By any stretch of the imagination, 90% is considered a good number, with the obvious implication that 90% is WELL ON ITS WAY to 100%. For example, in Butte County, CA,. a series of fires started by lightning strikes are reportedly 90% contained. The upshot is that the fire department is [...]

Tom Keating writes today that Microsoft is now offering FREE unlimited installation and compatibility support for Windows Vista, including FREE phone support! Well, I might finally get up the courage to unwrap that copy of Vista that I got when I purchased my home office desktop last year. I wonder how much [...]

DSL currently dominates the global broadband access landscape with approximately 65% of the world's 370 million broadband subscribers. Fiber subscriptions are however growing rapidly, rising by 33% year over year to lay claim to approximately 10 million subscribers. The numbers come from a report prepared for the Broadband Forum by industry [...]

Tim Gray is reporting on the chatter that has Sprint as the target of a takeover - albeit a friendly takeover - at the hands of SK Telecom, South Korea's wireless giant. Yesterday, Leuven, Belgium-based InBev picked up Anheuser Busch for the thirst-quenching little sum of $52 billion. And last week word [...]

Here's a great concept... Use technology to help raise money for sick kids. This Sunday, the Washington Nationals and MLB.com will debut the use of "mobile giving" to benefit the creation of a Diabetes Care Complex for Children's National Medical Center.  Here's how it works: Fans can text the word "NATS" to [...]

According to the latest WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report from Maravedis, the global BWA/WiMAX subscriber base increased by 260,246 in the first quarter of 2008, reaching a total of 1,988,246 subscribers "Even with an increase of more than 19% in WiMAX subscribers in the first quarter of 2008, operators are still waiting [...]

Sangoma Technologies has just announced that it will acquire Paraxip Technologies Inc. for $4.8 million, payable as $1.9 million in cash and 2.3 million Sangoma common shares. Paraxip develops IP connectivity software designed to empower the deployment of IP Telephony applications. Customers include IBM, Genesys (a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent), First [...]

XO Communications announced today that they have significantly expanded their nationwide Ethernet services footprint. In a briefing at Interop today, I spoke with XO’s Brad Boddicker, regional vice president for the company’s Western region, and he told me that XO is now capable of empowering over half a million [...]

The FCC was called on the carpet today to answer a Congressional committee’s questions about the recently completed wireless spectrum auction. A central issue was the Commission’s inability to attract any bidders for the so-called D block portion of the spectrum. Lawmakers did save a little praise for FCC [...]

If you own any of these smartphones — the Verizon Wireless SMT5800; the Verizon Wireless XV6800 and the MOTO Q9m — then for just $29.99 per month (with a qualifying voice plan) you can surf and send e-mail to your heart’s content using the Verizon Wireless E-mail and Web for [...]

I had the occasion to visit with Dimension Data’s Mark Slaga this morning at that company’s Perspectives event at the Batterymarch Conference Center in Boston. Slaga, the company’s chief technology officer as well as their chief information officer is certainly someone to chat with if you want to know [...]

Mobile operators are striving to improve operational efficiency of their networks and pursue cost control by raising the average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering new data services. This is no secret. Tremendous growth in data traffic is being driven by increased use of video, music, photo sharing, and [...]

Samsung Mobile announced the Samsung Instinct at CTIA last week. Hailed by many as the “iPhone killer” (or at least a worthy alternative) the device offers full touch screen functionality and promises to accelerate the user experience by enabling access to commonly used applications and contacts with a single finger [...]

I just confirmed that Communications Developer Conference will be making a triumphant return to Los Angeles this September 16–18. The event will be co-located with Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The final details are being ironed out as I write this and [...]

In the wake of bad economic news — yesterday’s 400+ point Dow Jones rally notwithstanding — many CEOs are faced with tough decisions as they map out the future of their companies, asking themselves, does it make sense to forestall growth until the downturn passes? Frost & Sullivan’s chairman [...]

Those folks at Gizmodo have all the fun. Right now they’re in Barcelona going ga-ga over the working demos of a variety of Android prototypes. They had this to say about ARM’s offering: ARM had theirs running on one of their lower-end processors. No fancy graphics [...]

Rich — who is technically on vacation this week — has caught wind of the fact that Motorola is exploring the possibility of spinning off its mobile handset business. In a press release, Motorola announced: …it is exploring the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses to better [...]

Goodbye Moto? There are early reports that Motorola might be getting out of the handset business to concentrate on serving their enterprise and government customers. Speculation is based on a single analyst’s report to clients. Richard Windsor, an analyst with Nomura International, professed that while the possibility exists of Chinese [...]

Tony Rybczynski, director of strategic enterprise technologies at Nortel, delivered a keynote at ITEXPO yesterday stressing a converging world and a tectonic shift occurring in the market. Tony began by suggesting the show change the meaning of the acronym ITEXPO to “In-transition Technology EXPO, to better reflect the current [...]

The Open Handset Alliance is a group of mobile and technology leaders who share a common vision for changing the mobile experience for consumers. The Alliance is made up of mobile operators, software companies, chip makers, handset manufacturers and commercialization companies. For more information visit http://www.openhandsetalliance.com. [...]

The private equity trend keeps rolling on... Covad Communications Group Inc., announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by an affiliate of Platinum Equity for $1.02 per share in cash. The company’s board has reportedly unanimously approved this transaction. The purchase price carries a 59% [...]

I just got back from Texas and had a great meeting with Nortel execs. We talked about SOA, and the evolution of convergence, and of course we spoke at length about unifed communications (UC). Check out my article here. Also be sure to check out TMCnet's coverage in advance of [...]

Informa Telecoms & Media has released a new report entitled, Mobile Converged Devices: Enabling IMS, SIP, UMA &VCC Services. This report forecasts 435 million mobile SIP users by 2012. The research points out that sales of mobile phones with active SIP functionality will reach 275 million units in 2007, [...]

Nokia and NAVTEQ have announced a definitive agreement whereby Nokia will pay $78 in cash for each share of NAVTEQ including outstanding options for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $8.1 billion (euro 5.7 billion). According to a company press release, the acquisition has been approved by the board [...]

I just finished moderating a session on the session initiation protocol, entitled “The State of SIP.” Joining me as panelists for this speaking engagement were Simon Millard, Head of Professional Services at Aculab, Jon Young, vice president of software engineering at Inter-Tel, and Cullen Jennings, Distinguished Engineer, Voice Technology Group [...]