TelecomWeb News Digest articles from February 2007

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from February 2007

Senate Committee Grills Full FCC Panel.
February 1, 2007... The U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, under new Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), toasted the toes of the five-member Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on such issues as mergers, the Universal Service...

Court Vacates Enron Broadband Exec's Conviction.
February 1, 2007... The conviction of former Enron Broadband Services (EBS) Vice President of Finance Kevin A. Howard on five counts of fraud, conspiracy and falsifying records (TelecomWeb news break, June 1, 2006) was thrown out of court yesterday afternoon by...

Net Neutrality, USF Bills Could Hit House Floor Soon.
February 1, 2007... Hope springs eternal on the Hill that that the network-neutrality fight may have room for more compromise this year. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) continues to pursue this goal. The congressman, who sits on the House Commerce Committee and...

Las Vegas (N.M.) Jackpot: Tropos Lands 500th Muni Mesh.
February 1, 2007... Tropos Networks signed its 500th customer - a milestone in the muni wireless-mesh-growth battle in which Tropos is battling Cisco for the Number One market position. Win Number 500 is Las Vegas, N.M. - a city of about 15,000 (gee, a...

Report: U.S. Leads The Way In Global Messaging Shipments.
February 1, 2007... New numbers regarding worldwide messaging sales during the first half of 2006 point to the United States as being the major source of industry volume. The "InfoTrack for Converged Applications First Half 2006 Messaging Report," released...

Bango App Shows Content Providers The Money.
February 1, 2007... Open-platform provider Bango says that, for the first time, the effectiveness of mobile advertising and marketing campaigns -- and their return on investment (ROI) -- can be measured accurately. Earlier today, the company took the wraps off...

Indian GSM Mega-Build Heads For Court.
February 2, 2007... Motorola reportedly rejected an attempt by India's state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) to come up with a temporary solution to the controversy surrounding BSNL's massive $7 billion, 63.4 million-line GSM expansion. The U.S....

McCain Resurrects Cyren Call First-Responder Plan.
February 2, 2007... Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took time out of his presidential exploratory efforts to release the details of his planned legislation to establish "a nationwide, state-of-the-art public-safety broadband network to promote interoperable...

Telenor Satellite Ramps Up GSA Contract.
February 2, 2007... Norway's Telenor Satellite Services modified its contract with the General Services Administration's (GSA's) Federal Technology Service (FTS) to expand its satellite offerings to all U.S. government agencies and authorized government...

Verizon Sells Off SkyTel.(Company overview)
February 2, 2007... Nationwide messaging pioneer SkyTel Corp., an indirect subsidiary of Verizon Communications Inc. that came with the purchase of MCI last year, has been sold to Bell Industries Inc. for a total purchase price of $23 million. With this...

Indian Speculators Flock To Idea Cellular IPO.
February 2, 2007... India's Idea Cellular has begun a relatively brief 10-day road show to promote its $500 million initial public offering (IPO), set to launch Feb. 12. The road show may turn out to be hardly necessary - speculators already are buying and...

Bookham Cuts Back On Nortel Sales Shortfall.
February 2, 2007... In large part blaming declining purchases from Nortel, optoelectronic chip maker Bookham Inc. has outlined an "aggressive overhead reduction plan" that will see it eliminate an undisclosed number of its 2,100 employees, consolidate its U.K....

U.K. Gets Another Broadband Freebie: Tiscali TV.
February 5, 2007... Tiscali has disclosed its U.K. IPTV rollout plans, setting a March 1 date for a re-branded service with plans for a five-million-home footprint by the end of the year and twice that by the end of 2008 plus an entry-level price point that's...

Broadcom Gets EDGE-y.
February 5, 2007... Wireless chip house Broadcom, not content to be the market leader in just Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for cellular handsets, has decided to enter the EDGE chip market as well. The move came 72 hours after Broadcom unveiled what it says is the...

New Open-Source Cellphone Code Born.
February 5, 2007... The open-source community has launched a new software stack for handset manufacturers to use, and it's challenged manufacturers to open up their phones to the use of such software. Such projects and challenges are par for the open-source...

ARRL: FCC Chair's BPL Numbers Still Wrong.
February 5, 2007... The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is taking Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to task again, this time for telling the U.S. Senate last week that broadband over power line (BPL) technology is the answer to...

CDMA450 Services Ratchet Down 3G Costs.
February 5, 2007... The CDMA Development Group (CDG) and the International 450 Association (IA450) concur that CDMA450 technology "is rapidly expanding across all regions, by fulfilling the demand for affordable 3G services in emerging, developed, and highly...

