BT s pilot of high-speed broadband in two locations in the UK starts on Monday. itpro.co.uk
The carrier coup must be stopped cio.de
Bell Canada Acquires Virgin Mobile teleclick.ca
iPhone hacker reveals SMS vulnerability scmagazineus.com
FCC.gov: What a WASTE heritage.org
Rumoured T-Mobile sale could turn into bidding war broadbandgenie.co.uk
Psystar emerges from Chapter 11; New Mac clone out theinquirer.net
Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downloads theregister.co.uk
read comment(s)

It's July 4th weekend, so light your fireworks in the comment section below. Everyone here at Broadband Reports wishes you a fantastic holiday.
read comment(s)

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is "proceeding with a Bush-era plan" that would use the NSA to more closely inspect the traffic traveling between government networks and the private-sector. According to the report, the aim of the classified "Einstein 3" project is to better protect the government from external cyber-threats, particularly those originating at private-sector contracted firms. AT&T was chosen by the Bush Administration to help participate in the project, and the trial has seen delays as AT&T "is seeking legal assurance that it will not be sued for participating in the pilot program." Meanwhile, the Salt Lake Tribune reports on a new $2 billion NSA data center in Utah.
read comment(s)

Illustrating the continued fragility of the modern Internet, threads in both the Zen Cart and Web Hosting Talk forums indicate that one of the country's largest credit card authorization networks has gone completely offline. From what we can gather, a "perfect storm" was created by the combination of a fire in their primary Seattle data center and the July 4 weekend holiday -- resulting the company going completely dark for more than five hours and counting. The company's phone lines and this Authorize.net website remains offline as of this writing, though they seem to be using Twitter to confirm the problem. If your weekend beer purchase didn't go through, now you know why....

update: Less noticed perhaps was the fact the same data center outage took Popcap's popular Bejeweled Blitz Facebook application offline. Not as important as a financial transaction of course, but still...
read comment(s)

Canadian cable operator Cogeco was supposed to start billing customers in June after they implemented a new metered billing model. However, as we noted last week, many users found Cogeco's meters didn't accurately reflect usage. Customers have complained that Cogeco's daily usage portal seems broken, and that automatic warning e-mail alerts don't match the portal. Cogeco reached out to us to note that they're working on the problems, while at the same time downplaying the breadth of the issues.

"Cogeco is confident that their high speed customers have an accurate means of gauging their on-line consumption and that their invoicing reflects the consumption displayed on the customer usage measurement tool provided by the company," Cogeco's Marie Carrier tells us. Carrier insists regular performance checks indicate that their tracking system is accurate, and "the vast majority of customers are satisfied with their consumption tracking and rates."

"However, anomalies can occur in the best of software applications and we are addressing those mentioned in Broadband Reports," she says. "In those specific instances, customer tracking tools, which are normally scheduled for daily updates, lagged behind actual usage and related email alerts," notes Carrier.

We asked Cogeco what customers should do if an e-mail alert contradicts the company's online usage-tracking portal, and were told that customers should rely on the portal numbers. The user consumption web page is updated once a day not long after midnight, generating an e-mail alert. When asked if Cogeco was planning a consumption meter that notified users in real time, we were told "it is not in our plan for the short term."

The company did confirm that they wouldn't start billing customers until the company has "completed any required fine tuning of the metering and notification tools." "We regret any inconvenience," says Carrier, "and assure our customers that they will not be billed for usage that does not appear on their customer tracking tool." Consumers will certainly be happy to know they won't be billed for services they didn't use. If you're a Cogeco customer feel free to drop us a line and let us know how Cogeco is doing.

read comment(s)

Sprint says it will be first to launch 3G femtocell technology mobileburn.com
Clearwire 'Undecided' on Stimulus Bid unstrung.com
Disruptive technologies are giving fixed telcos a headache ovum.com
BT: Broadband tax will not cover fiber rollout itpro.co.uk
FCC Meeting Stresses Urgency of Broadband Rollout multichannel.com
New Jersey Could Ban Those Distracting Manual GPS Devices in Cars gpsworld.com
US Music Trade Association Wants More Money from Ringtone Sales cellular-news.com
iPod touch 3G with camera revealed by new case? slashgear.com
read comment(s)

Clearwire needs to maximize the limited deployment funds they have -- so they've focused their deployments on major cities. But does the broadband upstart plan to explore government stimulus to reach less-serviced areas? Unclear, says the magic telecom eight ball. "We remain focused on completing our national rollout of 80 markets over the next 18 months, and our existing build plan isn't predicated on our ability to secure this funding," the carrier tells Unstrung. With only nine markets planned for 2009 (only three of which are currently live), that means Clearwire needs to seriously pick up the pace in 2010.
read comment(s)

Before there was the ugly Verizon Fairpoint kerfuffle, there was Hawaii Telcom, who, like Fairpoint, bit off more they could chew when they acquired DSL and landline networks Verizon didn't feel were worth upgrading. Like Fairpoint, when Verizon divested those networks in Hawaii, Hawaii Telcom struggled under the load and their executives repeatedly issued bubbly statements insisting that everything was fine. Unlike Fairpoint (for now), Hawaii Telcom filed for bankruptcy last December. If you're interested in owning the carrier, bidding for the operator opened this week.
read comment(s)

Stop The Cap directs our attention to a story in the New Zealand Herald about the discontinuation of an online video service in New Zealand called Sky Online. The $5 a month "all you can eat" video service was suspended after users kept going over their monthly download quotas, and were being kicked back to dial-up speeds by their ISP. Amusingly, one of Sky's online video competitors, TVNZ doesn't complain -- since TVNZ's relationship with state-owned ISP Orcon allows Orcon users to download video without impacting their data caps. Sky's now in the position of begging local ISPs to exclude them from their data caps -- putting Orcon in the position of determining who gets to be competitive -- and who doesn't.
read comment(s)

