Caron Carlson

For years, telecommunications companies have been pressuring Congress to do away with the federal excise tax on telephone services, a levy imposed in 1898 to help finance the Spanish-American War. But last week, the Joint Committee on Taxation proposed that rather than getting rid of the tax, Congress should expand it to cover a broader […]

Despite promises of streamlined efficiency and ease of convergence, network managers are discovering that running voice calls over the data network is rarely simple. To help the growing number of businesses turning to IP telephony, vendors are adding functions to make VOIP (voice over IP) management easier, and theyre adding services for enterprises that cant […]

To give pioneering IP telephony users more bang for their buck, and to give those still hesitating a smoother way to migrate to the convergence frontier, ShoreTel Inc. next month will add new flexibility to its calling architecture. ShoreTel5 Release2 will come with a group paging feature and a “whisper page” option that lets receptionists […]

When Congress came up with its plan to let long distance telephone companies sell local phone service, local phone companies sell long-distance service, and the market move toward open competition, legislators likely never envisioned what is happening today. After prompting an initial spate of new entrants, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave way to consolidation. […]

His legacy may be indelibly marked by the travails of Janet Jackson and Howard Stern, but the resignation of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell clears the way for Congress to rewrite the rules at the foundation of telecommunications. Despite his notoriety in the debate over public decency, it is in the arcane world of […]

Rumors have surfaced that SBC Communications Inc. has begun serious, preliminary negotiations to buy AT&T Corp., a move that would further consolidate the rapidly constricting telecommunications sector. The nations largest long-distance carrier, AT&T, of Bedminster, N.J., turned its sights in recent years to the lucrative business market, as pricing pressures in the long-distance consumer market […]

The FBI has steered clear of its much-criticized e-mail eavesdropping system in favor of off-the-shelf wares when it comes to court-ordered surveillance. The agency last week admitted it made little or no use of the system, first known as Carnivore and then as DCS 1000, during 2002 and 2003, opting instead to use commercial software […]

The telecommunications and IT industries are marshaling resources to improve emergency 911 calling via voice over IP, and at least one project in the works takes advantage of Wi-Fi for location identification. The collaborative effort among some of the biggest names in telecom and IT comes in response to stepped-up interest by policy-makers in ensuring […]

With a chain of more than 370 hotels in 33 states and an environment of near-constant change, La Quinta Corp. was accustomed to receiving close to 1,000 telecommunications bills a month from about 100 service providers. Such numbers, which masked myriad cost inefficiencies, combined with intensifying network complexity to force the company to seek outside […]

The 109th Congress may have bold plans to tackle new laws over the next two years, but legislators returning to Washington this week face a stack of old regulatory business dredged up by industry and awaiting attention on Capitol Hill. A chorus of complaints about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002, for example, is pushing […]

To enable more IP-based WAN services, including voice over IP, at more enterprise sites around the world, MCI Inc. is expanding its Private IP VPN network offering and adding satellite service to its access options. MCI champions its Private IP service as an ideal way for companies with far-flung sites to connect all locations to […]

IT companies are digging further into voice communications, forcing change to traditional telephony that could leave a century-old communications industry unrecognizable in short order. As the telephone carriers struggle to adapt to packet-based networking, data companies are quickly adopting voice strategies of their own. Moreover, VOIP (voice over IP) is forcing the convergence not only […]