eWEEK EDITORS

MFN Future Brightens Metromedia Fiber Network, which had until Aug. 15 to line up a new round of financing, has hammered out a conditional agreement with lenders, including Citigroup, for $150 million. The metro carrier now has about $330 million in funding commitments. Analysts say they expect MFN to next announce a restructuring that will […]

Level 3 Communications is scooping up enormous amounts of undersea fiber capacity for a fraction of what it cost to build, in a deal that should help control trans-Atlantic bandwidth prices. “Its like getting a free car,” said Cary Robinson, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffrays senior research analyst for communication services. Level 3 is acquiring undersea […]

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Transformational outsourcing is rapidly gaining traction among vendors and customers. Simply put, transformational outsourcing involves rolling up IT outsourcing, consulting, business-process outsourcing and change management into a comprehensive package of services to help customers transform their businesses. Customers are naturally attracted to the underlying “value proposition,” say industry observers, while partners like Accenture, EDS and […]

Kris Brunk had heard all of the horror stories about outsourcing, including onerous contracts, unresponsive vendors, hyped-up expectations—to sum up, the full monty of regret. So when it came time for her company, Geon, a maker of chemical compounds (since acquired by PolyOne), to outsource its desktop support operations, Brunk had a pretty good idea […]

Going, Going . . . Webvan Group, the ambitious online grocery service, is now all but gone. All that remains is a little cleanup. The company set an Aug. 27 deadline for bids on its assets, but made a point of saying it didnt think it would make enough money to give anything back to […]

Global ASP Business Area Leader IBM Elevator Pitch: Despite market conditions, Reiten is very bullish on the ASP sector, as she leads IBMs ASP Prime program, the companys so-called incubator for ISVs that want to migrate to the ASP model. Claim to Fame: “Launching and developing IBMs ASP Prime globally.” Current Challenge: “Ties back to […]

User Uptick The number of people using the Internet is still increasing in the U.S., though not as fast as it has in years past, according to audience measurement firm Nielsen// NetRatings. The company estimates that 102 million people in the U.S. used the Internet at home in July 2001, about 16 percent more than […]

.info Signup Draws Criticism Cybersquatting is becoming a problem in the land grab sparked by new domain names. Afilias, a group of domain managers designated to oversee the registration of the new .info domain, has allowed trademark holders time to register for their trademarks before the public gets its chance at the remaining .info domains […]

National DSL wholesalers have fallen, but smaller regional carriers are gaining momentum by selling bundles of telecom services to business customers. The carriers left standing say their competitors failed to understand that DSL is a technology, not a business. “The DSL-only model and wholesaling is dead, but the technology is not dead at all,” said […]

Golden Chutes Lucent Technologies paid sacked CEO Richard McGinn $5.5 million in severance after he failed to engineer a quick turnaround of the troubled gear maker, and agreed to pay former Chief Financial Officer Deborah Hopkins $3.3 million, the company reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. McGinn was replaced last October by his […]

Followers of the data-only mobile virtual network operator concept have a range of ideas for the types of companies that might like to offer wireless data services without building their own networks. Nitin Shah, ArrayComms executive vice president and general manager of business development and strategy, says the most obvious are the well-known ISPs. Those […]