ... West Coast-based 5G Wireless Solutions Inc., a relative newcomer to the wireless broadband scene and a wholly owned portfolio company of 5G Wireless Communications Inc., went cross country to sell the Utilities Commission, City of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., a new WiFi system it says will ...
NEC, Harris Kiss And Make Up.
Aug 04, 2005 ... NEC Corp. and Harris Corp. have settled their wireless patent-violation beefs, with both sides apparently winning. In its initial court filing nearly a year ago, NEC accused Harris of infringing seven patents in the United States and four in Canada for point-to-point digital microwave ...
BREAKING NEWS: FCC De-Regs Telco DSL Broadband.
Aug 05, 2005 ... The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to deregulate telco- provided DSL and other broadband services by putting common carriers on a par with cablecos in the United States. The action essentially reclassifies the telco offerings from heavier-handed regulated ...
More $$$ For E911 Data Testing.
Aug 05, 2005 ... Just what the PSAPs ordered: The Fla.-based Public Safety Foundation of America (PFSA) has ponied up a grant "to support and expedite the implementation of wireless enhanced 911 (E911)" nationwide. In this round of funding, PFSA is giving $750,000 to Project LOCATE, financing that ...
Dutch Treat: KPN Launches Ethernet Service.
Aug 05, 2005 ... Dutch telco KPN has launched an international Ethernet service that will provide customers with switched Ethernet services between worldwide locations with speeds as fast as 1 Gbps. KPN says it can now offer its customers a fully integrated national and international Ethernet service, ...
German Satellite Broadband House Assaults U.K. Market.
Aug 05, 2005 ... Germany's largest satellite broadband operator, Teles Wireless Broadband Internet GmbH, has set up shop in the U.K., with a promise of 16 Mb/s downstream speeds. The U.K. was the last major European market left for Teles to assault with its skyDSL service; the carrier's avowed goal is ...
AT&T's String Of Enterprise IP Contracts.
Aug 05, 2005 ... AT&T during the first week of August has landed a flurry of contracts worth a total of about $8.8 million for IP-intensive domestic and international telecom network services to large enterprise customers. Deals with fashion apparel/accessories company Liz Claiborne, healthcare-systems ...
Xalted Promises India-Bred GPON.
Aug 05, 2005 ... Xalted Networks, a five-year-old startup that moved the bulk of its operations from the United States to India three years ago in order to save precious venture capital, has signed a pact with India's Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) to develop a line of gigabit passive ...
Is Huawei Offering $1B For Marconi?
Aug 08, 2005 ... U.K. telecom equipment manufacturer Marconi today all but confirmed that it is in talks to be bought, with the British press quickly tagging China's Huawei Technologies as the suitor with what is said to be a $1 billion bid. The news is hardly unexpected - Marconi was sent reeling in ...
Qwest Workers Threaten To Strike.
Aug 08, 2005 ... The Communication Workers of America (CWA) said that a massive 91 percent of Qwest's 25,000 unionized workers have approved a strike if their union and the ILEC don't come to terms over a new contract to replace the current pact, which expires this coming Saturday at midnight. The ...
SBC Lands NCE-Hosted VoIP Contract.
Aug 08, 2005 ... SBC Communications today signed a five-year contract to deliver hosted voice and data network services to data-storage supplier NCE Computer Group. The contract value was undisclosed but the ILEC says the deal calls for it to provide NCE with its SBC PremierSERV Hosted IP Communication ...
Equant Gets Cozier With Cisco Systems.
Aug 08, 2005 ... France Telecom-controlled global accounts carrier Equant has reinforced its existing partnership with Cisco Systems via the award of special "elite" market status designations with the American manufacturer. Equant claims it is the only service provider to achieve Cisco's Channel ...
U.K. Cable Giant Promises 10 Mb/s Broadband.
Aug 08, 2005 ... The U.K.'s largest cable company, ntl, says it is going to upgrade all of its almost 1.5 million cable broadband customers to 10 Mb/s service - at no extra charge - by the end of next year. It also hints at 30 Mb/s and 50 Mb/s service to come, using both cable's DOCSIS 3.0 technology ...
FTTx Gear Deployed At Only U.S. County-Run Telco.
Aug 08, 2005 ... Minneapolis-based FTTx system supplier ADC says its OmniReach-brand fiber distribution terminals (FDTs) for passive optical network (PON) operations are being deployed by CC Communications, a telco-owned and -operated by Churchill County in Nevada and reputed to be the only county-owned ...