Broadband industry group say U.S. rules go too far yahoo.com
Mobile operators question net snoop plan theregister.co.uk
Space Data maps broadband signals from altitude Phoenix Business Journal
The Death of Exclusivity? xchangemag.com
FCC To Seek More Public Input on Broadband Plan multichannel.com
Novarum tests 3G in 13 US cities muniwireless.com
Dish Wins Stay From Appeals Court On DVR Order multichannel.com
Apple Admits iPhone Overheating Issues -- Sort of networkworld.com
read comment(s)

Just like AT&T did a few weeks ago, the folks at the Verizon policy blog say they've refined and clarified the company's privacy policy, creating one "easy to read" privacy policy that applies across all Verizon services. "We've tried to make our policy more customer friendly," says Verizon's Chief Privacy Officer, Kathy Zanowic, who adds the carrier believes consumer trust is an "essential" to their business and an "important responsibility." Why all this touchy-feely privacy love by Verizon and AT&T? The carriers are worried that new Democratic leadership at the FTC and FCC may craft new privacy laws, so they're trying to pre-empt them by illustrating how they're model citizens when it comes to consumer privacy.
read comment(s)

As we recently noted, Minnesota mom Jammie Thomas was recently found guilty of copyright infringement for sharing songs via P2P, and was fined $1.9 million dollars ($80,000 per song). Quickly after the verdict, the Electronic Frontier Foundation questioned whether the extremely high damages were constitutional, citing past instances where the Supreme Court ruled against disproportionate damage awards intended to "send a message." Not too surprisingly, Thomas, who obviously can't pay the award, says she's going to appeal the ruling on constitutional grounds.
read comment(s)

Alcatel-Lucent announced a new software release for its Intelligent Services Access Manager platform that enables VDSL2 line-bonding for improved bandwidth. The development comes at a time when telcos such as AT&T and Qwest Communications increasingly have talked about the viability of line-bonding, though the technique has not yet been broadly deployed.

Meanwhile, in connection with this ISAM platform, the vendor also unveiled an ADSL modem with low-power mode that cuts power consumption and saves energy when the modem is not in use.

For more:
- Telephony has this story
- Light Reading has this report

Related articles
Alcatel-Lucent and Hewlett-Packard recently partnered
Qwest has talked about VDSL2 bonding in the past

After attending a broadband stimulus event yesterday with Vice President Joe Biden and others in Wattsburg, Penn., new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will lead his first official FCC meeting today in Washington, D.C. The meeting starts at 11:30 a.m. EST.

The discussion is likely to focus on the agency's ongoing development of a national broadband plan, and a digital TV transition update also is on the agenda. The Pennsylvania event yesterday, at which Genachowski called for more public comment on the national plan, reportedly was attended by barely 100 people.

Today's meeting, however, will be streamed online. You can listen to the meeting by registering here.

For more:
- Multichannel News has this post

Related article
Blair Levin is leading the FCC's broadband efforts

New FairPoint Communications Chairman and CEO David Hauser began his tenure at the company Wednesday by attempting to discourage talk of a possible bankruptcy protection filing with optimism about the telco's chances to manage its debt through restructuring, while also rebuilding customer faith in the company.

FairPoint, based in Charlotte, N.C., is hoping to postpone an upcoming bond interest payment of about $531 million, though both the company and regulatory observers have to prepare for the possibility that it won't be able to do so. A bankruptcy protection filing would be one possible option, though Hauser told the Associated Press he would do everything he could to avoid taking that route.

For more:
- The Seattle Times has the Associated Press story

Related article
FairPoint named Hauser CEO about two weeks ago

AT&T, BT, and Tata Communications have conducted the first international, inter-carrier, inter-company multi-point telepresence call over Cisco Systems gear. The call involved telepresence systems at AT&T locations in Bedminster and Morristown, N.J., and Chicago, Ill.; a BT location in Colorado Springs, Colo.; a Cisco site in San Francisco; and Tata sites in Boston and London. There has been much talk of inter-company telepresence as being a key to greater success for such services, and this inter-carrier demonstration further broadens the utility of telepresence.

For more:
- Here's the Cisco press release

Related article
AT&T and Cisco have aimed telepresence at the federal government

More broadband stimulus program details were announced, and the good news is that applications for the first round of $4 billion will be accepted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Service starting July 14. The less positive news is two-fold: Consumers might be discouraged that the government has set the minimum speeds threshold for grant-winning broadband network projects at just 768 kbps; and some service providers might be disappointed the grant-winning firms will have to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality rules.

Neither of those moves may be much of a surprise. The government had to tackle the unenviable task of deciding what speed level best defines broadband. The choice of 768 kbps will seem like the broadband Stone Age to many, though the ability of some technologies to reach remote and rural areas likely factored into the decision.

Applicants have until August 14 to apply for first-round funds.

For more:
- Telephony has this story

Related article
The Obama administration has said stimulus is just a start

Hey, folks, just a quick note to tell you that the FierceTelecom newsletter will not be published on Friday, July 3, as we get an early start on the holiday weekend. Have a good 4th of July, and Happy Birthday, America! 

We will return to our regular publishing schedule on Monday, July 6.

-Dan

The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet issued a decision about whether or not it will review the insider trading conviction of former Qwest Communications CEO Joe Nacchio--and that might be good news for Nacchio. There was reportedly an assumption that the Supremes would announce their position on the case last week or this week, but the case was not listed this week among appeals that will be heard, nor appeals that are being denied.

This could mean that the Supreme Court will take a longer look at some of the details in the case, and might issue a decision about reviewing it formally when judges return to session in September. Further suggesting a possible review of the case is the news that the Supreme Court wants more data, including the entire record from Nacchio's earlier trials.

For more:
- InformationWeek has this story

Related articles
Here's a probably-flawed idea for avoiding another Nacchio
Nacchio's legal team filed a Supreme Court appeal bid in March

Nortel Networks likely will face the auctioning of its carrier networks business and other units later this month. At this point, the fate of the enterprise division is not known, though Avaya and a handful of other companies have been mentioned as possible buyers for the unit. Meanwhile, John McHugh, vice president and general manager for Nortel's Enterprise Data Networking Solutions, is hoping that the unit lands in a situation that can allow it to re-leverage the old Bay Networks name.

