I find the brewing pot of noise around sponsored data that AT&T announced this week all to be a bit funny. Why? Sponsored "data" has been around for a very long time. Radio programs were sponsored as far back as the 1920s. Public television has been sponsored since the 1950. Just as mobile data runs … Read more
New TeleGeography Map (Photo credit: Emilie Ogez) Image via CrunchBase It's time to bring down Skype. I don't mean take their network down. No way. But Skype is now about as pedestrian as the telcos that Skype sought to bring down, and in reality did. Skype has taken a stranglehold in the International long distance … Read more
It's no surprise that DSL installations are on going the way of the dinosaur from the USA's larger telcos as that news is over a year old. But the reason is LTE is cheaper for the operators to install, and there are no wires to maintain. Today's formal launch of HomeFusion by Verizon Wireless, while … Read more
(Photo credit: Wikipedia) Hurricane Sandy proved something. Our infrastructure for communications isn't hurricane proof. As the New York Times reports on what the FCC has determeined, it seems the northeastern United States became in spots a country back in the sixties, where the only thing that seemed to work was a wired landline and one … Read more
Image via CrunchBase In an Op-Ed type of guest column in Forbes, founder and CEO of Level3 Jim Crowe has called out the FCC, AT&T and Verizon in what could become the firestarter of a battle in Washington, D.C. over wired and wireless access. It's a far reaching but clear "slap in the face" to … Read more
LightSquared my be down for the count. While not a Joe Frazier or Larry Holmes style KO, it's looking more and more that the dream of multi-billionare hedge fund leader Phillip Falcone, may be going the way of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter or or worse, Sonny Liston. Yesterday the FCC said "no way" and now the … Read more
Image via Wikipedia AT&T and T-Mobile have been playing chicken with the opposition regarding their wireless merger for sometime, so yesterday's move to pull their application from FCC review is simply both a negotiation tactic and a way to prevent potential shareholder litigation. Clearly the AT&T lawyers and accountants had a strong say in this. The … Read more
Image via Wikipedia To be upfront and transparent, my view is the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile will eventually happen and all the details will get worked out between all the waring factions. Will the merger look the same as the way it did when announced. In the words of former WWE Superstar wrestler, "Stone … Read more
While 2012 will be an Olympic year in sports, it's also shaping up to be an olympic like year in the courts with the FCC and the nation's wireless, wireline and cable operators all competing for medal. Between the recent FCC Net Neutrality decision, and the AT&T–T-Mobile battle that everyone from Sprint to at least … Read more
Telecom Law Monitor, from regulatory law firm Kelley Drye tells us that the FCC is telling VoIP and Broadband service providers to report outages or pay the fines. Basically this means that service providers are more and more being told to play on a level playing field with no distinction between legacy and next generation. … Read more
