Hitlines's archive
Amazon Brings MapReduce to AWS
Amazon today said it would bring web-scale computing power for use in workloads such as web indexing and data mining to just about anyone. The bookseller now offers MapReduce (a programming model created by Google to help deal with incredibly large data sets) using Hadoop on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service. This […]
Qwest Looks to Sell Long-Haul Network
Qwest Communications, the regional telephone provider, is looking to sell its long-haul network, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. The company, which has $14 billion in debt, wants to continue its consumer last-mile business, which serves 11.6 million customers. However, without a wireless business (Qwest resells Verizon Wireless) the nation’s third-largest phone […]
DTV Delay Slows Qualcomm’s MediaFLO Expansion to a Trickle
Qualcomm today trumpeted that its MediaFLO mobile over-the-air television service has launched in three new markets; Atlantic City, N.J.; Greensboro, N.C. and Wilmington, Del., now have access to MediaFLO and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show on certain AT&T or Verizon phones! But the trumpeting falls flat given that by now — a month and half […]
Time Warner Expands Metered Broadband Rollout
It was only a matter of time before Time Warner Cable expanded its efforts to bring tiered broadband out of the tiny town of Beaumont, Texas. According to BusinessWeek, Time Warner is expanding its trials to San Antonio, Austin, Texas and Rochester, N.Y. and Greensboro, N.C. Data collection in Austin, San Antonio and Rochester […]
The Open Cloud Manifesto is Nothing But a Vapor Tiger
Late last week, we watched the big names in the IT industry play their little reindeer games over a proposed Open Cloud Manifesto put forth by IBM. I have to say, it wasn’t worth it. As far as Manifestos go, this one is pretty benign. Who cares if it was agreed to or drafted in […]
Charter Says Bankruptcy Won’t Affect Speed Upgrades
Charter Communications today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to rid its balance sheet of $8 billion in debt, but that apparently will have no affect on the company’s plans to roll out upcoming speed boosts. I feel unusually credulous writing this, but Charter spokeswoman Anita Lamont told me, “What’s happening on the balance sheet won’t […]
Subsidized Netbooks Are Going to Cause Carrier Troubles
Verizon may soon join AT&T in selling subsidized netbooks, Bloomberg reported this morning. Under such a plan, Verizon would sign partnerships with netbook makers to subsidize the devices for consumers who sign data contracts. (The majority of cell phones in the U.S. are sold this way.) Verizon hasn’t returned my calls trying to confirm […]
Verizon Rents Out its Fiber for LTE Backhaul
We’ve noted that Verizon plans to use its fiber network for backhaul for its future Long Term Evolution network, and today it says that it will also rent out capacity on that fiber network to other wireless carriers as well. As our readers are quick to point out, backhaul is the elephant in the room […]
Stat Shot: IPTV Growing Broadband Slowing
Broadband obviously isn’t a growth engine anymore, but it’s underpinning the growth of new communications services such as IPTV. A report commissioned by The Broadband Forum shows that television delivered via broadband is up 63 percent globally. Meanwhile, broadband growth has slowed to the single digits around the world. Another interesting footnote from the research […]
Dell Ties Servers and Services Even Closer
Dell today launched several enterprise products aimed at cutting back on one of the more stubborn costs in an IT department — the IT professionals. Its new lines of servers include features such as ImageDirect, which eliminates the IT professional’s role in installing an image on a server. From CNet:
It’s all part of the “new […]
FCC’s April Meeting Will Be a Big One
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday released the agenda for its April 8 open meeting, and developing a national broadband plan topped the list. Another big item is a notice that the FCC will be soliciting data for its annual video competition report that discusses how people get their video. The FCC has not gathered this data […]
DPI Doesn’t Kill The Open Internet, Carriers Do
The Free Press issued a report today that blames deep packet inspection technology for “The End of the Internet,” arguing that Internet service providers’ use of equipment that can inspect individual packets of data should raise concerns for both users and lawmakers.