Nortel bought Bay Networks about 11 years ago, and it became the core of the the Canadian vendor's subsequent enterprise push. Some of the Bay Networks products eventually were spun off into a different company, Netgear. While Nortel hung onto the Bay Networks brand rights, the name mostly disappeared, though corporate enterprise customers and former employees who dispersed to join other firms always have professed strong feelings for the company, and I've personally talked to several over the years who were quick to lament the firm's absorption by Nortel (though as I remember it, Bay was financially hamstrung and needed a buyer).

Realistically, the chances of a Bay Networks return seem slim, given that many enterprise companies who might buy the Nortel enterprise unit are up to their elbows in unified communications strategies and other efforts far removed from the hardware focus of the old Bay. Is anyone using the name Wellfleet Communications? (inside joke)

For more:
- Network World has this story

Related article
Nortel enterprise customers were said to be slowing purchasing

The $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program so far has created more confusion and stalled carrier spending than anything else, but never fear: Obama administration officials are set to announce further grant guidelines and details today. Some in the industry have been concerned that the grants will not be awarded until December, and that the process could become further bogged down, which would delay network construction in some northern states. However, a Wall Street Journal story quotes one official as saying that the government will begin handing grants out on a rolling basis before December, and is focused on keeping up its pace ahead of the September 2010 deadline for the program.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this story

Related articles
The "buy American" requirements won't apply to broadband equipment
The final broadband stimulus figure of $7.2 billion was reached in February

Japan's NTT announced it will acquire German IT security services firm Integralis, a move which is seen as strengthening the company's presence in Europe while European carriers are expanding in the U.S., and U.S. carriers are getting into Asia. The deal is worth about $105.5 million and is expected to close in September.

NTT, which has been a global leader in the push toward IPv6, also is busily adding new POPs in Europe and extending offerings like IP VPN.

For more:
- Light Reading has this story

Related article
NTT last month said it would acquire Pacific Crossing

In May, Zayo—the Colorado-based fiber network operator that’s been on an extended buying spree of small, regionally-focused network operators—seemed to be on its way to yet another acquisition, poised to gobble up FiberNet Telecom for $88 million. The buy was set to close in the third quarter, barring a better offer, which FiberNet was clear to accept until June 17.

Enter Herndon-based cable TV and Internet services operator RCN, which showed up last week with just such an offer: $96 million on June 16. All three parties have been mum since, reports the Washington Post.

FiberNet said in a June 18 SEC filing that its board of directors “cautioned that it was not making a recommendation with respect to the RCN proposal and reaffirmed its recommendation in favor of the pending merger with Zayo Group," and that the company would continue to evaluate the RCN offer.

For more:
- see this Washington Post article

Related articles
Zayo to acquire interconnect firm FiberNet  
Zayo last summer said its window for deals had not yet closed

Has broadband access become a personal right? Does it really equate with freedom of speech and democracy? Panelists at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City this week talked about the power of the Internet, its role in the Iranian unrest and about how some believed telcos and cablecos placed the interest of shareholders above public good. For more, read this column by Steve Rosenbaum in The Huffington Post, and this Wall Street Journal article

Cablevision has seen its broadband customers make more than 2 million WiFi connections since it began offering the free service last fall. Now, Comcast is taking it one step further, rolling out WiMAX to customers in Portland, Ore., over Clearwire Corp.’s 4G network.
Comcast’s “High-Speed 2go” will allow laptop users speeds of up to 4 Mbps, for $49.99 per month for the first year and includes 12 Mbps home broadband service and a WiFi router. 

Comcast—which invested $3.2 billion in Clearwire along with Intel, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Google last year—says it will offer the service in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago and other cities by the end of the year. Clearwire currently offers 4G service in Portland and Atlanta, and it has broad expansion plans that include Chicago, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Dallas, and Honolulu.

Sprint Nextel—which owns a 51 percent stake in the Clearwire joint venture—will allow Comcast WiMAX subs to use its 3G network outside Portland for an additional $20 a month.

The new rollout could be a major blow to the still-emerging LTE technology that’s being championed by most telcos. Beating LTE to market could give it a leg up with consumers and its lower price tag—WiMAX is based on open standards and relies on equipment that is cheaper to manufacture.

For more:
- see this AP story
- and this Wall Street Journal story

Related articles
Cablevision says broadand customers used WiFi more than 2 million times  
Cablevision will deliver 3 Mbps WiFi in May
Is WiFi the answer for cable companies?
WiFi boosted Cablevision's subscriber adds
AT&T gives all DSL subs free WiFi access

Flying under the radar—or tucked away in the shadow--of AT&T’s contract negotiations with the Communications Workers of America, has been the company’s talks with its other major union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The IBEW contract with AT&T—which covers some 10,000 union members at AT&T in Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, New England, and other states—expired Saturday at midnight.

Union members authorized a strike last month, but are continuing to work under the old contract. The major issue? Health care. Union members currently pay 8 percent of their costs, but the company thinks this contribution should increase, according to an AT&T spokesman.

Chicago-based Local 21 represents the workers; about 8,650 of them work for AT&T in Illinois and Indiana. Both sides say negotiations are ongoing and express hope an agreement can be reached soon, but with negotiations between the CWA and AT&T dragging into their third month, that may be wishful thinking.

For more:
- see this Delaware County Times article
- or this Quad-City Times article

Related articles
CWA District 6 negotiators leave bargaining table
CWA exec VP denounces AT&T, calls for petition signing
CWA President: AT&T strike "a tactic we may yet use"
AT&T and CWA: Is no news good news this week?

Vermont's not waiting for the other shoe to drop in the ongoing FairPoint Communications saga, as this week the state said it had hired a bankruptcy advisor to help weigh its options if the North Carolina-based firm decides to proceed with a bankruptcy filing. The company on Wednesday filed notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it likely would file for bankruptcy by the end of this year unless debt holders allow it to defer interest payments. FairPoint said it needed to be allowed to restructure some $530 million in debt-and avoid interest payments due in October--to survive.

