Jim Wagner

Verizon Communications comes out of its first full year as a merged company with a mixed report card, expanding its next-generation services successfully while cutting the fat from money-losing operations and dealing with the afteraffects of 9-11. Executives at the nation’s largest incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), formed through the merger of GTE and Bell […]

Development of the extensible business extensible markup language (ebXML) continues as a consortium of businesses release Wednesday updated specifications to the ebXML Registry Services Specification and ebXML Registry Information Model. The OASIS registry technical committee, one of three standards bodies, has already signaled their acceptance of the new specifications; it will now go to the […]

The U.S. is getting ready for the big push of next-generation of wireless digital phone deployments this year, and not surprisingly, the inevitable marketing push by wireless carriers has many scratching their heads over what these new phones will actually do. 3G, which promises to free folks from the shackles of PC dependency, will supposedly […]

While top-ranked competitors Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless show signs of flagging sales, third-ranked AT&T Wireless announced Tuesday gains in new subscribers, which in turn pushed a revenue increase of 30 percent. All told, through partnerships and affiliates, AT&T Wireless has 20.8 million wireless phone users. With 927,000 new subscribers in the fourth quarter of […]

Qwest Communications , the Baby Bell serving much of the Rocky Mountain region and surrounding states, took a $750 million hit in the fourth quarter as executives continued with their ambitious restructuring plan, officials announced Tuesday. Officials don’t expect their fortunes to reverse in the first quarter of 2002, either, as seasonality issues tend to […]

Long Island, N.Y.-based Cablevision Systems Corp. , still in the middle of restructuring its operations, announced Monday strong broadband Internet services growth while continuing to cut down on expenses. That’s good news for the seventh-largest cable network in the nation, which despite garnering 507,000 high-speed customers (which officials say makes them the fastest-growing cable Internet […]

BellSouth , one of the four incumbent local telephone companies in the nation, rolled out its data backup and restoration service to businesses, officials announced Monday. The critical service is a result of the events of 9-11 when BellSouth’s peer, Verizon Communications, found itself in the midst of one of the largest data recovery dilemmas […]

Global Crossing , a worldwide voice and data carrier for telecommunications companies around the world, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday morning, officials announced. Operations will continue as normal, thanks to a $750 million cash investment from two firms, Hutchison Whampoa Limited and Singapore Technologies Telmedia Pte, Ltd., which should go a long way […]

[Author’s Note: The following exchange is fiction. Any similarities to cable executives, living or dead, are purely coincidental.] Cable Executive #1: Man, it stinks that @Home is getting profits for ISP service on our cable network. Cable Executive #2: I know, let’s get out of our contracts and start up our own ISP service! Cable […]

Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, has been quietly adding cable networks to his personal portfolio of investments. An amended 10Q filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Cox Communications Inc. officials recently shows Gates bought 5.4 million shares last October through his non-profit organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. […]

3Com (NYSE:COMS) is broadening its appeal to businesses interested in 802.11b, or wireless local area networks (WLANs), at the workplace with the introduction Thursday of two new wireless hubs. Introduced at 3Com North America Focus Partner Conference in Las Vegas, the 11Mbps WLAN Access Point 2000 and Access Point 8000 promise to extend the hubs […]

VeriSign, Inc. , executives claimed 2001, the year that marked the start of a long and protracted recession, a success despite the fact it lost nearly a half-billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2001. A net loss of $401 million for the quarter is actually less than what many analysts expected. Last year at […]