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31
March 2009 |
Sprint Nextel Corp. Chief Executive Dan Hesse received compensation valued at $14.2 million in 2008 as the telecommunications company continued to lose ground in the wireless industry, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing Monday.
However, much of Hesse's compensation was in stock and options, which have plummeted in value since he received them.
Hesse, 55, received base salary of $1.2 million and a performance-based bonus of $2.7 million last year, according to a proxy stat... |
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28
March 2009 |
Web users in the U.S. surf the Internet at an average broadband speed of 3.9 Mbps, according to an upcoming Akamai report obtained by GigaOm's Om Malik.
That's higher than the worldwide figure of 1.5 Mpbs, but lower than average speeds in 16 other countries. Malik (and others) expect connections in the U.S. to continue to get faster, thanks to fiber-optic lines and DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) -- which allows for speeds up to 50 Mbps downstream.
Comcast alone recently s... |
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27
March 2009 |
Despite diminished budgets and increasingly thrifty expenditure, the figures for worldwide broadband subscribers still rose 3.47 per cent between the third and fourth quarter of 2008. In comparison to figures collected for the period between the second and third quarter, though, this signals a slight dip in take-up.
Collecting the data, research firm Point Topic found the number of broadband subscribers to be a figure of around 410.9 million. In terms of continental penetration these figures look like th... |
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26
March 2009 |
China Telecom yesterday reported a 96 per cent plunge in net profit for 2008 after it booked a Rmb24bn ($3.5bn) impairment charge related to its low-end wireless network.
But the Chinese telecoms group, which swung to a Rmb16.4bn net loss for the fourth quarter, said it remained buoyant on this year's performance, adding that it hoped strong demand for phone services in China would offset the impact of the global economic downturn.
China Telecom said it aimed to increase the number of mobile users fro... |
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26
March 2009 |
The competition watchdog is taking Telstra Corporation to court, accusing Australia's biggest telecommunications company of blocking rivals from accessing its crucial copper wire network.
Following the announcement, shares in Telstra fell seven cents, or 2.31 per cent, to close at an all-time low of $2.96 on Thursday.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in a statement it had begun proceedings in the Federal Court in Melbourne because Telstra had refused requests by other pho... |
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25
March 2009 |
New Zealand's Commerce Commission has sent letters to the country's three mobile phone networks warning that it wants a reduction in their mobile termination rates. The three networks had sent submissions to the Commission to lower their rates voluntarily, but the Commission has replied saying that the cuts don't go far enough.
Vodafone, Telecom and NZ Communications supplied undertakings to the Commission for mobile termination access services in January 2009. The proposed undertakings were in response ... |
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25
March 2009 |
Europeans are now paying far less for broadband Internet access and for mobile telephone calls than in previous years, contributing to an increase in use and helping the telecommunications sector to grow faster than the rest of the economy, the European Commission said Wednesday.
The European Union now has more mobile phones than people, the commission said in a report, with the number of phones representing 119 percent of the population, a figure that is well above the levels of the United States or Jap... |
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25
March 2009 |
The Broadband Forum today announced the latest IPTV and broadband statistics, with the Western Europe, Africa and Middle East regions showing strong IPTV growth of 45 per cent throughout 2008. The report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic (GBS database at http://point-topic.com/home/gbs/), showed France as the largest IPTV market in the Western European region, with over half of the 10.2 million subscribers.
The IPTV figures – announced by the Broadband Forum at today’s opening day ... |
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24
March 2009 |
Virgin Media will offer 100 to 150Mbps broadband speeds up to two years before BT completes its rival fibre network.
"We have an opportunity with our network to provide significantly higher speeds," Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett told BBC News.
BT has said its fibre network will hit the first crop of UK cities by early 2010 and will be complete by 2012.
Virgin currently offers a top speed of 50Mbps while BT is pledging 40 to 60Mb.
Mr Berkett said its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) net... |
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23
March 2009 |
Vancouver taxpayers will no longer have to shell out $2-million a year for road damage caused by telecommunications companies, after a federal decision in a case between the city and a local telecom.
The ruling appears to have settled a dispute between municipalities and telecoms that has been bubbling since deregulation was introduced more than a decade ago.
The precedent-setting ruling will save cities across Canada at least $107-million a year for the repairs needed after telecom companies cut into... |
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23
March 2009 |
The Obama administration for the first time is weighing in on a Recording Industry Association of America file sharing lawsuit and is supporting hefty awards of as much as $150,000 per purloined music track.
The government said the damages range of $750 to $150,000 per violation of the Copyright Act was warranted.
"The remedy of statutory damages for copyright infringement has been the cornerstone of our federal copyright law since 1790, and Congress acted reasonably in crafting the current incarnatio... |
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22
March 2009 |
Iliad Group, the parent company of French ISPs Free and Alice, has revealed that it plans to deliver fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage to 70% of Paris by the second half of this year and to 4mn households by 2012, having already invested EUR 150mn as part of the roll-out of its FTTH network.
The group also expects to reach 5mn broadband subscribers in 2011, between both its Free and Alice subsidiaries, as well as an 82% group-wide unbundling rate by the end of this year. Free alone had 1.3mn broadband c... |
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22
March 2009 |
BT has revealed new information about the roll-out of its £1.5bn programme to deploy super fast fibre optic (Fibre to the Premise/Cabinet, FTTP/C) broadband to as many as 10 million UK homes (40%) by 2012 (original news). Scotland will become one of the first places to benefit from early next year, with more than 34,000 homes and businesses in Edinburgh and Glasgow receiving speeds of up to 40Mbps and potentially 60Mbps.
Overall BT Openreach, which is responsible for ensuring that all rival operators hav... |
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21
March 2009 |
Zimbabwe’s telecommunications regulator has revised telephone tariffs downwards by up to 40 percent in a move meant to make communication affordable for ordinary Zimbabweans, APA learns here Saturday.
The Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) ordered service providers to slash telephone tariffs by between 25 and 40 percent pending the completion of an ongoing review of the charges.
The review is intended to balance the affordability of services by consumers and the via... |
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20
March 2009 |
As fears about the recession become more widespread, millions of Americans are on the verge of disconnecting expensive cell phone plans. Two out of five Americans with contract-based cell phones - 39 percent or just over 60 million consumers - are likely to cut back on their cell phones to save money if, as is widely expected, the economy gets worse over the next six months, according to new survey of 2,005 Americans conducted by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) for the New Millennium Research Council (N... |
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