Cellular South Sues AT&T to Block T-Mobile Acquisition

Cellular South today filed a lawsuit against AT&T today looking to block its acquisition of T-Mobile USA. The lawsuit was filed as a "related case" to those already filed by the Department of Justice, Sprint Nextel, and the states of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. "AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile would profoundly impact the interests of the wireless industry as a whole," said Eric Graham, Cellular South Vice President for Strategic & Government Relations. "If AT&T were to complete this deal, not only would it substantially lessen competition, but it would essentially consolidate the market into the hands of the 'Big Two' – AT&T and Verizon. Today's filing is another step in Cellular South's unwavering effort to pursue the best interests of competition, wireless consumers, and our nation's economy." Cellular South further contends that the merger would prevent regional carriers from obtaining the best devices in a timely fashion; would force regional carriers to pay higher roaming prices (if they can get them at all); and would raise prices, and reduce innovation, consumer choice, and competition. AT&T is scheduled to meet with the Department of Justice on Wednesday this week to discuss a possible settlement.

more at Cellular South »

Hackers In “Largest Identity Theft Case Ever” Stole Over 130 Million Card Numbers :: Personal Background Check Blog

Hackers In “Largest Identity Theft Case Ever” Stole Over 130 Million Card Numbers :: Personal Background Check Blog

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Text size: increase text sizedecrease text size Cable wars focus on HD channels

Let the race begin! Cable television providers RCN and Service Electric are going head-to-head to strengthen their foothold in the region by increasing the number of high-definition channels each provides.

The fallout? Some customers may have to purchase additional equipment to keep viewing.

RCN will be unveiling Project Analog Crush in September, a plan to phase out analog service in order to multiply the number of high-definition channels available to its Lehigh Valley's customers from the present 29 to 100. Allentown, the first area to be upgraded, will be completed by September and the entire region is planned to be all digital by the end of the year, said Randy Nungester, RCN's vice president and general manager of the Pennsylvania market.

The upgrade will come at a cost to RCN customers, who will need a converter box to view the additional channels. The first converter box is free but additional units are $2.95 per month.

The cable provider has already done such upgrades in New York, Boston, Washington and Chicago.

''Over the past three to four years there has been a proliferation of HD television sets and the marketplace has exploded in the years as the prices went down and the size of the sets has gone up,'' Nungester said. ''In a competitive world you have to listen to the needs of your customers and if you do not change you will not be very competitive for long.''

High definition produces crisper picture quality, with images about six times sharper than analog. HD's added features are theater-like wide-screen display programming and Dolby digital audio capabilities.

RCN plans to add 15 to 20 channels on its expanded cable lineup, officials said.

Many cable providers, including the nation's largest provider, Comcast, have launched similar HD and digital expansion programs to remain competitive with satellite systems and Verizon's fiber-optic cable service called FiOS.

Cable providers have been gradually scaling back analog programming in recent years, replacing it with digital, which multiplies a cable provider's channel capacity. Each analog channel is the equivalent of three HD or 10 standard-definition digital channels.

RCN and Service Electric are the two largest cable providers in the Lehigh Valley, competing with other paid subscription services such as DirecTV and Dish Network.

The region's paid television market has been even more competitive since Verizon announced in April that it signed a 10-year deal with Allentown, allowing the company to begin laying groundwork for its FiOS service later this year.

FiOS, a service that touts high-speed Internet, clear picture quality and many HD channels, is offered in parts of 13 other states.

Verizon has said it chose to start service in Allentown because it has an infrastructure in the city with its DSL Internet service. Verizon has not said if it would be spreading FiOS service to neighboring areas.

Jack Capparell, Service Electric's general manager, said the company plans to have 100 HD channels by the end of the year. Service Electric is currently the lead HD cable provider in the area, providing about 40 such channels, viewable by a digital converter box.

Capparell said Service Electric provides the first digital converter box free but charges $5.95 per moth for each additional box. He added that the company will continue its analog service for customers that prefer the option.

