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Byline: Glenn Bischoff Much of the discussion at the 2005 VoIP: Telephony conference - produced by Telephony and Wireless Review and held in Chicago on June 6 - focused on [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff It didn't take Moe Mustafa long to figure out he wasn't dealing with the usual natural disaster once Hurricane Ivan ripped through southern Alabama and the Florida [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Public safety officials are determined not to be left behind as voice over IP develops. Last week, the sector got its wish as one of its own, [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Recent push-to-talk handset additions by Kyocera and Motorola indicate that vendors are beginning to expand their focus beyond the business/enterprise sector that spawned the service to a [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Wireless carriers reported substantial increases in store and Web site traffic on the first day of local number portability, although the predicted flood of porting requests didn't [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff It's going to happen someday. Carriers are going to replace all of those Class 5 switches bought long ago that have outlived their usefulness. So says Frederick [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The Progress and Freedom Foundation doesn't think municipalities should be allowed to provide telecom services. The group recently released a study that decried the growth of government-owned [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The Association for Local Telecommunications Services asked Congress last week to investigate a lobbying plan developed by the U.S. Telecom Association and aimed at ending government management [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Since the Federal Communications Commission issued its Triennial Review order Aug. 21, most of the attention on the unbundled network element portion has been focused on switching. [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit agreed last week to transfer the appeal of the FCC's Triennial Review order to the District of Columbia [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Some ideas are just destined for the trash heap, though it often takes time for sanity to prevail. Take Astroturf: In 1965, the Houston Astrodome - the [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Competitive carriers scored a victory last week when the multi-district appeal of the FCC's Triennial Review order was awarded to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff and Vince Vittore Voice-over-IP provider and vendor 8X8 revealed last week that the Wisconsin Public Service Commission sent the company a letter telling it to become certified [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Telecom service providers are no more immune to the universal problem of deadbeat customers than any other businesses. Wireline and wireless carriers collectively accrue several billion dollars [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The wireless industry unveiled a voluntary code of conduct last week it hopes carriers will follow in their interactions with consumers, ostensibly to give subscribers greater protections. [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Unions generally don't enjoy a good reputation. They often are portrayed as greedy and unreasonable, and they have been known to employ questionable - ahem - negotiating [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The U.S. Telecom Association and SBC Communications appealed the FCC's final Triennial Review order in federal court last week, alleging that the FCC failed to follow the [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff On Aug. 14, alarms began to go off in Sprint's main network operations center at its headquarters in Overland Park, Kan. Normally, that's not a huge concern. [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Clearly, the national Do-Not-Call registry jointly administered by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the FCC is a huge hit with consumers. Less certain is the impact [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff SBC's plan to repeat its startling legislative success in Illinois, where its lobbying muscle and political connections rammed through a law that would have increased wholesale rates [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff After losing the fight to keep the FCC's wireless local number portability mandate from taking effect Nov. 24 as scheduled, wireless carriers and the trade group that [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Despite past sins that put his company in the glare of a legal spotlight and saddled it with a reputation for shoddy customer service, Richard Notebaert, chairman [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff President Bush signed tax relief legislation last week that both large and small telecom carriers believe will spark increased network investment. But it doesn't offer a coveted [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The Association for Local Telecommunications Services joined AT&T and MCI last week in filing a lawsuit in district court seeking to block the controversial Illinois law passed [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The settlement between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the telecom carrier formerly known as WorldCom is drawing the ire of critics, who believe the company [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The comic strip character Pogo once uttered the phrase, 'We have seen the enemy - and he is us.' Should the FCC's triennial UNE review turn out [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Back in the 1930s, one of the era's most popular radio programs asked the rhetorical question, 'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?' The [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff In a hearing last week on telecom's economic recovery, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the federal government and the industry both need to accept the idea that [...]

Byline: Vince Vittore and Glenn Bischoff In the waning days of October, the Bell operating companies and most of the larger incumbent carriers will report third-quarter numbers that are expected [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff It's different now. The victories don't come nearly as fast or as often for the people of Verizon Communications. At least not like in the weeks immediately [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Depending on who you ask, the joint proposal on network access presented to the FCC at the end of last month by BellSouth and Time Warner Telecom [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff BellSouth Chief Technical Officer Bill Smith told a House subcommittee last week that stronger measures are needed to protect sensitive information concerning the nation's telecommunications infrastructure, particularly [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Fear, as it turns out, can be an effective motivator. Fear is what keeps batters from digging in at the plate, husbands from forgetting their anniversaries and [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The FCC's approval of Verizon Communications' application to provide interLATA service in New Jersey last month brought the battle for long-distance customers to AT&T's front door. In [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff The relative stability of most ILECs and WorldCom's revelations has some questioning deregulation's pace. Regulation, of course, is anathema to Bell companies, which see it as an [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff As carriers look for ways to deliver greater value to their shareholders and keep the Wall Street vultures at bay, they are casting their gaze more than [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is planning to introduce legislation that would address intermodal parity between providers of high-speed data services. Unlike other pending legislation, the initiative would [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff While competitive carriers applauded last week's Supreme Court decision that affirmed the FCC's TELRIC formula, incumbents indicated the battle isn't over and that they would begin moving [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff and Vince Vittore To stave off an already intractable cash crunch, Yipes files Chapter 11 and buys time. Not everyone thinks it's the cure. Radical business model [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff There's a lot companies can do to employees without causing a revolt. Go ahead: Drop their company-paid health club memberships. Make them pay a bigger chunk for [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Telecom companies have done quite well in engendering customer loyalty, according to an annual study conducted by Brand Keys, a New York-based consulting firm. Four telecom companies [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff On Sept. 11, many Americans shared an experience that arguably was as gut-wrenching as watching the terror in New York City and Washington unfold on their televisions: [...]

Telecom Act aftermath resembles schoolyard scuffle Last week, Sprint, WorldCom and AT&T asked a federal court to block the recent FCC decision allowing SBC Communications to provide long-distance service in […]

What will the next-generation switch look like? As competing companies strive to achieve the first-mover advantage, they often take divergent paths in hopes of gaining the edge. It's somewhat unusual, […]

Reading fine print is no help with long distance CLEC We've all heard the advice: Read the fine print. Which is generally pretty good advice, unless of course the fine […]

CWA discards cookie cutter, carves out deal with Cingular Anyone who has seen 'Norma Rae' knows that union negotiations are supposed to be tough and mean. But that's not how […]

Free access ISPs aren't becoming extinct - they're evolving Based on the hand wringing during the past few months since several free access ISPs dropped off the landscape, many might […]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff Unlike the FCC's first triennial review of unbundled network elements in 1999 that retained the status quo, the current review promises to have a profound impact on [...]

Byline: Glenn Bischoff SBC Communications claims it is offering an olive branch in the venomous lobbying battle with its proposal to transition UNE-P to a wholesale model within two years. [...]

Discusses the development of Bell companies' internet protocol (IP) Centrex offering. Role of Verizon in the development; Local area network infrastructure of the system to support internet protocol telephony; Interoperability of the system; Potential of the IP Centrex.