New-age failure
By: By Carol Wilson
The FCC last week decided to impose Universal Service Fund fees on voice-over-IP providers and raise current fees on wireless service ...
Traffic patterns
By: By Ed Gubbins
I'm told the flow of traffic here at Globalcomm is lighter than attendees expected. But while vendors bemoan the amount of traffic on the show floor, they should be heartened by the fact that carriers are spending their time talking about the high flow of traffic in their networks...
Is it too late?
By: By Neale Martin
It has been 10 years since Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act, and it seems appropriate that we take the opportunity of the inaugural Globalcomm to look back as we look forward...
The Hundred Years' War
By: By Ed Gubbins
After 108 years, the U.S. Treasury has repealed a 3% tax on long-distance calls, which was originally imposed to help fund the Spanish-American War of 1898...
Customer data equals dollars
By: By David Young and Andrew Cole
Carriers know their customers well already, but they will soon be able to know them much better...
Parsing the denials
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Does anyone else get the impression that Verizon and BellSouth are talking out of both sides of their mouth?...
What we'll never know
By: By Carol Wilson
The headlines have screamed out from every newspaper and Web news site in the country: AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, all indicted in print, for handing over phone records to the National Security Agency...
Divergent convergence
By: By Andrew Cole
The U.S. is providing rare leadership in convergence strategy and services as the formerly distinct markets of wireless, wireline, cable and content transform into one pervasive digital services market...
Serge wins the skunk hunt
By: By Ed Gubbins
Last summer Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk shrugged off the suggestion that large-scale consolidation among big telecom equipment vendors was long overdue...
SMBs more than small talk
By: by Craig M. Clausen
Voice communications will occur almost exclusively via IP in the very near future. But the pace of acceptance varies by market, with progress slowest in the niche that presents the greatest opportunity--small and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs....
Who's in charge?
By: By Vince Vittore
Cisco Systems and Scientific Atlanta made it official yesterday, closing their multi-billion dollar merger to create what amounts to one big headache for Alcatel, Tellabs, Siemens, Nortel/Huawei, Lucent or any other big access player with designs on being a primary provider in the IPTV world...
Cities get smarter
By: By Carol Wilson
Wireless is rapidly becoming the access technology of choice for municipal networks...
Franchise players
By: By Carol Wilson
The battle over local video franchises is heating up on multiple fronts--at the federal level, the state level and the local level. At this point, it isn't even clear in whose jurisdiction the final decision will land. The cable industry is fighting tooth and nail on all fronts...
Riding the censor ship
By: By Tim McElligott
The spread of democracy seemed like a good idea way back in the 20th century. Now we know better. We can't lead with democracy when trying to mold a world in our own image, especially when we define democracy simply as an exercise in free elections when it is so much more than that...
As a percentage...
By: By Vince Vittore
"IPTV is the dumbest idea ever, and telcos are going to get killed doing it." That quote is from a well-known person in the industry. Someone whose opinion often is cited by both vendors and carriers as backing evidence to move into new markets. The logic behind the statement is something that is becoming more common...
Talent at the top
By: By Ed Gubbins
Recent bad news from Lucent Technologies has employees and analysts thinking about the possible need for big changes at the company. Should Lucent overhaul its product portfolio or its management team or both? ...
Are standards outdated?
By: By Vince Vittore
While it's certainly understandable that every access/aggregation/customer premises equipment vendor wants to position its gear as perfect for the IPTV world, it now seems that standards bodies (both real ones and advisory ones) are getting into the act as well...
Telco story needs a rewrite
By: By Vince Vittore
It's time the telco world faces some hard facts. Despite all the feel-good advertising of the past decade and the blitz that's about to come from the AT&T, telcos still have an image problem...
Pay-per trail
By: By Ed Gubbins
Though it's now a controversial subject of debate, the notion that carriers should charge varying prices for varying levels of network service quality has long been dreamed of as a remedy to what ails broadband economics...
Objects in the mirror are closer than they seem
By: By Steven Hawley
Broadband carriers around the world have embraced the delivery of TV and associated interactive services over switched digital video-capable networks using Internet Protocol--that’s the definition of IPTV that our industry has come to accept. But as 2006 opens, it’s time to reconsider this definition...
Family time
By: By Dan O'Shea
Several news reports surfaced last week that some cable TV companies were considering family-tier programming packages...
Fiber to the HMO
By: By Ed Gubbins
Talk about getting a lump of coal in your stocking. This month Verizon announced it would freeze the pension and retiree medical benefits of 50,000 management employees at the end of next June...
Cable's wireless foray
By: As told to Jason Meyers
Whitey Bluestein is a San Francisco-based consultant with clients in the MVNO, mobile entertainment, mobile TV, fixed-mobile convergence and CRM/loyalty sectors...
Running the numbers
By: By Vince Vittore
A good friend of mine had a grandmother who owned a bar in Pennsylvania coal country. This isn't the beginning of a joke. Really. Her job, besides lightening the wallets of miners on Friday night by filling them up with booze, was running a lottery of sorts, a numbers game....
Break the system
By: By Vince Vittore
A funny thing happened at a U.S. Senate hearing on indecency yesterday. The U.S. Telecom Association essentially said nothing except that it accepts responsibility to act responsible...
