Ed Sutherland

AT&T didn’t lose any time flexing its new muscle as the largest carrier. Soon after wrapping up its merger with BellSouth, AT&T is pitching mobile subscribers on a free calling plan to its landline customers. The company said the new “AT&T Unity” calling plan, slated to begin Sunday, allows AT&T Unity customers to call or […]

Just a day after announcing new monitoring software, MySpace and its parent company News Corp. were sued for fraud and negligence by four families who say their teen daughters were assaulted by adult members of the social-networking site. In individual lawsuits filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South […]

If you’ve recently shopped at T.J. Maxx with a credit card, check your statements. Hackers took an unwelcome shopping excursion through the credit card information of the retail giant. T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Winners and Home Sense stores in Canada, as well as T.K. Maxx […]

Social-networking giant MySpace plans to offer free software enabling parents to keep tabs on their children’s online identities. Code-named Zephyr, the software tracks the name, age and location that children are using on MySpace. It also tracks and stores any changes to the data. The information Zephyr provides is already available to anyone online, but […]

A week after Apple sucked all the oxygen from CES with its iPhone, Research in Motion (RIM) unveiled a white version of its Pearl BlackBerry, complete with lower price. Along with a white or black exterior, the new Pearl sports a deeper discount: $150 compared to $199 when it launched in September. The Pearl was […]

Barely a week goes by these days without news of laptops stolen or lost, and loaded with data that can expose employees, consumers or patients to identity theft. For companies involved, data breaches harm more than a corporate image. They impact the bottom line. According to research from the Ponemon Institute, a research firm focusing […]

Verizon Communications said today it will spin off 1.5 million wireline accounts in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, merging the business with rural telecom provider FairPoint Communications . The agreement frees Verizon to focus on broadband and provides $1.7 billion to pare the carrier’s debt. Charlotte, N.C.-based FairPoint gains 600,000 long-distance customers and 180,000 DSL […]

Sprint Nextel’s  recent troubles could serve as a lesson — both good and bad — for other wireless carriers, including newly-combined AT&T and Cingular wireless. Unlike AT&T’s merger with Cingular , the Sprint-Nextel marriage faced an awkward merger of consumer and business subscribers and two different network technologies. After announcing a slide of more than […]

Did Apple CEO Steve Jobs profit from a backdated stock option grant? Federal investigators reportedly want to ask former Apple executives about a 2001 grant that may have been improperly dated. According to the Wall Street Journal, the investigation centers on a grant for 7.5 million options awarded to Jobs. Apple took a $20 million […]

A Colorado private investigator faces federal identity theft charges for his part in last year’s Hewlett-Packard boardroom spy scandal. The two-count indictment charges Bryan Wagner with using a journalist’s Social Security number to illegally access phone records. U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said that Wagner established Yahoo and Hotmail accounts in order to obtain the online […]

UPDATED: Despite its gorgeous display and addictive appeal, Apple’s iPhone isn’t an instant home run just yet. For starters, there’s the name problem. Cisco Systems  filed suit against Apple in the Northern District of California today, seeking an injunction against Apple using Cisco’s iPhone trademark with its latest product. Cisco said it obtained the iPhone […]

Internet phone company Vonage  inked a three-year agreement with EarthLink , allowing the Internet access provider to offer Wi-Fi access to customers served by municipal wireless networks. Vonage said later this year it will provide customers in EarthLink areas wireless modems as an alternative to DSL or cable Internet. Vonage also said its Wi-Fi phone […]