FCC changes MDU rules
By: By Carol Wilson
As expected, the Federal Communications Commission issued new rules today that ban exclusivity clauses in video contracts for multiple dwelling units (MDUs) or other housing developments...
VON: Nortel helps carriers target SMBs with VoIP
By: By Rich Karpinski
BOSTON--Nortel Networks today announced packaged bundles to make it easier for service providers to deliver voice-over-IP to small and medium business customers (SMBs)...
VON: Tektronix offers IPTV video monitoring
By: By Sarah Reedy
BOSTON--As consumers increasingly demand that content be transferable from the television set to the PC to the mobile phone, the importance of network-wide video monitoring for IPTV is increasing in importance as well, according to Mike Humes, product manager for Tektronix...
VON: Alcatel-Lucent CTO calls for P2P hybrids
By: By Sarah Reedy
BOSTON--Offering a “plumber’s view” of current and future networking trends, Paul Mankiewich, Alcatel-Lucent’s chief technology officer for North America, told VON attendees of the need for telcos to engage with an emerging class of mesh-centric service providers, adopting an approach that combines the best elements of peer-to-peer and traditional networking...
VON: HD over copper a “non-issue” for AT&T
By: By Carol Wilson
BOSTON--AT&T will have no problems doing multiple streams of high-definition (HD) video over its U-verse network at scale, Jeff Weber, vice president of products and strategies at AT&T operations, asserted in a speech here at the VON show today...
VON: Landline not dead yet, Embarq CEO says
By: By Carol Wilson
BOSTON--Landline companies have a future, if they capitalize on convergence possibilities and learn how to make complex services simple for customers to use, Embarq CEO Dan Hesse told the VON crowd today...
Qwest greenlights $300M FTTN rollout
By: By Ed Gubbins
Qwest Communications’ directors have approved its management’s fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) deployment plans, new chief executive officer Ed Mueller said during the company’s quarterly earnings call today. But the company isn’t yet saying what set of services will justify the strategy...
VON: Pulver tells telcos: Be a ‘blade of grass’
By: By Rich Karpinski
BOSTON--The future of communications -- a combination of real-time and asynchronous connections driven by social networks -- may occur completely off the public switched telephone network, said Jeff Pulver, chairman of Pulvermedia, at the opening keynote address at this week’s VON show in Boston...
Continuous Computing aims to speed time to market
By: By Carol Wilson
Continuous Computing today announced a new family of systems that integrate Trillium software and Advanced TCA hardware, along with a unified management system, to enable telecom equipment manufacturers to more rapidly develop solutions for IPTV, security and mobility...
CTIA Wrap-up: The IT
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Though the entertainment seemed to overwhelm the IT at this year’s CTIA IT & Entertainment show, there were still plenty of enterprise applications on display at the fall show...
Enter the Skype phone
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Skype today unveiled its long-awaited VoIP phone, a mobile handset that uses the data capabilities of the mobile network to bypass an operator’s circuit-switched network entirely to make free calls over the Internet...
Data still driving Verizon Wireless growth
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Verizon Wireless added 1.6 million subscribers in the third quarter but, more impressively, saw its average revenue per user (ARPU) climb, driven by greater data usage...
Ringing in the New Year with iPhone 2.0?
By: By Sarah Reedy
With disappointment over the iPhone’s limited EDGE capabilities still hovering, speculation about the release of the long-awaited, third-generation version of the handset is at an all-time high...
VON: Defining differentiation, redefining video
By: By Sarah Reedy
BOSTON--Differentiation in the IPTV space is largely a factor of consumer demand in each particular market. This was the consensus of a panel of two industry analysts and the director of international marketing for UTStarcom at Telephony’s IPTV Workshop today in Boston...
Gaming emerges as middleware differentiator
By: By Sarah Reedy
Gaming is fast becoming a differentiator in the competitive middleware market, a trend illustrated by Game Now, an on-demand gaming service offered by middleware vendor SeaChange International...
