Colin C. Haley

BOSTON — SBC is taking a pragmatic approach to fiber deployments ahead of its IPTV rollout, an SBC executive said at Yankee Group’s IPTV Decision Summit here today. Jeff Weber, vice president of the San Antonio telecom’s Project Lightspeed fiber program, said it’s inaccurate to say SBC is using fiber-to-the-node architecture exclusively over fiber-to-the-home . […]

Police officers use dash-mounted laptops in cruisers to access criminal databases. But what if they’re patrolling on foot, bike or horse? A telecom giant and a mobile software specialist think they have the answer. Cingular and BIO-key International have launched a service that lets officials check vehicle information, stolen vehicle reports, weapon registrations and outstanding […]

Building on a 15-year relationship, Nortel Networks will supply new Voice over IP equipment to the United Kingdom’s largest telecom carrier. BT has placed an open-ended order for Nortel Communications Server 2000 (CS 2000), a softswitch that will allow the British carrier to offer hosted VoIP services to large businesses and government agencies. The CS […]

NetContinuum is readying a new network appliance to help corporate and government IT managers deliver Web applications faster and more securely. The NC-2000 Application Security Gateway is powered by the company’s multiprocessing software and AMD’s new dual-core Opteron processors. The product consolidates firewalling, caching, compression, load balancing, traffic switching, SSL acceleration and logging technology into […]

Old soldiers never die, they just become….VCs? Some did a double-take when former Secretary of State and retired four-star general Colin Powell became the newest partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB). But if the transition from military leader to IT investor seems unlikely, consider Brigadier Gen. Georges F. Doriot. The […]

A bill that would accelerate SBC and Verizon rollouts of TV-over-fiber service has new life in the Texas Legislature. The telecom carriers thought the measure was dead when lawmakers adjourned May 31. But Gov. Rick Perry recalled legislators to address school financing and property tax issues. In Austin, the Senate this week passed telecom legislation […]

XM Satellite Radio has bought WCS Wireless for about $200 million in stock to increase its bandwidth and coverage in major cities. WCS Wireless owns spectrum in 15 of the top 20 metropolitan markets in the United States, an area containing 163 million people. On average, the privately held firm’s licenses include 10 megahertz in […]

Qualcomm is returning fire in an escalating legal battle with Broadcom . The San Diego company today said it filed a federal lawsuit against its Irvine, Calif., rival alleging infringement of seven patents: six relate to semiconductors used in GSM handsets, one concerns chips used in Wi-Fi devices. Qualcomm, which recently celebrated its 20th year […]

Comcast is increasing residential broadband speeds again, the cable giant’s latest move in its ongoing battle with DSL providers. For high-speed customers who eschew Comcast cable TV service, upgrading to downstream speeds of 6Mbps or 8Mbps will cost $10 and $20 more per month, respectively. Those subscribers who also take cable TV service will be […]

IBM , unconvinced that the broadband battle will boil down to cable, DSL or fiber, is teaming with a Texas energy company on two Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) initiatives. Big Blue and CenterPoint Energy have opened a BPL center in Houston to test the high-speed technology, appealing because the power grid already blankets the […]

To better compete with Research In Motion’s BlackBerry offering, Good Technology has inked a deal to sell its wireless e-mail service directly to Sprint business customers. Previously, the service, which also provides two-way wireless synchronization of contact lists, calendars, notes and tasks programs, was only available through third-party providers. The new agreement between the Santa […]

UPDATED: Sprint will pay $1.3 billion in cash for wireless reseller U.S. Unwired , a move that erases a legal challenge to Sprint’s pending merger with Nextel . This morning’s announcement comes just four days before attorneys for Sprint and US Unwired were scheduled to appear in a federal court in Louisiana. Last month, US […]