That FairPoint is cash strapped should come as no surprise. It bought the landline networks in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine last year from Verizon for $2.3 billion, and has been struggling to get the system upgraded and operating efficiently since it took over operations in January. It's made a hash of its billing that's only recently begun to be sorted out.

FairPoint's customer service woes-days of outages, billing hassles, long service waits and even call centers that have gone on the fritz-have cost the company some 12 percent of its customers, double what they expected to lose.

Vermont Department of Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien said the hiring of a bankruptcy expert is simply a precaution to ensure Vermont isn't left out in the cold if FairPoint files. FairPoint, meanwhile, contends that even if it did file for bankruptcy protection, service in Vermont would continue as usual.

And, that may be the bad news.

For more:
- see this Vermont Public Radio report

Related articles
From bad to worse for FairPoint  
New Hampshire puts FairPoint on notice 
Fairpoint seeks delay in debt repayment
Fairpoint reports Q4 loss, suspends dividend

A Circuit Court judge in St. Louis has approved a settlement in a long-running legal fight between telco giant AT&T and about 330 municipalities in Missouri who had charged that AT&T did not pay enough taxes on the various landline fees it charges customers. The company will now pay out about $65 million total across these municipalities to settle the resulting class action suit. Kansas City, Mo., will get about $10.7 million out of the settlement, the largest amount that any one municipality will receive. The pay-outs will take about five months to process, assuming that municipalities agree to the settlement terms.

For more:
- The Kansas City Business Journal has this story

Related article
Missouri legislators also have been looking at how to reduce access charges

Hatteras Networks has added repeaters to its Ethernet-over-copper solution to boost its transmission reach from several thousand feet to more than 25 miles. That latter distance is achieved by using the maximum number of repeaters--eight. Utah's South Central Communications is the vendor's first service provider customer for the repeaters. Telephony reports that the new capability for Hatteras is one that competitor Actelis Networks has had in place for some time. The EoC market has been seen as a potential beneficiary of a tougher economic environment in which carriers may be looking to lengthen the life of their copper and limit investments in new fiber.

For more:
- Telephony has this report

Related article
Speakeasy is reselling XO's EoC service

Denver-based service provider IPtimize has acquired the Teliphonex VoIP business of fellow service provider National Telecom & Broadband Services, which is based in West Palm Beach, Fla. The buy gives IPtimize a new geographic foothold in Florida, where it can begin offering additional commercial voice services to Teliphonex's hosted PBX customers. IPtimize also gains about 1,000 small business and enterprise customers through the deal, the terms of which were not announced. 

For more:
- Here's the IPtimize press release

Related article
VoIP platform vendors have been consolidating, too

The family of xTCA standards--the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA), MicroTCA, and Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC)--are as familiar as, well, family to the major network equipment vendors and their component suppliers. Developing and clarifying these standards in the interests of creating an environment encouraging the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components to build networks may have seemed like the hard part, and it was. In fact, it has taken most of the opening decade of the 21st Century to complete this phase.

But, the job is not over yet, and as the entire telecom industry deals with the effects of the recession and accompanying budget belt-tightening, xTCA concepts need a bit more fine-tuning to carry them the rest of the way toward the sector growth that has been expected for some time. One of the most important areas where that fine-tuning needs to occur is interoperability. The xTCA community needs to make it as easy as possible for network operators and their vendor partners to pursue and fully exploit COTS strategies.

Making that interoperability happen is no small task, as there are a number of different component players involved. The component makers' network equipment manufacturer customers want to be sure they can benefit from the unique capabilities and benefits of the different component suppliers. But, in the interests of saving valueable time and money, the network equipment manufacturers also have a basic need to be able to use standardized interfaces and processes in incorporating those components. The challenge to make sense of both sides of this equation has been taken up by the Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA).

The CP-TA is working with other xTCA groups to clear interoperability hurdles and get xTCA closer to that golden moment. To hear more about how the xTCA market continues to evolve, and how the CP-TA and other groups are addressing interoperability and other issues, be sure to check out our webinar "Fine-tuning xTCA" tomorrow at 2 p.m. ET. You can register here. IDC analyst Lee Doyle will present a market update, and you'll get the rare opportunity to hear from the CP-TA, PICMG and the SCOPE Alliance all in one sitting. xTCA's big day is not far off, and these groups and their efforts hold the key to releasing much of its value.

-Dan

Last month, a California state Senate bill that sought to stop telcos from charging consumers a fee to keep their phone numbers unlisted was shelved for the second consecutive year under what was described as intense opposition from service providers. Now, the Los Angeles Times is taking a closer look at those fees, and the difficulty that some service providers have in explaining why they do it and what the money goes toward.

The report by David Lazarus actually keys in an odd practice by Time Warner Cable, which charges customer 99 cents to unlist their numbers, but does not publish a directory from which to unlist them. TWC and other service providers the newspaper talked to can't seem to clearly explain their reasoning or even what goes into the process of unlisting a number. Unlisted phone number fees generate controversy from time to time, though there never seems to be a wide enough outcry that service providers cave. Maybe they have some real need to charge the fees, but if they do, they should be able to explain why.

For more:
- The Los Angeles Times has this report
- The Los Angeles Times had this story last month on Senate Bill 437

Related article
California adopted new rural service laws last fall

The U.S. Commerce Dept. and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration have made an adjustment to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that loosens the "buy American" requirement in particular for companies that win a piece of the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package. Though a few vendors had supported the "buy American" requirement, many others did not, including the largest equipment vendors, which get many different component systems from all over the world.

The broadband exception to the "buy American" rule covers broadband switches, router, transport and access gear, and customer premises equipment, but not coaxial or optical cables, which must be granted an additional waiver if foreign-made.