VON: IPTV providers forced to prove ‘quality of experience’
By: By Carol Wilson
BOSTON--Service providers once thought building networks with 99.999% reliability was all they needed to do, until delivering data services required them to also offer quality of service. Now IPTV is pushing them even further, requiring service providers to deliver quality of experience (QoE), Tektronix Vice President of Marketing Lyn Cantor told a Telephony IPTV Workshop audience here today...
Verizon DSL giving way to FiOS
By: By Ed Gubbins
Verizon Communications reported another sharp drop in DSL customer additions in the third quarter as it continued to rack up customers for its FiOS fiber-to-the-home services, some of which made the switch from DSL...
Privacy, piracy and deep packet inspection
By: By Carol Wilson
The controversy that has blossomed over Comcast’s use of deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to rate-shape peer-to-peer traffic comes at an awkward time in DPI’s life cycle. Read more of this special report on DPI...
Covad acquired by private equity firm
By: By Ed Gubbins
Covad Communications has agreed to be acquired by Platinum Equity for about $304 million in cash, the companies announced today...
TelcoTV: Reporters’ Notebook
By: By Carol Wilson
ATLANTA--AT&T is constantly bombarded with questions about the capacity of its U-verse network, given that it will rely on fiber-to-the-node technology and copper connections into the home...
Moto returns to profitability, barely
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Motorola ended its two-quarter loss streak this week, posting a slight profit for the third quarter but off of much lower revenue and handset shipments than it had in previous boom years...
Sonus updates VoIP service platform
By: By Rich Karpinski
Voice-over-IP infrastructure vendor Sonus Networks this week delivered an update to its IMS-based application platform, with new tools for creating apps that include advanced messaging and multimedia capabilities...
Occam chairman: No M&A or CEO search underway
By: By Ed Gubbins
Despite calls from some investors to replace top management or sell the company, Occam Networks has no plans to do either, according to the company’s chairman and representative of its largest shareholder...
TelcoTV: Comverse builds converged IPTV apps
By: By Carol Wilson
ATLANTA--Comverse is not the first name that pops to mind when you think of IPTV, but the company does, in fact, have a history in the consumer video business, having developed the user interface for LodgeNet and other hotel video services, as well as being well-established in wireless applications, including ring tones, messaging and more...
TelcoTV: NetInsight offers terrestrially shared head-ends
By: By Sarah Reedy
ATLANTA--In response to a trend in the market for virtual headends to be shared among operators in order to cut costs, NetInsight has introduced the Nimbra multi-service IPTV platform, which enables headend operators to aggregate and distribute next-generation services over terrestrial networks...
Telcos slow Comcast’s subscriber growth
By: By Ed Gubbins
Comcast blamed telecom competitors for unexpectedly slower growth in subscriber additions in the third quarter...
CTIA: Merger creates WAP, SMS local content service
By: By Kevin Fitchard
SAN FRANCISCO--Wireless local content providers Go2 and 80108 announced at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show that they will merge to create a unified local content and directory service powered by both mobile Web content and real-time messaging...
Microsoft values Facebook at $15 billion
By: By Rich Karpinski
Call it a Web 2.0 shootout: Microsoft beat out Google and Yahoo for a shot at Facebook’s advertising business, investing $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The deal values Facebook at $15 billion (on just $150 million annual revenues), instantly making it the fifth largest Web property in terms of market capitalization...
Nokia Siemens acquires carrier Ethernet vendor
By: By Ed Gubbins
Nokia Siemens Networks announced plans to acquire carrier Ethernet equipment vendor Atrica today, in what would be the joint venture’s first acquisition...
CTIA: Facebook founder challenges operators to open networks
By: By Kevin Fitchard
SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz told operators to “leave some money on the table” Wednesday in his keynote plea to the wireless industry to open up their networks and only seek service revenues in areas where they offer true added value to the mobile Internet experiences. Only under those conditions will wireless content services flourish, Moskovitz concluded...