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Aug 09, 2005 ... While imminent Federal Communications Commission regulations will require voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) carriers to connect users who dial 911 to the proper public service answering point (PSAP) automatically, a continuing wrinkle in the scheme is that it is the customer who must ...
Motorola Invests In Powerline Vendor Intellon.
Aug 09, 2005 ... Motorola Ventures, the equity-investment arm of Motorola Inc., today disclosed its investment in Intellon, the dominant provider of HomePlug- compatible integrated circuits (ICs) for broadband-over-powerline (BPL) in- building networks, including home networking and networked ...
Nokia Enters Vietnamese GSM Market.
Aug 09, 2005 ... Finland's Nokia inked a deal to deliver GSM core network equipment to Vietnam's largest mobile operator, Vietnam Telecom Services Company (GPC). The value of the contract was undisclosed and, although Nokia has supplied mobile wireless handsets into the country, the GPC deal marks the ...
Indian Broadband Prices Plummet.
Aug 09, 2005 ... India's state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) slashed its prices to home users in half, and it has come up with a new plan for business users that's far cheaper than were previous offers. Meanwhile, Hughes similarly trimmed charges by 40 percent for Indian users of its ...
FiberNet Tapped For Big Apple Metro Ethernet.
Aug 09, 2005 ... FiberNet Telecom Group has been selected by France Telecom's global accounts carrier Equant to provide low-latency Metro Ethernet transport services in the New York and New Jersey areas. The deal positions the company to provide service to 90 percent of Equant's Metro Ethernet needs in ...
Pack Your Passport And Your Tags.
Aug 09, 2005 ... For those looking to travel out of Canada and into the United States for business or pleasure, get ready to have another piece of ID on your person: a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. Experiments have just begun at several Canadian border crossings and one inside the United ...
Alltel, Western Wireless Ink $1.6B Austria Sale.
Aug 10, 2005 ... Alltel and its Western Wireless International Austria subsidiary today signed a definitive agreement to sell their tele.ring Telekom Service GmbH business in that country to Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile Austria GmbH for approximately $1.6 billion. The transaction still must be approved ...
Sprint, Nextel Set $35B Merger Date.
Aug 10, 2005 ... Sprint and Nextel Communications say they intend to close their proposed $35 billion merger on Friday (Aug. 12), having received all required regulatory approvals for the deal. After completion of the merger, the newly combined company, Sprint Nextel, will launch common-stock trading on ...
Yankee Group Fears Wholesale Data Deterioration.
Aug 10, 2005 ... Market research and consulting house Yankee Group today issued a report warning that further declines in wholesale data-transport revenue could lead to a deterioration of the segment into a commodity-type business. The group maintains a revenue gap "is expanding among network service ...
New Report Predicts 440M Broadband Users In 2010.
Aug 10, 2005 ... The number of broadband users in the world will near the 440-million mark by the end of 2010, up from an estimated 190 million by the end of this year, according to new estimates from U.K. research house Informa Telecoms and Media. Moreover, Informa predicts, in 2010, DSL will still ...
Ericsson Scores In Greece & Belgium.
Aug 10, 2005 ... Ericsson, in a pair of key contract wins in Greece and Belgium, will be supplying Greek wireline operator Vivodi Telecom with 10,000 ADSL 2+ lines. It also snagged a managed-services contract from Belgian mobile carrier BASE to operate its core network for the next seven years. ...
RUS Vets Vyyo Gear For Rural Loan Program.
Aug 10, 2005 ... Early last spring, the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which administers the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Utilities Programs, made funding available for the Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. In a nutshell, this fiscal year alone, at least ...
LECs Win: Texans Pass Telco IPTV Franchise Bill.
Aug 11, 2005 ... On the third attempt in fewer than three months, the Texas Legislature passed a controversial telecom bill that allows the statewide franchising of telephone-company video services. In a major victory for ILECs, the state's House of Representatives voted an overwhelming 144-1 in favor ...
Qualcomm Snaps Up Flarion, Challenges Mobile WiMAX.
Aug 11, 2005 ... Qualcomm today announced it is buying Flarion Technologies, a pioneer and leading developer of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex Access (OFDMA) technology and the inventor of FLASH-OFDM technology for mobile broadband Internet protocol (IP) services. The deal is valued at $600 ...
Yahoo! China Mates With Alibaba In $4B Deal.
