GigaOM

With its business still recording losses and saddled with debt, you would think that Internet backbone provider Level 3 would be trying to keep as many customers as it can. That’s why the company’s decision to pull the plug on a small Pennsylvania ISP is puzzling, especially since the ISP heatedly disputes Level 3’s claims of acceptable-use violations.

Is it just a case of he said-she said between Level 3 and (no pun intended) Said, Inc. (owners of ISP Saidcom), or is it the sign of a bigger strategy inside Level 3 to cut costs by lopping off the least-productive customers of some of its recent acquisitions?

Whatever the case, the real losers so far have been the Pennridge, Pa., school district and several hundred area businesses and residents, who have been without Internet service since Level 3 cut it off abruptly on Feb. 22.

Continue »

Who says the TED conference is only about movie stars and old basketball players? According to MarketWatch columnist Herb Greenberg, TED will be the official launching pad for MagicJack, a USB-based VoIP offering from telecom vet Dan (Tel-Save) Borislow that could make Skype’s simple setup look like calculus.

According to the just-live MagicJack website, the main “magic” appears to be an oversized-looking thumb-drive thingy with a USB connector on one end, and an analog phone jack on the other. Greenberg’s column says the total price for a device and a yearly subscription for all-you-can-eat dialing in the U.S. and Canada should be between $50 and $60 $29 and $39 the first year, $19.99 a year thereafter; so far, no other details have surfaced on how the pricing, connection and billing actually work, and whether it won’t be another free-calling fiasco.

Continue »

In a ruling that could have wide-ranging consequeces for the entire competitive voice replacement market, a federal jury Thursday found Vonage guilty of infringing several patents held by Verizon, and awarded $58 million in past damages and imposed a 5.5 percent royalty fee on future Vonage operations.

According to analysis of the case by the telecom experts at Stifel, Nicolaus, the judge in the case may also impose an injunction stopping Vonage from selling services that infringe on the patents involved; the judge is scheduled to determine any injunctions in two weeks.

Continue »

Wall Street gave a thumbs-up to the WiMAX strategy of Craig McCaw and Clearwire Thursday, as the company (ticker symbol CLWR) was finally able to go public at the high end of its $23-25 expected pricing. The stock opened at $27.25 per share, then dropped and leveled off around $25. Intel and Motorola, two big investors in Clearwire, will own 29 percent and 10 percent of the company, respectively.

Not a day goes by wihtout some large enterprise telephony/software company promising a blissful marriage of communications and business applications. (Wednesday Cisco and IBM were painting a picture of a new IP-enabled future, while Microsoft dreamed of billions from the same.)

While they may think of it as utopia, it reminds us of Arena Football. What problem are the big companies really trying to solve, other than buffing up their revenue streams? While they wait to lead businesses to the promised land pledging to tie together communications like voice, IM and email, and to integrate them with business applications (bet you just can’t wait to dial someone from Excel), innovative startups are already offering a cornucopia of V(eb)oIP that are based on open standards (mostly) and more importantly are easy to use. (Well, almost easy to use.)

Continue »

If and when wireless broadband provider Clearwire hits the public markets as expected this week, the offering is sure to be heralded as a first for WiMAX. However, the smaller startup WiMAX service provider Towerstream is already selling stock, albeit via an over-the-counter offering whose roots the company isn’t exactly flattered in sharing since it involves a defunct producer of girly calendars.
Continue »

Is the idea of “presence” really one of the next steps in communications applications, or is it just a fancy way of not having to answer your phone?

Alec Saunders, one of the founders of VoIP presence software startup iotum, definitely hopes it’s the former, and not just because his company wants to make a buck off the idea. In personal appearances as well as his well-read blog, Saunders is a champion of the Voice 2.0 idea, using applications to move the world of communicating past busy signals and voice mail.

We caught up with Alec for a quick email Q-and-A about presence, iotum and blogging, which follows after the jump.

Continue »

Will a low-cost cordless phone finally convince you to pull the plug on the PSTN? That’s what SunRocket and ATS hope with their scheduled announcement Tuesday of a cordless, multi-handset VoIP phone that will be available for as little as $19.99 after a rebate.

Whether or not such easy-to-use gear — or the convenience of a bundled service — will help lift troubled SunRocket out of the bottom of the VoIP provider pool is another story.

Continue »