To whom it may concern
By Tim McElligott
I, Tim McElligott, being of sound but balky mind and body do hereby announce my retirement from Telephony. I have had a great (for me, anyway) run but wish to spend more time with my family and to pursue other, less time-sensitive interests...
Table steaks
By Ed Gubbins
I remember vividly the time I had lunch with Alltel chief executive officer Scott Ford. It was in a small private dining room down the hall from his 12th-floor office in Little Rock. We were served heaping piles of barbecued meat impossible to eat in one sitting. It was September 2001. At the time, Alltel was trying to pressure another rural telco, CenturyTel, to merge with it. I was trying to eat and take notes at the same time....
Nortel ready to dance
By Ed Gubbins
When Alcatel and Lucent Technologies announced their betrothal a year ago, analysts and prognosticators began talking much more seriously about which vendors would best be paired with which in the pending consolidation crush...
Al Gore's short tail effect
By Tim McElligott
Don't call it a comeback
By Ed Gubbins
Someone once accused my wife of being a glass-half-empty type of person, to which she replied, "No, I'm actually a glass-half-full person. But it's that other half that I'm worried about"...
Changing faces
By Dan O’Shea
As network operators, particularly in the mobile industry, increasingly outsource management of their networks to major vendor partners, we're beginning to see interesting shifts in the telecom workforce...
Who needs a COO?
By Ed Gubbins
Who needs a chief operating officer? The thought crossed my mind as I noticed that Actelis Networks just named a new COO. Another Ethernet equipment vendor, Extreme Networks, recently eliminated the position...
The new Mobile ESPN
By Kevin Fitchard
This week I’d like to take the opportunity to share my own little conspiracy theory with you. My theory is about the rebirth of Mobile ESPN. I hear you laughing...
Cisco, just buy Calix already
By Ed Gubbins
Isn't it time for Cisco Systems to just go ahead and acquire Calix? Industry prognosticators have been speculating about this combination for at least...
Victims of success
By Carol Wilson
A woman I know recently married her high school sweetheart, after meeting him again at a 25-year reunion. She was then faced with what she now calls the greatest challenge of her lifetime--consolidating the households of two adults...
M&A arms race
By Ed Gubbins
Following a slew of acquisitions from Cisco Systems and Motorola in recent months, the acquisition of Tandberg Television proposed this week by Arris would set up a three-way race for the residential triple-play...
Stomach check
By Ed Gubbins
Do you have the stomach thing or the throat thing? Or both? Everyone I know has either just gotten rid of one of those illnesses or is still trying to kick it. People on opposite ends of North America have complained to me...
Cisco Juniper Smackdown
By Ed Gubbins
Juniper Networks held its position as the world’s number-two supplier of service provider routers in the third quarter, though its revenues in the space continue to shrink from a year earlier, to the benefit of its competitors....
The winds of change
By Tim McElligott
The sweet fragrance of change swept across the land this week, and it was a beautiful site to behold. The change I refer to, or rather that Telephony's Ed Gubbins refers to in his article this week about Cisco...
What Mike doesn’t like
Ed Gubbins
About a year after Mike Zafirovksi became Nortel Networks’ chief executive officer, the company is not quite where he’d like it to be. It’s moving along the path he chose...
A New Dimension
By Tim McElligott
There is no such thing as a final frontier. Even if mankind lives to explore all we think there is to explore, we'll never be sure there isn't something smaller...
SOS, different day
By Dan O’Shea
Jacob Alexander and two other former Comverse executives have been charged with securities fraud in an alleged stock option back-dating scheme, and Alexander, who resigned from Comverse earlier this year, is reportedly a federal fugitive....
What's next for Sprint
By Kevin Fitchard
The shake-up at Sprint is beginning. Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer said last night he's leaving the ailing operator after working with the company for eight years. Sprint has reported some punishing results since it acquired Nextel last year, and even though its executive team has some ambitious plans for the wireless operator's future, it's questionable whether they'll be around to execute those plans. ...
Optical kick
Between April and June, the optical equipment market saw its best quarter in the last four years, according to data released today by Ovum-RHK. Fiber access deployments, along with metro and backbone network upgrades, drove wireline spending higher than expected in the second quarter....
The challenge of churn
By Carol Wlison
Customers will still change service providers to save money, even though they are happy with their current level of service. That's one of the findings of In-Stat's latest survey of U.S. consumers. ...
The case for original thought
Carol Wilson
I'm going to miss Dan Moffat. The founder and CEO of New Edge Networks is one of many smart, interesting people with whom I've had the pleasure to speak on a regular basis...
Opportunity rocks
By Tim McElligott
Market opportunity. It's the first figure cited in every hopeful business case, the apparition that pops the eyes and the banquet that waters the mouth of every entrepreneur...
Risk and reward
DAN O'SHEA
Bankruptcy, one way or another, usually is a CEO killer. Not many CEOs have followed companies into bankruptcy, guided them throughout the recovery process, emerged from the process still at the helm and continued to stay on as the specter of bankruptcy has faded further into the past...
Thunder road
By Tim McElligott
Sprint succeeded this week in turning everyone's focus to 4G. What happened to 3G? Aren't we all still waiting to experience its full benefit? Aren't there several billions of dollars of return-on-investment that operators are suppose to enjoy first?...
Crazy man
Tim McElligott
Richard Notebaert was right. People did think he was crazy for taking the job at Qwest. And they also were right. He was crazy...