Aug 11, 2005 ... Yahoo! is funneling $1 billion in cash into China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba.com, with plans to merge Yahoo! China into Alibaba in a deal valued at a total of $4 billion - thus creating one of the largest Internet companies in China. In return for its cash and its Yahoo! ...
AT&T Team Chases $20B GSA Network Deal.
Aug 11, 2005 ... Vienna, Va.-based AT&T Government Solutions is putting together a team of partners to bid for the GSA's "Networx" procurement, a 10-year networking and IT contract with a potential value of $20 billion or more. Besides AT&T, team members include: IT systems ...
Former FCC Chairman Joins Equity Firm.
Aug 11, 2005 ... Michael Powell, who left the chairman's suite at the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, has joined Providence Equity Partners as a senior advisor on technology and regulatory issues. He will be involved in media, communications and information industries; in selected ...
Why Being 'Dumb' Sometimes Isn't.
Aug 11, 2005 ... Becoming a "dumb pipe" may be the smartest move for wireless carriers, according to Jonathan Schreiber, CEO of Xingtone. Xingtone sells PC software that converts audio tracks of any kind into ringtones that can be pushed to phones via SMS. The company also provides white-label mobile ...
Launched: The Biggest Broadband Satellite Ever.
Aug 12, 2005 ... The heaviest commercial communications satellite in the history of the industry was launched into orbit early Thursday morning, a 6.5-ton beast costing $400 million that will provide broadband to between 2 million and 4 million users in 14 Asian countries, and voice telephony in remote ...
TIA Pushes U.S. Comms Research Funding.
Aug 12, 2005 ... The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has stepped up its advocacy for more U.S. funding of basic research into communications technologies. During its annual summer meeting, the TIA's board of directors of established a division devoted solely on efforts to support increases ...
T-Online Staggers: Broadband Growth Slows, Profits Plunge.
Aug 12, 2005 ... Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Online, the leading pan-European ISP, in a disappointing quarterly report said it added only 182,000 new customers to its domestic DSL base in the June quarter, and net profits plunged by a disastrous 36 percent on a tiny 4.5 percent increase in revenues ...
Survival Strategy: Japan's IIJ Reshuffles The Deck.
Aug 12, 2005 ... Telecom services provider Internet Initiative Japan Inc (IIJ) today disclosed plans for a massive restructuring of functional responsibilities and ownership relationships within its subsidiary organizations - moves designed to focus resources more closely on converging customer markets ...
Public Advocates Question Home Telephony Shortfall.
Aug 12, 2005 ... The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) today said it will ask the Federal Communications Commission to delve deeper into the meaning of the regulator's own statistics that indicate the numbers of U.S. households with telephone service is declining. ...
Wireless Broadband, Wireless Banking Merge In Texas.
Aug 12, 2005 ... Texas-based ERF Wireless, which offers enterprise-class wireless broadband products and services, made public its plans to acquire "virtually all" of the secure enterprise-class wireless banking network business of Skyvue USA East Central Texas Inc., another Texas company. No financial ...
O2 Takeover Talks Go Into Hiding.
Aug 15, 2005 ... Mixed reports out of the U.K. today suggest that a massive joint offer from Deutsche Telekom and KPN to buy U.K. wireless operator O2 for a sum variously reported as ranging from $23.5 billion to 25.5 billion have either foundered or gone underground. O2 has been the subject of takeover ...
Qwest Strike On Temporary Hold.
Aug 15, 2005 ... Qwest and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) "froze the clock" as the union contract with Qwest expired during the weekend, with the two sides continuing to negotiate. The CWA, in a notice late Sunday night, said only that talks are continuing, although the two sides are still ...
Avaya IP Telephony Gets Around.
Aug 15, 2005 ... U.S. equipment supplier Avaya today disclosed deployments of IP telephony systems with a geographical diversity reaching as far away as China and as near as Florida. The Basking Ridge, N.J.-based manufacturer says PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) currently is using its system at a new ...
MCI Expands Voice, Private IP Restoration.
Aug 15, 2005 ... MCI is expanding its disaster-recovery capabilities for government customers to include back-up voice services, and it also is expanding business continuity solutions for its fastest-growing service, Private IP, to include a suite of options for better customer preparedness. ...
BellSouth Uses Napster, Snapfish Offers To Lure DSL Customers.
Aug 15, 2005 ... BellSouth today disclosed an agreement to offer Napster digital music service via the incumbent local exchange carrier's FastAccess-brand DSL; the carrier says new residential customers of FastAccess DSL can receive a free Napster To Go-compatible, flash-based MP3 player plus three ...