For more:
- Telephony has this story

Related articles
Zhone was one company that supported the "buy American" rule
Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent disagreed with the requirement

Cable TV giant Comcast, which earlier this year touted its telephony success with that claim that it had become the third-largest residential telephone service provider in the U.S. in terms of total customers, is now revamping its approach to international calling by introduced a worldwide flat-priced plan. The Carefree Minutes Worldwide 300 plan provides customers with 300 minutes of calling to 100 countries for $14.95 per month.

The new model expands availability well beyond the 34 countries Comcast used to serve, and replaces packages that were centered around different international calling regions, such as portions of Latin America. Incidentally, with this week's Federal Communications Commission approval of CenturyTel's Embarq acquisition and the anticipated amalgamation of those companies into CenturyLink, Comcast likely will drop back to be the fourth-largest U.S. telco. Still, Comast has experienced consistently strong telephone subscriber growth on a quarter-by-quarter basis in recent years.

For more:
- Multichannel News has this report

Related article
Comcast moved into third among U.S. telcos in March

The Federal Communications Commission has extended by two weeks the deadline by which telecom companies can file replies to more than 500 initial comments filed with the agency regarding the development of a nation broadband plan. The new deadline is July 21. The FCC is facing its own deadline of February 2010, at which time it must deliver the completed national plan.

For more:
- Broadcasting & Cable has this story

Related article
Net Neutrality has been the subject of some filed comments

After passing quickly through the Senate Commerce Committee last week, Julius Genachowski was approved as the next Federal Communications Commission Chairman by the full U.S. Senate Thursday night, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Senate also confirmed Robert McDowell for another term as FCC Commissioner. The WSJ also said that President Obama earlier Thursday formally chose Meredith Attwell Baker as his nominee for the open Republican post on the commission, a nomination which had been expected for some time. Baker and Democrat FCC Commissioner nominee Mignon Clyburn will soon go though Senate confirmation hearings.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this story

Related article
Genachowski and McDowell were approved by the Senate Commerce Committee last week

Tellabs, like many telecom equipment companies, is looking to diversify and succeed in the enterprise market as well as in the carrier sector. The company is doing so, however by partnering with its carrier customers, rather than pursuing enterprises directly on it own, said Stuart Bennington, director of global portfolio marketing. Though Bennington did not specifically name Cisco Systems as an example of the latter, one might assume that's who he meant.

Meanwhile, Tellabs has has cleared more than 30 contracts with enterprise customers for its 7100 Optical Transport System by pursuing the partnership route with carrier customers such as Verizon Business. Among other new moves, Tellabs also is starting to target more government customers with a fiber-to-the-desktop GPON approach.

For more:
- Telephony has this story

Related article
Tellabs' first quarter net income and revenue were down

At least three newswire services reported late yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission has approved CenturyTel's acquisition of Embarq to form the new company CenturyLink. However, the FCC and the companies involved had not confirmed that approval as of earlier this morning. The companies have been looking to close the deal within the second quarter, which ends next Tuesday.

For more:
The Kanasa City Star reports on the wire reports

Related articles
The FCC earlier this week was reported to be near a decision

The Wall Street Journal reports that advertising industry trade groups--including the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau--are near to completing development of standards designed to keep Internet users informed about information that advertisers are collecting from them and how it is being used. The self-regulatory effort, which may include an icon on Web ads that users can click on to find out more information about the privacy and information usage guidelines that apply, might be a step in the right direction, and could take some of the heat off of the service providers enabling the data collection.

However, as the WSJ reports, it remains unclear whether or not it goes far enough, and there is a fair bet that it will not stop legislators from pursuing more aggressive Web privacy laws. Telcos and other service providers will be watching this development closely, as it could impact how they proceed in enabling collection of customer data for use not only in Internet services, but also in their growing TV service efforts.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this report

Related articles
AT&T this month rewrote its own privacy policy
A House subcommittee is targeting targeted ad practices

Having spent the 20-oughts emerging from economic crisis to become a global mega-vendor, Ericsson will start the 20-teens with a new CEO intent on continuing its expansion and strength in emerging markets. Hans Vestberg has been named CEO of the company, and will move into the job at the beginning of 2010, as current CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg moves on to become chairman of BP.

Vestberg, a career-long but well-traveled Ericsson employee, currently is CFO of the company, though might be better known to many as the past chief of Ericsson's Global Service unit and the engineer of the vendor's success collecting managed network contracts from carriers. He will begin his tenure with an eye to expand in Africa and to continue investing in recent growth sectors like China and India.

Svanberg will continue to hold a seat on the Ericsson board of directors, and he leaves full-time duty at the company after more than six years, which witnessed Ericsson becoming a more balanced wireline and wireless network equipment vendor through acquisitions of firms such as Redback Networks, Tandberg and others.

For more:
- Light Reading Europe has this story

Related article
Vestberg became CFO of Ericsson in October 2007

As smart-grid technology for managing home energy consumption becomes all the rage, we are seeing more announcements of traditional telcos positioning to get their piece of the action. AT&T, which earlier announced a partnership with SmartSynch to target the emerging market, this week announced a deal with Cooper Power Systems to jointly sell smart-grid sensors that measure performance data to help the utility better manage its grid. The sensors will be connected to AT&T's wireless data network for transmission of that data.

AT&T's latest announcement comes just days after Qwest Communications said it would provide DSL-based backhaul to Current Communications' smart-grid systems.

For more:
- Network World has this story

Related article
Qwest recently announced support for Current smart-grids

Following reports that there may be as many as nine companies vying to acquire Nortel Network's metro Ethernet unit, Light Reading takes a look at who the so far-unnamed bidders might be. LR actually comes up with 11 different possibilities, and the list includes just about every sizable optical and Ethernet vendor that you might consider. I'd personally place a bet on Ericsson or Huawei Technologies, the two companies with the most to gain in terms of geographic connections. The metro Ethernet unit has been on and off the auction block once already without a deal being done, but of course, Nortel is more motivated to sell now.

In other Nortel news, the company suggested it may sell its brand name as part of the unit sales that are part of its planned break-up. The name certainly has value in the industry, and it would be nice--nothing more and nothing less--if it were to hang around, wouldn't it?

