Roy Mark

AT&T agreed Jan. 14 to pay $2 million to settle a civil complaint by the Department of Justice that the nation’s settlement provider of mobile wireless voice and data services failed to fulfill its divestiture obligations in connection with AT&T’s acquisition of Dobson Communications. AT&T bought Dobson, a regional carrier based in Oklahoma City, for […]

Republican lawmakers are balking over President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers’ call to delay the Feb. 17 digital television transition deadline. The legislation setting the deadline was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2005.“[The transition] is freeing broadcast spectrum for firefighters, police officers and other life-savers and also providing them with $1 billion to equip […]

President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate Julius Genachowski, Obama’s chief campaign technology adviser, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to a number of media reports. A former Harvard Law School classmate of Obama and the chief legal counsel at the FCC during the Clinton administration, Genachowski raised more than $500,000 for the Obama […]

President-elect Barack Obama isn’t playing it very cool when it comes to the digital television transition. No sooner had the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced that funding for the $1.34 billion digital converter box coupon program had been temporarily exhausted than Obama called for a delay in the Feb. 17 deadline for television stations […]

Facing legal pressure from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups, the U.S. government has delayed by at least a month a federal mandate calling for federal contractors and subcontractors to use an Internet-based electronic verification system to confirm that prospective employees are legally eligible to work.Known as E-Verify, the free program is […]

Motorola’s cell phone division may be striking out in the handset market, but its video delivery services are a hit with Major League Baseball’s new MLB cable network. Launched on Jan. 1, the network chose Motorola’s modular uplink system and integrated receiver/decoders to distribute its new lineup of sports programming. The new 24-hour cable network […]

Not everyone out there is suffering through the recession. Sparked by strong consumer and enterprise demand for Wi-Fi-enabled devices, Wi-Fi chip set sales jumped 26 percent last year to 387 million, according to new statistics released Jan. 8 by the Wi-Fi Alliance and In-Stat. Driving the chip set sales were cell phones loaded with Wi-Fi, […]

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team told lawmakers Jan. 8 Congress should delay the Feb. 17 transition date for television stations to begin exclusively broadcasting in digital. John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama transition group, said there have been “major difficulties” in the digital TV transition planning. The NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) announced earlier […]

Add Palm to the smartphone sweepstakes. The beleaguered pioneer of personal digital assistants has finally pushed out a smartphone it hopes will rival the popular Apple iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices, introducing the Palm Pre on Jan. 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Palm aims to gain on Apple and […]

With just 39 days left before television stations begin broadcasting in digital, the Consumers Union urged Congress Jan. 7 to delay the transition from analog to digital until more funds are made available in the federal coupon program created to offset the costs of digital converter boxes. The Consumer Union’s letter to Rep. Henry Waxman […]