Thor Olavsrud

AT&T Broadband Tuesday moved to divest itself of cable systems in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri for about $2.22 billion in cash while parent company AT&T struck a deal to sell its 10 percent stake in Japan Telecom Co. Ltd. for $1.35 billion in cash. Mediacom Communications Corp. will become the eighth-largest cable company in […]

Nokia Inc. Monday unveiled the latest version of its WAP developers toolkit complete with a new mobile phone simulator. The free software tool, Nokia WAP Toolkit 2.1, allows developers to write, test and de-bug WAP applications without actually having a handset or access to carrier infrastructure. The simulator — for WAP-enabled Nokia 6200 and 7100 […]

Following through on a cost-cutting initiative unveiled in December, Santa Clara, Calif.-based 3Com Corp. Monday slashed 1,200 jobs, about 10 percent of its workforce. The network-equipment maker said the lay-offs will take place across-the-board, affecting both full-time regular employees and the alternative work force. “In light of the U.S. economic downturn and turmoil in the […]

In the wake of a long-running, unsuccessful search for new capital, eToys Inc. Monday said it plans to file for bankruptcy protection in the next five to 10 days. The company said its has enough cash to maintain operations through March 31 at the latest. eToys said it expects to close the eToys.com Web site […]

Sometimes it seems a week can’t go by without another security flaw turning up in Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook and Outlook Express (OE) e-mail clients. This week is no exception. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker Friday warned of a flawed OE component for processing vCards, or virtual business cards. The component contains a buffer overrun caused […]

Microsoft Corp. has taken steps to sell its stake in Ottawa-based Corel Corp. in a move that may have been spurred by U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny. Corel filed an S-3 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday which would allow it to convert Microsoft’s 24 million Corel Series A shares into saleable common […]

Oasis, a not-for-profit consortium of companies backed by the United Nations, Thursday seemed to back off from its confrontational stance against the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and said it would support that group’s Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) standard. The move has important implications for e-business standards. The two groups have been at odds […]

A bankruptcy court in California has awarded data local exchange carrier (DLEC) Covad Communications the right to migrate all of the Covad-supplied customers of ailing ISP Flashcom DSL to other service providers, the company announced Thursday. Flashcom filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 8, and it is the largest of Covad’s “distressed ISP” customers. In […]

VeriSign Inc. made a heavy play for the wireless space Wednesday at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France. The infrastructure services provider unveiled its new wireless payment services platform and also announced deals to provide digital certificate technology for phones made by both Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo Inc. The new wireless payment services include […]

Deutsche Bank Group unit Deutsche Financial Services (DFS) Thursday sealed a deal to co-brand New York-based Juno Online Services Inc.’s premium and broadband Internet access services to offer to its customers. DFS said the program is intended to drive usage of its Web-based e-commerce programs. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but DFS […]

Police in the Netherlands Wednesday arrested the man who claimed to have authored the Onthefly worm, also known as the Anna Kournikova virus. The 20-year-old man, whose identity is protected under Dutch privacy laws, turned himself in to police in the northern town of Sneek after allegedly posting a letter on the Web Tuesday claiming […]

While others in the DSL market are crashing and burning, San Antonio, Texas-based SBC Communications Inc. has been aggressively growing that side of its business. On Jan. 19, the Baby Bell, which now has footholds across most of the U.S., strengthened its ties with Prodigy Communications Corp. — of which it is a majority stakeholder […]