Free Republic

Ever greater numbers of Americans are disconnecting their home telephones, with momentous consequences MUCH has been made of the precipitous decline of America’s newspapers. According to one much-cited calculation, the country’s last printed newspaper will land on a doorstep sometime in the first quarter of 2043. That is a positively healthy outlook, however, compared with another staple of American life: the home telephone. Telecoms operators are seeing customers abandon landlines at a rate of 700,000 per month. Some analysts now estimate that 25% of households in America rely entirely on mobile phones (or cellphones, as Americans call them)—a share that...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration on Tuesday will try to convince a federal judge to let stand a law granting retroactive legal immunity to the nation's telecoms, which are accused of transmitting Americans' private communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. At issue in the high-stakes showdown - set to begin at 10:00 a.m. PST - are the nearly four dozen lawsuits filed by civil liberties groups and class action attorneys against AT&T, Verizon, MCI, Sprint and other carriers who allegedly cooperated with the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program in the years following the Sept. 11 terror attacks....

Sen. Barack Obama's shifting position on the FISA bill -- on Friday he released a statement saying that he supported the bill, and on Saturday announced that he would seek to strip out the section providing retroactive immunity to communications companies -- is being directed by aides to Sen. Chris Dodd, who also opposes the compromise legislation. Dodd and senior Obama campaign and Senate staff have been speaking for close to a week on strategy to kill the bill as it became increasingly apparent that negotiations on the bill were coming to a successful end. "Dodd is taking his marching...

(CBS/AP) - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., issued a statement in support of the House's update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but said he would try to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week. The House approved a compromise bill Friday that would set new electronic surveillance rules that would also shield telecoms from lawsuits arising from their participation in the government's warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and computer lines in the United States. The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after...

Congress will pass long-delayed FISA reform legislation as early as tomorrow after key members of the House reached a compromise on a series of issues. The compromise has the backing of House leadership, the White House, and the telecommunications companies fearful of an endless series of lawsuits from their earlier cooperation with the NSA. This bill will permanently update FISA legislation to encompass what became known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, as well as modernize it to eliminate the archaic language that required warrants for international communications: After more than a year of partisan acrimony over government surveillance powers, Democratic...

There's a report today that the New York Times has a story coming up that details extensive involvement between Senator McCain and a telco lobbyist that may have resulted in the telco retro-active immunity provision of the new FISA amendment. ... According to Matt Drudge, McCain has hired legal counsel to pressure the Times to hold back on the story until after the primaries, or kill it outright. Additionally, according to Drudges account, "Rutenburg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday, sources reveal, but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story...

The Bush administration won a legislative victory yesterday when the FISA bill that excluded immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the NSA failed spectacularly in the Senate, leaving the path open to the immunity approach endorsed by the White House. The version without telecom immunity only garnered 36 votes in the upper chamber despite the Democrats' endorsement of it. Twelve of their members joined 48 Republicans in voting against it: The Senate signaled in a key vote yesterday that it supports giving some of the nation's largest telephone companies immunity from dozens of privacy lawsuits related to a federal...

LONDON: Arun Sarin has got more than he bargained for when he paid a bomb to acquire Hutchison Essar; he’s getting a taste of ‘how they do business in India’ and he sounds bowled over. Yes, Hutch Essar is adding 1.5 million to 2 million subscribers per month. Yes, Vodafone’s India targets are 100 million in a few years, a market potential that boggles European minds. But that’s not what’s exciting the Vodafone CEO.He’s looking, in India, for the answers to put his high-cost, low-growth European business on the fast track; a reverse transfer of management technology, if you will....

Cellular subscribers are paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year to subsidize land-line telephone service, enriching big telecommunications companies while providing little or no benefit to cell-phone users. The subsidies are intended to reimburse the companies for providing traditional phone service in rough terrain and rural areas where stringing lines can be costly. But rampant development has transformed some of these backwaters into booming subdivisions, with no real adjustment to the distribution formula; others, such as the oceanfront celebrity playground of Malibu, are receiving subsidies simply because of their difficult topography. Outdated formulas for tabulating the surcharges -- coupled...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez announced plans Monday to nationalize Venezuela's electrical and telecommunications companies, pledging to create a socialist state in a bold move with echoes of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba. Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to eliminate the autonomy of the Central Bank and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to give him greater powers to legislate by presidential decree. "We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform...

