SEATTLE (Reuters) Microsoft (MSFT) will open its online messaging service for the workplace to America Online and Yahoo’s (YHOO) systems, in a big step toward allowing users of different networks to communicate with each other, the companies said on Thursday.
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, will open up its instant messaging software used by businesses, but consumers using its free MSN Messenger service will not get the same interoperability, at least for now, said Taylor Collyer, a Microsoft marketing manager.
Archive for July, 2004
Microsoft opens messaging service to AOL, Yahoo
Battle brewing over hi-tech video standards
An obscure contest over futuristic video technologies is beginning to unfold in the broadcast industry, with dramatic consequences for the future of television, Hollywood and Microsoft.
The battle for now is visible only on the fringes, where experts are carefully weighing the pros and cons of two new candidates for delivering emerging applications such as Internet movies on demand, video over cell phones and high-definition TV (HDTV) programming.
One candidate, known alternately as MPEG-4 AVC or H.264, is the latest successor to the standard video format currently used by virtually all cable and broadcast TV stations. The other is Microsoft’s Windows Media VC-9 format.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsitePowell: FCC forging ahead on VOIP rules
VoIP Regs are heating up, here is what Powell has to say of late…
“I think we’re going to do this nation a big disservice if we try to chop the Internet into 51 pieces and every state is allowed to regulate economically any way it chooses. That’s no indictment of states, only as the good of the whole won’t be maximized,” he said. “You’re going to have a hard time. It’s one thing to say, ‘Should you do it?’ but I don’t even understand how they would do it.”
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteConsumer Federation of America Cautions Regulators Against Undermining ‘Next Generation’ of the Internet
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) today presented a new framework for evaluating the importance of open communications networks to the success of the Internet. Federal Communications Commission proposals to abandon the requirement that advanced telecommunications be operated in a nondiscriminatory manner threaten to undermine the vibrant competition and dynamic innovation that the Internet unleashed.
CFA will file the 110-page white paper, The Public Interest in Open
Communications Networks, in nearly a dozen proceedings pending before the FCC and the Courts, proceedings that will affect the future of broadband
communications. The paper argues for principles of open architecture and
includes a 12-page Issue Brief that summarizes the full white paper.
Cisco inks Boeing VoIP deal
Cisco is set to announce one of its largest Internet telephony contracts to date.
On Tuesday, the company will announce that Boeing has selected Cisco to be its main supplier of Internet Protocol telephony gear, as the airplane manufacturer migrates from a traditional telephone network.
The entire project will take roughly five to seven years from start to finish, said Mike Terrill, program manager for network convergence at Boeing. The company, which is one of the world’s largest makers of commercial jetliners, military aircraft and equipment for the United States space program, has more than 150,000 employees in 48 states and 70 countries.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteU.S. rejects Net phone call tax
The Treasury Department said it doesn’t plan to tax telephone calls made over the Internet after a lawmaker asked for a clarification of a notice the government issued last week.
The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service said Friday the government will seek comment from telecommunications companies on whether telephone tax regulations first developed in 1965 need updating to keep pace with technological advances.
“Nothing in the notice said anything about taxing” the technology known as voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, Treasury Department spokeswoman Tara Bradshaw said.
California Representative Christopher Cox, a Republican who leads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, yesterday sent a letter to President George W. Bush urging him to “direct the IRS immediately to affirm” that a tax on telephone calls does not apply to those placed over the Internet.
Jeff Pulver, chief executive of pulver.com, which operates Free World Dialup, a voice-over-the-Internet service, said he was pleased by the government’s clarification and said it ratifies an earlier ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that traditional telephone rules don’t apply to his industry.
“The IRS needs to get a grip about how VOIP technology is evolving,” he said.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website
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