Congress Ponders FY08 FCC Budget.
February 5, 2007... In the huge FY08 budget Congress just received from President Bush is proposed funding for the Federal Communications Commission of $313 million. At this funding level, covered programs include mandatory increases in salaries and...

From Namibia To Virginia, Copper Thefts Plague Telcos.
February 6, 2007... It's indeed a small world: Both Verizon and Telecom Namibia today issued urgent statements condemning the theft of miles of copper cables from their networks, crippling phone service in affected areas. Thieves are apparently stealing the...

BT Buys Its India Network-Services Reseller.
February 6, 2007... BT's Indian joint venture, BT Telecom India Pvt Ltd, is buying BT Infonet global managed network services reseller i2i Enterprise Pvt Ltd. The takeover is BT's 17th acquisition around the world in the past 24 months. "BT will become...

IPTV Ends 2006 With 3.6 Million Viewers.
February 6, 2007... The year 2006 ended with about 3.6 million IPTV viewers worldwide, according to a new study by U.K. research and consulting house Canalsys - and most of those viewers live in Europe. That number, admittedly a drop in the buck, has set the...

ICO Bird Now Set For November Launch.
February 6, 2007... Reston, Va.-based ICO Global Communications (Holdings) Limited won a Federal Communications Commission milestone extension in connection with the construction and launch of ICO G1, the company's geostationary satellite for ICO North America...

Telos, AirDefense Expand Army Security Contract.
February 6, 2007... The U.S. Army has tapped Telos Corporation, a provider of security solutions to the federal government, to install Atlanta-based AirDefense's wireless intrusion detection/prevention system (WIDS/WIPS) at 20 North American installations. ...

New Novatel Card Pushes Sprint's EV-DO Envelope.
February 6, 2007... Laptop customers using the Sprint Power Vision Network soon will able to ramp up their EV-DO Rev. A speed via a new Novatel wireless Rev. A card. With the Merlin EX720 ExpressCard, designed for use in mobile computing notebooks that...

Rumor Du Jour: Hutch-Essar Battle Headed For E-Mail Bids.
February 7, 2007... Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom International Ltd (HTIL) reportedly is considering an open-auction format - with bidding via e-mail, no less - for its 67-percent stake in India's Hutchison-Essar Ltd., for which it's hoping to get as much as...

Egyptian Telecom Mogul Grabs A Greek Treat.
February 7, 2007... Egyptian telecom mogul Naguib Sawiris and his Weather Investments is buying Greece's third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers, TIM Hellas and Q- Telecom, from Apax Partners and Texas Pacific Group (TPG) for a total of $4.4 billion. ...

Globalstar Faces Possible System Shutdown.
February 7, 2007... Satellite voice and data provider Globalstar may have some explaining to do regarding its two-way service if it can't repair its aging satellite fleet. According to its filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this...

India Fast-Tracks Wireless Subscriber Numbers.
February 7, 2007... India's adoption of wireless communications is moving faster than anticipated, with predictions spiking to more than 265 million users by 2010 from more than 100 million today. According to research firm In-Stat, the subcontinent's...

CEA, DTV Group: Cyren Call Plan 'Risk Riddled".
February 7, 2007... The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the High Tech DTV Coalition already are fighting proposed legislation detailed by Sen. John McCain last week (TelecomWeb news break, Feb. 2) and the continued efforts on Capitol Hill by Cyren...

Motorola Concludes A Different Kind Of Triple Play.
February 7, 2007... In a wireless-industry hat trick, Motorola completed its acquisition of Netopia Inc.; signed an agreement with Neotel in South Africa for RF planning of its WiMAX and CDMA networks; and made an equity investment in Tango Networks Inc., a...

Japanese Big Six Disclose Common 3G Mobile Platform.
February 8, 2007... A consortium of a half dozen major Japanese companies that for more than a year have been jointly developing a basic platform for manufacturing next- generation 3G mobile phone handsets took the wraps off their project this morning,...

Yet Another Study Dismisses Mobile WiMAX.
February 8, 2007... Yet another major analytical study has concluded that, despite all the hype, the technology being marketed as WiMAX is going to be just a niche player in the mobile wireless market over the next half decade. The latest study, by Arthur D....

The Virgin Group Crashes The Quad-Play Party.
February 8, 2007... Well, here we are, a "Virgin" that does everything, and it may be doing it to BT and Sky TV. Sir Richard Branson's brainchild now encompasses Virgin Media, "a major new force in entertainment and communications" that was unveiled this...

NXP Buys Chip Technology For $25 GSM Phone.
February 8, 2007... NXP Semiconductors, Europe's second largest chip house, is buying the cellular communications business of Silicon Laboratories Inc. for $285 million in cash plus up to an additional $65 million more if various milestones are met over the...

