Still obviously stinging from its high-profile abandoned bid for MCI, Qwest is nonetheless in the market to buy more carriers, and is available to take another run at MCI if shareholder discontent derails the merger with Verizon. CEO Dick Notebaert said at Sanford Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference that “if we’re going to have a viable competitive market…there will have to be further consolidation in the other industry players and I think Qwest” is in a good position to do that.
I’m sure that as people wake up and look a couple of years out, they will see the same picture we see. If you are going to be successful competing against those two [SBC and Verizon], you’re going to have to have a larger partner and be part of a larger entity.
But, for the really big telcos, mandatory access to facilities is critical, Notebaert said. He’s confident that will happen too. “Our expectation is that the Department of Justice and the FCC will ensure that, so that people can’t lock up networks the way the cable industry has.”
Notebaert seemed refreshingly honest about why Qwest halted its months-long pursuit of MCI, particularly given that so many MCI shareholders were rooting for a Qwest merger given that deal’s higher value. “After taking four unsolicited runs at this thing and never being embraced very warmly…we thought it was better to go to plan A,” he said.
But the game may not be entirely over yet. Hedge fund-run shareholder revolts at MCI might make closing a deal with Verizon difficult. “If the shareholders choose to vote that down, we will be very thoughtful and available,” Notebaert said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:24 PM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Courtesy of SkypeJournal, a new mind-blowing phenomenon: video over VoIP technology. A company called Dialcom has released the video4skype plugin, which enables video telephony for Skype users. It’s free and according to Skype Journal’s Bill Campbell, works just fine, but users need to keep an eye on upstream capacity. According to the SkypeJournal post “If you set the Quality to max you will be uploading at about 160 kilobits per second. This will overload anyone with a 128 kilobits per second connection.”
Dialcom is a German company that develops real-time videoconferencing and remote collaboration tools that work over IP platforms. According to the company, it will develop the free plugin for other VoIP platforms. If VoIP customers of U.S. cable and phone companies cotton to a free video telephony plugin, that could either wipe out these companies’ plans to offer their own premium video telephony options or spark a battle over network access and control.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:02 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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