TelecomWeb News Digest articles from May 2007

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from May 2007

Internet TV Takes Off As Joost Juices Up.
May 1, 2007... Joost (pronounced "juiced"), the free IPTV service launched by the same crew of wizards who crafted Skype, this morning announced its commercial launch - replete with a cast of 32 big-name advertisers and content from such top-tier sources...

New Zealand Celcos Cut Rates, Dodge Regulation.
May 1, 2007... The New Zealand government has abandoned a plan to force the country's two wireless carriers to cut their rates after the two agreed to voluntarily slash charges paid on calls to mobile phones from landlines by as much as 40 percent. In...

Comcast Outlines Plans For VoIP Dominance.
May 1, 2007... Comcast, at its 2007 analyst and investor meeting in Philadelphia this morning, said it expects a VoIP penetration rate of between 20 percent and 25 percent of its subscribers by the end of 2009 - a prediction implying at least 7 million...

Cellphones Need Backing Up, Too.
May 1, 2007... Ever had that sinking feeling when you've either lost your cellphone or PDA, mangled it in some way or just bought a flashier model, and you now have to reconstruct that contact list? A new application launched by U.S. Cellular can make that...

ITC Begins SiRF Patent Inquest.
May 1, 2007... The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, D.C., has begun a patent-infringement investigation of SiRF Technology Inc. and four of its customers that involves technology belonging to Global Locate Inc., a provider of GPS...

Sunshine State First Responders Get New Digital Network.
May 1, 2007... Hall County, Fla., continues to boast about its new sales-tax-funded, $16 million radio system built for law enforcement, firefighters and medics to replace equipment that in some cases was 50 years old. Voters approved funding for the...

Joint Board Proposes, Copps Opposes USF Interim Price Cap.
May 2, 2007... The Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cap its high-cost, Universal Service Fund (USF) disbursements in an interim first step toward "long-term, comprehensive reform of the...

Vonage Demands Retrial As Supremes Rewrite Patent Rules.
May 2, 2007... Vonage, hoping to take advantage of an unexpected U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a patent for automobile brake-pedal sensors, is demanding a retrial of its conviction for violating a trio of Verizon VoIP patents. The court's ruling,...

Sprint Splatters As Subscribers Churn.
May 2, 2007... Sprint Nextel this morning reported a quarter in the red but things could have been worse - it only lost 220,000 of its key postpaid subscribers, compared with some expectations that it would lose 300,000. Meanwhile Sprint and the U.K.'s...

European Wireless Deals Meld Complementary Companies.
May 2, 2007... Wireless-broadband-networking provider Airvana Inc. has purchased 3Way Networks, a U.K.-based developer of home base stations and industry-tailored solutions for UMTS markets. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. According to the buyer,...

ICO Names Equipment Partners For MIM Tests.
May 2, 2007... Mobile satellite concern ICO Global Communications (Holdings) Limited plans to begin testing its Mobile Interactive Media (MIM) services a year from now, and Alcatel-Lucent and Hughes Network Systems will develop key architecture and...

Scots Seek A Wee Dram Of Broadband.
May 2, 2007... Somewhere in the Scottish Ghaidhealtachd ("highlands" to those who don't speak Gaelic), there are 750 folks left in the country who can't get broadband, and the Scottish government doesn't like it. It's planning to spend $7 million to see to...

EC Gives Germany A Broadband Ultimatum.
May 3, 2007... The European Commission this morning gave Germany its final chance to change the law that gives Deutsche Telekom what the EC considers an illegal "regulatory holiday" for its broadband network. If Germany doesn't respond within a month -...

Mystery Bulgarian Telco Buyer Emerges From Hiding.
May 3, 2007... The unknown buyer of Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC) (TelecomWeb news break, April 27) was unmasked this morning, and it turns out to be the AIG Global Investment Group, the investment arm of insurance giant AIG. AIG initially...

GSA Awards Next-Gen Satcom Contracts.
May 3, 2007... The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) handed contracts to 24 companies that now will provide next-generation voice and data satellite communications systems to U.S. government military and civilian agencies under the $750 million...

HP DRAGON Slays Data-Retention Concerns.
May 3, 2007... There a European Union directive that requires telecom service providers to be able to produce for law-enforcement purposes collected and stored data from a variety of sources, including fixed and mobile telephony, email and voicemail,...

APCO, NENA Ink NG911 Migration Plan.
May 3, 2007... The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International vetted a joint Statement of Cooperation regarding next-generation 911 (NG911) migration and transition...