Supreme Court whacks DSL antitrust suit against AT&T

The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a lawsuit against AT&T charging that the telco engaged in "price squeezing" against smaller Internet providers. A group of carriers led by Linkline Communications complained that the DSL giant charges high rates for wholesale access and low rates to consumers, effectively pushing competitors out of the market.

But the Supremes ruled on Wednesday that AT&T had "no duty to deal" with these carriers, at least as far as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is concerned. The key to this logic is that while the Sherman Act forbids a company from monopolizing trade or commerce, it doesn't force the business to sell its services to other firms.

"If AT&T had simply stopped providing DSL transport service to the plaintiffs, it would not have run afoul of the Sherman Act," declared Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking for the court. "Under these circumstances, AT&T was not required to offer this service at the wholesale prices the plaintiffs would have preferred."

Lower courts did not see the matter this way. Linkline and three other carriers first brought their case to a California district court in 2003, charging that AT&T's retail and wholesale pricing policies effectively allowed it to "preserve and maintain its monopoly control of DSL access to the Internet." That venue agreed that AT&T's alleged squeezing techniques could run afoul of the Sherman Act. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco backed this perspective in 2007.

At issue for these courts was a ruling that the Supreme Court issued in 2004, Verizon vs. Trinko, which concluded that "a firm with no antitrust duty to deal with its rivals at all" doesn't have to provide a baseline level of service to them. As soon as the Supremes made that call, AT&T invoked Trinko in a bid to get the Linkline case dismissed. But majorities on both lower courts said that the "price squeezing" aspect of the dispute made the matter more complicated.

It got even more complex in 2005 when the Federal Communications Commission issued its Order releasing telecommunications carriers from the obligation to share their networks with unaffiliated ISPs. But in exchange for FCC permission to acquire BellSouth in late 2006, AT&T agreed to continue to offer DSL transmission access to smaller telcos "at a price not greater than the retail price in a state for . . . service that is separately purchased by customers who also subscribe to AT&T/BellSouth local telephone service."

The Supreme Court did not rule on whether AT&T has kept its end of that bargain. But it did uphold its own position in Trinko. "Trinko holds that a defendant with no antitrust duty to deal with its rivals has no duty to deal under the terms and conditions preferred by those rivals," Roberts wrote.

The Chief Justice seems to have had some fun with this case, e.g. this flourish: "[Linkline and company] tried to join a wholesale claim that cannot succeed, with a retail claim that cannot succeed, and alchemize them into a new form of antitrust liability never before recognized by this court."

And furthermore: "If AT&T can bankrupt the plaintiffs by refusing to deal altogether, the plaintiffs must demonstrate why the law prevents AT&T from putting them out of business by pricing them out of the market."

Perhaps they can demonstrate that, but they'll have to go back to the lower courts now with different arguments. The other plaintiffs involved this dispute are In-Reach Internet, Om Networks, and Nitelog, Inc.

DSL FORUM

The DSL Forum today unveiled a major new phase of work at this year's Telco TV in Atlanta. The BroadbandSuite Release Plan -- an industry toolkit for broadband advancement - - represents a significant change in how the Forum issues its specifications.
Over the last fourteen years, the DSL Forum has developed approximately 150 Technical Reports (TRs) that address issues that range from interoperability to remote management of the digital home. The goal of the Forum's new Release Plan is to clearly identify which TRs are associated with specific milestones of broadband development. The Release Plan also provides for the first time, a defined roadmap of Forum work in the pipeline -- spelling out exactly what is the next stage of development.
-- Moving to the BroadbandSuite Release Plan enables service providers to better identify best practices and provides a reference map of future developments. For vendors, this new approach creates a benchmark against which to position their solutions and accelerate time-to-market. It also provides a roadmap of new contributions and work in development, allowing the industry and other organizational bodies to see the direction in which the Forum is moving.
BroadbandSuite Release 3.0 is tentatively scheduled for completion and release third quarter 2008.

