News briefs: 'Net neutrality suffers setback

By Staff Writers, Network World, 05/01/06

 Start a discussion    Print article

 Comments (1)    Print article

• A telecom reform bill approved by a U.S. House committee last week drew predictable reactions from proponents and opponents of 'Net neutrality - as the opponents won in this preliminary round of what promises to be a long legislative process. The bill creates a national franchise process for such carriers as Verizon and AT&T, which are rolling out TV services in competition with cable TV. Currently, new providers of cablelike TV services must get approval in every city where they want to provide service. The 'Net neutrality amendment would have required broadband providers that set aside bandwidth for such services as IP TV to offer the same bandwidth to competing services. Supporters of 'Net neutrality say that without a strong law, providers could block content from competitors or charge companies extra for their content to have top priority.
• AttachmateWRQ last week said it will acquire NetIQ for $495 million to create a stronger company offering enterprise software products. NetIQ sells systems and security management products that help IT administrators ensure policy compliance and manage service levels. AttachmateWRQ's products let administrators make corporate data accessible to more users and also manage and secure enterprise systems. The combined companies will offer a wider array of products to customers, AttachmateWRQ said. Attachmate and WRQ merged last year to form AttachmateWRQ, a company owned by a group of investors. At the time of the merger, AttachmateWRQ executives hinted the new company might make acquisitions. The NetIQ acquisition follows an announcement in March that AttachmateWRQ acquired OnDemand Software for an undisclosed amount.
• Infrastructure management vendor Avocent has agreed to buy LANDesk Group, which makes desktop management products, for $416 million. LANDesk offers a range of software products, including tools for desktop management and security. The company has partnerships with several big PC makers, including Lenovo. It was once part of Intel, which spun it out into a separate company in 2002. The LANDesk acquisition follows Avocent's purchase of Cyclades earlier this year. Cyclades specializes in Linux-based management tools.
• EDS said last week it has signed a seven-year, $1.7 billion outsourcing services contract with food and beverage behemoth Kraft Foods. As part of the contract, EDS will provide services that include data centers, hosting, telecommunications, workplace support services, hardware and software. EDS will manage Kraft's IT infrastructure, including desktop workstations and servers for more than 60,000 employees worldwide. EDS has landed a couple of large contracts in recent months. It was part of the massive General Motors five-year, multibillion-dollar systems integration plan that includes Capgemini, Compuware Covisint, HP, IBM and Wipro. The services firm also inked an outsourcing contract extension with the U.S. Navy worth an estimated $3 billion.
• NEC is the victim of a large-scale piracy ring that sold counterfeit NEC goods and NEC-branded products the company does not manufacture. The company is unsure whether the goods were produced by factories working under contract for NEC in China and Taiwan or came from an outside counterfeit-goods syndicate, says Yasuhito Jochi, a spokesman for NEC in Tokyo. Counterfeit keyboards, writeable CDs and DVDs, and MP3 players have been sold unlawfully under the NEC brand, even though NEC doesn't necessarily manufacture all those products, he said. The company does not make MP3 players, for example. NEC was unable to estimate the value of the pirated goods sold, because it hasn't ascertained the scope of the problem yet.
• Lucent last week said it has completed its $207 million acquisition of certain assets of metropolitan Ethernet router maker Riverstone Networks. Last month Lucent outbid rival Ericsson for those assets, which give Lucent Ethernet switching and routing capabilities it could not get from partner Juniper Networks. Lucent says Riverstone's carrier Ethernet platforms augment its IP Multimedia Subsystem portfolio by letting operators use end-to-end, Ethernet-based architectures that support lower-cost delivery of broadband services. "Substantially all" of Riverstone's 400 employees are now Lucent employees, Lucent said.

Invalid query - session: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

About Us | Contact Us | Advertising Info | Terms of Service/Privacy

Copyright, 2006-2007 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.