TelecomWeb News Digest articles from April 2008

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from April 2008

Live From CTIA Wireless 2008: Is The Bogeyman After You?
April 1, 2008... How much business intelligence really has been lost by someone in your organization either misplacing his or her smartphone or by it's being infected by malware aimed at cracking into sensitive information? The answer is: No one really...

Court Orders Sprint To Sell Part Of Nextel.
April 1, 2008... Sprint's acquisition of Nextel, which most everyone thought by now was a done deal, isn't over yet. An Illinois appeals court, ruling in favor of Nextel reseller iPCS Inc, has overturned lower court rulings and says Sprint must divest...

802.11n Chip House Metalink Pulls In Its Horns.
April 1, 2008... Wireless broadband chip house Metalink is slashing its expenses, blaming the slow pace of adoption of 802.11n for the need to cut costs while it desperately hangs on waiting for the market to develop. Metalink's bet its life on 802.11n,...

Verizon BlackBerrys Its FMC Mobile Extension Offering.
April 1, 2008... Verizon has ditched its hardware-dependent PBX Mobile Extension offering, after barely six months on the market, and replaced it with a software-based offering that most notably brings Research in Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry fully into the...

Toshiba Launches Network eManager for Multi-Site Admin.
April 1, 2008... Toshiba America Information Systems Inc.'s Telecommunication Systems Division is marketing a new version of its eManager software, a browser-based system-administration tool that enables programming of both Strata CIX IP communication...

Cheetah Upgrades Vegas Hot Spots.
April 1, 2008... Coinciding with this week's CTIA Wireless 2009 show, Cheetah Wireless Technologies Inc., a wireless mesh-network solutions provider, has upgraded its Las Vegas broadband Wi-Fi infrastructure with the MBW 2000 series microcell and MBW 1000...

FCC Chairman Rejects 'Wireless Carterfone'.
April 2, 2008... FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, turning the clock back 40 years, said that he is going to oppose Skype's petition to apply the landmark Carterfone decision to wireless telecommunications, and leave it to the good will of telecom carriers to open...

Live From CTIA, Day Two: Mo' Money, Mo' Subs, Mo' Taxes.
April 2, 2008... CTIA Wireless 2008 - and this year is the 25th anniversary of the first commercial cellular phone call - officially kicked off with a spate of statistics, including record-breaking U.S. wireless subscriber numbers and service revenues. ...

Tellabs Withdraws From Verizon GPON Program.
April 2, 2008... In a terse, four sentence, statement Tellabs this morning said that "for economic reasons" it is discontinuing all of its gigabit passive optical network (GPON) activities that are focused on Verizon. Few details of what that means for...

Aussies Ditch $2B WiMAX 'Bush Broadband' Scheme.
April 2, 2008... The Australian government has cancelled its commitment to cough up $1 billion in subsidies for the construction of a $2 billion broadband network to serve rural Australia, a network that was going to rely heavily on the use of IEEE 802.16...

Aperto Garners More Venture Cash.
April 2, 2008... WiMAX gear manufacturer Aperto Networks is reporting $20 million in new equity funding. The financing round was led by Quicksilver Ventures and included several of the existing investors like Gunn Allen Venture Partners, JK&B Capital,...

Coming Soon: 'First Ever' Open-Standard 'Timing Over Packet' Solution.
April 2, 2008... Nokia Siemens Networks is teaming with Symmetricom to offer carriers a solution aimed at helping them keep up with the demands of ever-increasing data usage. The two companies are readying what they say is the industry's first...

Live From CTIA Day Three: What's So Good About 4G?
April 3, 2008... The leaders of three wireless infrastructure superstars agree on one thing: They wish they could be the only 4G gear suppliers moving forward. Talking among themselves about 4G and other future wireless issues during Wednesday's keynote...

Sprint Postpones WiMAX Launch.
April 3, 2008... Sprint Nextel has delayed the launch of its IEEE 802.16 (i.e. WiMAX) based Xohm mobile broadband offering, which was supposed to go live in at least a couple of cities this month, to some indeterminate time later this year - it's blaming...

