Filling the pipe
"Filling the pipe" is the tag line for this year's Fiber-to-the-Home Conference, being held this week in Orlando. With a decided focus on content, the show is focused on which services will drive consumers to make the most of their fiber broadband connections. So what are some of the things that will fill the pipe?...
The ‘Wal-Mart-ization’ of voice service
Will contacting your local and long-distance carrier (or even your cable or VoIP provider) for a voice service hook-up soon become a thing of the past? It could be, if the growing number of companies providing voice alternative products have any say...
Dark horse
On the down slope of the telecom bubble, as things started to look grim in the CLEC sector, the two names that kept coming up as likely survivors in that bloodbath were Allegiance Telecom and McLeodUSA...
AT&T and WiMAX
The latest little nugget of speculation circling the industry is that AT&T is about to launch WiMAX services in the near future, something I admit would be a distinct possibility, though the story would be a lot less exciting than it sounds...
Beachhead
Tellabs may have to keep going it alone for a while, according to UBS Investment Research...
Stay the course
There is no way anyone is going to step in and block the $2.7 billion sale of access lines between Verizon and FairPoint Communications. There is no reason to block it...
Copper and robbers
Copper theft is becoming epidemic. Embarq last month began offering a $5000 reward for information leading to the prosecution of copper cable thieves...
Be there
Cisco Systems is holding an analyst day tomorrow, a particular focus of which is expected to be its “telepresence” products for three-screen, high-definition videoconferencing (though the company would prefer you don’t call it that)...
The old new guy
Edward Mueller seemed to be having a good time during the conference call yesterday in which he was introduced as the new chief executive officer of Qwest Communications...
Ground floor
When people talk about “getting in on the ground floor” of something, they’re usually talking about a rare and rewarding opportunity, as if the ground floor wasn’t the same one used by everybody else forever afterward to enter the same plac...
No big dig at Qwest
In what seems likely to be his last earnings call as Qwest Communications’ chairman and CEO, Richard Notebaert didn’t pull any punches...
Nokia Siemens Naperville
During their second-quarter earnings conference call today, Tellabs executives understandably didn’t say much about recent rumors that the company is entertaining acquisition offers from Nokia Siemens Networks ...
Imagine Nations
In a panel discussion at the NXTComm trade show last month, Daryl Dunbar, director of British Telecom's 21st Century Network initiative, told the audience, “Imagine the BT experience in the U.S. or in Asia. You can envision a world where the consumer has a consistent experience regardless of what network they're on.” ...
Who’s complaining?
Reading the news this week that Sprint had discontinued service to customers who frequently called customer service, I couldn’t help but wonder what this augurs for the future...
Imagine unafraid
"Imagine the BT experience in the U.S. or in Asia," Daryl Dunbar, director of British Telecom's 21st Century Network initiative, told attendees of a panel discussion at the NXTcomm trade show last month...
NXTcomm, Day One
On the first day of NXTComm, it’s surprising to see how much activity there is among exhibitors at the show. In years past, vendors without new gear to tout at the industry’s big summer show might have trumpeted customer wins or future strategy directions. But this year, there’s a surprising amount of new products on the floor. It’s almost easier to name the vendors that aren’t unveiling new gear at the show (or shortly before it)....
The core router race
While describing Juniper Networks’ new core router this week, Shailesh Shukla, the vendor’s vice president of service provider marketing and partnerships, said two things to me that I can’t reconcile...
Table steaks
I remember vividly the time I had lunch with Alltel chief executive officer Scott Ford. It was in a small private dining room down the hall from his 12th-floor office in Little Rock. We were served heaping piles of barbecued meat impossible to eat in one sitting. It was September 2001. At the time, Alltel was trying to pressure another rural telco, CenturyTel, to merge with it. I was trying to eat and take notes at the same time....
Nortel ready to dance
When Alcatel and Lucent Technologies announced their betrothal a year ago, analysts and prognosticators began talking much more seriously about which vendors would best be paired with which in the pending consolidation crush...
Trust
The ongoing saga of antitrust litigation has been fascinating to me since I first wrote at length about the crusade in 2002. (Despite its age, that story is well worth reading if you haven’t yet; it’s like the thriller John Grisham would have written if, instead of becoming a lawyer, he’d have been a public utility commissioner.)...