For more:
- Light Reading Europe has this post

Related article
Nortel in February put off selling its metro Ethernet unit

Verizon Business has announced a bandwidth-on-demand service for its Ethernet Virtual Private Line customers, enabling a usage-based pay scenario. Verizon EVPL Dynamic Bandwidth allows business of all sizes to control bandwidth via the Verizon Enterprise Center portal.

Bandwidth-on-demand is not a new concept to Verizon, which has touted the capability for carrier customers of its wholesale services in the past. The concept helps banish the old ideas about building networks and buying bandwidth with peak usage times and needs in mind. Could pushing bandwidth-on-demand in the business sector also help encourage acceptance of usage-based broadband in the consumer sector? That may be a bit much to ask for now.

For more:
- Telephony has this story

Related article
Verizon launched wholesale bandwidth-on-demand in 2007

Juniper Networks and Nokia Siemens Networks have announced a joint effort to create router interfaces to optical networking equipment and components, an approach that is being likened to Cisco Systems' IP-over-DWDM architecture. IPoDWDM has been around for several years, and Cisco has at least two network operator customers of note for it--Sprint and Comcast. 

The cost benefits and management simplifications of eliminating hops between gear may be finding more fans amid increasingly cost-conscious carriers. As Telephony notes, some carriers have questioned the ability to achieve complete visibility of an optical signal in such an architecture. In the Juniper-NSN scenario, the latter firm's management system manages the optical signal, and is integrated with NSN's hiT7300 multi-reach DWDM gear and the 10GE DWDM cards on Juniper's routers.

For more:
- Telephony has this story

Related article
Cisco landed Sprint as an IPoDWDM customer last year

The Federal Communications Commission, still limited to three commissioners pending the arrival of a new chairman and one other commissioner, reportedly is very close to approving the CenturyTel-Embarq deal. The companies agreed to acquisition approval conditions that included a pledge to upgrade broadband speeds, not a particularly surprising condition given that the FCC is knee-deep in its development of a national broadband plan.

The broadband commitments include providing 90 percent of broadband customers with download speeds of at least 768 kbps in the next three years, and delivering at least 1.5 Mbps to at least 87 percent of customers within two years, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. Within the next year after the deal closes, about 75 percent of customers are supposed to get at least 3 Mbps capability.

After the acquisition is completed, the combined entity will be called CenturyLink, and will operate in 33 states, with 7.5 million phone lines, 2.1 million broadband subscribers and 440,000 video customers. The companies already have received deal approval from regulators in all of those states.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this story

Related articles
CenturyTel and Embarq forged a new identity this month
The acquisition was announced in October 2008

AT&T said at a conference in London that it plans to launch national 3G femtocell-based service later this year, according to Light Reading's Unstrung. AT&T has been reported for some time to be aiming for a commercial launch this year, though this occasion apparently is the first time that the carrier has confirmed its timing for the rollout. The news comes as other carriers, such as Verizon Communications, have pursued femtocell or femtocell-like services, though AT&T's offering would be one of the few UMTS-based services--Vodafone recently said it is about to launch its own UMTS offering.

For more:
- Light Reading's Unstrung has this story

Related article
Sprint recently announced a wholesale femtocell service

Nortel Networks, which confirmed it is pursuing a break-up, is near to making a deal to sell its enterprise business unit, according to the Toronto Global and Mail.

Avaya is described as the most likely buyer for the unit in what could be a $500 million deal, though other bidders have emerged. Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports that Nortel's metro Ethernet unit has drawn interest from as many as nine potential buyers. That unit could be worth about $750 million.

For more:
- The Globe and Mail has this report

Related article
Nortel said recently it is headed for a break-up

Cablevision’s Madison Square Garden division—which includes the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks, Radio City Music Hall, the MSG cable network, the FUSE cable network, the Madison Square Garden arena, and more—has been spin-off bait for nearly a year, as the cableco has looked for ways to pacify uneasy investors and raise cash. Surprisingly, reports The New York Times, the $550 million purchase of the Montreal Canadiens by the Molson family may help open the taps for Cablevision.

Activist investors last August began pushing hard for CEO James Dolan and the Dolan family—which owns 70 percent of Cablevision’s voting shares—to offload the MSG division. But after three-days of dog and pony shows for investors on Wall Street, it became clear nothing was going to happen in the near term. The Dolans and Cablevision would stand pat.

Much of that may have been due to difficulty in valuing the assets. As the Times points out, sports teams aren’t often on the block, and fewer actually are sold, so it's hard to get a reading of how much they're actually worth. The Rangers—because of the New York market—are likely to have a bigger price tag than the Canadiens, and that’s good news for Cablevision, which must have toasted the $550 million price tag. After all, analysts had valued the entire MSG division at just $750 million to $1.5 billion. Now, one analyst is saying the two teams alone could be worth $1.5 billion or more. Add in the value of the Manhattan real estate--less the $500 million to $700 million in debt due in the next four years following the renovations done on Madison Square Garden--as well as the value of the MSG and FUSE cable networks, and the MSG division gets a little shine.

But it's unclear whether the Dolans--with a suddenly shiny penny--would be willing to part with any of their properties. After all, it wasn't that long ago they tried to take the whole shebang private. The Molson family's buy of the Canadiens may have made the Dolan family's decision to keep all of their toys a little easier.

For more:
- see the Times article

Related articles
Cablevison's on the hot seat
Cablevision makes nice with Wall Street  
Cablevision surprises investors with plants to actually TALK to them   
Cablevision's Newsday buy is unlikely to start a trend 
Hedge fund ups ownership stake in Cablevision
Hedge fund buys Cablevision stake

Our neighbors to the north are headed down a slippery slope on privacy issues with Ottawa’s latest attempt to keep up with us Joneses. The government last week introduced two bills that would give law enforcement agencies broad access to ISP files, including users names and any personal information the ISP has managed to collect; ISPs also would have to track users Internet activities. The second bill allows police to turn on cell phone and automobile tracking devices.

The Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act and the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act—proposed by Conservative MPs--already are drawing fire for being excessive, and are facing an uphill battle when the House of Commons returns in the fall. Nonetheless, observers are worried about the government’s latest attempt to expand surveillance powers.

“I think it raises real concern where there is potential for abuse,” said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce law. “That's why you have court oversight.”

Canada already allows some police surveillance of Internet activities, but only when approved by a court.

For more
- see this Globe and Mail article

Related articles
From Bush to Obama, telecom immunity law defended  
EFF challenges telco immunity law
2008 Year in Review: Telco immunity divided Congress

The rhetoric is flying hot and heavy as a new coalition spearheaded by Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile looks to put a cap on the wholesale access fees they pay companies like AT&T and Verizon for access to broadband lines.

The No Choke Points coalition says the fees—which have been a contentious point between the haves and have-nots for years--are stifling capex outlays and sidetracking the Obama administration’s goal of expanding broadband across the United States. It also claims the access fees cost businesses and consumers some $10 billion a year and reap the telcos profit margins that exceed 100 percent.

Not so, says AT&T, which responded to the coalition’s statements with a broadside aimed squarely at Sprint and its continuing struggle to make sense of its merger with Nextel. AT&T said the company’s appeal to cap the special access fees was a “cynical attempt to obtain government-mandated reductions ... in order to alleviate some of the short-term financial and business pressures."

AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Embarq and Windstream contend that a cap on access fees would deter other companies from building out their own Internet connections, thus hamstringing deployment further. A USTelecom statement says the coalition is looking to “minimize their own investment in U.S. broadband.”

The "No Choke Points" coalition's members also include Clearwire, tw telecom, Cbeyond, Covad Communications, Group One Communications and XO Communications.

For more:
- see this Wall Street Journal article

Related articles
Broadband stimulus package restarts special access rates fight    
Economic stimulus package: $6 billion for broadband
Martin folds; FCC telecom overhaul vote delayed

As anticipated, Verizon launched a pair of news channels in northern New Jersey and on Long Island exclusively for its FiOS subscribers that will deliver local news, weather and traffic reports.

On Long Island, Verizon’s new offering--FiOS 1--will face stiff competition from Cablevision, which has offered 24-hour news coverage since 1986 and now has a dozen news, weather and traffic channels. Cablevision has 3.1 million subscribers in the metro area, compared to Verizon’s 2.2 million FiOS customers in 14 states.

Cablevision downplayed the impact Verizon’s news channels would have, saying:  “We don't believe a phone company news channel will be in any way comparable to the authoritative information available from News 12 and News 12 Traffic & Weather."

Meanwhile, critics already are saying the news channel isn't any different than other news programs in the metro area, despite Verizon's pitch that it would be hyperlocal and "a little more fresh and a little more accurate than our competitors."  Monday's debut featured a host of stories that had been reported on in other media on Sunday.

For more:
- see this New York Daily News article
- see this Newsday article

Related article
Verizon local channel expected in New York

Nortel Networks shareholders may be taking a bath as the company aggressively pursues a breakup plan and the stock goes into the black hole of having its trading suspended on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but they’ve got company. Two former execs--ex-CEO Frank Dunn and ex-CFO Doug Beatty, who were both fired in 2004--are scrambling to cover some of the cash they’re spending to defend themselves against accounting fraud allegations. Nortel's insurer has balked at paying the two execs multi-million dollar legal bills.

For more:
- see this Toronto Star article

Related articles
Three former Nortel execs charged with fraud 
SEC hounds former Nortel execs

Verizon today fired a shot across the bow of its cable competitors, bumping the speed of its entry-level FiOS from 10/2 Mbps to 15/5 Mbps. The download/upload speed increase is most notable for the increase in its upload speed, a move cable companies will have a tough time matching because of upstream spectrum limits, GigaOm reports.

With the increase in consumer demand for video uploads and the increased use of online backup storage, the two-way bump in speed may be a harbinger of the future. Not only has Verizon increased its entry-level offerings, but also its mid-tier product from 20/5 Mbps to 25/15 Mbps. According to a Verizon blog, customers in some areas of New York will see 35/20 Mbps offerings.

For more:
- see this GigaOm article
- and this Verizon blog

Related articles
AT&T pushes for 100% broadband by 2014  
FCC to tackle national broadband plan    
The FCC opened public discussion on national broadband plans in April

The bandwidth glut of earlier in this decade increasingly has been forced into the shadows by growing bandwidth demand and anticipated future demand. The trans-Atlantic submarine cable bandwidth sector, despite being one of the instigators and victims of the previous glut, is now facing a growing need for more capacity, according to TeleGeography, which closely follows the undersea cable market. TeleGeography's Global Bandwidth Forecast Service suggests bandwidth requirements will grow 33 percent between 2008 and 2015.

The trans-Pacific theater has been an active sector in recent years and months for new submarine cable projects, but with that projected growth rate, the trans-Atlantic capacity could run out by 2014. That sounds like a call to action for carrier consortia and other adventurous bandwidth investors. Who will answer the call?

For more:
- Here's the TeleGeography summary

Related articles
Carriers from China and Taiwan recently pursued a submarine cable venture
The Asia-Pacific Gateway is another recent cable project in the Pacific

If you feel like you have been hearing a lot about next-generation wireless network technology LTE, your senses are not deceiving you. ABI Research said recently that as many as a dozen wireless operators around the world (at least three in the U.S.) will be launching LTE during 2010. And with the jump to another "G" in the wireless world, the wireline network operators who provide most of the backhaul capacity are being put on notice: they need to make sure they can provide enough capacity to handle the bandwidth consumption enabled by LTE, but how much capacity they will need may be anyone's guess.

For the last couple weeks, FierceMarkets has been conducting a webinar series, "The Business of Backhaul," exploring issues such as the new backhaul business case and the role of alternative carriers in the market. (You can now listen to the first two webinars in our series on-demand, and the third and final episode, "Battling BYOB: Build Your Own Backhaul" will be presented live this Thursday.) During our second episode, "Enter the competition," Gary George, president of IP Networks, Inc., noted that the backhaul demand created by LTE could be anywhere from 300 Mbps to 1 Gbps per cell site.