Verizon Wireless Chases More Illegal Telemarketers.
May 3, 2007... Verizon Wireless is cracking telemarketer heads again, this time filing a lawsuit in Superior Court in Somerville, N.J., against unknown entities that have been soliciting its customers illegally (TelecomWeb news break, Dec. 20, 2006). ...

Court Denies A Vonage Retrial.
May 4, 2007... The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, once again acting with unusual speed, quashed Vonage's attempt to win a retrial of its jury conviction for violating a trio of Verizon patents. Earlier this week, Vonage petitioned for a...

9,000 Jobs Axed As Nokia Siemens 'Faces Reality'.
May 4, 2007... Nokia Siemens Networks today said it's slashing 9,000 jobs, with the biggest cuts coming in Germany and Finland. The cutback represents the upper end of staff reductions of between 10 percent and 15 percent out of a total of 60,000...

Vendors, Carriers Fight For Enterprise FMC Contracts.
May 4, 2007... A new InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility (IEM) study found that although enterprise expenditure on Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) was in its early stages during 2006, the trend toward adoption of such voice solutions will command a greater...

India Regulator Rules Consumers Can Complain.
May 4, 2007... The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) this morning issued rules mandating all telecommunications companies - landline voice, cellular and broadband - set up a three-tier system to address consumer grievances. The regulator...

Investment Opportunities Still Abound In MEA.
May 4, 2007... The telecom boom in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) reportedly is driving "unparalleled levels" of financing in the region, with more debt capital raised in the first five months of 2007 than in the whole of 2006. According to...

European Medicos Need, Resist Wireless Technology.
May 4, 2007... Despite numerous restraining factors, the European healthcare IT market has started buying into wireless applications at a pretty healthy clip. The ability to provide improved medical attention in remote areas, together with the potential...

U.K. Wireless Use Flip-Flops As Text Tops Talk.
May 7, 2007... Wireless subscribers in the U.K. are talking less and texting more, according to a new survey by J.D. Power and Associates - the first time in the decade the survey's been done that voice usage dropped. The news isn't good for U.K. wireless...

Broadcom Buys Into MoCA.
May 7, 2007... Broadcom, moving into a niche of the home broadband market where it hasn't been a player, is buying Israeli fabless chip startup Octalica, which specializes in silicon to build equipment to push multimedia - including broadband and video -...

Comcast Gets Into The 'SmartZone'.
May 7, 2007... Earlier today, cable giant Comcast announced plans to launch its "SmartZone" communications center, a fully integrated, Web-based communications center that lets customers go to one central location to receive email; to check voicemail...

Motorola Offering Fools Fiber Into Thinking It's Cable.
May 7, 2007... Motorola today took the wraps off a product line that enables a passive optical network (PON) to look like the hybrid-fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks in common use by the cable industry. The goal is to convince the industry to install PONs...

With TEM Market Set To Explode, TnT Unveils New Apps.
May 7, 2007... According to research firm Gartner, the telecom-expense-management (TEM) market will grow at a compound annual rate of almost 40 percent for the next three years, reaching $1.5 billion in 2010. To ride that wave, TnT Expense Management...

Networks In Motion Adds 1 Million Subs Year One.
May 7, 2007... After just a year in the marketplace, wireless navigation and location- based services (LBS) provider Networks In Motion now boasts more than one million paid users of its real-time navigation services on GPS-enabled mobile phones based on...

Virgin Throttles Back Broadband Bandwidth Hogs.
May 8, 2007... U.K. cable operator Virgin Media has become one of the first broadband providers in the world to disclose publicly its rules for how much data its so- called "unlimited" broadband customers can download. Those who download too much during...

South Korea Stages Full-Court IPTV Standards Press.
May 8, 2007... South Korea has put the international standardization of IPTV technology developed by its home companies on the front burner, fielding a team of more than 30 experts from Korea Telecom (KT) and LG Electronics at this week's meeting of the...

How Sprint Is Playing On Cable.
May 8, 2007... Hot on the heels of Comcast's announcement yesterday of several enhanced product offerings (TelecomWeb news break, May 7), Sprint today set in motion its expanded offering of VoIP cable-telephony services. Sprint (which some have said is...

Veraz Cuts Losses On Stronger Softswitch Sales.
May 8, 2007... Softswitch and media-gateway vendor Veraz, in its first public report following its IPO last month (TelecomWeb news break, April 6), reported a 27- percent increase in quarterly income and sharply lower losses than it suffered a year ago. ...

