The last week of the first month of the New Year (can we still shout it that?) ends with a rather critical milestone, at least from a unified communications perspective.

FCC Auction in High Gear

The highly coveted commercial Block C of the 700MHz auction has met the minimum reserve, and in doing so, ensures open access for all. Yay!!! Who’s bidding on what remains to be seen, as that is not disclosed by the FCC in an effort to prevent collusion.

At the end of the bidding on Friday, the FCC had raised by 18.5 billion for the U.S. Treasury.

Quality of Service Takes a Hit in the Mid East and Asia

On Wednesday, two under water cables in the Mediterranean were cut, causing a massive slowdown of Net and telecommunication services from Egypt to India. Repairs on the cable could take a week or more as countries and businesses frantically race to switch to satellite uplinks. On Friday, another submarine cable was cut in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Dubai, adding insult to injury. Both instances involve cables owned by the same company, and are being blamed on anchoring ships. A new Al Queda tactic?

Sprint Rumored to be Talking to Clearwire, Again!

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Sprint is reviving talks with Clearwire to

profile a joint venture in hopes of getting some outside capital, from the likes of Google or Intel, to help defray the 5 billion dollar cost of building out their WiMax networks. Amid massive layoffs, Sprint has been said to be close to deciding on a microwave backhaul provider for its “post” initial WiMax rollouts. possibly the beat does still go on.

Continental Airline to offer Free WiFi Web Access

Continental cuts a deal with LiveTV LLC to offer in flight WiFi World Wide Web access and Satellite TV starting in 2009. WiFi services will be free, and would allow users World Wide Web access through WiFi enabled handhelds and laptops. LiveTV, a unit of JetBlue, already offers its services there, as well as other airlines such as Virgin Blue, WestJet, and Southwest Airlines.

8X8 Announces Profitable Quarter

Finally some good news from a pure play VoIP service provider! Packet8 parent company 8X8 announced third quarter profits ending December 31st, up 17% by last year. Packet 8’s Virtual Office, a hosted IP PBX solution with by 10,000 SMB subscribers, grew 8% in revenue quarter by quarter. Their VoIP residential service was additionally up by 5% by the second quarter.

And that’s just some of the way it is, February 1st, 2008.

Share This

Original post by editor