Any service providers that have not already been awarded funding for infrastructure projects from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration apparently are out of luck. The NTIA yesterday issued its final awards under the broadband stimulus program, and although the agency made 70 awards totaling nearly $400 million, only two of these were for infrastructure projects–and both of those were for public safety networks.
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Archive for the ‘All Stories’ Category
Sandwich Isles Communications could go bankrupt if USF payments are not reinstated
Sandwich Isles Communications, a small telco that has received a huge amount of funding from the Universal Service high-cost program, may be poised to go into bankruptcy, the Hawaii Free Press reported.
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High-bidder Huawei loses out twice on US acquisition deals
Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies has shaken up the global telecom market with its ability to underbid competitors. But it recently lost two acquisition bids in which it had submitted significantly higher bids due to concerns about it’s ability to score U.S. government approval of the acquisitions, according to Bloomberg.com. One of the two deals went to a rival when Nokia Siemens Networks purchased Motorola’s wireless assets for $1.2 billion. (more…)
Springing a leak: Mobile data grows as revenue lags
Some hard numbers today to back up a trend we’ll be talking about more throughout this fall: the paradox that even as mobile data usage surges, revenue from those services is not keeping pace. It’s a conundrum that is putting mobile operators in a very tough position and leading to experimentation with data caps and other types of concepts. (more…)
AT&T shrinking DSL prices to stem shrinking subscriber base
With AT&T (and other carriers) bleeding DSL customers, it’s not surprising to see some pricing incentives coming into play. In its quarterly earnings report last week, AT&T said it had dropped 347,000 DSL customers in the quarter. Could lower prices stem the tide? (more…)
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile eye turning smartphones into credit cards
In their most aggressive mobile payments move yet, three mobile operators are reportedly ready to launch broad trials that would let consumers use their smart phones to charge purchases. The report from Bloomberg said the trials would include Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile and could represent the biggest threat yet to the established credit card industry. (more…)
Genband taps Procera to fill in DPI hole
Continuing to expand its end-to-end IP portfolio, Genband this week tapped Procera Networks as a partner to add deep packet inspection (DPI) platform capabilities. Genband will OEM Procera’s PacketLogic platform as the Genband P Series, in line with the vendor’s product naming schemes. To add some additional weight behind the partnership, Genband CEO Charlie Vogt agreed to join the Procera Board. (more…)
Redknee powers pre-paid ‘top-ups’ – fifty cents at a time
The announcement today that Redknee would help revamp Armenian operator Vivacell’s top-up capabilities caught my eye, as I’ve heard complaints locally from migrant workers on farms that finding scratch-off cards is increasingly difficult in small towns like that in which I live. There’s a large demographic of people in Central New York that don’t want to be locked into expensive contracts, so they want pay-as-you-go options without “minimum” limits set by vouchers or scratch-off cards.
Smart (no longer all-you-can-eat) networks need smart apps
AT&T is taking tons of heat for ending its all-you-can-eat data plans, but as mobile operators embed more intelligence in the network to help deal with the data onslaught, app developers need to make their apps smarter, too. Their first reaction, that the golden goose has been killed, is understandable. There’s a lot at stake. According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, developers have made more than $1 billion from iPhone and iPad apps already. If new more limited, or expensive, data plans put a dent in those sales, that’s a big deal. (more…)
Chip vendors push Linux (and Android) toward mobile
Even open source advocates can smell an opportunity — and today, that opportunity is all things mobile. That land rush has led a group of chip-makers — including IBM, Samsung and Texas Instruments — to debut a new effort today, dubbed Linaro, to improve software Linux distribution used in consumer devices. Of particular interest to the group: TVs, tablets, smartphones and netbooks, a set of devices today dominated by commercial operating systems, including Windows, Symbian, BlackBerry and iPhone OS.
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