Cell carriers fined over missed e911 deadlines

The Federal Communications Commission had set a December 31, 2005 date by which all mobile carriers had to ensure that 95 percent of their subscribers had location-sensitive handsets--that is, those that allow emergency responders to pinpoint a caller's location upon connection to the 911 switchboard.

Sprint Nextel and large regional operators Alltel Corp. and U.S. Cellular Corp. "failed to meet this critical deadline by a significant margin, despite the clear requirements of the commission and the needs of their consumers," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement (PDF).

In fact, Sprint Nextel recorded only an 81 percent penetration rate and, according to the FCC, still has not reached the required levels. It was hit with the largest fine, at $1.33 million.

Alltel, which admitted it had reached a penetration rate of only 84 percent by the deadline and did not achieve the target until 17 months later, received a $1 million fine. U.S. Cellular, which reported about an 89 percent penetration rate as of the deadline and reached full compliance eight months later, was ordered to pay $500,000. Each of the companies had applied for deadline waivers but had their petitions denied in January of this year.

Martin said he considers "facilitating the ability of the public safety community to help those in need" among his agency's highest priorities and said enforcement actions like Thursday's are "a valuable and necessary tool in achieving this mission."

Each of the companies now has 30 days in which to pay up or to petition for the fee to be reduced--or dropped entirely.

Apparently, compliance with the FCC's rules relies in part on the ability of wireless carriers to force their subscribers--through incentives and otherwise--to switch to compatible phones, which has drawn reservations in the past from the wireless industry.

Alltel spokesman Andrew Moreau said his company "took extraordinary measures to convince our customers to swap phones, (but) many just didn't want to make the change. We believe the FCC's timetable for compliance may have underestimated customers' willingness to exchange phones." He declined to comment specifically on the FCC order because the company was still reviewing it.

Sprint Nextel spokeswoman Stephanie Walsh said her firm has faced an extra setback. In July 2004, a "software glitch" rendered the location-tracking capabilities useless in 4.7 million Motorola handsets using then-Nextel's iDEN network. The pre-merger Sprint CDMA network, she added, was poised to be the first carrier to reach the 95 percent mark.

Right now, the carrier has reached 94.7 percent compliance, Walsh said, but she declined to comment specifically on what the company plans to do about the fine, except to "recognize" it has been levied. She also said that no other wireless carrier met the December 31, 2005 deadline--although she acknowledged her company was "farther behind" than the others

Verizon, AT&T and Qwest share a huge contract, Sprint spurned

Good news, AT and T (T), Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Verizon Communications (VZ), Qwest Communications Intl (Q)
The General Services Administration announced last week that teams of companies led by AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) have won the Networx sweepstakes to provide the federal government telecommunications for the next decade. Noteworthy by its absence was Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), which has provided these services via the previous two 10-year contracts. Those companies winning the contract will be eligible to bid for federal telecommunications services currently estimated to be worth up to $20 billion, although some suggest the total worth may be twice that amount. For AT&T Government Solutions, this builds on the many existing contracts it holds with departments of the government including Justice, Homeland Security, and the IRS. 4,000 employees already work for this division of AT&T. Its partners in this bid were Bechtel, Cingular Wireless, EDS, Global Crossing, GTSI Corp., Northrop Grumman IT, and SRA International.Verizon packaged its bid with Comtech Telecommunications, G2 Satellite Solutions, HP Proxim Wireless Networks, and WilTel Communications/Level 3 Communications, and Verizon Wireless.For Qwest, this decision represents a huge step forward as a major player in telecommunications services. It brings Akamai, Americom, Lucent Technologies, SAIC, Sykes and WireOne.Sprint's losing bid partners were Hughes Network Systems, InterCall and Lockheed Martin.A second, much smaller part of the Networx program, Networx Enterprise, will be awarded in May. That contract will cover emerging technologies.