HelloMetro Provides Local Flavor, Mobile Style.
May 8, 2007... New today to the wireless marketplace is HelloMetro, a cobbling of more than 600 city-based, locally focused "dot-mobi" Web sites that claim to share more than 2.2 million unique visitors a month. Its focus: providing tasty local information...

Accessing Your Inner 'Tube' On The Road.
May 8, 2007... If YouTube is getting a little too old and cliche, get ready to change the channel. Tubearoo Inc. says it wants to become "one of the world's largest Internet video networks for users to view, upload and share Internet video" via "Mobile...

Taliban Targets Afghan Cellular Provider.
May 9, 2007... According to wire-service reports from Afghanistan, wireless carrier Roshan is being threatened by the Taliban regarding its alleged ties with U.S. and Afghani officials and the war on terror. The Taliban reportedly said it will destroy...

Hutch Ponders War Chest As Vodafone Closes India Deal.
May 9, 2007... Vodafone yesterday closed on its acquisition of Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited's (HTIL) 52-percent controlling stake in India telco Hutchison Essar. When the dust clears, and HTIL makes promised dividend payments, it...

Telenor Gobbles Up Tele2's Danish Ops.
May 9, 2007... Sweden's Tele2 AB is selling all of its operations in Denmark to competitor Telenor, saying that, in the future, it wants to concentrate more on infrastructure-based operations. Telenor is paying a shade less than $151 million for the...

Sierra Wireless Ups AirLink Purchase Price.
May 9, 2007... Earlier today, wireless-data developer Sierra Wireless Inc. announced its plan to sweeten the AirLink Communications Inc. acquisition pot (TelecomWeb news break, March 7), ratcheting up the cash paid to AirLink stockholders. AirLink is a...

USB Cellular Modems Enter Competitive Fray.
May 9, 2007... In the last few months, several modem vendors have launched or have announced the development of USB cellular modems. ABI Research predicts a growing and increasingly competitive market in these modems, resulting in unit shipments surpassing...

TeliaSonera Goes To The Dogs.
May 9, 2007... Soon, Lassie will be able to phone home. Dogs are getting their own cellphones in Sweden. Starting next week, Swedish dog owners will be offered dog collars with a built-in GPS unit and cellphone. The system is designed to help dog owners...

Dethroned Vonage Claims Workaround, But Growth Still Stalled.
May 10, 2007... VoIP pioneer Vonage, valiantly attempting to put the best light on another quarter deep in the red, reported higher revenues and a smaller loss than in previous quarters and said it thinks it finally has figured out a workaround for two of...

Rural Coalition, Sprint Nextel Escalate Call-Blocking Battle.
May 10, 2007... In a continued effort to fight the rise of alleged call-blocking by major telecom players (TelecomWeb news break, April 17), more than a dozen rural LECs and conferencing providers have banded together to form the Coalition for Carrier...

Joost Boosts Venture Capitalists As Intel Goes JaJah.
May 10, 2007... Investors today plowed a massive $65 million into startups working on the two hottest broadband applications out there - IPTV and VoIP. Joost, the Internet-based IPTV service crafted by the founders of Skype, got $45 million, including...

Venezuela Gains Control Of CANTV.
May 10, 2007... The government of Venezuela now runs CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), paying $1.32 billion for 79.62 percent of the telco's shares. That gives the government 86.21-percent equity in the national telecom carrier and ends...

HP Triple-Threat Portfolio Makes Mobile-TV Customization Easier.
May 10, 2007... At its "Making Connections: The 2007 HP Mobility Summit" in Shanghai this week, HP unveiled mobile software solutions it says "will help people use personalized video services to enliven their interactions with family, friends and social...

Prior To CityTalk Merger, Semotus Sheds Some Assets.
May 10, 2007... Enterprise mobility software provider Semotus Solutions Inc. is selling its wireless financial-information assets to Stockgroup Systems Ltd., but the two will continue to be involved for the next two years via a revenue-sharing agreement...

Black Friday At DT: Workers Walk As Profits Plunge.
May 11, 2007... More than 10,000 employees left their jobs at Deutsche Telekom this morning to protest part of the carrier's planned $6.3 billion cost-reduction program (TelecomWeb news break, April 27). The strike came less than a day after the carrier,...

Money-Losing Alcatel-Lucent Says It Will Do Better.
May 11, 2007... Alcatel-Lucent, in its first full quarter since Alcatel bought Lucent in its famous "merger of equals," this morning reported an operating loss of $330.3 million on sales of almost 8 percent, to $5.25 billion. It blamed the costs of the...