Industry Debates Public Safety's Broadband Cyren Call.
February 8, 2007... If anyone thought the road to a nationwide, interoperable, broadband public safety network will be smooth and/or fast, that hope was dashed this morning as those backing the Cyren Call plan and those who think what's available commercially...

CBS Continues Wireless Content Push With New Mobile Division.
February 8, 2007... It had to happen. CBS Corporation has created CBS Mobile, a new platform within CBS Interactive dedicated to building and growing the broadcaster's mobile operation across its various properties, including CBS Entertainment, CBS Sports and...

Alcatel-Lucent Wields The Axe As Profits Evaporate.
February 9, 2007... The freshly minted Alcatel-Lucent this morning reported a better-than- one-billion-dollar plunge in its bottom line, diving into the red for the last quarter of 2006 on a major sales shortfall and admitting sales in the current quarter...

Qwest Wins A Slim Profit, Loses IPTV Franchise Battle.
February 9, 2007... Qwest, the smallest of what are now three pieces of what used to be the "old" mighty AT&T, has turned in its fourth consecutive quarter of profit - on flat revenue - for the first time in memory, helping it chip away a bit at the nearly $15...

Contact-Center Operations In A Disaster Zone.
February 9, 2007... During hurricane or tornado season, many businesses that depend on in- house equipment and electricity for their phone systems often find themselves unable to communicate with customers by phone. This often leads to perceptions that the...

Using Wi-Fi 'BreadCrumbs' To Find Your Way.
February 9, 2007... A partnership between Pa.-based Rajant Corporation and LDV Corporation in Wisconsin is scattering BreadCrumbs, a mobile system that combines portable wireless network capabilities with mobile command and other specialty vehicles to help...

Move Over Apple, LG: Samsung Gets 'Ultra Smart'.
February 9, 2007... In this world of Internet time, it didn't take long for the vaunted Apple iPhone first to be upstaged by a new LG handset and now by Samsung's Ultra Smart F700, which will make its debut at next week's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. ...

Level 3 Sets Layoff As Losses Deepen, But S&P Is Happy.
February 9, 2007... Level 3 Communications, reporting what it called "a strong fourth quarter" in which its losses increased to $237 million, says it's going to lay off 1,000 workers as it trims overhead following last year's string of acquisitions, and it will...

Vodafone Wins Control Of Hutch-Essar.
February 12, 2007... Britain's Vodafone Group Plc won the bidding battle to buy a 67-percent stake in India wireless operator Hutchison-Essar owned by Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom International Ltd (HTIL). Vodafone paid $11.1 billion in cash, assumed $2...

SMBs Are Buying IPT PDQ.
February 12, 2007... The U.S. small-business market (SMB) is buying IP Telephony (IPT) in a big way - and in several flavors. A new InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications "Overview of the U.S. Hosted IP Telephony Market" report indicates hosted IPT finally...

From Spain, RIM Touts New GPS BlackBerry.
February 12, 2007... Kicking off today's opening of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled its BlackBerry 8800 smartphone, the latest in a long line of smart devices hitting the market since Steve Jobs introduced Apple's iPhone...

Lebanon Readies For Celco Bidding War.
February 12, 2007... The government of Lebanon is making plans to sell off two cellular carriers, hoping to rake in as much as $7 billion for the licenses - cash desperately needed to pay off part of the war-ravaged country's debt. Lebanon has been trying to...

Survey Sez: Mobile VoIP Drives Muni Public Access.
February 12, 2007... A recent survey says municipal wireless broadband is creating new service opportunities for a total potential North American market of $10 billion in 2011. "Municipal wireless broadband is becoming widespread across major metropolitan...

Tucson Weighs Budget, Penny Tax, Impact Fees For Public-Safety Funding.
February 12, 2007... Councilman Jose Ibarra is calling for the City Council of Tucson, Ariz., to put an additional 1-cent sales tax to fund public-safety growth on November's ballot but, while it seems a penny isn't a lot to ask, Republicans and Democrats alike...

Europe Considers A Communications Czar.
February 13, 2007... European Commission (EC) Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding has thrown down the gauntlet to telecom regulators from all 27 nations in the European Union (EU), demanding they come up with a proposal to increase competition in telecom markets...

Bad News From Barcelona: Cellular Subscriber Growth Slump Coming.
February 13, 2007... With the massive 3GSM World Congress and trade show underway this week in Barcelona, at least one analyst house was raining on the parade with a warning that the glory days of cellular-subscriber growth are over. According to industry...

