Caron Carlson

Businesses of all sizes plan to nearly double spending on IP-based voice communications this year, and vendors and service providers are busy showing off products to fill that need. Enterprises and small and midsize companies will spend an average of $100,000 this year on IP equipment and services, up from $63,000 last year, according to […]

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers admit that they were caught by surprise by Voice-over-IP service and its capacity to radically disrupt the countrys legacy telephone system. Still, the legislators are urging preemptory steps to ensure that state regulators cant impose legacy obligations that might drag the upcoming technology down. Proponents say the actions are needed to protect VOIP, which […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the Commonwealth of Massachusetts appeal for more stringent antitrust sanctions against Microsoft Corp. The ruling brings to a close a longstanding case brought by the Department of Justice against the company. “This decision is bad news for consumers, bad news for competition and ultimately […]

Massachusetts settled a class-action lawsuit with Microsoft Corp. Tuesday, making vouchers available to its residents for the purchase of desktop, laptop or tablet computers, software and peripheral devices. The vouchers will be issued to members of the class action who claim them, and will come to a maximum value of $34 million. Vouchers will be […]

Civil rights advocates and computer experts today urged all counties planning to use DRE (direct recording electronic), or touch-screen, voting systems to immediately implement security precautions, including independent expert access to the systems source code. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law issued a set […]

The collective mind of congress is rapidly turning to the fall elections, but some issues are pressing enough to warrant continued attention, among them spyware. The growing problem of sneaky information collection programs has enterprises increasingly worried and lawmakers in the House of Representatives determined to pass an anti-spyware bill this summer. For industry sectors […]

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate today approved legislation aiming to stop identity theft by increasing criminal penalties and creating a new crime of aggravated ID theft, defined as using a stolen identity to commit certain other crimes. The House of Representatives passed the same bill Wednesday, and the legislation is now headed to the White House for […]

To give carriers and their enterprise customers ways to make better use of the vast amount of network capacity available today, vendors are developing products that add more control to traffic, bandwidth and services management. At this years Supercomm conference in Chicago, VocalData Inc. will roll out its latest data application server, which has an […]

To offer a lower-cost alternative to frame relay and MPLS services from telephone companies, startup network service provider Straitshot Communications Inc. will launch a WAN service by aggregating carrier networks and dynamically choosing the least expensive line. Straitshot officials touted their technology, called Intelligent Private Network, for its ability to provide the security of frame […]

Congress put the kibosh on the Pentagons Terrorism Information Awareness electronic surveillance program in February, but data mining remains alive and thriving throughout the federal government. A General Accounting Office report released Thursday enumerates nearly 200 data mining initiatives in operation or in the works. Scores of data-mining projects that collect and analyze U.S. citizens […]

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Cisco Systems on Tuesday morning, CEO John Chambers laid out an ambitious strategy for technology innovation, beginning with the companys most powerful router, the CSR-1, which will be available this summer. Ciscos goal is to become the product leader not only in the service provider and enterprise markets but in […]

WASHINGTON—Almost five months after Congress passed a law to reduce the amount of junk e-mail flooding the nations in-boxes, industry experts widely agree that the opposite has occurred: Were getting more spam than ever before. The CAN-SPAM Act is widely viewed, even by top policymakers, as a positive but inadequate measure. Officials now are placing […]