Web Exclusives
Broadband Stimulus Applications Due by Aug. 14, 2009
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Congress allocated $7.2 billion to provide broadband services to rural, underserved, and unserved areas. Under the ARRA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (...
Mobile Broadband: New Business Models Needed?
The good news is that mobile broadband--using PC dongles or cards or mobile handsets--is growing fast. The bad news is that all that new data traffic is straining mobile networks. Irish regulator ComReg, for example, notes that there were 1.27 million br...
Sprint Outsources Network Operations to Ericsson Services
Sprint has announced a seven-year, $5 billion contract to outsource management of routine network functions to equipment maker Ericsson. The unusually broad agreement goes further than previous outsourcing deals by affecting virtually all of Sprint's wire...
Atlantic Tele-Network Petitions FCC to Deny Transfer of Bankrupt ICC Properties to RTFC
On July 7 Massachusetts-based Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. weighed in on transferring the bankrupt Innovative Communication Corp (ICC) properties in the U.S. Virgin Islands to its largest creditor, the Rural Telephone Finance Cooperative. Atlantic has ope...
U.S. Court of Appeals Applies Telephone Solicitation Restrictions to Text Messaging
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (in California) has reversed a federal district court ruling and held that federal laws restricting telemarketing calls to consumers apply to text messages as well as voice telephone calls. Specifically, the C...
Forrester Finds Customer Service More Important Than Price
You could get a good argument in the communications business about whether consumers buy primarily based on price or some other attributes of a product. The question is a bit complicated because there always is a base set of values that any product has to...
Recapturing Voice Value is Key to Avoiding Voice Commoditization
A key issue virtually everybody in the voice communications business faces is that value and retail price now are diverging. Nobody would argue that voice communications are less valuable. But the cost to any end user clearly is falling. Likewise, nobod...
M&A Down 32 Percent
Based on Ovum’s report, titled Financial Deals Industry Insight – Telecommunications (4Q08 edition), M&A deal count was 129 in 4Q08, down from 192 in 4Q07, with only four deals valued above US$1B, from 10 in 4Q07. Public stock offerings dried...
New Cuba Policy Could Impact Telecom
The Obama administration is changing U.S. policies toward Cuba that might create some new opportunities in the wirless, broadband and long distance spaces. For example, the administration proposes to let telecom companies establish fiber-optic and satel...
Possible Change in Consumer Sentiment; Communications Sales Still Robust
The important thing about the recession is to look for signs of change, for evidence of a bottoming, as the recession now has been formally working its way through the economy for 14 months. Though it is not definitive by any means, a shift in consumer se...