Comcast Rolls Out 50 Mb/s 'Wideband'.
April 3, 2008... Comcast today rolled out its first ultra-high speed broadband service, using the nascent DOCSIS 3.0, offering 50 Mb/s downstream and 5 Mb/s upstream service in Minneapolis/St. Paul. With a consumer price of $150 per month, and a business...

Rumor Du Jour: Carphone Could Become U.K's Biggest Broadband House.
April 3, 2008... Carphone Warehouse is reportedly considering a bid for Tiscali's British broadband operations, in a more than $1 billion buyout that would leapfrog Carphone into the status of being the U.K.'s largest broadband provider, eclipsing even...

Nortel, IBM Add UC To Their Standing Partnership.
April 3, 2008... Nortel says it's accelerating the development of unified communications (UC) solutions for small to medium businesses (SMB) by adding its IP telephony application to IBM's new generation of Power Systems processors. This new piece of...

Trumpet Mobile Now Plays Radio Shack Tune.
April 3, 2008... Prepaid wireless service provider Trumpet Mobile now will be sold in more than 4,300 RadioShack locations nationwide. Last year, Trumpet Mobile introduced prepaid mobile money transfers in the United States in a pilot with global...

LTE Ascends As Verizon, AT&T Reveal 700 MHz Plans.
April 4, 2008... Both AT&T and Verizon last night outlined a strategy to roll out Long Term Evolution (LTE) on the 700 MHz spectrum for which they just paid billions in the FCC's recent spectrum auction - statements that more than ever make it clear 4G...

Motorola Layoffs To Top 10,000.
April 4, 2008... The number of pinks slips at Motorola is set to surpass 10,000, according to a new filing the company made to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with additional reports now coming in from around the world of everything from a...

China Wins As Nortel Revamps R&D.
April 4, 2008... Nortel is reorganizing its 12,000-person, $1.7 billion R&D operations worldwide after admitting it has been wasting nearly 50 percent of its R&D budget on "late-lifecycle products." This restructure will elevate its China R&D unit to a...

Survey Sez: Chief Innovation Execs Help Ensure Strategic Success.
April 4, 2008... Business strategy is driven largely by innovation, but corporate responsibility for the innovation process is highly fragmented, according to a new Accenture survey. Late last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a survey on...

Hosted Services Provider Intros Online Suggestion Box.
April 4, 2008... Appia Communications, a Mich.-based provider of managed IT and telecom services to small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises, has come up with a way to garner customer views and opinions without divulging the source. ...

GotVoice G2 Lets Users Get Voice-To-Text Messages.
April 4, 2008... The GotVoice G2 convergence communications platform, new from messaging provider GotVoice Inc., features real-time voicemail-to-text transcription for telcos, IP communications providers and voicemail-solution providers. Carriers and IP...

Microsoft Demands Yahoo! Surrender; More Moolah Wanted.
April 7, 2008... Microsoft, in a letter sent to Yahoo! this past weekend, said it wants the company to sit down and negotiate the terms of Microsoft's hostile-takeover offer or face the consequences of a proxy battle and a lower offering price. In a...

EC Okays In-Flight Wireless Use.
April 7, 2008... The European Commission (EC) this morning approved the sometimes- controversial use of cellphones by airline passengers while in flight. The governing body has given EU member countries 180 days to put into effect a set of common rules...

Alcatel-Lucent Bolsters Enterprise Laptop Security.
April 7, 2008... Following on its new commitment to open architecture, Alcatel-Lucent has expanded its OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardian (NLG) partner ecosystem through alliances with four more players. According to Alcatel-Lucent, the OmniAccess...

Wireless Chip Startups Merge To Target Qualcomm.
April 7, 2008... British wireless newbie Icera is buying Texas-based CMOS RF transceiver startup Sirific Wireless, creating a merged company that both hope will position the combo to better compete against industry giant Qualcomm in the wireless broadband...