More Bad News: Europeans Diss Tiny TV.
February 13, 2007... Much more than half of those Europeans who have so far tried out watching TV on their mobile devices have ditched the service, according to a study whose release apparently was timed to shake folks up at this week's 3GSM World Congress. ...

FCC Group Schedules USF Meeting.
February 13, 2007... The Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service will hold an en banc hearing Feb. 20 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. Between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., the Joint Board will discuss high-cost universal-service support in...

GSM Association, Carriers, MasterCard Team For 'Unbanked' Service.
February 13, 2007... At the 3GSM World Congress this week in Barcelona, the GSM Association launched a pilot program it says will enable the world's 200 million international migrant workers "to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of...

Calls Centers Now A Big China Employer.
February 13, 2007... New research says China is closing in on India when it comes to staffing global, outsourced call centers. "The world is becoming flat," commented Francis Scricco, senior vice president of Avaya, which has just set up an "intelligent...

EarthLink Snags Houston: Biggest-Ever Muni Wi-Fi.
February 14, 2007... EarthLink landed the contract to build what will be the largest municipal Wi-Fi network so far planned in North America - one that will cover nearly all of Houston's 600 square miles by spring 2009. The latest feather in EarthLink' muni...

Motorola Gets Green: Project Leaves GSM 'Blowin' In The Wind'.
February 14, 2007... Motorola inked an agreement with the GSM Association and MTC Namibia to conduct what are believed to be the world's first customer-based trials of wind and solar systems to power remote GSM cellsites - the "greening" of wireless, if you...

FCC Heads For Hill Hot Seat Again.
February 14, 2007... Washington, D.C., may be snowed in today, but Rep. John Dingell (D- Mich.), the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, promises to supply some heat when he and fellow panelists host the Federal Communications Commission...

All's Well That Ends Well In Venezuela Phone Nationalization.
February 14, 2007... Everyone from Verizon investors to politicians sound relieved at the apparently amicable end to Venezuela's plan to nationalize CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), with that country agreeing to pay Verizon $572 million for its...

Cisco Offers Gov't-Compliant Secure Wireless Solution.
February 14, 2007... Earlier today, Cisco unveiled its "Secure Wireless Solution," a product it bills as a "tested and validated" application that works on a par with wireline products to protect business-critical applications and data as well as business...

Verizon Makes Sure Most Feds Can Communicate.
February 14, 2007... Verizon Business' Voice Continuity service now is available to more federal customers under the U.S. General Services Administration's Washington Interagency Telecommunications System (WITS) 2001 contract for federal agencies within the...

SonaeCom Hints At PT Bid Sweetener.
February 15, 2007... Sonae and its 60-percent-owned SonaeCom communications subsidiary may boost their hostile $18 billion takeover bid for Portugal Telecom (PT) after all. Investors have been betting on such a move since well-before the hostile bid was...

Long Distance Goes Boingo Over Wi-Fi.
February 15, 2007... Wi-Fi hot-spot operator Boingo Wireless unveiled a $7.95-per-month global Wi-Fi VoIP roaming plan called "Boingo Mobile." The plan is believed to be the first in the industry that eliminates one of the major barriers to the use of VoIP...

Update: Tucson Penny-Tax Proposal DOA.
February 15, 2007... Unable to garner any support for his plan to raise city sales taxes by one cent to benefit public-safety endeavors (TelecomWeb news break, Feb. 12), Tucson City Councilman Jose Ibarra watched his proposal disappear, not even coming to a...

E-Rate Fraudsters Plead Guilty.
February 15, 2007... Two former SBC Communications account managers have admitted to defrauding the Federal Communications Commission of E-Rate school Internet funds. The two submitting fake invoices for work they said they did for a few Connecticut schools...

India Cellular Investors Get A Bright 'Idea'.
February 15, 2007... As predicted, investors worldwide literally have stampeded to buy into the initial public offering (IPO) of India's Idea Cellular. Book-building for the offering closed today with reports out of India that the issue is 48 times...

How Romantic: A Text-Messaged Valentine.
February 15, 2007... Even though Dr. Phil definitely would disapprove, VeriSign Inc. predicted a record 725 million mobile messages, including affectionate text messages, were sent and received yesterday in North America alone. It that indeed turns out to be...

Shares Tank As Vonage Reports Another Financial Fumble.
February 16, 2007... Vonage shares plunged to new all-time lows - forcing investors to again ask "how low can you go?" - as the VoIP company released its latest quarterly financial figures showing massive gains in revenues but a continued and startling slowdown...

