Cash Deal
Cisco Systems will sell more than 500 high-speed routers to China Telecom that will be used to build out the companys national Internet backbone. Cisco, heavily criticized for providing so-called vendor financing for similar deals in the past, says it will not underwrite the $100 million equipment sale.
Vote of Confidence
Nokia says it will use Symbian software on half its handsets by 2004, boosting hopes for the consortiums operating system. Nokia owns a 21 percent stake in Symbian, but has only rolled out one handset that runs the Epoc OS.
I Will Survive
Though analysts doubt that Metricom can survive past August, the high-speed wireless Internet service provider has launched a marketing blitz in two of the 15 cities where it offers access. It also rolled out Ricochet Dial-Out Service, which allows remote access for enterprises without Virtual Private Networks. Metricom has lost about $500 million invested by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and others.
Tax-Free
A U.S. Tax Court judge threw out a $523.3 million tax bill from the 1980s, ending a court dispute between Nortel Networks and the Internal Revenue Service that began in 1997. The IRS claimed that Nortel realized a gain when a U.S. subsidiary acquired the rights to purchase gear from the Canadian gearmakers big customers, like U S West, then lease it back to them.
Streaming Apps
CacheFlow unveiled its cIQ Starter Kit, which enables enterprises to deploy high-quality streaming and Web apps on their network infrastructure, at the NetWorld+Interop conference last week. The package is designed for groups managing corporate content and deploying multimedia apps across four or more locations.