It has been a pretty big news day so far this early morning. Intel perhaps is responsible for the biggest portion of today’s market movement as last night they announced earnings which were not all that bad but the stock got slammed anyway. I am a shareholder of Intel as a point of disclosure.

Ending a six-month long saga many thought was over, Oracle will be buying BEA Systems for 8.5 billion dollars in an all-cash deal. You may recall this summer that the two companies were negotiating over this sale with BEA rejecting an earlier offer from the database and software giant.

The Wall Street Journal has good financial analysis of Synchronoss Technology, the company behind the iPhone activation. Although the company has a diversified product base, AT&T accounted for 65% of revenue in 2006. This has some investors spooked and as a result there is a 25% short interest in the shares. Disclosure: I own shares in the company.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on AT&T having to replace 17,000 backup batteries in U-verse installs as a few have exploded or started fires. The problematic batteries were made by Avestor out of Quebec.

Rounding out the WSJ contribution to this post there is another article on the FCC and Kevin Martin in particular. Martin discusses the satellite radio merger, the 700 MHz auction and emergency services use of those airwaves.

To end the morning’s news is a great analysis by Popular Mechanics on how the DVD format war — Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD may be irrelevant as the new Apple TV costs less than one of these players and can do everything a DVD player can and more — surf the internet, view photos, etc. Most importantly the library of Apple titles is going to be larger than what is likely to to be pressed into either DVD format.

Best of all, the new Apple TV will be available as a free upgrade to existing owners.
 
I am excited to see the tech/communications news is flowing faster than ever as TMC gears up for next week’s Internet Telephony show in Miami, FL. I hope to see you there.