The report: “Deep Packet Inspection: The End of the Internet as We Know It?” […]
Why Cisco’s Buying Pure Digital for $590M
UPDATED: As expected, Cisco today said it would buy Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip handheld video camera, for $590 million in stock. The deal will move Cisco deeper in the consumer market and give it control of a device that produces video, which it hopes will drive the sale of its Internet routing […]
Why IBM Should Buy Sun: Cloud Services
This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion in cash. The deal makes sense given Sun’s distressed share price, and because both companies appear to be pursuing cloud computing — the next big computing opportunity — in a similar manner. Let’s see how each plans […]
SXSW Cloud Computing Panel: Clouds Still Need Work
Cloud computing and cloud services are real, but this is only the beginning. This was the message the guys who helped build Amazon Web Services, Google’s App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure clouds conveyed in Austin, Texas, this morning at South by Southwest’s only cloud computing panel. It was packed.
Given that between one-quarter and one-third of […]
Forget the Fail Whale: Twitter Jumps the Shark
Twitter has jumped the shark for the digerati attending South by Southwest here in Austin. Daniel Terdiman at C|Net points out what everyone trying to follow the #sxsw tweets have discovered –there are just too many of them. It seems that while Twitter’s hardware can scale for the many millions of people who have joined […]
Facebook Friends the iPhone, Apps Will Now Connect
Facebook today announced that your iPhone apps can be friends with Facebook at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas –something Om had written about nine months ago. David Morin, with Facebook, told the audience that now that they can play games or tie their iPhone apps to their Facebook friends anywhere — […]
SaaS Grows Up and Validates the Cloud
The next generation of highly successful software as a service (SaaS) companies will likely focus on delivering collaboration and IT management, according to a report out today from Forrester Research. The report takes a look at the SaaS infrastructure and lays out the case for continued SaaS adoption among certain groups of applications (see chart).
What […]
Nortel Keeps Market Guessing, Will It Sell or Slim Down?
Like any celebrity coyly letting the tabloids speculate about the status of her relationship, the bankrupt Nortel seems to have the business press all aflutter with news that instead of emerging from bankruptcy, the company may break up its business. The Wall Street Journal says the Canadian telecommunications gear maker is considering selling its core […]
Rackspace Offers Cloud Computing for Cautious Customers
Rackspace today is expected to announce its own on-demand computing product, CloudServers. The service is built on the company’s acqusition of Slicehost last year and will offer the same services as Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s also a cornerstone of Rackspace’s attempts to build out a cloud computing environment that will rival those […]
Choose Your Own Ads Google Style
Google is good. Not necessarily as in “the opposite of evil,” but “smooth.” The company — facing some privacy backlash here and in Europe — said today that it would allow users to select the type of ads they see in web sites and provide an opt-out for folks who don’t want Google to track […]
Broadband Policy Plans Kicked Off in D.C.
Today, the three agencies responsible for allocating the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds for broadband met in Washington, D.C. The bottom line appeared to be a lot of hot air, including FCC promises of an open process to deliver a national broadband strategy within one year, and a lot of unanswered questions, such as how […]
In the Race to LTE, Kineto Talks up Voice
As carriers evaluate their Long Term Evolution 4G network deployments, voice has becoming a sticking point. LTE is an all-Internet-Protocol data network that offers speed, capacity and a lower cost per bit, but what is doesn’t offer is the same circuit-switched voice technology of current cellular networks. This is where Kineto Wireless, the company behind […]
MetroPCS Gets BlackBerry Curve
MetroPCS said today it will launch the BlackBerry Curve 8330 (not Om’s latest handset crush) in several markets, including Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, with advance pay plans that range from $30 to $60 a month. The BlackBerry is the carrier’s first smart phone.
Last week, MetroPCS COO Tom Keys told us […]
Clearwire Names Turnaround Guru As New CEO
William Morrow
Clearwire today named William Morrow, a former executive at Vodafone and Pacific Gas & Electric, to the CEO position — replacing co-founder and current CEO Ben Wolff. Wolff will become a co-chairman at the WiMAX operator, alongside curent chairman Craig McCaw.
