eWEEK EDITORS

Before Select Inc. came along, Eastern Bank didnt entirely trust some of its potential integration partners. “They seemed to lack product access and expertise,” laments Eastern Banks Bob Primavera. Theres a lesson in that comment for anyone who wants to retain customers: Consider certification. “Without the Cisco Wireless Certification program, we wouldnt have been able […]

Sometimes less is more. Just ask Eastern Bank, which decided to consolidate offices in the Boston area as part of an initiative to streamline operations. Eastern, which has 46 banking branches and eight regional sites in the Boston area, wanted to close four offices scattered over a 15- to 20-mile radius. Employees from each office […]

Free Space Optics vaults into the big leagues this week with Qwest Communications Internationals announcement that it will deploy LightPointes rooftop-to-rooftop optical technology in its worldwide network. Its the first time a major incumbent carrier has signed a deal with a manufacturer of FSO, a technology that is low-cost and fast to deploy, but can […]

Motorolas new way of bonding light-emitting compounds onto a silicon chip may do more to deliver smaller, cheaper and faster semiconductors than anything announced by chip makers this year, analysts said. “This could go down in history as a major turning point for the semiconductor industry,” said Steve Cullen, Cahners In-Stat Groups principal semiconductor analyst. […]

Assistant secretary of Commerce Bruce Mehlman is in charge of the Office of Technology Policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce, having been confirmed by Congress in May. Previously, Mehlman was telecommunications policy counsel for Cisco Systems Inc. Prior to that, he served as policy director and general counsel for the House Republican Conference. Mehlman […]

Gigabit Ethernet. The very name rolls sweetly off the tongue, implying lightning speeds in a protocol as simple and familiar as the plug-and-play ports in the back of your laptop and printer. Its the hottest play in the metro area because it can carry heavy traffic from office to branch office and onto the public […]

Tachyon, another pioneer in high-speed satellite access, already offers downlink/uplink speeds of 164Kbps/ 300Kbps to 256Kbps/2Mbps. Leasing bandwidth on existing space-based infrastructure, Tachyons services (www.tachyon.net) are resold in the United States by small and midsize ISPs like NeTrack and Infocom. Smart Partner evaluated the Tachyon service for six months in late 2000 and early 2001. […]

The South Carolina legislature recently modified an anti-pedophilia state law to require IT people discovering child pornography on a system to report the computers user to authorities. Sounds reasonable, right? After all, its pretty hard for a rational person to argue in favor of protecting those who buy or traffic in kiddie porn. But theres […]

With David Nagel leaving AT&T Labs to run Palms Platform Solution Business, Hossein Eslambolchi takes the reins of the original networking brain trust. Formerly a senior vice president of packet and optical networks, Eslambolchi first joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1985, studying metro network applications and ultra-reliable communication systems. Eslambolchi, 43, has a doctorate in […]

With a corporate breakup off the table, Microsoft now faces a raft of potential mandates to remedy its monopolistic behavior. The simplest and most reasonable may be compulsory licensing of the Windows operating system, observers said. “We think a universal license to the OS is the way to go,” a senior official of AOL Time […]

With school back in session, its time for Interactive Weeks fifth annual ISP Customer Satisfaction Survey. Each year, we ask our readers to grade their business ISPs to determine which should be added to the honor roll, and which should stay after school for extracurricular help. This years class valedictorian for overall customer satisfaction is […]

The Problem A 10-person psychiatric practice needs to make its medical records HIPAA compliant by April 2003, according to new government mandates (see www.hipaacomply.com). The company needs a HIPAA-compliant server that stores medical records and can synchronize with a local hospitals system. Moreover, doctors must be able to access the server from wireless handheld computers […]