How Sweet It Is: Sonae Ups PT Bid To Almost $20B.
February 16, 2007... Sonae and its 60-percent-owned SonaeCom communications subsidiary late yesterday sweetened their hostile-takeover bid for Portugal Telecom (PT) to $13.77 per share (up from $12.46) for a total of almost $20 billion for PT and its...

Muni Wi-Fi Watch: EarthLink Scores Again.
February 16, 2007... EarthLink, in its second major municipal Wi-Fi victory in a week, defeated a field of bidders for the right to install a mesh in St. Petersburg, Fla. The victory comes just days after EarthLink won the nod to build a mesh in Houston...

White Paper: Resolving Customer Issues On First Contact.
February 16, 2007... Whether it's firing off a simple order placement or wading into a complex technical support question, resolving issues on first contact makes for happy customers and more profitable (or at least lower cost) contact centers. "First...

FCC Staffers Release 2006 Biennial Review Reports.
February 16, 2007... Every other year, the Federal Communications Commission assesses its roster of regulations issued under the Communications Act that affect telecom service providers in an effort to determine whether a regulation "is no longer necessary in...

Oldies Phones: The Next New Frontier.
February 16, 2007... "I've fallen and I can't get up" has been replaced by "I want to use a cellphone, and I want it to be simple" as the new mantra of senior citizens who aren't showing up on handset manufacturers' radar. At this week's 3GSM Congress in...

Portugal Telecom Still Rejects Sonae's Affections.
February 20, 2007... Portugal Telecom's (PT) board of directors, to little industry surprise, was expected this evening (European time) to recommend its shareholders not accept the sweetened $20 billion hostile-takeover bid offered by Sonae and its 60-percent...

Cellphone Distributors Merge, Create Global Giant.
February 20, 2007... U.S.-based cellphone distributor Brightpoint is buying Dangaard Telecom A/S, its largest counterpart in Europe, forming a $4.6 billion global giant that will control the distribution of more than 6 percent of the world's mobile phones while...

Hot Bird Flies Into Euro Satellite Broadband Market.
February 20, 2007... Eutelsat Communications and ViaSat Inc. inked a pact to bring Ka-based satellite broadband services akin to those burning up the American market to Europe. The target is just about any species of satellite-based broadband, particularly...

AT&T, Craig McCaw Exchange Spectrum...Again.
February 20, 2007... As part of an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission regarding its recent acquisition of BellSouth, AT&T is selling all 2.5 GHz spectrum currently licensed to or leased by BellSouth to Clearwire Corporation, Craig McCaw's...

Thomson Telecom Breathes Down Linkys' Neck.
February 20, 2007... New research says Thomson Telecom is the leading vendor when it comes to small office/home office (SOHO) wireless LAN market. According to the Dell'Oro Group, Thomson's sequential quarterly revenue growth of 55 percent in the fourth...

Social Networking Hits The Enterprise.
February 20, 2007... Wireless Factors, a Reston, Va.-based industry business network, now is offering professionals what it claims is the industry's first relationship- powered network. Wireless Factors enables mobile industry professionals to connect with a...

Vonage At The Crossroads: Verizon Sues; MVNO Plans Mooted.
February 21, 2007... Vonage and Verizon were to show up in federal court this morning for the start of a lawsuit that threatens the life - or more likely just a piece of the financial life - of the VoIP industry, with Verizon claiming patent rights to key...

European Commission Mandates UWB Rules.
February 21, 2007... The European Commission (EC) this morning adopted a set of rules that outline mandatory conditions for the use of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology in next generation wireless devices across the European Union (EU). The EC action is aimed...

VoIP Industry Consolidation: deltathree Absorbs Go2Call.
February 21, 2007... VoIP house deltathree has bought the service provider and consumer businesses of fellow VoIP house Go2Call.com, Inc., paying a combination of $7.8 million worth of cash and stock. The acquisition represents one of what are expected to be...

CDMA2000 Subs Total More Than 325 Million.
February 21, 2007... According to the CDMA Development Group, there were 100 million new CDMA2000 subscriber adds in 2006. Today, there are more than 325 million CDMA2000 subscribers, including 55 million CDMA2000 1xEV-DO broadband subscribers, representing a...

Coming Soon: A Fixed-Mobile Convergence Spike.
February 21, 2007... In an era of dramatic changes to telephone services, one of the hottest new market phenomena is fixed-mobile convergence. ABI Research has found that, by 2011, some 250 million users will be making and receiving phone calls over converged...

LatAm The Next Wireless Test Equipment Hot Spot.
February 21, 2007... With the launch of new technologies and the enhanced demand for advanced, feature-rich mobile handsets, carriers, mobile device manufacturers and network manufacturers are likely to increase their demand for new wireless test equipment,...