Covergence, Unity Team For Access-Edge Protection.
April 7, 2008... Denver-based Unity Business Networks, a regional provider of integrated IP communications, plans to deploy the Covergence Session Manager (CSM) to help protect its access edge. Unity offers hosted and integrated local, long-distance and...

Too Many 'Prosumers' Could Spoil The Enterprise Network Pot.
April 7, 2008... Firewall expert Palo Alto Networks is launching a new program aimed at tracking trends and risks in today's enterprise applications landscape. According to the company, CIO/CSOs now must deal with social networking, software-as-a-service...

Now, Can Icahn Sell Motorola's Handset Business?
April 8, 2008... Motorola caved in to the demands of Carl Icahn, agreeing to give him two board seats and a major role in the sale of the manufacturer's troubled wireless-handset business - a deal that almost amusingly puts Icahn in the moral hot seat of...

Rumor Du Jour: O2 Gets Smart?
April 8, 2008... Giant multi-national carrier Telefonica O2 is in talks to gobble up Ireland's Smart Telecom, the once-troubled broadband and mobile operator that was sold for just one Euro a little more than a year ago (TelecomWeb news break, Oct. 9, 2006)....

Bungee Jumps SaaS To PaaS.
April 8, 2008... Bungee Labs, a two-year-old Utah startup targeting the nascent Platform- as-a-Service (PaaS) market, has released a set of customer-resource-management (CRM) integration-reference applications it says can be used to build "highly interactive"...

Sprint Adds FTEU Functionality.
April 8, 2008... SoundBite Communications Inc., a provider of on-demand customer-contact solutions, was tapped by Sprint to deliver Free-to-End-User (FTEU) text messages on that carrier's nationwide network. SoundBite's automated customer-contact...

The Double-Edged Sword Of Flat-Rate Wireless Plans.
April 8, 2008... The recent efforts by all major U.S. wireless carriers to craft flat- rate, all-you-can-eat pricing plans as a way of reducing customer churn and attracting new subscribers have been succeeding, but one research firm warns of the risks such...

French Trains Get Onboard With Mobile Wi-Fi.
April 8, 2008... Three trains operating on the TGV East of SNCF (High-Speed Trains, East of the French National Railway Network) system are testing satellite-delivered mobile Internet access facilitated by home-town player UDcast, whose UDgateway...

Former AT&T Chief Named Motorola Chairman.
April 9, 2008... Motorola has tapped former AT&T Chairman and CEO David Dorman to take over as its non-executive chairman starting at next month's annual meeting, the latest move in the saga of the company's reinvention following its fall from grace as the...

Amdocs Gobbles Up Cable Broadband OSS Supplier.
April 9, 2008... Israel's Amdocs is the new owner of British broadband cable operating support system (OSS) and provisioning specialist Jacobs Rimell Ltd, paying $45 million in cash in a deal that further cements Amdocs' position as the key supplier to...

Jamcracker Unveils DIY SaaS Delivery Toolkit.
April 9, 2008... Jamcracker has a new "do it yourself" toolkit for turning applications into software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings that can be sold via the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN). The Jamcracker Integration Toolkit (JIT) is an...

Ufone Voice SMS Spans All Pakistani Networks.
April 9, 2008... Pakistani wireless carrier Ufone now is offering the "Awaz SMS" service based on "voice SMS" technology from N.J.-based Kirusa. Ufone, part of the Etisalat Group Company, is Pakistan's second-largest cellular operator, serving more than...

QLogic CNAs Meld Storage Apps, Support Cisco Products.
April 9, 2008... QLogic Corp., a presence in networking for storage and high-performance computing (HPC), unveiled its QLogic 8000 Series of converged network adapters (CNAs) that support both data and storage networking via a single unit. It also announced...

