Take That!
Digex shareholders must be pleased with their WorldCom settlement. WorldCom agreed to pay $165 million in cash, acquiesced to fund $900 million in Digexs expansion and committed to sell $500 million worth of the companys services. The suit was filed last year after WorldCom backed out of a deal to purchase Digex for $120 per share, only to buy parent Intermedia Communications for $39 per share.
Trimming Down
Nortel Networks is cutting 10,000 jobs, mostly in its circuit switching operations, because it expects a 4-cent-per-share operating loss on $6.3 billion revenue in its first quarter. In January, Nortel had predicted a 16-cent profit and $8.1 billion revenue for the quarter. Nortel lowered revenue growth for 2001 to 15 percent from its earlier projections of 30 percent.
More Layoffs
Dell Computer will cut 1,700 jobs, 4 percent of its work force. Dell came up a penny shy of fourth-quarter earnings expectations, with 18 cents per share, or $508 million, on a 28 percent revenue hike to $8.7 billion.
1+1=3?
The Nasdaq halted trading of Covad Communications shares after questions about accounting in the companys year-end report raised flags. “The postponement will permit the company additional time to review complex accounting issues related to revenue recognition, SAB-101 accounting, restructuring charges and asset impairments,” Covad said in a press statement.
Jxta Minute
Running very short on details, Sun Microsystems announced a project called Jxta — pronounced “juxta” — that will provide certain core services for peer-to-peer computing applications. Jxta — still in the earliest planning stages — is, for now, a small, low- profile effort to form a developers community to create interoperable P2P applications, said Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy.
Youre for Sale
VeriSign has announced it is selling customized data from the Web address database operated by its subsidiary Network Solutions Inc. Information about 6 million domain name holders is being sold as NSI continues to monetize assets gained during the years it enjoyed monopoly control of the domain name registration market. This effort to market the WHOIS database, like previous attempts, is meeting with stiff criticism from privacy advocates.