'Global' vision for MCI
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Facing persistent speculation that MCI Inc. is positioning itself for a sale, the telecommunications company's chief executive, Michael D. Capellas, insisted yesterday he has ''no intention&quot; of breaking the company into pieces that could attract several buyers.
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Good news for investors in telecom bad boy MCI (Nasdaq: MCIP): Over in Luxembourg, the European Court of Justice&#39;s Court of First Instance ruled in MCI&#39;s favor on an appeal of an antimonopoly ruling Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - What struck Microsoft executive Marshall Phelps at a recent series of conferences in developing nations was that government, business and academic leaders often asked him, "How can we invent the next Google?" It's not that he took it as a slight that they said "Google" and not "MSN." What struck him was the view that a single big idea could transform a country overnight. "Not everything has to be the next big breakthrough," said Phelps, the company's corporate vice president for intellectual property, during an interview last week. The key to building a prosperous economy is to create an environment that supports innovation, he said. Innovation can take place at a piecemeal pace and does not have to happen in one fell swoop -- and usually, it doesn't. Phelps had just finished a series of conferences on innovation cosponsored by Microsoft in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The idea was to bring together national leaders and help them figure out how to encourage innovations that play to the strengths of their countries, and how to create an environment to ensure that innovation continues. For example, Phelps said, in Indonesia many people are artistic, and the country has started to focus this talent on visual multimedia software. A drawback for the country is that around 65 percent of college graduates go abroad to find jobs. In Thailand, government agencies tend to be aggressive and forward thinking, and that can help strengthen a number of industries. Medical tourism is booming there, and Thailand is growing into an automobile titan in Asia. Innovation can occur in any of these industries -- especially with software, Phelps said. The idea of drawing on local strengths can be applied to the U.S. too, said Bob Hayward, a managing consultant in Thailand with Strat-etech Consulting Co. Ltd. The U.S. software industry is a by-product of a business environment that relies heavily on new technology for efficiency. "You must work with what's in your environment," Hayward said. Malaysia is the most advanced of the three countries Phelps visited. It has high-tech parks and attracts investments from global technology companies, which in turn support innovation locally by providing training and engineering jobs that increase the skills of the work force. Malaysia also has strengths in building data centers, and in "Islamic finance," a type of financing that does not charge interest for religious reasons. South Korea is one country in the region that has developed so far in recent decades that it is now a technology leader in some areas. It's years ahead of other countries in certain types of Internet applications because of its early focus on broadband. Its online gamers are famous, and a host of multiplayer games developed there, such as "Guild Wars" and "The Legend of Mir 2," have won acclaim outside Korea. Many poor nations are still struggling to adjust their economies to the modern world, and they are often wary of solutions proffered by rich nations and multinationals. The innovation conferences give Microsoft a chance to meet local officials and try to win their trust. It gets other benefits too, such as boosting its image and giving it a chance to discuss issues that are important to the company, like intellectual-property enforcement. The countries where the conferences were held certainly face hurdles to innovation. They are still largely agricultural, and are moving into heavier industries, where less money is traditionally spent on research and development. Intellectual-property rights are not strongly enforced, meaning inventors see their products copied in the local market, making it hard for them to expand in their country, much less internationally. Such countries may have intellectual-property laws on their books, often enacted to meet the criteria of trade deals, but enforcement of those laws moves slowly. "Once R&D is near or approaching 1 percent of a country's gross national product, then their enforcement of IP gets very serious," Hayward said. Another hurdle is the lack of a "culture of failure" in Asia, Phelps said. Government and business leaders need to be realistic that some companies and some products will fail. Governments often provide resources to keep companies afloat artificially because, they fear, if they fail it will reflect badly on their development policies. There is also a debate in many countries over which economic model to follow, and how to create a modern nation without losing cultural identity. While these are sensitive issues, several countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, have found ways to develop while maintaining their cultural roots. The best economic model is "not a mystery," according to Hayward. "We kind of know what works and what doesn't." For him, capitalism, for all of its faults, is the best economic system available. The next step for Microsoft is to arrange more meetings and create better coordination between government officials and local Microsoft offices, Phelps said.
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Developing a global SEO strategy is not an easy undertaking. But if you have, or plan to have, a worldwide presence, you should create a global plan sooner, rather than later.
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Nutrition, obsession, global business:  an exploration of our second most basic desire.
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SAN FRANCISCOâWireless software developers and content producers attending the CTIA Wireless show here say the United States is on the verge of catching up with Europe and Japan in the deployment of the latest wireless technology and content.
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Microsoft began the latest phase of its big push for consumers&#39; digital lives by unveiling Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 (MCE) and a host of products designed to work alongside it.
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Join Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and J&J in improving the world.
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MCI Inc., the long-distance provider, said yesterday that it planned to take a $3.5 billion charge in the third quarter to better reflect the loss in value of its phone and data networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Some of the world's biggest cellular operators have gotten together to promote their vision of what next-generation mobile technology should look like. Sprint Nextel Corp., Vodafone Group PLC, China Mobile Communications Corp., Orange PLC, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Royal KPN NV and T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG announced Thursday they have formed the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative. NGMN, a nonprofit group based in London, won't push a particular type of network but rather a set of guidelines that future technologies should follow, said Steve Falk, vice president of global standards at Sprint. "We think that we can speak with a more organized and concerted voice that we have in the past," Falk said. Vendors and standards organizations had stronger voices in the development of 2G (second-generation) and 3G systems. Carriers will represent the interests of their customers, the end users, he said. The group, which is already consulting with equipment vendors but will only include carriers as members, may be pitting itself against Qualcomm Inc., which developed much of the current 3G (third-generation) technology and has been criticized in some quarters for its royalty and licensing practices. The NGMN is looking toward the technologies to follow 3G systems such as HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). Carriers are still deploying and upgrading those networks, which are based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) respectively, but even faster technologies are coming down the road. Sprint, for one, has called WiMax its 4G technology and plans to roll it out across the U.S. within the next few years. In choosing WiMax, the carrier used some of the guidelines NGMN was formulating, Falk said. Among NGMN's recommended features are the following: - high data throughput with low latency - low operation and maintenance costs - support for authentication, security and differentiated quality of service Carriers also will favor technologies covered by FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) intellectual property rules, Falk said. "One of the principles of NGMN is an open and transparent IPR (intellectual property rights) regime," he said. The NGMN would like to see a single technology track and believes greater harmony will lower costs and speed up product development for vendors, too. "In some cases, 2G and 3G vendors have had to do very costly and time-consuming development on three to five different kinds of technology," Falk said. Being able to focus on one or two tracks, in turn, will help bring products and services to mobile subscribers faster and more economically, he said.
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Professor wants to redesign chip software and hardware for the mobile age, creating chips that can power chameleon devices.-Leslie Walker
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Ultrasmall technology, revolutionary impact.
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Introducing a global water ETF.
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Decision may bring world of wireless peripherals to market.
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Delivering the capabilities of traditional EAI products within a light-footprint, standards-based infrastructure supporting incremental integration
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MCI Inc. MCIP.O, the No. 2 U.S.  long-distance company, said on Monday it would record noncash  impairment charges of about $3.5 billion in the third quarter,  mostly for property, plant and equipment.
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Leading supermarket chain lays out road map for the future.