Survey Sez: Companies Need Centralized TEM To Succeed.
April 9, 2008... According to the "2008 Telecom Expense Management (TEM) Benchmark Survey," conducted by Edge Research and supported by MBG Expense Management, overall satisfaction with TEM is low but companies with centralized telecom management report...

No Xohm 'Mobile WiMAX'-Certified Gear Before July.
April 10, 2008... The first clutch of products now officially able to be called "mobile WiMAX" has been certified by the WiMAX Forum, according to a curious announcement out of Singapore that also disclosed no certified mobile WiMAX of the type needed for...

Emcore Buys Another Piece Of Intel's Optical Business.
April 10, 2008... Intel has sold off yet another piece of its shrinking Optical Platforms Business - this time the enterprise and storage assets of its optical platform unit that includes 10 Gb/s broadband circuits and storage area network (SAN) transceivers...

New Nortel UC Kit Takes Aim At SMB Mid-Market.
April 10, 2008... Nortel, giving customers a choice of either a Dell/Microsoft or a pure IBM platform, has turned to open source to craft a unified communications (UC) software offering targeted squarely at the middle of the small- to medium-sized business...

FCC Vets Wireless Alerts Order, But Which Agency Is In Charge?
April 10, 2008... Despite the fact the Federal Communications Commission cancelled its scheduled monthly meeting today, it has been releasing its decisions, including a First Report and Order it says will help U.S. wireless carriers "transmit timely and...

Encoding Platform Addresses Three Screens.
April 10, 2008... Calif.-based Envivio Inc. says its 4Caster C4 convergence encoding system is the world's first to provide video compression for all three screens - TVs, PCs and mobile devices - on a single platform. Designed to enable fixed-line and...

Goodbye Digital Fairway, Hello Commsolv.
April 10, 2008... Enterprise communications-assets manager Digital Fairway is changing its name to Commsolv Corporation "to more accurately reflect" both the company's focus on delivering software solutions that help companies manage their communication...

STM, NXP Wireless Chip Units Merge, Target Qualcomm, TI.(Company overview)
April 11, 2008... STMicroelectronics NV is merging its wireless semiconductor business with rival NXP, the chip house spun out of Philips, to create what will be the world's third-largest wireless chip company. As such, STM will emerge as the controlling...

BT Snags Vodafone's U.K. Backhaul Business.
April 11, 2008... Vodafone UK has turned to BT to provide backhaul over its much heralded 21CN next-generation network, rather than building its own network for its growing wireless broadband needs as it increasingly proffers such bandwidth- intensive mobile...

RAD Readies New Backhaul Demarc Offerings.
April 11, 2008... With wireless backhaul over Ethernet rapidly emerging as one of the key technologies in the industry, RAD Data Communications says it will go to market next month with a new series of intelligent demarcation units designed to support managed...

China Telecom Puts Hot Spots On The Front Burner.
April 11, 2008... Jiangsu Telecom, China Telecom's branch in Jiangsu Province, now is running 8,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in that province, and it expects to cover the entire area within three years as part of a government initiative. The capital of Nanjing as...

GTT Adds Managed Services To Product Portfolio.
April 11, 2008... McLean, Va.-based Global Telecom & Technology Inc. (GTT), a global multi- network operator, now is offering "GTT Managed Network Services," a proactive network monitoring-and-management service targeting enterprise and carrier customers...

Report Results Push Cisco To Launch Collaborative Partner Service.
April 11, 2008... Based on a global study indicating collaboration between channel partners is a large and growing trend, Cisco has launched the Cisco Partner Exchange, a network it says "will help partners increase their revenues, extend their expertise and...

LTE Competitors Agree To Limit Patent Fees.
April 14, 2008... A group of the industry's largest players have agreed to a pact establishing a cap on the licenses fees for the use of intellectual property licensing 3GPP Long Term Evolution and Service Architecture Evolution standards (LTE/SAE). The...

