All posts under tagged ‘Qwest’

VoIP Outage in Several States Due to Qwest-SkyWi Fracas

The legal battle between SkyWi and Quest has impacted VoIP service used by some areas in New Mexico. Among them, Eddy Country which uses ZiaNet. Fortunately, 911 services were not impacted.

Qwest Communications shut down SkyWi Inc’s network two days ago, leaving businesses, homes and governments without internet connections.

“We believe that we are under attack by Qwest Communications. SkyWi filed a lawsuit against Qwest in federal court in New Mexico earlier in December regarding Qwest’s predatory, anti-competitive and unfair trade practices. We itemized Qwest’s anti-trust violations, as well as racketeering activities, invoking the Clayton Act and RICO statutes. Qwest has now decided to discontinue the service it had provided to SkyWi,” said Jack Leach, SkyWi’s President.

However the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission on Wednesday stepped in, ordering Qwest to restore service to SkyWi and its subsidiaries. The deadline? Today at 8 a.m. A quick search online failed to bring up an answer to whether that happened or not.

In addition to New Mexico, customers in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and Texas were also impacted.

“This is a great result for our customers,” stated Jack Leach, SkyWi’s President. “I am pleased that Qwest’s predatory practices and their efforts to drive us out of business were recognized by the Commissioners of the PRC. There is still a great deal of damage rendered to our customers’ businesses by their actions, however, and we must now work very hard for our customers in order to rebuild their trust in our services and our company.”

SkyWi contends that they made a fair offer to Qwest, which was denied.

Published on January 2nd, 2009 under du, GE, IP, Q, Qwest, S, T, VoIP, voip outage

FCC Rules Against a Baby Bell

Source: gigaom.com

FCC Rules Against a Baby Bell —

Not only did the FCC decide on Friday to berate Comcast for messing with P2P traffic, but apparently it showed no love to Qwest, either, denying Qwest’s request for forbearance in four cities. Qwest had sought the right to stop charging competitive telecommunications carriers wholesale rates for access to its network in Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver and Seattle, saying the area was now competitive. Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC and the carrier’s biggest fan, disagreed. Maybe he’s tired of being the industry’s lapdog.

Comments (0)

Published on July 28th, 2008 under Object id #96

Is Cable Voice Getting a Sore Throat?

Source: gigaom.com

The economic downturn, in particular the housing market slump, that has been pressuring U.S. telecom operators now seems to be extending to cable operators as well. After enjoying nearly eight quarters of solid growth, it looks like the U.S. cable telephony business is slowing down.

The proverbial canary in the coal mine sounded the alarm yesterday. ARRIS, which makes hardware for cable operators, lowered its second-quarter forecast for both profits and revenues. Management blamed maturing cable telephony deployments and a slow housing market on the reduced demand for cable telephony services.

I think both are valid points. First, cable voice has become pervasive. You can now call your cable operator and get a fixed line connection without worrying if they actually offer voice service in your market. (Whether you’re happy with them, however, is a different story altogether.) So it’s hardly a surprise that the demand for equipment would slow down.

As we’ve previously noted, cable VoIP has been on a tear. At the end of the first quarter, Comcast had 5.1 million customers, while Time Warner Cable had 3.17 million, followed by Cox’s 2.46 million, Cablevision’s 1.68 million and Charter’s 1.08 million. Many of these subscribers came at the expense of telephone companies. Telegeography estimated that there were about 16.3 million VoIP households at the end of the first quarter of this year.

The cable companies benefited from the previous surge in new housing starts, which led to spectacular growth in their broadband and voice telephony businesses and in turn, made it easier for people to switch away from telephone companies. A slowdown in this business is only natural. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if large cable companies saw a sharp slowdown in broadband growth as well.

The real question is, just how big will the slowdown be? With the second-quarter earnings season just getting underway, it won’t take long to find out.

Published on July 9th, 2008 under Object id #46

Qwest Being sued for VoIP Patent violation by RTI Inc.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Rates Technology Inc (RTI), which has sued high-profile companies like Nortel Networks, Google Inc. and Vonage Holdling Corp, seeking billions of dollars in damages, now has set its sights on Qwest Inc. Most cases that were mentioned above resulted in settlement agreements.

Rich Tehrani of TMC did speak with RTI after it sued Google.

RTI’s complaint against Qwest said the suit came about after Qwest ignored RTI’s earlier requests to settle the matter out of court. The case was filed July 16 in federal district court in Delaware.

RTI, based in Smithtown, N.Y., has demanded an injunction to stop Qwest from selling VoIP services that uses it’s patented technology. It also demands Qwest recall all such products sold previously.

The 24-year-old company holds several important VoIP patents and has reached agreements with more than 140 companies who provides services based on VoIP technology.

Published on July 20th, 2007 under Law suit, Patent law suit, Qwest, Rates Technology Inc, RTI, TMC, VoIP, VoIP Patents

Digital Voice phone service by Comcast

Source: voipcentral.org

The Comcast Inc today brought out a Digital Voice phone services in Digital Voice phone services Digital Voice phone services . This will benefit the residents of Denver as they will be able to receive VoIP supported news.
The services are quite cheaper so definitely it is expected to boost the number of the subscribers. Comcast is the largest cable TV service operator. Therefore it makes the things easier as their network happens to be quite strong through which the services can be offered to the user.
The routing of the calls is not through the internet but through its own network. Its implications are that 911 services can be provided. It is expected to give a tough fight to its competitor Qwest.
A campaign is also expected to be launched by the Comcast that will make the users aware of this service.

For more news read

Published on November 15th, 2005 under Comcast Inc, denver, Digital Voice phone, Qwest