EarthLink rocks, J.D. Power says
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Broadband provider ranks No. 1 in marketing research firm's 2007 customer satisfaction study published Wednesday.
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EarthLink confirmed Friday that its partner in Helio, SK Telecom, had agreed to invest up to $270 million in the wireless venture.
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Watch out, cable. Reddy Kilowatt can now invade your turf as the FCC on Thursday approved regulations that allow power companies to provide broadband services.
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Shares of EarthLink climbed more than 6 percent today after the Internet service provider said it would cut about half its work force and close four offices to reduce costs.
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Two former MCI executives, Joyce Dorris and Paul Erickson, want to bring Internet phone service to mainstream America. "We're in the beginning of a wholesale transformation to have communications run over Internet technology," said Erickson, chief executive of SunRocket, a start-up in Vienna. "If you have broadband, you'd be silly not to put your phone service on the Internet."
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In a continuing effort to cut costs, EarthLInk said it would lay off about 900 employees. In addition, it would buy back about $200 million of its own stock, according to a statement by CEO Rolla Huff on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - The ACLU has turned up the political heat on EarthLink and Google's plan for Wi-Fi in San Francisco, telling the city's Board of Supervisors that the proposed contract doesn't have enough privacy or free speech protections. The ACLU of Northern California said in a letter to the supervisors on Tuesday that both EarthLink's paid service and Google's free offering would fall short of most of the group's recommendations on collection and sharing of personal data and possible tracking of users. Among other things, there are no limits on what kind of information EarthLink can or will collect, and terms for the Google service call for requiring "minimal" information on login without defining "minimal," the letter said. In addition to privacy concerns, the group is worried that knowing information is being collected will cause users to limit what they say and do on the Internet. The city and EarthLink agreed on a contract last month, and EarthLink is confident the closely watched project will get off the ground with deployment of a proof-of-concept network starting in April, said company spokesman Jerry Grasso. But the proposal has been under fire since before the contract was completed, and some members of the board have said a municipally owned system would be better for the city. EarthLink negotiated the deal with the city and would build and operate the network, bringing Google in as a tenant providing the free, slower service. Some critics have warned that San Francisco could be giving a virtual monopoly on citywide Wi-Fi to private companies without ensuring user privacy or complete coverage. The ACLU said a municipal Wi-Fi network should let users opt in or out of any service that collects data on what they look at or search for on the Internet, or their e-mail messages. There are no provisions for that in the paid or free service terms, it said. EarthLink can only save location information for 60 days, but there's no limit to how long it can store personal protected information and no limit to how long Google can store any information, the ACLU said. Users of the EarthLink service can opt out of receiving marketing materials, but EarthLink has free reign to share personal information with partner companies that help it deliver or promote the service. Both service providers can hand over users' personal information for law enforcement or national security reasons without a warrant or notification of the user, though they would require "court-ordered documentation" before doing so. If information is sought for a civil suit, EarthLink or Google would have to tell the user first. EarthLink's Grasso declined to comment on the ACLU's letter, saying EarthLink has not seen it. Google and city representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Alpheus Communications, operator of an extensive fiber optic network  across Metro Texas, today announced that they will provide fiber-based  backhaul support for EarthLink's (NASDAQ:ELNK)  municipal Wi-Fi network in Corpus Christi.
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The sun came out for EarthLinks&#39; Philadelphia Wi-Fi network on Thursday even as prospects for its San Francisco project remain shrouded in fog.