Canadian WiMAX Pioneer Put On The Block.
May 11, 2007... Canada-based wireless broadband house SR Telecom, a 25-year industry veteran that most recently had been betting the farm on a move into WiMAX, has put itself up for sale, warning it may soon go belly up if it can't find a buyer or new...

WalMart Has It Right: Greet Those Customers ASAP.
May 11, 2007... A new J.D. Power and Associates study shows that while customers entering a typical wireless retail story wait some five minutes before they are greeted by staff, their overall satisfaction begins to drop if they aren't addressed in some way...

Employees Most Often Compromise Enterprise Networks.
May 11, 2007... There apparently is some dispute regarding the security of wireless enterprise environments, with a new study saying wireless networks are no better and no worse than wired networks for most applications. According to market-research firm...

Tracker Monitors Users In Hostile Situations.
May 11, 2007... A new satellite technology introduced by U.K. global telematics provider Satamatics aims to help protect individuals in remote, hostile environments. The company's "SAT-201K Personnel Tracker" unit uses satellite technology to monitor...

As Wal-Mart Skypes, VoIP Hardware Vendors Flock To Microsoft.
May 14, 2007... VoIP just got cheaper, if that's possible. So-called "Skype certified" VoIP hardware - including webcams, headsets and handsets - this morning went on sale at Wal-Mart at what look to be bargain-basement prices typical of the world's largest...

DSP Group Buys NXP's VoIP Chip Business.
May 14, 2007... The DSP Group is the new owner of NXP Semiconductors' cordless and VoIP terminals chipset businesses as the result of a deal that could end up being worth $345 million deal. NXP walks away with at least $200 million in cash and a...

N.C. Jurisdictions Fight Tower-Build Streamlining Bill.
May 14, 2007... It looks like tower builders in North Carolina won't see their path getting any smoother when it comes to building new wireless transmission facilities in that state, if local authorities have their way. A bill introduced in the North...

EC Accepts Poland's Tweaked Broadband-Access Proposal.
May 14, 2007... Earlier today, the European Commission (EC) released a decision that endorses the Polish telecom regulator's amended proposal concerning the market for access to fixed telephony services in that country. On March 13, the EC told Poland's...

Enterprise Email Staffers Face Two-Pronged Security Problem.
May 14, 2007... According to a study just released by Washington State-based MessageGate Inc., enterprise IT and security professionals face two major forces related to enterprise messaging: a content deluge due to growing volumes of electronic documents...

India's YOU Telecom Snags IceNet.
May 14, 2007... In what's being seen as the first significant consolidation move in the hot India communications market, broadband provider YOU Telecom is buying the Internet business of IceNet, reputedly the first "digital" ISP to set up shop in India and...

NCTA Head Continues Push For Market-Based Regulatory Reform.
May 15, 2007... According to Kyle McSlarrow, president & CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the regulatory framework that governs today's communications marketplace is ready for fundamental reform that better reflects the...

Verizon Takes Top Honors In Telecom Satisfaction.
May 15, 2007... Verizon has come out on top in both the fixed-line and wireless categories of the closely watched University of Michigan's "American Customer Satisfaction Index" (ACSI) - scoring first in the wireless category for what is now the fourth year...

Investors Plow Cash Into 'Me' TV.
May 15, 2007... A group of high-profile investors have sunk an undisclosed, but reportedly substantial, chunk of cash into kyte.tv, a startup that lets anybody produce his or her very own TV shows - "live," if you'd like - and broadcast them using IPTV...

Look Out VoIP - Here Comes VoME.
May 15, 2007... In an industry first, Cablevision's broadband-service-provider subsidiary Optimum Lightpath launched Voice over Metro Ethernet (VoME), making it the first-ever carrier-class voice service delivered over Metro Ethernet by a cable multiple...

AOL Strengthens Wireless Presence With Third Screen Media Buy.
May 15, 2007... AOL is the proud new owner of Third Screen Media (Wireless Business Forecast, Aug. 3, 2006), a mobile advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management-platform provider that now will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL's...

Pew Study Finds Few Americans 'Love' Web 2.0.
May 15, 2007... Only about 8 percent of the adult population of the United States actually makes full use of the capabilities represented by the so-called 'Web 2.0,' according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And that's...

India Gets New ICT Czar In Political Power Play.
May 16, 2007... The Indian government this morning named a new Minister of Communications & Information Technology, following the surprise resignation of Dayanidhi Maran as the result of a nasty little internal spat in his political party rather than...

Real Gets Sony, Vodafone Gets Real.
May 16, 2007... RealNetworks today bought Sony's European mobile-music-download-and- streaming service Sony NetServices for $9 million in cash. Within hours, it walked away with a three-year extension of Sony's deal with Vodafone, its biggest customer. ...

