Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell Joins Providence Equity Partners

Providence Equity Partners, a private venture capital firm, has hired Michael K. Powell, former Chairman of the FCC, as a senior advisor. He will advise the firm on technology and regulatory issues in the media, communications and information industries, on selected new investment opportunities, and on certain of the firm's existing investments. The firm said Powell has chosen to affiliate exclusively with Providence Equity Partners in the private equity field. Michael K. Powell spent over seven years as an FCC Commissioner, and was Chairman of...

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Qwest Continues to Negotiate with Union

Talks between Qwest Communications and the Communications Workers of America continued over the weekend. The current labor contract expired on Sunday morning. CWA represents Qwest workers in 13 states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. http://www.cwa-union.org/http://www.qwest....

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Blockbuster Cites Movie Rental Malaise

Shares in Blockbuster tumbled last week to historic lows after the company reported that its Q2 revenue decreased 1.6% to $1.40 billion from $1.42 billion for the second quarter of 2004. Net loss for the second quarter of 2005 totaled $57.2 million, or $0.31 per share.Blockbuster said its new online movie rental business is starting to show results, but that it is feeling "the impact of the declining store-based video rental industry."http://www.blockbuster....

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Agilent to Sell Chip Division

Agilent Technologies has reached a deal to sell its semiconductor division to an investor group led by Silver Lake Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, according to various media reports. An announcement is expected on Monday, following the release of the company's quarterly results.http://www.agilent....

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FCC Vows No Tolerance for USF Violations

The FCC issued $1.5 million in fines to two telecom carriers for apparent violations to of the Universal Service Fund (USF) and regulatory fee rules. In a statement, the FCC said it was demonstrating a "no tolerance policy for any carrier that fails to pay its required USF and other regulatory obligations. Apparent violations like these distort the marketplace by causing carriers in compliance with the requirements to carry a disproportionate share of the costs of funding these programs and frustrate the purposes for which Congress and the Commission...

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Sprint Nextel Completes Merger

Sprint and Nextel Communications completed their merger, creating a larger company with extensive nationwide spectrum, more than 44 million wireless subscribers with the highest ARPU in the U.S. On a "pro forma" basis, Sprint Nextel reported revenues of $40.8 billion for the year ending December 31, 2004. The combined company has approximately 80,000 employees with its corporate headquarters in Reston, Virginia, and its operational headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas.Gary Forsee is the president and chief executive officer of Sprint Nextel...

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Sony Ericsson Releases Walkman Phones in North America

Sony Ericsson announced the release of its first Walkman phone in North America. The new W800 combines a Bluetooth-enabled GSM phone with a digital music player, an FM radio and a two-megapixel auto-focus camera with an active lens cover. It ships with a 512 MB Memory Stick PRO Duo, allowing it to hold approximately 125 music tracks, or 10-12 full length CDs, from an existing music collection. The device is compatible with MP3 and AAC formats...

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TIA Lobbies for Federal Funding for Telecom R&D

the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) will establish a sixth division whose sole focus is increasing federal funding for communications technology research. In 2004, the association convened a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Council to advocate for increased federal funding for communications-related basic research in the face of sustained reductions in industry research spending and an intensely competitive global environment. Participation in the CTO Council has grown to nearly 30 TIA member company CTOs and senior research executives,...

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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to Offer 6 Mbps Link

NASA successfully launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 12 on a mission to provide a high-resolution survey of the planet. The spacecraft is designed to transmit data to Earth at rates as high as 6 Mbps -- ten times higher than previous Mars orbiters -- from a distance of 100 million kilometers (62 million miles). NASA expects the Orbiter to transmit more than 34 Terabytes of data over its two-year primary science mission. The orbiter's radio operates in the X-band of the radio spectrum, at a frequency of around 8 Gigahertz. The...

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Siemens Invests in Dune Networks for Scalable Switching Fabric

Siemens Venture Capital has made an equity investment in Dune Networks, a developer of traffic management and scalable switching fabrics. Financial terms were not disclosed.Dune Networks, which is based in Sunnyvale, California with R&D in Israel, offers a Scalable Architecture for Networking Devices (SAND) chipset provides a non-blocking switching fabric, ingress/egress traffic management and scheduling. The design allows equipment to scale in terms of port rates, port densities and service types, without requiring changes to the core switching...

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Nokia Powers Vodafone New Zealand's 3G Network

Vodafone New Zealand is launching 3G enabled services. In May 2004, Vodafone announced that it had chosen Nokia to supply its 3G network infrastructure to Vodafone Australia and Vodafone New Zealand. Nokia is providing the complete 3G core and radio networks, supplying, deploying and testing the equipment in the field. Nokia is also providing 3G network management, monitoring and maintenance services in an arrangement known as Managed Services.http://www.nokia....

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Effnet Licenses IP Header Compression to Qualcomm

Effnet has licensed its IP Header Compression software to QUALCOMM for future integration into select chipsets for CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and WCDMA (UMTS) products. The Effnet Header Compression software helps provide efficient delivery of Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services over CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and WCDMA networks. http://www.effnet....

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Siemens Foresees Transport Capacity Gains Enabled by GMPLS

Siemens predicts that future transport networks will be able to transfer up to 30% more data than at present simply through better capacity utilization enabled by GMPLS. The increased efficiency of transport networks is possible thanks to intelligent software, which utilizes possible synergies in the installation of standby capacities to create a safety buffer against supply system outages. This enable operators to use network capacity to a greater extent with the same costs,.Software being developed by Siemens uses GMPLS protocols to enable individual...

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