That's a definite elevation from current requirements, but also an extremely broad range. It's simply not clear yet what the eventual effect of nascent applications such as mobile TV and video will be, or how a new generation of post-iPhone devices and trends toward open networks could influence matters.

The backhaul providers can't wait to let all the variables play out. Their capacity is key to the success of wireless carriers pursuing LTE, and while there currently are many different technologies and different ways of enabling the right backhaul links, the most important theme in the future may not necessarily be sheer capacity itself, but flexibility. They need to provide backhaul flexibility to wireless carriers, and their own networks need to be flexible enough to adapt to changing needs. That, in turn, means that IP will be important, and that wireline carriers participating in the backhaul market also do need to see it as a core business.

There is still time to adapt to the changing backhaul scenario, but the hour is getting LTE.

-Dan

For more:
- FierceWireless has more about ABI's forecast

Related articles
SK telecom last month pursued a wireline acquisition for its backhaul needs
The backhaul business is increasingly important to traditional telcos

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission, acting on the urging of a consumer advocate and a competitor who questioned the benefits of Frontier Communications' planned acquisition of Verizon rural lines, has suspended its approval of the deal. The Ohio Consumers Counsel raised objections to the deal last month, though the OCC has said it just wants the Ohio PUC to ensure the deal is in the public's best interests. Would-be competitor Cincinnati Bell Extended Territories also filed comments with the PUC.

The deal may yet be subjected to numerous public hearings that could take quite some time. Verizon is against taking the route--the company probably remembers all too well that it took well over a year complete a sale of its rural lines in New England to FairPoint Communications while that deal was heavily scrutinized in public hearings in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The FairPoint deal eventually went through, and has produced a sizable amount of controversy and customer disappointment ever since.

For more:
- The Ironton Tribune has this story

Related article
The Frontier-Verizon deal was announced last month

Verizon Communications more than a year ago was denied forbearance from wholesale pricing regulation in six Eastern U.S. markets, but the company looks to be getting a second chance with its forbearance petition after a federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission must reconsider the company's request for rate flexibility.

The ruling comes as the FCC has been trying to seek changes in the forbearance process after the process itself and forbearance petition outcomes were heavily criticized last year. Those changes may need Congressional approval. Verizon had pursued the court appeal after the FCC's original denial of its petition.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this story

Related article
Whatever happened to the bill blocking automatic forbearance approvals?

Nortel Networks, following the announcement Friday that it will sell its CDMA and LTE unit to Nokia Siemens Networks for $650 million, confirmed this weekend that it is seeking to sell other units as part of a corporate break-up plan, rather than attempt to emerging from bankruptcy protection as a going concern. Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski is quoted in the Financial Times as saying that this was not Nortel's original intention, but that the company now "lacked the scale to compete" against the mega-vendors of today, NSN being just one example.

Zafirovski painted a picture of a company that was unable to close acquisition opportunities that might have propelled it into that larger class of vendors, and thus was hit especially hard when many carriers cut spending last year. Remaining Nortel businesses, including the wireline-side, enterprise-focused operations, metro Ethernet networking operations and its LG Nortel joint venture, will be sold and already have drawn several potential buyers.

There likely will be further details coming later this week on Nortel's plans, but it appears the days of the storied firm are growing short. We encourage Nortel employees and former employees to post their thoughts about the company in our comment section.

For more:
- The Financial Times has this story

Related articles
The re-beginning of big may have spelled the end of Nortel
A last-minute creative bid to save Nortel may have fizzled

J.D. Power and Associates has released the results of its 2009 Major Provider Business Telecommunications Study, which sized up business data services from major telecom services providers. Verizon Business won the large enterprise business segment, while Cablevision Systems' Optimum Business scored highest in two sectors--home-based businesses and small/midsize business customers.

The results, based on 4,252 responses to a survey that took place between January and April of this year, also shows that customer satisfaction improved overall in these business segments during 2008, while the incidents of customer problems generally declined, J.D. Power said.

Time Warner Cable finished second to Verizon in the large enterprise arena; Cox Communications and Embarq followed Optimum in the home-base business market; and Cox and AT&T came in second and third, respectively in the SMB sector.

For more:
- Here's the J.D. Power press release

Related article
A J.D. Power survey last fall highlighted landline decline

Independent telco Embarq, which is in the process of being acquired by CenturyTel, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government claiming the company is owed $31.6 million in mistakenly-paid income taxes. Those payments occurred quite a while ago, between 1990 and 1994, and apparently happened when Embarq (then Sprint Local) recorded Universal Service Fund payments as taxable income. The company now argues that shouldn't have been the case because the USF payments were "non-shareholder contributions to capital," according to the Kansas City Star. The Internal Revenue Service already has denied Embarq's request for payback.

For more:
- The Kansas City Star has this story

Related article
Embarq and CenturyTel are set to become CenturyLink

The Senate Commerce Committee approved the nominations of Julius Genachowski as Federal Communications Commission Chairman and Robert McDowell as Republican FCC Commissioner, forwarding both nominees to the full U.S. Senate for confirmation. The Genachowski nomination moved very quickly this week through commitee hearings after it appeared recently it might take longer. Some reports now suggests that Genachowski could head to work at the FCC as early as sometime next week.

For more:
- BroadbandCensus has this post

Related article
Genachowski was nominated as FCC Chairman in March

There has been rampant speculation in recent days that Google Voice was going to become widely available this week. That hasn't happened yet, but Google Voice (formerly Grand Central until its was renamed in March) may be closing in on that major expansion, as a report circulates that Google recently reserved as many as 1 million phone numbers with Level 3 Communications. Level 3 has supplied the company with numbers previously, but the free service has been available only to previous Grand Central customers.

For more:
- Network World has this story

Related article
Grand Central became Google Voice in March