TelecomWeb News Digest articles from August 2005

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from August 2005

Prez Quits As Nokia Sets Executive Succession.
August 1, 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...

Alltel Digests Western Wireless.
August 1, 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...

T-Mobile Reportedly Tops Tele.ring Bidding.
August 1, 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...

Cox VoIP Targets More Markets.
August 1, 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,...

Nera Bags Second BGAN Broadband Order.
August 1, 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,...

Broadwing Inks Wholesale Deal With Nat'l Reseller.
August 1, 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...

Senate Bill Expands USF Subsidy To 'Broadband'.
August 2, 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...

MCI Grabs Totality In Managed-Services Buy.
August 2, 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,...

TowerStream, Vonage Team To Cut Out LECs.
August 2, 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...

Alltel Takes On ADC's FTTx Line.
August 2, 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...

Cameraphone Companies Click.
August 2, 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...

Czechs Check Out Broadband.
August 2, 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...

FCC Meeting May Blunt International 'WhipSaws'.
August 3, 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...

Alcatel Draws Four Aces: MAN, DSL, IPTV & GSM.
August 3, 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...

MCI Speeds U.S. Wholesale VoIP Rollout.
August 3, 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...

ICOA Hot-Spot Buying Spree In High Gear.
August 3, 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...

SAN Supplier Brocade Recruits Big Blue.
August 3, 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...

No Worries: FastWeb Welcomes TI Competition.
August 3, 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...

$35B Sprint/Nextel Deal Gets FCC Nod.
August 4, 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...

First Skype/DECT Phones Hit U.S. Shores.
August 4, 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 -...

Report: The Rise Of Broadband Value-Added Services.
August 4, 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...

CSC Nabs South African Bank Business.
August 4, 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. ...

More Hot Spots For The Sunshine State.
August 4, 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...

NEC, Harris Kiss And Make Up.
August 4, 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...

BREAKING NEWS: FCC De-Regs Telco DSL Broadband.
August 5, 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...

More $$$ For E911 Data Testing.
August 5, 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...

Dutch Treat: KPN Launches Ethernet Service.
August 5, 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...

German Satellite Broadband House Assaults U.K. Market.
August 5, 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...

AT&T's String Of Enterprise IP Contracts.
August 5, 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...

Xalted Promises India-Bred GPON.
August 5, 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...

Is Huawei Offering $1B For Marconi?
August 8, 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...

Qwest Workers Threaten To Strike.
August 8, 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...

SBC Lands NCE-Hosted VoIP Contract.
August 8, 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...

Equant Gets Cozier With Cisco Systems.
August 8, 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...

U.K. Cable Giant Promises 10 Mb/s Broadband.
August 8, 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...

FTTx Gear Deployed At Only U.S. County-Run Telco.
August 8, 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...

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
August 9, 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...

Motorola Invests In Powerline Vendor Intellon.
August 9, 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,...

Nokia Enters Vietnamese GSM Market.
August 9, 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...

Indian Broadband Prices Plummet.
August 9, 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...

FiberNet Tapped For Big Apple Metro Ethernet.
August 9, 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...

Pack Your Passport And Your Tags.
August 9, 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...

Alltel, Western Wireless Ink $1.6B Austria Sale.
August 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...

Sprint, Nextel Set $35B Merger Date.
August 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,...

Yankee Group Fears Wholesale Data Deterioration.
August 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...

New Report Predicts 440M Broadband Users In 2010.
August 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,...

Ericsson Scores In Greece & Belgium.
August 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...

RUS Vets Vyyo Gear For Rural Loan Program.
August 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...

LECs Win: Texans Pass Telco IPTV Franchise Bill.
August 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...

Qualcomm Snaps Up Flarion, Challenges Mobile WiMAX.
August 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...

Yahoo! China Mates With Alibaba In $4B Deal.
August 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...

AT&T Team Chases $20B GSA Network Deal.
August 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...

Former FCC Chairman Joins Equity Firm.
August 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,...

Why Being 'Dumb' Sometimes Isn't.
August 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....

Launched: The Biggest Broadband Satellite Ever.
August 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...

TIA Pushes U.S. Comms Research Funding.
August 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...

T-Online Staggers: Broadband Growth Slows, Profits Plunge.
August 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...

Survival Strategy: Japan's IIJ Reshuffles The Deck.
August 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...

Public Advocates Question Home Telephony Shortfall.
August 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....

Wireless Broadband, Wireless Banking Merge In Texas.
August 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...

O2 Takeover Talks Go Into Hiding.
August 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...

Qwest Strike On Temporary Hold.
August 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...

Avaya IP Telephony Gets Around.
August 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...

MCI Expands Voice, Private IP Restoration.
August 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...

BellSouth Uses Napster, Snapfish Offers To Lure DSL Customers.
August 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...