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(InfoWorld) - EarthLink's announcement that it will lay off 900 people is a blow to broadband competition, but some industry followers say it doesn't signal the end of municipal Wi-Fi. While EarthLink's statement about the job cuts doesn't include a single mention of Wi-Fi, the company's municipal Wi-Fi business is likely to be hit hard. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made on Tuesday says the position of president of municipal networks is being eliminated and Don Berryman, who held the position, is one of the employees being let go. At the end of June, EarthLink had just over 2,000 employees. In addition, EarthLink has been reining in its municipal efforts since earlier this year. Most recently, in July, the company saidÂ it would not take on any new municipal Wi-Fi projectsÂ until it's confident of a reasonable return. EarthLink's woes could eliminate the potential for new competition in the broadband industry. "What you won't see any more is a new entrant in the telecom business coming in like EarthLink did and trying to build green-field networks and compete against the incumbent to build a third pipe to the consumer," said Ron Sege, CEO of Tropos Networks, the vendor that supplies EarthLink with Wi-Fi network equipment. Instead, he suspects that existing operators will build Wi-Fi networks as an extension of their DSLÂ offerings and that cities may build the networks in order to use them for public safety applications or meter reading. EarthLink's troubles point to a couple of problems with many of the municipal Wi-Fi business plans, said Phil Solis, an analyst at ABI Research. "The whole premise of doing municipal Wi-Fi was that it would be extremely low cost," he said. "But the low-cost assumptions were built on having 30 or 40 Wi-Fi [access points] per square mile." In practice, operators found they might need as many as 100, which changed the economics, he said. In addition, some operators assumed that the municipalities would use the networks, but in some cases that didn't happen. Some newer contracts are requiring municipalities to commit to a certain level of business, guaranteeing the operators some revenue, he said. Solis called EarthLink's restructuring a "reality check." Operators and cities are better off considering Wi-Fi, WiMax, and cellular, depending on the application, he said. Wi-Fi can still work in dense areas and will work even better when 802.11n, a faster Wi-Fi standard, becomes widely used, he said. Given more time, EarthLink might have succeeded, Sege said. Gary Betty, EarthLink's former president and CEO, started the municipal Wi-Fi business at the company. But Betty suddenly died in early January, leaving no one to "carry the flag" for municipal Wi-Fi, Sege said. He suspects that Betty may have had a long-term growth plan that would have seen the networks start to pay off in around five years. New President and CEO Rolla Huff hopes for a quicker payoff, he said. EarthLink, which has scheduled a conference call for Wednesday to further discuss the restructuring, has not said what it plans to do with the Wi-Fi networks it has already built. It operates networks in Anaheim, California; Corpus Christi, Texas; Milpitas, California; New Orleans, and Philadelphia. It could continue to operate them or consider selling them to Clearwire or Sprint Nextel, companies that are just beginning to build WiMax networks. EarthLink's customers and access to city infrastructure for hanging network equipment could be valuable to them, Sege said. News of the restructuring could cloud the municipal Wi-Fi initiative in San Francisco, where city officials early this year finished negotiating a contract with EarthLink. The network still needs approval by the city's Board of Supervisors. A committee is scheduled to vote next week whether to send the contract on to the full board for approval. Opponents have used EarthLink's financial woes to raise question the viability of the plan. In its statement, EarthLink said it expects subscriber additions to slow down in 2008. At the end of June, EarthLink had more than three million dial-up and 1.1 million broadband subscribers. In addition to offering wired and wireless Internet service, EarthLink is also part owner of Helio, a struggling mobile virtual network operator. (Stephen Lawson in San Francisco contributed to this story).
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EarthLink Inc.'s current contract to build a municipal Wi-Fi network in San Francisco appears to be dead follow...
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EarthLink (Nasdaq: ELNK) is the latest company to bridge the Internet and the telephone. It&#39;s offering Voice over Internet Protocol (or VoIP) service for free to its customers, as it announced in a press release today.
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Plans for municipal Wi-Fi in a dozen cities currently in negotiations with EarthLink may be in jeopardy as the company is imposing new demands on how the networks are to be paid for.
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EarthLink said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with the city of Corpus Christi, Texas that would open up its preexisting Wi-Fi network for public use at a cost of $20 per month.
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EarthLink Inc, one of the US&#39;s largest consumer ISPs, said yesterday it has started offering free voice over IP calls to subscribers of its high speed service.
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ALBANY, N.Y. -- There are high hopes here for an electric transmission cable that can carry three to five times the power of traditional cable.
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Agency gives phone companies more leeway in sharing connections. Also: Broadband over power lines gets green light.