Optical homecoming
By: By Ed Gubbins
The escalation of network traffic and its ensuing consumption of bandwidth capacity have brought renewed vitality to the optical sector in recent years...
DSL in the dumps, analysts say
By: By Carol Wilson
A growing chorus of analysts is questioning the pace at which Verizon and, to a lesser extent, AT&T have backed off selling basic DSL services in order to push their higher-speed Internet offerings and their video services...
Real Web comes to mobile
By: By Rich Karpinski
Talk about your 180-degree turns. Remember when the mobile Web was about simple text snippets and phone-ready widgets? That's old hat. The latest trend is delivering the Web -- in all its desktop glory -- right to your hip pocket...
Open access & a boatload of cash
By: By Kevin Fitchard
It turns out the two most controversial licenses in the 700 MHz auction generated the least amount of excitement when it actually came down to bidding...
Portal power shift
By: By Rich Karpinski
Lost amid the hoopla of Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!, AT&T this month renegotiated its broadband portal deal with Yahoo! -- with much improved terms for the service provider...
Q&A:Bango's Anil Malhotra
Social networking, advertising and location-based services are among the biggest applications migrating to mobile handsets. The potential for additional revenue streams is definitely significant, but if mobile carriers can't measure their services' traffic, the mobile push could go unnoticed. Enter Bango...
Mixing satellite TV into the wireline triple-play
By: By Sarah Reedy
Where terrestrial triple-play services are not economical (in rural areas, for example), the lingering question for telcos becomes: How can they seamlessly integrate a partner’s satellite TV service with their own terrestrial services such as video-on-demand (VOD)?...
Video sales may stumble on customer service woes
By: By Carol Wilson
Telecom service providers in a rush to sell new video services could stumble badly if they don’t work harder to properly set customer expectations and do a better job of helping customers make the transition, a customer service consultant is warning...
NEC, Kineto make UMA’s case for femtocells
By: By Kevin Fitchard
NEC and Kineto have submitted their unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technology to the 3GPP and the Femto Forum in hopes of quickly settling on a standard for the burgeoning femtocell market...
RLECs see no revenue growth in 2008
By: By Ed Gubbins
Two of the rural telco sector’s largest carriers -- Embarq and Windstream -- have predicted flat or declining revenues for 2008...
SureWest: No need to own wireless for quad play
By: By Ed Gubbins
Providers of quadruple-play services need not own the wireless part of the bundle, Steve Oldham, president and chief executive officer of SureWest Communications, said this week...
Level 3 execs forego bonuses
By: By Carol Wilson
Level 3 Communications executives have put their money where their mouths are: Chairman and CEO James Crowe and his top four executive team members will not get bonuses for 2007 because of the company’s disappointing performance...
In the spotlight: Brian Rose of Cox Communications
By: By Carol Wilson
Brian Rose joined Cox Communications as product development manager after seven years with BellSouth and has found selling Ethernet services can be more fun when you aren’t cannibalizing your existing base of data services. Just after the Vertical Systems Group report credited Cox with fourth place nationally in the sales of Ethernet ports with 10% of the market, Rose spoke with Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson...
Fujitsu back in the WiMAX game—with a partner
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Fifteen months after announcing its entry into the U.S. WiMAX infrastructure market, Fujitsu has finally released its first product, a Mobile WiMAX kit tuned to the 2.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz frequencies popular both in the U.S. and at home in Japan...
MWC: Software companies align for mobile marketing push
By: By Sarah Reedy
Mobile advertising is slowly moving from an untapped source of revenue to a value-added service for customers and carriers alike. To expedite the process, the Mobile Advertising Alliance, an association of mobile software companies, was announced in advance of Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona...
TW Cable surges, Qwest slows in Ethernet services
By: By Ed Gubbins
Time Warner Cable is rapidly making gains as a newcomer to the Ethernet services market, while Qwest Communications is falling behind, according to new data from Vertical Systems Group...
Broadband Census launches grassroots effort
By: By Carol Wilson
A veteran journalist is attempting to determine for himself just how accurate the Federal Communications Commission’s rosy reports of competitive broadband services really are. Drew Clark set up his own limited liability corporation, Broadband Census LLC, to try to answer the question of how much broadband access is really available in the U.S....
Opera revs mobile Web browser
By: By Rich Karpinski
Opera Software, already delivering some of the Web's most widely used and advanced mobile browsers, today announced an update to its core mobile product that it says brings it closer to a desktop Web browsing experience...
Cbeyond sees softness in SMB market
By: By Ed Gubbins
IP services provider Cbeyond reported seeing broad but minor economic weakness in the small and medium business (SMB) market Monday in a muted echo of comments from AT&T last month that sparked widespread concern among investors...
Nokia delivers Ovi Share for social networking
By: By Rich Karpinski
Nokia today launched a key part of its Ovi Internet services strategy with a revamped multimedia-driven social network dubbed "Share."...
Zhone, Ascend cofounder Jeanette Symons dies
By: By Ed Gubbins
Jeanette Symons, the cofounder of Zhone Technologies and Ascend Communications, died in a plane crash Friday, according to news reports...
A closer look at 40 Mb/s DSL
By: By Ed Gubbins
Rim Semiconductor turned some heads in January with a claim that its new chip can send traffic at 40 Mb/s over 5,500 feet of 26-gauge copper wire. The chip promises big jumps in bandwidth for carriers such as AT&T that are trying to cram as much traffic as they can down existing copper lines...
What MS+Yahoo means for service providers
By: By Rich Karpinski
If the telecom and Web worlds are merging, then a mega-merger on one side -- Microsoft’s proposed $44.6 billion acquisition of Yahoo -- surely affects the other. But how?...
Unlocked iPhone market in shades of gray
By: By Sarah Reedy
Apple seems to have a growing problem on its hands – the size of which it may have grossly underestimated. According to last week’s earnings calls, Apple claims to have sold 3.7 million iPhone activations, whereas AT&T reports only 2 million...
Calient doubles down
By: By Ed Gubbins
With a new chief executive officer and new funding, Calient Networks isn’t adopting a new strategy—it’s just promising a more aggressive pursuit of its previous plans....
700 MHz Auction: Open access assured
By: By Kevin Fitchard
In today’s opening round of the 700 MHz auction, a bidder pushed the C-block nationwide license over the $4.6 billion reserve price set by the FCC, ensuring that whichever bidder wins the license must launch an open-access network that will support any competitor’s device or application...
Qwest CEO: It’s the interface, stupid
By: By Carol Wilson
Edward Mueller’s view of the future sets him apart from most telecom CEOs. He’s not building Qwest into a company that will deliver its own voice, data, video and wireless services to its consumer customers. Instead, Mueller is pointing Qwest toward a different kind of future...
Has real mobile browsing arrived at last?
By: By Rich Karpinski
Mobile Web browsing sucks. You can’t get much plainer than that. But a new crop of browsers may at last be changing the game...
700 MHz Auction: As open access nears, bidders back off
By: By Kevin Fitchard
The price of the nationwide C-block license in the 700 MHz auction ticked upward today, but it got nowhere near the $4.6 billion reserve price necessary to trigger the open-access provisions of the highly valuable spectrum property...
Sharedband launching bonded DSL in Seattle this week
By: By Ed Gubbins
British startup Sharedband expects to launch its bonded broadband offering in the United States this week, starting in Seattle and planning to expand throughout the country this year...
