By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me, rapidly becoming one of First Coffee’s
favorite records:
First CoffeeSM
is in his new home in Istanbul, boy it felt good coming back. This is
where he lived in the early ‘90s, met Mrs. First Coffee here – yes, it’s the
kind of city where Americans can meet New Zealanders – and has never really
shaken the desire to come back. Now that we’re back here, moving from the
Mediterranean city of Antalya over the weekend, it feels like we’ve come home.
Walking up Istiklal Caddesi, the great pedestrian
boulevard-outdoor zoo that is the heart of the most fascinating city in the
world (coffee shops along Istiklal should charge admission for those of us who
sit at their outdoor café tables, hour by hour, watching all the world pass by)
to the Union Church yesterday morning we met the pastor’s wife, a good friend
of ours, and asked why the street was all torn up.
Well, they’re repaving. People walked past workers swinging
picks, ladies dressed for church delicately stepping on the paving stones the
workers laid in the mud thirty seconds earlier. Turns out they’d repaved the
whole thing a month earlier, but it was a few inches too high and the trolley
wouldn’t run, so they tore it all up and are doing it all again.
Welcome to Istanbul, kids. Believe me, you’ll never be
bored.
…
Verizon Communications Inc. announced late
last night that it is looking options to divest
the company’s wholly owned directories publishing business, Verizon Information
Services.
VIS is in the directory publishing business nationwide and
controls SuperPages.com, a local search portal. In the United States, VIS
provides sales, publishing and other related services for approximately 1,750
directory titles in 44 states and Washington, D.C.
VIS had combined operating revenues of $3.6 billion in 2004.
The unit is based in Texas and has 7,300 employees.
Company officials describe the move as an attempt to “sharpen
Verizon’s focus on three core network-based businesses in the wireless,
broadband and enterprise markets.” The Verizon Board of Directors has
authorized the company’s management to check into divesting VIS through a
spin-off, sale or other scheme.
Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said what with the MCI merger expected
to close shortly, “this is the right time” to get rid of VIS. He said Verizon
remains “focused” on a strategy of operating networks to serve wireless,
broadband and enterprise customers, and is “satisfied with the current levels
of investment in our network growth initiatives.”
There is no change to Verizon’s previously announced
operating guidance for 2006.
Seidenberg said he thinks that, given the “attractive
opportunities developing in the local search and advertising markets for VIS,”
a divestiture would give VIS “more flexibility to maneuver in the fast-changing
environment of content providers.”
The company anticipates that it could complete a disposition
in 2006. Verizon has engaged Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. and JPMorgan
Securities Inc. as its financial advisors.
…
CRM Mastery, which does CRM tech research
and software evaluation and selection assistance for small and mid-sized
enterprises, has announced the release of its directory of
CRM-related technology products on the Internet.
“Most CRM solution directories on the web are self-maintained by the
participating vendors,” says Jim Berkowitz, the founder and CEO of CRM Mastery
which bills itself as a completely independent, unbiased research firm.
…
Teledata Networks, a provider of access and
network products for telecom operators and service providers, has announced a partnership agreement with NEC Neva, a provider of telecommunication products for fixed line operators in the Russian
market, for distribution of BroadAccess Multiservice Access Gateways in northwest
Russia.
The agreement encompasses the distribution of BroadAccess MSAGs supporting a
flexible suite of services, from traditional to advanced next generation
applications. The BroadAccess MSAGs will be managed by ClearAccess+, an Element
Management System using client-server architecture.
The planned deployment of MSAGs will allow traditional broadband services in
more outreach locations as well as modernizing existing infrastructure by
enabling NGN rollout in towns and cities.
NEC Neva said they were impressed with Teledata Networks’ ability to deliver and
deploy the BroadAccess MSAG and provide suitable broadband services. Teledata
Networks has been working in Russia since 1997, doing business with a variety
of carriers.
…
Also in Russia, Scientific-Atlanta will provide headend and optical transport equipment and
systems to COMCOR (Moscow Telecommunication Corporation) to deliver cable
programming in Moscow. Cable operators will access COMCOR’s signal delivered to
fiber nodes in its backbone network via the Scientific-Atlanta equipment.
COMCOR has selected Scientific-Atlanta as the exclusive supplier for this two-year
network expansion which includes what COMCOR officials describe as enhancements
to its existing Scientific-Atlanta digital headend, new Vision 1000 analog
headends, the deployment of the iLYNX backbone system and associated fiber nodes, and the installation of Prisma II analog optics.
…
Over the weekend Abstract Design Group announced a new Canadian VoIP store powered by
their own e-commerce product. The online store carries an assortment of VoIP
products and related services, which include server administration and
software.
The new online store carries an assortment of Digium products and related
services, which include server administration and software.
VoipStoreCanada.ca will soon expand to offer more products
from many more VoIP manufacturers, company officials say: “We want to be a
complete VoIP source for our consumers… a one-stop shop for this technology,” says
Ryan Price, CEO of Abstract Design Group. “This is why we also offer support,
configuration and custom programming services via the online store.”
…
For those of you keeping
your offshoring scorecard up to date, the Financial Times is
reporting that JPMorgan Chase “plans to hire 4,500 graduates in India as
part of its plan to shift 30 percent of its back office and support operations
offshore over the next two years.”They’ll put most of the bank’s exchange
operations in Mumbai and Bangalore.
Over the past two years the bank’s had roughly 200 employees
in India, but are recruiting between 300 and 400 Indian grads per month, and
hope to have 9,000 employees in India by the end of 2007, the newspaper said
breaking it down to “3,000 in investment banking and 6,000 in commercial
banking, the latter including 2,000 in call-center operations.”
…
And if you’re looking to buy fiber optic transceivers and processor components online, as of
this morning there’s a new option for you: ProtocolTransport.com.
Run by Gillaspy Associates, it
showcases fiber optic transceivers from Finisar and processor components from
PMC-Sierra. The site catalogs WDM and single wavelength transceivers, passive optical
products and optical amplifiers from Finisar.
On the Integrated Circuit side ProtocolTransport.com lists
MIPS-based processors, SERDES, storage, VoIP, printer and networking products
from PMC-Sierra.
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content.
