Heads up Google Fiber: A rural Vermont telephone company might just have your $70 gigabit Internet offer beat. VTel’s Chief Executive Michel Guite says he’s made it a personal mission to upgrade the company’s legacy phone network, which dates back to 1890, with fiber for the broadband age. The company was able to afford the upgrades largely by winning federal stimulus awards set aside for broadband. Using $94 million in stimulus money, VTel has invested in stringing 1,200 miles of fiber across a number of rural Vermont counties over the past year. Mr. Guite says the gigabit service should be available across VTel’s footprint in coming months. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read MoreCBOE Holdings Inc. technology staff knew of software issues in the hours before the largest U.S. options exchange suffered a three-hour outage, according to people briefed on discussions among CBOE officials. Staffers at the company, which operates the Chicago Board Options Exchange, were confident they could fix the issues, CBOE executives have told colleagues and others outside the company. One area of focus by CBOE Thursday and Friday has been whether the exchange should have moved to a backup system to be safe, the people briefed on the discussions said. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read MoreSamsung Electronics Co. said its first-quarter net profit rose 42 percent from a year earlier on strong smartphone sales, but the pace of earnings growth slowed, highlighting stiff competition. South Korea’s biggest company by market capitalization has been betting on its new smartphone, the Galaxy S4, to drive sales in the current quarter, but its plans hit a temporary hiccup after some U.S. wireless carriers said this week they are facing delays in selling the new device. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreChip maker Qualcomm Inc. continued to benefit from strong demand for mobile devices in its latest quarter, though profit fell 16 percent due to a large one-time gain in the year-earlier period. The San Diego-based company said revenue jumped 24 percent, and projected a range for revenue growth in the current quarter with a midpoint of nearly 31 percent. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreMetroPCS Communications Inc. shareholders have approved the company’s merger with Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA unit, after terms of the deal were improved. The deal is expected to close May 1. T-Mobile agreed last year to merge with MetroPCS, creating a publicly traded company of which Deutsche Telekom would own 74%. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreVMware Inc.’s first-quarter earnings declined 9.3 percent as realignment charges weighed on the software maker’s results, though services revenue and core earnings improved. Shares fell 6.8 percent to $70.80 after hours as the company lowered its full-year revenue guidance and offered weak estimates for the second quarter. Through the close, the stock has fallen 20 percent since the start of the year. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreA hedge-fund executive disclosed that he owns about $2 billion in Microsoft Corp. stock, stating that the value of the software giant’s businesses wasn’t appreciated by other investors. Jeffrey W. Ubben, founder ValueAct Capital Management L.P., discussed the stake Monday at an investor conference. ValueAct hasn’t disclosed how many Microsoft shares it bought, but the stated value suggests ValueAct holds less than 1 percent of Microsoft’s total stock outstanding. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreCBS Corp. has taken a minority investment in Syncbak, a company that allows local-TV stations to stream programming to consumers over the Web, a move that comes as broadcasters are fighting unauthorized Internet distribution of their content. Syncbak, founded in 2009 by Jack Perry, has created a technology to deliver broadcast-TV signals to tablets and smartphones. The service isn’t yet commercially available. It is being tested by more than 100 local-TV stations in 70 markets. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreHow do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet? That’s a question we faced during our January visit to North Korea, when we attempted to engage with the Pyongyang traffic police. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
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