Industry News

AT&T investors nix proposal to split CEO and chairman roles

May 1, 2012

AT&T (NYSE: T) investors decided against a plan to split chairman and CEO into separate positions, during its recent annual meeting in Salt Lake City.

Safaricom & Bharti Airtel fiber collaboration

April 26, 2012

Safaricom Kenya and Bharti Airtel are set to form an agreement that will enable the two giants to lay a fiber network. This is a move designed to cut costs associated with the involvement of third parties whom they rely on for their Internet.

Meeting between fiber-optic firm, Quincy canceled

April 26, 2012

A meeting between i3 America and officials from the city of Quincy was canceled Thursday without explanation.

Villagers tire of awaiting high-speed Internet, so they deploy own cable trench

April 26, 2012

Anyone visiting the village of Wray in Lancashire over the next few days may get the wrong idea about this tiny British hamlet. For this weekend (April 28-29) sees the start of the annual Scarecrow Festival, which means that the streets will be full of country bumpkin figures, with turnips for noses and stalks of straw poking out of their ill-fitting jackets. Then, of course, there’s the maggot-racing, which takes place every autumn in the George and Dragon pub. All of which might lead you to believe that this is a bit of a rural backwater.

Google Fiber in Kansas City Lets Hollywood Nervous

April 26, 2012

Of all the media industries dragged kicking and screaming into the brave new digital world—news, music, publishing—Hollywood has held up comparatively well. Although physical sales of DVDs and Blu-ray are falling, no single Web company dominates the online video realm, and consumers mostly still get their programming via pricey cable bundles. Poky Internet speeds—the U.S. average of about 5 megabits per second ranks 26th globally—means that pirates can’t swap bulky video files with the same insouciant ease as they do MP3s.