'Pre' 802.11n' Wi-Fi Test Certifications Unveiled.
May 16, 2007... The Wi-Fi Alliance this morning took the wraps off the test suite and first flush of high-speed wireless products certified as being "pre-802.11n"- compliant - the unusual and controversial program to certify products before specifications...

FCC Follows Up On Joint Board USF Recommendations.
May 16, 2007... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has established its line of questioning regarding a recent recommendation by the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service that it "take immediate action" to rein in the explosive growth in...

Calypso Adds Speech-To-Text Patents To Its Roster.
May 16, 2007... Miami-based Calypso Wireless Inc. is buying four U.S. patents for technologies it says enable cellphones and wireless PDAs/Pocket PCs to convert incoming text to voice and voice to text. And now that so many jurisdictions are outlawing...

IP Unity Glenayre, CommonVoices Complete Cableco Voice-Mail Project.
May 16, 2007... IP Unity Glenayre Inc. and CommonVoices Inc. are trumpeting the completion of their full voice-mail migration project for thousands of Suddenlink Communications cable customers that took place in a single night. Suddenlink Communications,...

AT&T Ponders Sat-TV Choices As DirecTV Mulls BPL.
May 17, 2007... AT&T this week has been busily giving out mixed messages regarding its planned future relationship with satellite-TV providers DirecTV and EchoStar, both of which currently are its partners, thanks to the acquisition of BellSouth. Its...

McLeodUSA Blows Into The Windy City.
May 17, 2007... Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based McLeodUSA is paying more than $17 million for the business-telecom assets of Chicago's Mpower Communications Corp. McLeodUSA has provided business telecommunications in Illinois since 1994 and currently has...

BT Regains Broadband Crown; Sets 'Bumper' Share Buyback.
May 17, 2007... BT, reporting a fourth quarter and fiscal year with solid if staid growth, has regained its Number One position in the U.K. broadband market - unseating cable provider Virgin Media - while launching a $5 billion share- buyback program. ...

Indiana Two-Way Shop Loses FCC Creds.
May 17, 2007... Two co-owners of a wireless business, who happen to be brothers, have been stripped of their FCC license authorizations as a result of a settlement agreement with the commission stemming from alleged corporate and personal misdeeds. ...

Why Cablecos Will Continue To Test IPTV Waters.
May 17, 2007... Comcast's recent decision to trial IP video services later this year using the new DOCSIS 3.0 data-networking standard highlights the keen interest many cablecos around the world are showing in the possibilities of IPTV. "The coming...

GPS Tops Mobile TV On Cellular Shopping List.
May 17, 2007... Consumers are far more interested in knowing exactly where they are, courtesy of Global Positioning System (GPS) capability built into their cellphones, than they are in watching television shows on a little screen, according to the results...

iPhone Certification Raises Eyebrows.
May 18, 2007... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday gave its official blessing to Apple's super-hyped iPhone, certifying the device for use in the United States. The FCC documents, though, also revealed that at least initially the iPhone...

U.K.'s Dethroned Virgin Strikes Back At BT With DSL/IPTV.
May 18, 2007... U.K. cable operator Virgin Media, which just lost the honor of being the largest broadband provider in the U.K. to BT (TelecomWeb news break, May 17), has struck back with a deal with Cable & Wireless (C&W) that turns it into an xDSL and...

Motorola Strikes Again In IPTV Battle: Buys MPEG-4 House Modulus.
May 18, 2007... Motorola, in its fifth acquisition of an IPTV-related company in less than 18 months, is buying hot MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) startup Modulus Video. The move plugs one of the last holes in the IPTV hardware ecosystem Motorola's been...

Wireless Fiber Company Wins DoD Business.
May 18, 2007... GigaBeam Corporation, a provider of ultra-high-speed point-to-point wireless solutions marketed as WiFiber wireless fiber, won follow-on orders this quarter of approximately $350,000 from a reseller for the U.S. Department of Defense and from...

Canadian Partners Aid Rural Cableco Wi-Fi, WiMAX Deployments.
May 18, 2007... Lindsay Broadband, a manufacturer of wired and wireless RF distribution products, is teaming with Incognito Software, a global provider of device provisioning and network management systems, to develop intelligent Wi-Fi and WiMAX broadband...

Sprint Intros 'All You Can Eat' Wireless Bundle.
May 18, 2007... For a limited time, customers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Tampa markets will be able to sign up for unlimited wireless voice, text and data service from Sprint for one price, including access to over-the-air...