News Archive - July 2008
California judge rules Sprint's early termination fees illegal
July 31, 2008
A judge in California has ruled that Sprint Nextel's early termination fees are illegal and said the wireless operator should pay back $18.2 million in collected fees to consumers, a decision that could help sway decisions on similar cases throughout the country.
Motorola Surprises Wall Street with Profit
July 31, 2008
Motorola surprised Wall Street by reporting a small profit and steady market share in its beleaguered handset business for the second quarter of 2008.
July 30, 2008
Vonage announced that Marc Lefar, former chief marketing officer at Cingular, will become the Vonage's new CEO. Lefar, 44, will take over the top spot at the company from Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's founder who stepped in last year to help guide the company through its legal battles and financial issues.
Video conferencing with MCS: tons of users, zero hassle
July 29, 2008
Mirial announced a new release of its MCS platform, the video conferencing network appliance designed to easily deploy and manage a large Mirial Softphone user base. Withh MCS, service providers are able to offer subscribers a cutting-edge video conferencing service that includes all of the advanced Mirial Softphone features.
BT guns for Android and Skype with Ribbit buy
July 29, 2008
BT has bought Internet telephony company Ribbit, in a move that will bring the communications giant up against competitors ranging from Skype to Google's Android platform.
AT&T Looks to Block Sprint/Clearwire Merger
July 25, 2008
AT&T is accusing the FCC of playing favorites. The telco filed a complaint to the agency saying that Sprint Nextel and Clearwire proposed merger of assets should be subject to the same scrutiny it was given when it acquired Dobson Communications last year.
Google Wants You To Be Your Own ISP
July 25, 2008
Vint Cerf slams the telecoms, which aren't happy that bits have been commoditized and would like to shape industry regulations to help them to get back in the services game.
Nokia Siemens Posts Blow-Out Q2
July 17, 2008
Nokia Siemens Networks put its first year of integration and growing pains behind it with second-quarter revenues and margins that far exceeded financial analyst expectations.
For teens, the future is mobile
July 15, 2008
Marketers convened to figure out how best to reach teens on the Internet. The answer: It's all about the mobile phone. And, we'll even go further and say that the world is going mobile—it will not just be the way to reach teens.
Nortel wins first global telepresence deal
July 11, 2008
Nortel announced a contract to provide managed multimedia services, including telepresence, for professional services company Deloitte. The deal encompasses 130 Deloitte firm member sites worldwide.
OKI Launches "Visual Nexus" Video Conference System
July 10, 2008
Oki Electric Industry announced it has launched "Visual Nexus ver3.2-3," the latest version of its H.323-based video conferencing system and featuring enhanced functions for large-scale operation. This system also includes a multi-tenant function that enables video conferences to be operated via application service providers, and a server load dispersion function.
Wiretaps: Telcos Are Off the Hook
July 9, 2008
U.S. carriers can breathe a little easier today knowing that the wiretapping they helped conduct after September 11, 2001, is almost certainly going to be protected by law. The U.S. Senate passed legislation today that overhauls the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The bill will grant retroactive immunity to carriers that carried out these wiretaps, without warrants, for the federal government.
Comcast and Vonage collaborate on network management
July 9, 2008
Talk about an odd couple. Cable giant Comcast said that it will work with Vonage to help ensure Vonage's Internet phone service works well over its broadband network.
T-Mobile rumored to be readying Android phone for 3G launch
July 8, 2008
The rumor mill is churning that T-Mobile will offer a new Android phone along with three others including, the Sony Ericsson Z780, a high-end Samsung camera phone, and possibly the Motorola ZINE ZN5.
ISPs prepare for video revolution
July 7, 2008
Video consumes more network resources than any other media distributed on the Web. Even poor-quality video from YouTube eats up more bandwidth than e-mail, music downloading, and VoIP services. And when you throw full-length high-definition video into the mix, you're talking about even more bandwidth.
Yahoo's encouraging words for IM standards
July 7, 2008
Yahoo! executives see XMPP as the standard that will be used to interconnect the various IM service providers, including Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN, etc. This sounds like encouraging news, but stands at odds with the desire to better integrate SIP voice calls with IM (i.e., SIP folks want to use only SIP).
Advanced Multimedia System Takes Steps
July 3, 2008
Experts working on the next generation multimedia communication system known as H.325 recently completed a meeting, reaching some important decisions on architecture, terminology, and protocol syntax used in the new system. The new system will be a decomposed system, allowing anyone to create new applications and will utilize XML as the basis for the signaling protocol.
Skype Appoints New Chief Operating Officer
July 1, 2008
Skype announced that it has named Scott Durchslag Chief Operating Officer. Scott brings 20 years of experience from Fortune 100 technology corporations, start-ups, and professional services to this newly created role. Most recently, Scott was an executive at Motorola.
Sometimes VoIP Saves Money, but the Real Potential of IP Communications is Unrealized
July 1, 2008
VoIP has saved some end users money, but has largely had not save businesses a single penny on long distance voice services. But, there are things enterprises can do to save money and there are more valuable services than "voice" that service providers could be providing.
July 1, 2008
Since 2005, rates to send and receive text messages on all four major carrier networks have doubled from 10 cents to 20 cents per message. One blogger calculated that, at that rate, carrier would charge roughly $6,000 for the bandwidth required to transmit a typical MP3.
Investor Letter Takes Swipe at Sonus
July 1, 2008
In a letter to Sonus CEO Richard Nottenberg, Legatum's president, Mark Stoleson, expressed his firm's frustration with the company's leadership that has led to a five-year low in the vendor's stock price. He also stated that Legatum was not interested in pursuing a hostile takeover bid for 100 percent ownership of the company.