Morrow was recently president and CEO of PG&E in San Francisco, and he served […]
Embarq Files for Universal Femtocell Patent
An alert reader sent me a link to a patent filed yesterday by Embarq, the wireline carrier currently trying to merge with CenturyTel. The patent is for a “universal femto cell,” and the gist of the patent is to create a femtocell that will work with any carrier. A femtocell is like a mini […]
And GSM Shall Rule Them All
GSM-based technologies account for a whopping 81 percent of the world’s 4 billion mobile subscriptions, according to numbers released today by Wireless Intelligence. Coming in as the runner-up is Qualcomm’s CDMA, with 10 percent of the world’s subscribers, 100 million of whom are in North America.
The research firm, which is owned by the GSM Association, […]
Nokia Plans LTE Devices for 2010
A Nokia executive said today that the company has committed to LTE as its preferred network for devices, and plans to launch devices for those networks in 2010. James Harper, senior manager of technology marketing at Nokia, speaking at a PCCA meeting held in Grapevine, Texas, declined to detail what type of devices the handset […]
Intel Inside Becomes Intel Everywhere
Intel’s low-power Atom processor for mobile devices didn’t just get its name because it’s small, but because Intel wanted it to be the building block for the Internet of Things. In a conference call today, Intel announced four new variations on the Atom processor — including a 1.33 GHz chip and the ability to run […]
Tit for Tat: Psion Sues Intel for Treble Damages
Psion took aim at Intel last week for the alleged theft of its netbook trademark and asked for three times the value of any profits earned from the use of the trademark, which would equate to about$1.2 billion in damages. Our colleagues over at jkOnTheRun have more, but the high-octane counter suit (which disputes everything […]
Wireless Scorecard, Recession Edition
The financial results are in, so in order to give you guys an idea of how the major U.S. carriers are doing, we’ve gathered together the relevant data from their fourth-quarter wireless results and laid them out below. It’s looking like cheap is chic and the iPhone is keeping AT&T on a winning streak […]
VIA Technologies Hit By Intel’s Atom Bomb
When Intel announced its low-power Silverthorne chip in 2007 aimed at the mobile computing market, the folks at Centaur Technology, who had been designing low-power x86 chips for mobiles under Taiwanese parent company VIA Technologies, were vindicated. They also suddenly faced direct competition from the giant in the industry.
“Intel has made this a legitimate marketplace […]
How Neutral Should Wireless Networks Be?
As more of us hop on our 3G-connected smartphones or netbooks, and future 4G connections offer the promise of wired-like speeds via wireless networks, Ars Technica has posted a great article on how regulators in Canada are weighing the issue of network neutrality over wireless networks. Some of the practices described in the article seem […]
Yahoo CFO to Leave
The executive shakeup at Yahoo continues. Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, will leave the company, according to an SEC filing made this morning. Yahoo said it has initiated a search for a new CFO and that Jorgensen will remain with the company through a transition period.
MetroPCS Grows As Economy Shrinks
Prepaid mobile phone provider MetroPCS today reported profits of $14.6 million for the fourth quarter on sales of $723.6 million. The carrier didn’t meet Wall Street earnings expectations after writing down more than $90 million in auction rate securities, but it has added a significant number of new subscribers thanks to its expansion into new […]
The Mobile Web Is for Fun and the PC Web Is for Everything Else
The mobile web and the PC web may not be all that different, but data out today from comScore implies that the users are. Numbers released by the group suggest that those spending the least amount of time in front of their PCs are 30 percent more likely to surf on their mobiles.
