Labor Contracts at AT&T with Expire with its Major Union

Contracts covering nearly 100,000 AT&T workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) expired at midnight on April 5, 2009. No agreement has been announced by the parties and the CWA noted that many important issues -- including employment security and health care -- have not been resolved. For now, the CWA is calling for employees to continue to report to work, although it is the option to strike open. CWA members at AT&T operations voted by an 88 percent yes vote to authorize a strike if a fair contract isn't reached....

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Exar Completes Hifn Acquisition

Exar closed the previously announced acquisition of hi/fn. Al Sisto, the former chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors of Hifn, has joined Exar's board of directors. It is expected that Hifn's personnel and operations will be relocated during the second calendar quarter of 2009.Hifn (NASDAQ: HIFN), which is based in Los Gatos, California, supplies a line of Applied Services Processors (ASPs) to network OEMs. Exar (Nasdaq:...

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Frontier Prices Offering of $600 Million of Its Senior Notes

Frontier Communications, a full-service communications provider and one of the largest local exchange telephone companies in the U.S., priced a registered offering of $600 million aggregate principal amount of 8.25% senior unsecured notes due 2014. The issue price is 91.805% of the principal amount of the notes. Frontier will receive net proceeds of approximately $538 million from the offering after deducting underwriting discounts and estimated offering expenses. Frontier intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to reduce, repurchase...

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JDSU Appoints Dave Holly to Head Test and Measurement Business

Dave Holly has been appointed president of JDSU's Communications Test & Measurement business segment, succeeding Tom Waechter, who was named JDSU president and Chief Executive Officer earlier this year. Holly has been serving as interim leader of the test and measurement business since January 1, 2009 and will be responsible for global sales, product development and operations. He will report directly to Waechter.Prior to JDSU he had managerial sales responsibilities at NYNEX (now part of Verizon) and began his career in engineering at IBM....

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CableLabs Offers Tru2way Reference Platform

CableLabs plans to release a source code reference implementation of its tru2way specifications that will accelerate the development and deployment of tru2way devices and applications. The "tru2way" brand, which replaced the term "OpenCable Platform," enables consumers to access two-way digital cable programming without the need for a cable operator-supplied set-top box and is capable of supporting all cable services now delivered to devices currently...

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IBM + Sun Deal Called Off

The expected acquisition of Sun MicroSystems by IBM was called off after Sun's Board of Directors rejected the latest offer and IBM dropped its bid. http://www.ibm.com http://www.sun....

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U.S. EPA Conducts National Cell Phone Recycling Week

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) is conducting a National Cell Phone Recycling Week, which runs April 6-12. The project brings together leading cell phone manufacturers and service providers to encourage consumers to recycle used cell phones, Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), cell phone batteries, chargers and other accessories -- and to reduce the amount of reusable materials in landfills, especially e-waste. According to the EPA, more than 100 million cell phones are discarded annually; and, in 2007, only 10 percent were recycled....

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Singapore Selects StarHub as Operator for Next Gen Broadband Network

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has selected StarHub to serve as the Operating Company (OpCo) under the Next Generation National Broadband Network. Four proposals were considered: Intellinet (Axia + Cisco), Kliq (M1), 1NNOV8 (Singtel) and Nucleus Connect (StarHub). Last year, the OpenNet consortium backed by SingTel was selected to serve as the Network Company (NetCo) of the Next Gen National Broadband Network.Under the NBN...

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