The blades are falling.Look for the biggest series of headcuts since Robespierre was in short pants as carrier consolidation continues this year – and as big vendor consolidation almost certainly follows. Here’s the merger headless-count, so far: Verizon + MCI = 7,000 axed AT&T + SBC = 12,000 now, 13,000 to follow the deal (See Verizon's 'Beachfront Property' and SBC to Buy AT&T for $16B .) And with so much of the North American carrier capex now in the hands of so few companies, industry observers doubt that Lucent, Nortel, Redback, Avici, Carrier Access, Verilink, Sonus, and Paradyne will all...

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a major U.S. contractor has dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction. Contrack International Inc., the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, cited skyrocketing security costs in reaching a decision with the U.S. government last month to terminate work in Iraq. "We reached a point where our costs were getting to be prohibitive," said Karim Camel-Toueg, president of Arlington, Va.-based Contrack, which had won a $325-million award to rebuild Iraq's...

<p>WASHINGTON — A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI (news - web sites) on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials confirmed Friday.</p>

Remember the 878 area code? Peek in a local telephone book and you'll find a customer guide that lists the code as serving Jeannette, Connellsville, Blairsville and other towns in Westmoreland, Fayette and Indiana counties. But do you know anyone with a 878 number? So, what's the 411? Three years ago, amid estimates that all the available numbers within the 724 and 412 area codes soon would be gobbled up, the state introduced 10-digit dialing for calls within the region to southwestern Pennsylvania residents and businesses. Starting in July 2001, those wanting to make a local call were required to...

A phony theory of federalism may paralyze the Federal Communications Commission's halting movement toward deregulating the telecom industry. The battle cry of the faux federalists is "states' rights," which is not the first abuse of that term, or of the federalist principle. Like similar abuses, this one deserves to fail. The flashpoint is whether the FCC and Solicitor General Theodore Olson will seek Supreme Court review of a March 2 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. For the third time, that court rejected the core of the FCC's regulatory scheme. In particular, the court rejected the...

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Turning the tables on the outsourcing controversy in the United States, India's largest private telecoms firm, Bharti Televentures, awarded an in-house IT services contract to US computer giant IBM worth up to 750 million dollars. The move by Bharti, one of the most aggressive Indian telecoms players, to outsource its IT needs to the US firm comes amid a raging controversy in the United States about jobs being shifted to India and other developing nations where labour is cheaper. "Arrangements like this will take the sting out of outsourcing," said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Top executives of SBC Communications Inc. said Tuesday that, as part of an ongoing staff reduction program, the telecom company plans to reduce its workforce by 3,000 to 4,000 in the fourth quarter. The cutback will come in the form of both attrition and an enhanced retirement program. SBC management said it expects to take a one-time, pre-tax cash charge of up to $150 million, or as much as 3 cents per diluted share, in the fourth quarter, to cover the costs of the downsizing. SBC executives made the remarks at...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Butte-based Touch America laid off 216 of its 378 employees Wednesday afternoon, according to company spokespeson Linda McGillen. Of the layoffs, 72 are Butte employees. Ninety-nine Butte employees remain. In Missoula, 23 people were laid off, with 20 jobs remaining there. In Denver, 45 were let go and 16 employees remain there. McGillen was not available for specific layoffs in other cities this afternoon. The bad news is the latest fallout from the company that used to be the state's stalwart corporate citizen: Montana Power Co. Over the past six years,...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. U.K. telecommunication equipment maker Marconi PLC will be able to stay in business, for the time being at least, after reaching an agreement with its banks and bondholders to finance the repayment of its net debt of £2.85 billion (US$4.4 billion), the company announced Monday. As part of ongoing efforts to save the London company from going bust, it will lay off an additional 600 employees. The company has also appointed a new chairman to its board: John Devaney, Marconi said in a statement. Devaney was most recently chairman of Exel...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The mobile telephone division at Norwegian telecom firm Telenor plans to cut 216 jobs by early next year. The pending layoffs at Telenor Mobil mean a total staff cut of nearly 15 percent. "There's no way around it," Telenor Mobil chief Ingvild Myhre told employees at a company-wide meeting Tuesday morning. "Costs have to be in line with income." The vast majority of those facing layoff, 179 of 216, work at Telenor's sprawling new headquarters at Fornebu, west of Oslo. The remainder work at Telenor Mobil's other 15 offices outside Oslo....