Maura Ginty

Cutting the red ribbon for bandwidth commodity trading, high-bandwidth application service company Enron Communications Inc. Friday officially introduced its new approach to bandwidth. “This is ‘Day One’ of a potentially enormous market,” said Jeff Skilling, Enron president and chief operating officer. He compared the present inflexible agreements for pre-set capacity amounts to pre-reform “oil contracts […]

European online auction player QXL.com PLC Friday signed a deal with Excite for co-branded auctions. The new joint sites will incorporate bids from the the regional (QXLC) sites in UK, France, Germany and Italy. Excite users will be able to bid on items using a co-branded page or from the Excite auction section. Product search, […]

Freeserve PLC and BT Cellnet Thursday joined hands and leapt into the deep end of the wireless pool. The two companies will develop wireless Internet services with support from BT Cellnet-owned mobile ISP and portal Genie Internet, according to several published reports. SMS transmissions will the first service to become available through the alliance, with […]

As each and every portal player makes its mad dash for wireless, Lycos Inc. and Ericsson Thursday formed a partnership to offer Lycos content on Ericsson’s devices. Lycos (LCOS), which currently tallies about 30 million users per month, will use Ericsson’s mobile infrastructure and handsets. The two companies will coordinate a joint marketing push to […]

E-tail leader Amazon.com Wednesday added luxury goods to its ever-expanding list of online offerings through a $10 million deal with Ashford.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon (AMZN) will receive a 16.6 percent stake in Ashford.com (ASFD) for the investment, and will run the marketing on the Amazon.com site through next year’s holiday season. […]

America Online Inc. Wednesday made a major investment in its wireless strategy, purchasing wireless data solution player Tegic Communications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. AOL (AOL) will use the acquisition of the to offer e-mail and to develop Internet messaging solutions through mobile phones and wireless devices, all under its “AOL Anywhere” strategy. […]

In another David-versus-Goliath court battle, a Virginia judge set another precedent for small companies by favoring Virtual Works’ domain name registration over the Volkswagon trademark. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton last week refused to grant an injuction to Volkswagen that would force Internet company Virtual Works from using the vw.net domain address. The judge found […]

In a major play for the Indian portal market, Satyam Infoway Ltd. Monday inked an agreement to buy IndiaWorld Communications Private Ltd. for Rs. 4.9 billion (US$115 million). The two-step purchase intends to meld the Web site network of IndiaWorld with the Satyam Online portal and e-commerce services. IndiaWorld’s network includes news site Samachar, the […]

E*TRADE Group Inc. Monday broke into unchartered territory for the global brokerage player, becoming one of the first big-name online trading services to enter Africa. E*TRADE announced a joint venture deal with E-data Holdings Ltd. to establish E*TRADE Africa. E*TRADE will control the majority interest of the company, which will be capitalized with $15 million. […]

Swedish telco Bredbandsbolaget (B2) has teamed with Cisco Systems Inc. to bring high-speed Internet access and other services to the region. The two companies will co-develop, market and manage broadband services targeting home users They also plan to “exploit the potential of broadband in the home” throughout Europe as well. By starting in Sweden, Cisco […]

China.com Corp. Wednesday again hit the expansion trail, forming a joint venture and purchasing three companies to extend the company’s post-WTO reach within Asia. The business-to-business e-commerce joint venture, to be called Beijing Digital Ark, was created with Chinese Internet pioneer Jay Tian. The venture will focus on developing e-commerce and data management technologies and […]

Global TeleSystems Group Inc. Tuesday unveiled plans to develop city enterprise networks in six of Europe’s major metropolitan areas. The CENs will be added to the GTS backbone to add services in Frankfurt, London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Madrid and Stockholm. They are expected to be operational by the middle of next year. In the initial build, […]