politics

Union Reacts to AT&T Layoffs

February 14, 2012

Not my usual topic, but I thought I would point out the following, from Rebuild the Dream:

"AT&T recently announced the "surplus" of 740 union AT&T jobs despite their revenues soaring to $126.7 billion and a CEO that made over $27 million in 2011." Nice!

Yesterday, 2/13/12, "30 activists just entered the AT&T Atlanta headquarters and are refusing to leave until every single greedy layoff is rescinded. Simultaneously, an occupation with tents is being set up outside of the building. Watch the Occupation of AT&T now: http://livestream.com/occupyAtlanta

Posted in economy, politics

FCC is Busy!

February 7, 2012

The FCC is really busy!

The FCC is still working on Inter-Carrier Compensation. It ordered Rural Call Completion.

It approved TWC's $3B bid for Insight. "Time Warner Cable last August agreed to buy Insight for $3 billion in cash. The nation's No.

Posted in CLEC, FCC, broadband, cableco, compliance, politics, spectrum

AT&T Archive Video

January 30, 2012

From the AT&T archives: "A fascinating animated film explaining the perspective of the Bell System made during the legal challenges of the 1970s from both the government and other phone companies. "

The MackNell Quandary from 1975 about the greatness of monopoly. I guess this was propaganda before AT&T was broken up.

Posted in PR, mergers, politics

It's a Mobile Monday

January 30, 2012

It's a mobile Monday as I get set to pack up to head to ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami Beach.

Yahoo was being Yahoo! this morning as it announced - in the same breath - that it has launched a "Mobile First" mindset, then shut down 10 mobile apps. Granted, some of them were not doing well (like Yahoo itself), but it's schizophrenic to do it on the same day.

Patent house Klausner Technologies sues MetroPCS for Visual Voicemail Infringement. That's always fun - and profitable for the patent house. Hopefully, in this case, it doesn't mess up the consumers' experiences.

AT&T is now supporting DISH Network at the FCC on its deployment and usage of spectrum in the 2 GHz range that it acquired from bankruptcy court via TerreStar Networks and DBSD North America.

Posted in FCC, apps, cellular, politics, spectrum, wimax, wireless

Privacy versus Security

January 25, 2012

"Concerned about privacy? Maybe you should be concerned about the economy instead. That was the subtext of a keynote speech by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, at a technology conference in the heart of Europe." [Benton]

Not to get political, but privacy is a ship that has sailed. Google, Facebook and other sites track online activities. Credit card companies and Paypal can track both offline and online activities.

Posted in economy, outage, politics, privacy, security, technology

Why I Was Going to Run for Congress

December 10, 2011

This is kind of a political rant, so fair warning and I apologize if I offend you in advance.

Voter Suppression, media green zones like in Baghdad (and here), indefinite detention of Americans by military, the revolving door between lobbyists and government, SOPA, Congressional insider trading, shorting on the debt ceiling, re-districting to keep power - aren't we tired of this crap yet? I am. Very tired. DC and state capitals are owned and run by career politicians and lobbyists. This truly is Corporate America or America, Inc.

I have spent the last few weeks trying to decide if I should run for Congress.

Posted in off topic, politics

Mergers Cost Jobs

December 7, 2011

In the wake of AT&T getting caught misleading the federal agencies about the benefits of its merger with T-Mobile (FCC report here), we see that the merger of PAETEC and Windstream has already resulted in job losses.

Windstream cuts 58 jobs at Palm Harbor office is just the start of at least 280 jobs being cut from its combined workforce of 14,500. Synergies require job cuts. Richmond is losing 70. Even Rochester is losing 52 jobs, according to 13 WHAM TV.

Mergers can't work without job losses, office closings, and other economic detriment.

Posted in economy, mergers, politics, telco

Sprint Deals With Clearwire

December 5, 2011

The best details of the Sprint-Clearwire deal is at Marketwatch, but Tammy Wolf at TMC did a good job, too. Clearwire gets "up to $1.6 billion over the next four years in payments for WiMAX services, possible pre-payments for LTE services and potential equity investments" from Sprint. "Sprint will pay Clearwire a total of $926 million, approximately two-thirds of which will be paid in 2012, for unlimited 4G WiMAX retail services during 2012 and 2013, subject to certain conditions." So Clearwire is stuck with WiMAX until like 2015 while also building an LTE network. The speculation begins: is $1.6B enough for Clearwire? Who will buy the bundle (Sprint-Clearwire)? The Senate wants to know more about Lightsquared.

Posted in cellular, politics, spectrum, wimax, wireless

Lots of News (I Can't Cover in Detail)

December 5, 2011

Dag Peak explains the difference between BroadTouch and BroadCloud by BSFT.

That Carrier IQ key logging software has Sprint and AT&T caught in lawsuits. This privacy issue reminds me of the cigarette suits -- keep suing and when you win one, you crack the whole thing open and huge sweeping change must follow. So lawyers start your engines and get out those lawsuits! (Like I have to tell you to.)

Obama names new FCC nominees for Senate approval. Copps is term limited and Meredith Baker left for a lucrative job at Comcast! (No conflict of interest there, just part of the revolving door in DC.)

CenturyLink adds broadband caps to compete better with Cox, who does too.

I'm still working on my blog post about this: FCC Releases Connect America Fund Order, Reforms USF/ICC for Broadband

It's a week where SAP feels like Ron Paul, because its cloud acquisition got about 90 seconds of space.

Posted in FCC, broadband, broadsoft, politics, privacy

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