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Friday, September 13, 2002 |
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• SBC, Yahoo! take the wraps off DSL service • AOL does the management shuffle • Got a thirst for concert tickets? Try H2O
SBC, Yahoo! take the wraps off DSL service Making good on a promise made late last year, SBC Communications Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. have launched a co-branded broadband Internet access service. The CO-branded DSL access service, which is available to customers in SBC's 13-state local service region, offers a personalized homepage, a customizable browser, e-mail, parental controls and spam filters. Hoping to attract narrowband Internet access subscribers who have been scared away by broadband's price tag, the duo is offering various tiered pricing packages based on speed. SBC Yahoo! DSL Basic offers speeds of up to 384 Kbps downstream and up to 128 Kbps upstream for $42.95 a month. New customers will receive an introductory price of $29.95 for the first six months, a free DSL modem and free activation with a one-year subscription agreement. SBC Yahoo! DSL Standard Plus3 offers speeds of up to 384 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream and up to 128 Kbps upstream for $49.95 a month. New subscribers to this plan also will receive the six-month promotion price of $29.95 a month. SBC Yahoo! DSL Deluxe provides downstream speeds up to 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps and upstream speeds of up to 256 Kbps for $59.95 a month. Since the speeds are much faster than the other two plans, new customers will be offered an introductory price of $39.95 a month for the first six months. These subscribers also will be eligible for a free DSL modem and free activation if they sign a one-year contract. Tiered pricing is one of the hot topics in the telecom industry. At the NCTA convention in May, several cablers discussed the pros and cons of charging customers more for higher speed or more bandwidth usage and reducing speeds for those unwilling to pay higher prices. Covad Communications recently introduced a reduced-rate, no-frills DSL offering to its customers. AT&T Broadband also recently launched a faster tier of cable Internet service for $80 a month. The company has plans to conduct trials with a lower-speed version this year. In June, SBC and Yahoo! unveiled SBC Yahoo! Dial, which gives subscribers access to Yahoo! content, including finance, music, online calendaring, e-mail and customized news tracking. Unlike the broadband service, the narrowband service is available nation wide. Two months earlier, SBC and Yahoo! expanded their existing partnership to bring broadband services to small businesses. SBC has enlisted Yahoo! as its dial-up and broadband ally in an attempt to put itself on a level playing field with the likes of AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Both companies own a great deal of online content and have been taking steps to be competitive in the broadband service arena. Yahoo! will receive monthly per-subscriber payments from SBC, while SBC will receive a share of Yahoo!'s non-subscriber revenue on advertising, e-commerce and broadband-enabled features and services on the portal. Related stories:
When the fourth quarter end on Sept. 30, Lucent Technologies Inc. expects to post a wider-than-expected loss of 45 cents a share. The news pummeled Lucent's stock, sending its shares down more than 11 percent in early trading. Citing "continuing market softness and ongoing uncertainty in customer spending levels," the telecom gear giant is forecasting revenue will fall as much as 25 percent sequentially from the $2.95 billion it recorded in the third quarter. While analysts on average were expecting revenue of $2.89 billion, according to Thomson First Call, if Lucent's forecast is correct, the company will post revenue between $2.21 billion and $2.36 billion. Adding to Lucent's woes, the company expects to record a loss of 45 cents per share, which is far steeper than the 16-cent per share loss analysts had estimated. Lucent plans to reduce its quarterly revenue break-even rate to between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. The company says it is still targeting the end of fiscal 2003 as its time to return to profitability. In today's announcement, Lucent stated it will take "additional restructuring action," meaning more jobs will be eliminated. The company said it will provide an update on its headcount during its Oct. 23 earnings announcement. For the past two years, Lucent has made several reductions in its workforce while working to restructure its operations to better align expenses with demand. At the beginning of 2001, the company employed roughly 106,000 people, but that number has dwindled to around 50,000. As of 11:38 a.m. EDT, Lucent shares were shedding 19 cents, or 11.5 percent of their value, trading at $1.46 a share. Related story:
AOL does the management shuffle Following hints that a major housecleaning was in the works, America Online Inc. has reshuffled its executive ranks. The changes are aimed at reversing AOL’s flagging dial-up-subscriber growth and dwindling profitability. They may also be an effort to restore confidence in the unit’s financial practices in the wake of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice into possible accounting irregularities. Most notably, the realignment eliminates the chief operating officer and AOL president position, putting newly christened AOL CEO and chairman Jon Miller in more direct control of several key units, including AOL Broadband. The Internet-service provider will also be looking for a new chief financial officer. With the COO and president slots eliminated, Miller will directly oversee the company’s brand, interactive marketing and broadband divisions. In a release, Miller also noted that AOL will put more resources behind its AOL Broadband unit, led by Lisa Hook. Current COO J. Michael Kelly moves over to chairman and CEO of AOL International and assumes command of the AOL Anywhere unit, now being managed by Hook. CFO and executive vice president Joseph Ripp, meanwhile, will become vice chairman. He will oversee corporate functions and operations, including infrastructure and technology, as the company looks for a new CFO. AOL is also setting up councils to oversee brand, product and technology strategies, all under vice chairman Ted Leonsis’ supervision. A senior strategy group will include Miller, Leonsis, Ripp, Kelly, AOL Interactive Services president James de Castro and AOL Time Warner Inc. Media and Communications Group chairman Don Logan. Current president Ray Oglethorpe will move over to a senior advisor position before retiring from the company. Also leaving is Jan Brant, vice chairman and chief marketing officer and champion of the infamous AOL CD carpet-bombing mailer campaign. She will step down and become a senior advisor, as well. And AOL is disbanding its business-affairs department, reassigning employees to the respective business units they support.