FTTH Council Details Next-Gen Broadband Barriers.
August 15, 2005... Early last week, shortly before the Texas Legislature acted on its pending telco video-franchising bill, the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council weighed in on what it called "the two major barriers to next generation broadband deployment" in the...

Cable & Wireless Foils Energis Hijack Attempt.
August 16, 2005... Cable and Wireless (C&W) has reached agreement to acquire fellow U.K. telco Energis in a deal worth $1.2 billion - despite a last-minute attempt by rival U.K telco Thus to grab Energis from under C&W's nose with a still higher bid said to...

VoIP Battle Breaks Out In Israel.
August 16, 2005... While most attention is focused on Israel's dismantling of villages in the Gaza Strip, a telecom industry drama is also unfolding as Golden Lines, the leading ISP in Israel, became the first of its ilk to launch local VoIP phone service....

Canadian Regulators Ponder Their Options.
August 16, 2005... Canada faces many options in future telecom policy, ranging from its current step-by-step movement toward full deregulation and open competition to a completely new integrated framework that essentially is both technology- and service...

Juniper Snags String Of Routing, Firewall/VPN Deals.
August 16, 2005... Juniper Networks disclosed a string of showcase contracts for its portfolio of routing platforms and remote office firewall/VPN systems. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor said the deals include U.S. broadband services company Speakeasy, U.S....

FCC Launches International "Whipsaw" Inquiry.
August 16, 2005... The Federal Communications Commission yesterday launched a new investigation into foreign carriers' alleged international route-blocking retaliation - so-called "whipsaw" practices - against U.S. service providers, looking to streamline and...

Free Or Fee? Pasadena Mulls WiFi Options.
August 16, 2005... Pasadena, Calif., the home of the Rose Parade, decided last night that the cost of a citywide Wi-Fi network was too thorny, so it now plans to look for private funding. City officials say such a system could go for between $3.1 million and...

Qwest Hammers Out Deal With Union.
August 17, 2005... Qwest, faced with an imminent strike by 25,000 of its workers in 13 states, late Tuesday hammered out a new three-year contract with the Communications Workers of America. The company's employees had been working without a contract since...

BT Broadband Chief Flies The Coop.
August 17, 2005... Alison Ritchie, head of broadband at BT and credited with growing the carrier's broadband business more than tenfold in fewer than 36 months, says she's leaving the company at the end of September. Her announced plan is simply to travel the...

Qualcomm: $57M For U.K. Mobile Content Firm.
August 17, 2005... Mobile system supplier and developer Qualcomm has acquired U.K. mobile content delivery software Elata for approximately $57 million in cash. The San Diego-based vendor indicated its BREW wireless data and applications development suites...

U.S. Wireless Online Completes FL Broadband Buy.
August 17, 2005... Internet access network provider U.S. Wireless Online has wrapped its purchase of DHR Technologies, a Fort Myers, Fla.-based ISP and broadband access provider; acquisition terms were not immediately disclosed but the Louisville, Ky., buyer...

MobilePro's 'CloseCall' With BellSouth.
August 17, 2005... Broadband service provider company MobilePro Corp. today disclosed that its CloseCall America operating subsidiary has reached an agreement to resell local services of incumbent carrier BellSouth. Bethesda, Md.-based MobilePro said the ILEC...

Playing The Mobile Dating Game.
August 17, 2005... The U.K.-based interactive-TV provider YooMedia is confident it can make a strong impact in the mobile-television space for interactive entertainment applications. The company recently launched a mobile gaming channel linked to its Avago TV...

Sprint Merger Battle Ain't Over Yet.
August 18, 2005... Just when it looked like the $36 billion merger of Sprint and Nextel had gone off without any real problems, one of the pre-merger issues has come back to haunt the reborn Sprint-Nextel . Nextel Partners, the outfit with Nextel resale rights...

Telstra Privatization Deal Finalized.
August 18, 2005... Australian legislators have apparently hammered out a deal to pave the way for the privatization of the government's 51.8-percent share in national telco Telstra, agreeing that about 10 percent of the $22.6 billion the government expects to...

SBC-AT&T Countdown: 5 States Left.
August 18, 2005... The proposed $16 billion merger between SBC Communications and AT&T yesterday won the approval of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, completing the regulatory review process in AT&T's home state. The companies say that with the...

Higher-Speed CDMA Passes First Test.
August 18, 2005... Verizon Wireless and Lucent say they successfully completed what they claim is the industry's first, live over-the-air tests of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A technology, setting the stage for extensive technology trials next year of the new,...

ADC Gets RUS Green Light.
August 18, 2005... FTTX system supplier ADC today said its OmniReach brand fiber- distribution terminals (FDTs) have been granted product acceptance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Services (RUS), allowing the equipment to be purchased...

Public Safety Meets In The Mile-High City.
August 18, 2005... The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International, which will be meeting in Denver next week for its annual conclave, says the College of St. Scholastica (Minn.) is the winner of its 2005 Corporate Award for...