Archive for the 'General Telecom' Category
Cable TV giant Comcast Corp. has confirmed that it has received notice from the Federal Communications Commission that the regulatory agency wants to question Comcast about its delaying (or some alleged “blocking”) of some peer-to-peer Internet traffic. Many consumers and advocate groups have called on the FCC to investigate and fine the service provider for […]
January 15th, 2008 | Posted in General Telecom, Telecom | No Comments
Following the recent appointment of Dan Hesse as CEO, Sprint Nextel is considering laying off a few thousand of its 60,000 total employees, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The carrier, which has suffered through customer defections and ongoing corporate strife related to the Sprint Nextel merger, cut about 5000 jobs last […]
January 15th, 2008 | Posted in General Telecom, Telecom | 1 Comment
A proposal would require that voice over Internet Protocol providers enable calls to emergency services. The U.K.’s telecommunications regulator, the Office of Communications, has since mandated that such access must be made available by September 2008.
Leading VoIP providers, such as Skype, disagree with such proposals, arguing that VoIP is a complement to, rather than a […]
December 18th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, VoIP | 1 Comment
The cost of industry consolidation over the last few years was not just limited to the deal prices quoted to Wall Street. 2007 was the year that the telecom began to deal with the ongoing cost of consolidation, such as technological and corporate integration. The most obvious example at the carrier level was Sprint Nextel’s […]
December 17th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, Telecom | No Comments
Vonage’s first patent lawsuit loss came back in March and was something of a stunner. Verizon Communications had sued the VoIP juggernaut over alleged infringement on seven patents, and though only three of them were found to have been infringed upon, the die was cast for a year in which Vonage also was sued by […]
December 17th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, VoIP, Telecom | No Comments
There was probably no issue more divisive in the telecom industry during 2007 than the question of whether or not to grant telcos that participated in a warrantless domestic wiretapping program operated by the federal government retroactive immunity for their actions.
While Congress worked on new legislation to enable future surveillance and the Bush administration rebuffed […]
December 17th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, Telecom | No Comments
Net neutrality, as recently as the summer of 2007, appeared to be on the wane as a topic of concern for the telecom industry. Service providers weren’t taking it seriously, Net neutrality advocates couldn’t provide enough evidence for their concern, and Congress had moved on to different battles.
That all changed with Comcast’s traffic-delaying controversy. The […]
December 17th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, VoIP, Telecom, IPTV, Broadband | 1 Comment
Demand for consumer VoIP in Canada is surging a survey of retailers says. The survey showed one of 12 Canadians is using a VoIP service and predicts the strong growth to continue as consumer costs fall for devices because of the strong Canadian dollar.
“The demand for VoIP has not only been overwhelming for service providers, […]
December 11th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, VoIP | No Comments
Britain has joined the U.S. to mandate the enabling of emergency calls from U.K.-based VoIP services. The new rules formulated by telco regulator Ofcom will come into effect Sept. 8 and follow a survey that showed 78 percent of VoIP users couldn’t access emergency numbers, or were unsure if they could.
The new rules will apply […]
December 11th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, VoIP | No Comments
Rural telcos and cable TV firms (often the very same company) should continue to have an influential friend in Washington, D.C., for the next five years. Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein was nominated by President Bush for a new five-year term with the FCC, a nomination celebrated by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, the rural […]
December 11th, 2007 | Posted in General Telecom, Telecom | No Comments