WASHINGTON-Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, signed an order creating a new Iraqi government agency to oversee licensing of commercial wireless and wireline telecom systems in that country.The June 9 order establishing the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, obtained by RCR Wireless News,...
WASHINGTON-Motorola Inc. is getting a slice of the $34 million contract held by WorldCom Inc. to provide mobile phone service to U.S. civilian and military officials in Baghdad, even as pressure builds to have the Bush administration dismiss the embattled long-distance giant as a...
WASHINGTON-Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) today urged the General Services Administration to consider cutting ties with WorldCom Inc., potentially putting lucrative government wireline and wireless contracts in jeopardy. Collins' terse two-page letter to GSA Administrator Stephen Perry, obtained by RCR Wireless...
WASHINGTON-The inspector general of the General Services Administration is investigating WorldCom Inc.'s contracts with the federal government and may issue recommendations to Congress shortly on whether the Bush administration should continue doing business with the embattled long-distance company, according to a source familiar with...
WASHINGTON-The inspector general of the General Services Administration is investigating WorldCom Inc.'s contracts with the federal government and may issue recommendations soon on whether the Bush administration should continue to do business with the embattled long-distance company, according to a congressional source late today.The...
WASHINGTON-Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she is dissatisfied with the General Services Administration's response to her May 30 inquiry on why WorldCom Inc. should continue to bid on federal government contracts.WorldCom, which recently snagged an Iraq mobile-phone contract worth $34...
The telecommunications industry's on-again, off-again interest in offering bundled services appears to be back on again as a pair of companies announced initiatives last week that could make it easier to offer customers both wireline and wireless telecommunications services.AT&T Corp., which spun off its...
WASHINGTON-Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) has launched a probe into whether scandal-plagued MCI, which recently won a $34 million defense contract to supply mobile-phone service in Iraq, should be allowed to compete for federal contracts."Despite evidence that WorldCom (renamed MCI) committed...
ASHBURN, Va.-MCI Corp., formerly known as WorldCom Inc., has reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its accounting fraud case and will pay $500 million in fines when it emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, expected later this year.The tentative settlement...
WASHINGTON-Despite interest in steering Iraq reconstruction business to American companies through competitive bidding and White House reluctance to meddle in wireless rebuilding in the war-torn country, the Bush administration has awarded what appears to be a no-bid GSM mobile-phone contract to a troubled U.S....
BellSouth Corp. has agreed to buy WorldCom Inc.'s multichannel multipoint distribution system licenses for $65 million in an agreement the two companies reached last month. BellSouth's bid for the company's fixed-wireless assets is a "stalking horse" bid, in which a bankrupt company chooses one...
There are several ways one can read the Pentagon mini-mobile-phone Iraq contract with MCI, formerly MCI before reputation-ravaged WorldCom Inc. figured a retro name change was in order since just about everything having to do with the one-time telecom giant had been turned upside...
WASHINGTON-MCI is working with the Pentagon to provide mobile-phone service in Iraq, but it is unclear whether the embattled long-distance telephone company has an inside track to bring large-scale commercial wireless service to the war-torn country."Yes, we have been awarded the contract, and we...
OVERLAND PARK, Kan.-Sprint Corp. said it settled the securities class-action lawsuits related to its failed merger with WorldCom Inc. The settlement is subject to court approval.Sprint agreed to pay $50 million as part of the settlement, most of which should be covered by insurance....
BELLEVUE, Wash.-Based on a new survey of the online customer care offerings of 500 companies, including 22 telecom service and equipment providers, The Customer Respect Group found one-third don't respond to inquiries sent to their Web sites, while half respond within 48 hours.The research...
Editor's Note: Each year RCR Wireless News chooses the person who has most impacted the wireless industry. Our choice for 2002 is Dennis Strigl, Verizon Wireless Inc.'s chief executive. Verizon, the nation's largest carrier, is known as a conservative company, and that has served...
Editor's Note: Each year RCR Wireless News chooses the person who has most impacted the wireless industry. Our choice for 2002 is Dennis Strigl, Verizon Wireless Inc.'s chief executive. Verizon, the nation's largest carrier, is known as a conservative company, and that has served...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission should raise the wireless safe harbor for universal-service contributions from 15 percent to 40 percent, said the Coalition for Sustainable Universal Service.Long-distance carriers make universal-service fund payments based on a portion of their revenues since universal service is funded with...
The wireless industry's shift from focusing on growth at any expense to an emphasis on growing profitably has been reinforced recently with a number of operators deciding it will take different leadership to guide them through what many expect to be a trying time...
Companies bleeding with leviathan losses and flush with embarrassment from weak sales, mismanagement and corruption (the usual stuff in telecom and high-tech sectors these days) are increasingly turning to the tool of last resort-the open letter. The letter begrudgingly acknowledges, in a roundabout...
NEW YORK-Struggling WorldCom Inc. announced it appointed Michael Capellas as the company's new chairman and chief executive officer. Capellas is the former president of Hewlett-Packard Co."I took this job because I am convinced that WorldCom has the assets, the customers and the people to...
NEW YORK-Verizon Wireless Inc. reported 1.2 million net customer additions for the third quarter of this year compared with 752,000 net customer additions for the same quarter last year. The increase came despite the carrier's loss of all of the 308,000 former WorldCom Wireless...
REDMOND, Wash.-AT&T Wireless Services Inc. became the first nationwide wireless operator to officially report an increase in its customer base during the third quarter of this year following negative net customer additions from Sprint PCS and Cingular Wireless. The Redmond, Wash.-based operator said it...
WASHINGTON-Saying that WorldCom Inc. is unfit to hold its licenses, the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ Inc. filed an informal objection to the transfer of WorldCom's licenses to the debtor-in-possession."Companies that manage our nation's telecommunications and Internet facilities must operate...
