This week EU lawmakers halted telecom reform in its tracks, TeleGeography saw signs of a bandwidth boom and John Chambers saw signs of a market bottom.
The European Parliament blocked a telecom reform package because of anti-piracy measures which infringed on citizen rights. Governments and lawmakers have two months to stitch up a new deal.
EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding called on the US to let go of ICANN.
Microsoft banned mobile VoIP apps from its new app store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
TeleGeography saw signs of a bandwidth boom – with 16 cables planned this year, the biggest growth in capacity since 2001.
Cisco’s quarterly earnings fell 21% but added $2 billion to its $34 billion cash war chest. CEO John Chambers said the slump in corporate spending may have leveled off.
Alcatel-Lucent doubled its losses as sales in North America and to service providers fell sharply.
Deutsche Telekom lost EUR1.1 billion for the quarter and booked a EUR1.8 billion writedown on its UK mobile business. Telenor’s profit dived as sales shrank in key Thai, Malaysian and Pakistan markets.
Telecom NZ’s HSPA network will launch on schedule after the carrier settled Vodafone’s claim of network interference out of court.
GCHQ, the UK electronics eavesdropping agency, took the rare step of publicly denying it planned to track internet and online phone use in Britain. The head of the National Security Agency called on the US to build a digital force able to fight a future cyberwar.
Security researchers found sensitive information for shooting down ICBMs as well as bank details and NHS records on old computers.
Sony Ericsson hopes to sell at least two new smartphones by year-end. Thanks to Twitter, Bit.ly has overtaken TinyURL as the biggest URL shortener.
Rupert Murdoch expects to begin charging for access to News Corp’s news sites within a year.
Nasa is testing a space internet protocol, the Delay (or Disruption) Tolerant Network (DTN). European space firm EADS Astrium is working on satellite “sails” that could guide spent spacecraft back to the Earth’s atmosphere to reduce the volume of in-orbit traffic.
Amazon unveiled a much larger version of Kindle. The hype began for Wolfram Alpha, a smart search engine.
The New South Wales government launched a campaign to warn about the dangers of sexting. YouTube helped a Welsh father to deliver his wife’s baby.
And experts revealed the earliest sighting of the @ sign, 473 years ago.