It’s all a bit […]
Zombies Attack Time Warner Cable in SoCal
If you’re an irritated Time Warner Cable customer in Los Angeles who has been experiencing crappy service for the last week, you can blame the zombies. Time Warner emailed to let us know that it has determined that a denial of service attack against its DNS servers was at fault. From its statement:
However, this particular […]
Nortel to Cut 3,200 More Workers
Nortel, the bankrupt telecommunications gear maker, said today it will lay off an additional 3,200 workers worldwide over the coming months — bringing its total workforce down to 25,000. The Canadian company, which filed for bankruptcy in January, said last November that it would cut 1,300 employees — and that was on top of […]
How Low Can We Go? Gartner Sees Bigger Drop in Chips
Gartner said today it expects chip sales to drop by 24 percent in 2009 — an unwelcome revision to its previous forecast of a 16 percent drop issued in December. Back in November, when the sky started falling, it had expected (hoped for?) a slim 1 percent growth rate for 2009. Now, the research firm […]
When Gmail Fails, Users Adapt
Can technology users adapt to the relatively high failure rates of their favorite communications tools by skipping from service to service when one option fails? With Gmail down last night, Twitter traffic relating to the failure was all over the place. A quick (but obviously unscientific) peek at my Facebook page showed more messages than […]
Smartphones and Netbooks: Closer Than Kissing Cousins
You know how you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover? Well, when it comes to smartphones and netbooks, a semiconductor research firm is predicting that in fact the cover — or rather, the device casing — may soon be one of the only ways to tell the two apart. Portelligent has analyzed […]
Broadband: Damned Lies Edition
Today, Saul Hansell of the New York Times used two surveys — the Nokia Siemens Connectivity Report and a Pew survey — to write a post titled “Surprise: America is No. 1 in Broadband,” which not only argues that we’re No. 1, but also tries to refute the fact that “Americans are starving for broadband.”
I […]
Cloud, Cables and Cisco Makes the AT&T Capex Cut
AT&T said today that it plans to spend $1 billion this year on delivering all-IP networks to business customers and on undersea fiber, the same amount it planned to spend on these items last year. That makes a total of $3 billion spent on delivering IP access for businesses since 2006, and affirms AT&T’s commitment […]
The End of x86 Domination: AMD Is Cool With That
The shift to mobile computing emphasizes the split between two distinct markets for the processor vendors that make the brains of computers. There’s the consumer-facing devices, which include everything from smartphone to laptops, and the server side, which offers content to consumer devices through the cloud.
That split is a reaction to how people use their […]
Let The Nortel Breakup Begin
Radware, the maker of application delivery equipment, wants to buy a business unit of bankrupt gear maker Nortel. The unit in question is Nortel’s Alteon unit, which makes application switching and WAN optimization products for the data center. Nortel bought Alteon for $7 billion back in 2000. Light Reading reports the Radware bid may be […]
Europe Backs Symbian With $630M Loan
Nokia said today it has received a €500 million loan ($630 million) from the European Investment Bank to help it further develop Symbian and keep it competitive with other mobile operating systems. The loan may change the math we’ve done on the likelihood of Symbian beating out Android, LiMo, Apple, Windows Mobile and other mobile […]
Sprint Loses Less Money, More Subscribers
Sprint today reported a loss of $1.62 billion, which looks much better than the nearly $30 billion loss it reported a year ago at this time, thanks to its writedown of Nextel. However, the carrier is still struggling with subscriber losses (it plans to cut 8,000 jobs), and it’s unclear if the launch of the […]
Intel/Nvidia Catfight Is About More Than IP
Intel on Monday night filed suit to stop graphics chipmaker Nvidia from tying its graphics chips to certain future Intel CPUs. The suit filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery alleges that Nvidia doesn’t have the right to integrate a Nvida GPU with future Intel processors, such as the high-end Core i7 chip code-named Nehalem, […]
Verizon Will Have LTE Smartphones in 2011
At the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona today, the next-generation 4G wireless service finally got some respect, with AT&T saying it will likely deploy the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard in 2011 rather than in 2012 and Verizon choosing vendors for its upcoming LTE rollout.
Verizon has chosen Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent as […]
Economy Slows Cable’s Momentum
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, beat earnings and sales expectations for the fourth quarter, but still managed to disappoint when it came to the number of new subscribers for television and broadband services.
Comcast this morning reported earnings of $412 million on sales of $8.77 billion for the fourth quarter. However, like its rival Time […]
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