FCC Launches NOI On NSI 911 Fraud.
April 14, 2008... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a petition for a Notice of Inquiry filed by the public-safety community regarding the growing number of fraudulent 911 calls made from wireless "non-service initialized (NSI)" phones. ...

Top China Wireless Carriers Ink Ericsson Deals.
April 14, 2008... Ericsson signed GSM expansion framework agreements with China Mobile and China Unicom, valued at about $1.3 billion and $140 million, respectively, in a ceremony earlier today in Beijing attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Sweden's...

Salesforce.com, Google Meet In 'The Cloud'.
April 14, 2008... Dramatically proclaiming "the end of software is here," Salesforce.com and Google have joined hands in a cloud-computing pact under which Salesforce's customer relationship management (CRM) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications will be...

BT Targets Video-Conferencing Top Spot.
April 14, 2008... BT, bolstering what's now a minor position in the business video- conferencing market, is buying Denver-based Wire One Holdings Inc., the top U.S. player and a strong contender in the U.K. market, in a move that positions BT Global Services...

'XO Anywhere' Offer Bundles Mobility Features.
April 14, 2008... "XO Anywhere," launched today by Va.-based XO Communications, aims to improve worker productivity via mobility and unified-communications features. According to the company, XO Anywhere "enables employees to turn any phone into their XO...

Aussies Begin Fight To Build $9B Nationwide Fiber Net.
April 15, 2008... The bidding for rights to build a massive nationwide fiber-based broadband network that will reach 98 percent of all Australian homes began this morning, with the Australian government agreeing to kick in a subsidy of half the expected $8.8...

WiMAX Provisioner Warns Of Sales Shortfall.(Financial report)
April 15, 2008... Self-proclaimed world WiMAX market leader Airspan, in a financial warning, says its sales in the just-ended first quarter were only about 85 percent of what it had expected, and they could only add up to between $17 million and $17.5 million...

Verizon Launches Ethernet Over SONET.
April 15, 2008... Verizon Business has begun offering an Ethernet-over-SONET (EoS) service, targeting large corporate users and government agencies for that offering, touted as a high-reliability but lower-cost method of linking local area networks (LANs)...

Red Hat Adds Recovery App To Enterprise Linux Program.
April 15, 2008... Moonwalk Inc., a developer of all-inclusive data management and protection software, says its Moonwalk 6.0 suite now is an approved application for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0. Moonwalk 6.0 delivers "a high-performance, stable and...

Occam Offers Triple-Tier FTTH Telco Program.
April 15, 2008... The new the FTTH Quick Start Program (FQS) from Occam Networks helps telecom service providers to "quickly and efficiently" cut over fiber-based deployments, especially those using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for VoIP. "Our telco...

ECI Nabs Dutch Airport NGN Management Pact.
April 15, 2008... Schiphol Telematics (ST), which provides telecom services for the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands, awarded Israel's ECI Telecom a three-year managed-service contract for its next-generation networks (NGNs). No financial...

Rumor Du Jour: France Telecom Eyes TeliaSonera.
April 16, 2008... France Telecom, with the backing of the French government, reportedly is getting ready to make what could be an all-stock offer to acquire TeliaSonera in a massive deal worth at least $34 billion. Such a merger would see the French,...

Phoenix Center Says FCC Left 700 MHz Money On The Table.
April 16, 2008... A Phoenix Center study released today estimates broad application of the "open-platform" requirements mandated by the Federal Communications Commission for the Upper C block spectrum to the entire commercial wireless industry could reduce...

fring 'Skypes' The iPhone.
April 16, 2008... One-year-old Israeli VoIP startup fring has released a "sneak preview R&D version" of a Skype client for Apple's iPhone in defiance of Apple's attempt to prevent VoIP clients from being used on its device and without the blessing of eBay's...

Startup Claims First-Ever/Software-Only WAN Optimizer.
April 16, 2008... Belfast-based Replify has gone to market with what it claims is the world's first all-software-based wide area network (WAN) optimization solution. Replify's offering, called Reptor, consists of software that sits on a corporate server,...

