MCI Worldcom in published reports indicated it would be interested in buying a mobile phone service company in the coming years as competition drives down the value of wireless companies.MCI Worldcom management previously has insisted that wireless service was not a priority for the...
WASHINGTON-Justice Department antitrust czar Joel Klein, sending a mixed message, predicts Baby Bells will face local competition from wireless and wireline firms over time, even if mega-mergers among dominant telecom players are approved.Pointing to forces of deregulation, technology and globalization that are driving telecom...
WASHINGTON-In an exclusive interview provided to RCR, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition plans to announce aggressive opposition against pending telecom mega-mergers at the Federal Communications Commission's Dec. 14 meeting if negotiations with company executives on the AT&T Corp.-Tele-Communications Inc.; SBC Communications...
NEW YORK-MCI WorldCom, Jackson, Miss., announced Nov. 20 it has formed the MCI WorldCom Fund, a venture-capital fund to invest in companies "that can create demand for and increase the performance of services and networks, and also deliver superior financial returns."With an initial...
NEW YORK-Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt accused Corporate America of "manipulation" and "illusion" when accounting for certain costs."In the zeal to satisfy consensus earnings estimates and project a smooth earnings path, wishful thinking may be winning the day over faithful representation," Levitt...
LONDON-Cable & Wireless plc completed its $1.75 billion cash acquisition of MCI Corp.'s U.S.-based Internet business, including its Internet backbone services, about 1,000 specialist employees, as well as its retail and Internet Service Provider customer base.Cable & Wireless now owns and operates an Internet...
NEW YORK-Recent gyrations in the public capital markets have made for splashy headlines, but they are not likely to stop telecommunications mergers unless there is a prolonged and profound slump, said Dave Rhodes, senior vice president of Daniels & Associates, Denver.In terms of sheer...
MOBILEMEDIAMobileMedia Corp., dba MobileComm, promoted several people in management positions. Steven Gross was named executive vice president of sales and marketing. He joined MobileComm as senior vice president of sales and marketing in 1996, and since has been responsible for new product introductions, including...
WASHINGTON-Almost 500 years after Columbus visited, Portugal and Spain are back on Latin American shores; this time, it isn't sugar cane or gold they are after, but rather the potentially lucrative telecom sector. Telefonica de Espana and Portugal Telecom were the most aggressive bidders...
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating CellStar Corp.'s compliance with federal securities laws, and the handset distributor said it believes the inquiry is focused on previously disclosed events that occurred in 1995 and 1996.CellStar reported disappointing financial operating results for the first and...
NEW YORK-Telecommunications carriers broke records Aug. 6 in the debt markets, with WorldCom Inc. selling the largest corporate bond issue ever and a Bell Atlantic Corp. subsidiary, the biggest exchangeable note deal.The magnitude of the issues is all the more remarkable given a dicey...
The quest for international partnerships continued last week as AT&T Corp. announced a $10 billion joint-venture plan with British Telecommunications plc to more strongly position itself in the global market.AT&T and BT July 26 said they have agreed to pool their international operations and...
The government of Brazil received premiums of more than 200 percent over minimum bid requirements on some of the cellular properties it auctioned off last week.The sealed-bid auction last Wednesday that split Telecomunicacoes Brasileiros S.A. (Telebras) among several international and local players earned the...
Applied Cellular Technology Inc. formed an executive search committee to fill the position of president and chief executive officer. The committee, made up of several outside board members and Richard Sullivan, chairman and CEO of Applied Cellular, will work with an independent top-tier executive...
WASHINGTON-A proposal to assign abbreviated dialing codes nationwide appears to be headed for a major roadblock from the North American Numbering Council. NANC is expected to approve a report in September that will declare no one supports abbreviated dialing codes, said Lori Messing, manager...
Turns out there is not one but two million-dollar men in the Portals fiasco.Subpoenaed documents provided to congressional investigators by Tennessee developer Franklin Haney last week supposedly reveal that former Tennessee senator Jim Sasser, before becoming U.S. ambassador to China, pocketed $1 million for...
NEW YORK-InterDigital Communications Corp., King of Prussia, Pa., will field test its new wireless local loop product in northwest Iowa this fall in conjunction with Pioneer Holdings L.L.C.The agreement represents the first full U.S. field trial of InterDigital's TrueLink fixed wireless system, which uses...
SAN JOSE, Calif.-Fujitsu Software Corp. extended its ByeDesk Link wireless server software to Metrocall Inc., PageMart Wireless Inc. and Paging Network Inc., as well as to PageNet reseller MCI Communications Corp.ByeDesk Link, previously available to Global System for Mobile communications based phones, is a...
LONDON-Cable & Wireless plc announced plans to purchase MCI Communications Corp.'s Internet communications business for $1.75 billion in cash.An agreement previously announced May 28 included only the Internet backbone services business and the Internet Service Provider customers, with a price tag of $625 million.The...
CITELCitel Inc. unveiled a new line of coaxial surge protectors that provide protection against lightning surges and electrical transients. They use gas tube technology, making them suitable for broadband applications. The new line includes: N, BNC, TNC, SMA and 7/16. P8AX coaxial protectors are available...
WASHINGTON-A proposal from Western Wireless Corp. to receive universal-service support payments for providing telephone service to rural areas seems to have gotten a lukewarm response from the Federal Communications Commission.A basic piece of the Western Wireless proposal-to have the FCC re-evaluate support for rural...
WASHINGTON-The European Commission last week gave conditional approval to the proposed merger between MCI Communications Corp. and WorldCom Inc.The approval is subject to the divestiture of MCI's Internet services business, which overlapped with WorldCom's to give the combined entity about 50-percent market share. The...
WASHINGTON-The European Commission in early July gave conditional approval to the proposed merger between MCI Communications Corp. and WorldCom Inc.The approval is subject to the divestiture of MCI's Internet services business, which overlapped with WorldCom's to give the combined entity about a 50-percent market...
SINGAPORE-If there's one good thing that has come out of the current economic crisis in Southeast Asia, it's the added push it has given to the long-talked-about and much-needed shakeout in the regional telecommunications market.Already, there have been rumblings of cash-strapped companies in Indonesia,...