Got a thirst for concert tickets? Try H2O Based on the OpenTV H2O interactive TV application, OpenTV has teamed with Ticketmaster to develop a t-commerce service that will turn televisions into virtual ticket agents. The companies have joined forces to enable iTV subscribers to search for and purchase tickets for concerts, sporting events, and other events using their televisions. The OpenTV H2O platform translates online content developed in HTML and JavaScript to an iTV application, which in turn will enable set-top boxes that are unable to support an embedded Web browser to offer the content. "OpenTV H2O provides content developers and network operators with an opportunity to take advantage of existing Internet technologies to create compelling interactive TV content on existing thin set-top boxes," OpenTV Europe's General Manager Mickey Kalifa said. Operators would not need to upgrade or exchange their existing set-top boxes powered by OpenTV middleware to use OpenTV H2O, according to Kalifa. The application is being demonstrated this week at the IBC 2002 show in Amsterdam. Related stories:
Canadian communications company Shaw Communications is putting the finishing touches on its video-on-demand service set to launch next month in Calgary. The company has inked a deal with Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution Group to help fill up its VOD library. Although financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Alliance Atlantis will supply older titles from its catalog of films, as well as current releases. Movies slated to debut this fall on Shaw's VOD service include John Q, Amelie, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Blade II and 40 Days and 40 Nights. Shaw also has a content deal with Hallmark Interactive to provide more than 300 titles. The company says it is continuing to work to secure more content deals from movie studios. The VOD service will offer subscribers a selected title for up to 48 hours. The service also will offer full VCR functionality, including such features as pause, rewind and fast-forward.
Fixed-wireless broadband provider Teligent Inc. is free from bankruptcy. The company emerged from its Chapter 11 filing today, free of debt. Teligent has exited the proceedings debt free, fully funded and with all of its fixed wireless assets intact. To erase $1.65 billion in debt, the company swapped its debt for ownership with its creditors. The company's secured lenders -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Toronto Dominion Bank, own 100 percent of the reorganized company's stock. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York approved the reorganization plan last week. "While this has been a very long and difficult road, we are extremely pleased to complete our reorganization," Teligent's CEO Jim Continenza said in a statement. "We are very excited about moving forward and executing our new business plan," he said. To protect itself from its creditors, Teligent filed for Chapter 11 in May 2001, after it failed to secure $350 million to make interest payments that had come due. The company has spectrum licenses in 74 markets. It will continue to sell Internet services to its enterprise customers, transport services to carriers and point-to-point broadband access services to multi-location businesses. Related story:
• Chip makers support Windows Media 9 Series The newly released Windows Media 9 Series from Microsoft Corp. has gained support in the chip sector. Equator Technologies Inc., National Semiconductor Corp., Sigma Designs Inc., STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments Inc. say their chips for set-top boxes and next-generation digital media appliances will support the digital media delivery format. • Magis secures $5 million Magis Networks has secured $5 million in funding from Elwin Capital Partners. These funds bring the total raised by Magis during a Series B round of financing to $45 million. Magis develops chipsets that enable wireless communications of high-quality video, TCP/IP data, and audio through the home and office. • Organizations team for MPEG-4 interop testing The Internet Streaming Media Alliance and the MPEG-4 Industry Forum have agreed to facilitate interoperability testing of MPEG-4 streams and players. Both organizations have been promoting the development of MPEG-4 products that adhere to industry standards, but this is the first time their combined membership of 120 companies will be able to exchange encoded content and interconnect streaming equipment in real-time. The first interoperability testing event of ISMA v1.0-based products and services will take place in October.
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