Polycom, Microsoft Meld Video, OCS 2007.
April 16, 2008... Polycom Inc. has expanded its relationship with Microsoft, integrating Polycom video endpoints and conferencing solutions with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (OCS) 2007 software. The two say customers will be able to "video-enable"...

Try Breadcrumb LX To Find Your Wireless Access Way.
April 16, 2008... Rajant Corporation, a provider of portable wireless mesh networking solutions, says its BreadCrumb LX allows users to connect standard IEEE 802.11b/g (Wi-Fi) or 802.11a devices - including laptops, PDAs, GPS gear, IP cameras, sensors and RFID...

Nokia Warns Of Handset Sales Slump.(Financial report)
April 17, 2008... Wireless handset market leader Nokia, despite reporting a quarter with bottom-line profits up a handsome 25 percent, has scared the industry witless - forecasting a 2008 industry downturn based on the economic slowdown in the United States...

Another Rumor Du Jour: Is Virgin Mobile USA Scaling Back?
April 17, 2008... Virgin Mobile USA reportedly has decided to drastically slash its operations, shutting down its West Coast IT unit and outsourcing the work to IBM while moving more of its call-center operations offshore in an effort to cut costs. These...

Wipro, Microsoft Cement More Enterprise Bonds In India.(Company overview)
April 17, 2008... Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited based in India, is bulking up its partnership with Microsoft by cutting the ribbons on two "Wipro Centers of Excellence" aimed at showcasing Microsoft's technologies at...

Investors Shower Cash On Wi-Fi VoIP Startup.
April 17, 2008... Mobile VoIP house Truphone - which fancies itself the world's first "Mobile Internet Network Operator" (MINO) - has landed $32.7 million in second- round venture capital, making a total of $57.2 million that has been plowed by backers into...

Aastra IP PBX Targets Small North American Biz.
April 17, 2008... Aastra Telecom, the North American business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited, now is marketing the AastraLink Pro 160, a standards-based IP PBX specifically designed for small North American businesses. The new system promises simple...

Xand Taps Optimum Lightpath For Data-Center Continuity.
April 17, 2008... Xand Corporation is the latest New York City metro area data-center provider to choose Optimum Lightpath's Intelligent Enterprise Network to support its business, this time a 30,000-sq.-ft. Westchester County facility. Optimum Lightpath...

EU Surpasses U.S. In Broadband Penetration.
April 18, 2008... The European Union (EU) has topped the United States in broadband penetration, according to a report issued this morning by the European Commission (EC) that assesses the state of information and communication technology (ICT) growth under the...

eBay Ponders Skype Sale.
April 18, 2008... Auction site eBay reportedly considering putting Skype on the block, having already thrown $1.43 billion into a black hole on the acquisition of the world's largest Web-based VoIP company. After two-and-a-half years, eBay still can't...

AT&T Pink-Slips Landline Middle Management.
April 18, 2008... AT&T, in a brief filing with the SEC this morning, says it's going to slash 1.5 percent of its workforce (nearly 5,000 employees) while taking a $374 million charge. Those getting the axe mainly are middle management involved with AT&T's...

Dialogic Intros Hybrid Call Center, IVR Gear.
April 18, 2008... Montreal's Dialogic Corporation, a global provider of products and technologies for media and signal processing, says it's added "new strength" to its platforms for hybrid TDM-IP contact center and IVR. With the introduction of its...

Norlight's Wisconsin Enterprise Footprint Grows.
April 18, 2008... Norlight Inc. has expanded the service availability of its "IPLive" integrated communications bundles to businesses across the metro Milwaukee area. Now included in the company's footprint are Brookfield, New Berlin, Waukesha, Pewaukee,...

MDM Services Ramp Up, But Who's In Charge?
April 18, 2008... A complex mobile value chain and a growing business reliance on mobile products have created the need for services that help businesses maximize the value of their mobile investments. According to ABI Research, mobile device management...