Corporate and legal

The Federal Communications Commission is shaking up the communications market with bold initiatives to overhaul the $7 billion Universal Service Fund to help pay for universal broadband and reallocate wireless spectrum for new wireless broadband services.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski presented plans for revising the USF program and reallocating spectrum during a speech on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., at The Innovation Economy Conference.

The Universal Service Fund is a $7 billion federal subsidy program that is funded by fees added to consumer phone bills. The USF was originally designed to provide subsidies to pay for phone service in rural … Read more

Third-quarter sales of servers across the globe showed a 17.3 percent decline from the same quarter in 2008, sagging to $10.4 billion, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker.

But server shipments improved, falling only 17.9 percent for the quarter, compared with 30.1 percent in the second quarter, noted the IDC report released Wednesday. Even more promising, shipments grew at a healthy 12.4 percent over the second quarter, the market's largest sequential quarterly gain since 2005.

All three server segments tracked by IDC--volume, midrange enterprise, and high-end enterprise--saw lower third-quarter sales compared with … Read more

Finally, some good news from Nokia.

On Wednesday, the world's largest maker of cell phones said it expects sales volumes of mobile handsets to increase 10 percent in 2010 from 2009, as the market rebounds from a worldwide recession.

"Going into 2010, the overall mobile-devices market is stabilizing, and it is growing more in the areas where Nokia has competitive advantages," Nokia's new chief financial officer, Timo Ihamuotila, said in a statement.

Nokia said its worldwide market share of 38 percent would remain unchanged next year but that the company would increase revenue by focusing on … Read more

Another e-tailer criticized by federal lawmakers two weeks ago for profiting from "misleading" and "deceptive" marketing practices appears to be rethinking its position.

VistaPrint, an online printing company, announced Monday it has "terminated its contract" with Vertrue, a so-called post-transaction marketing company that has come under scrutiny along with competitors Affinion and Webloyalty. This summer, the U.S. Senate Commerce committee began looking into scores of consumer complaints about the marketers--some going back years.

VistaPrint said in a statement that the company's contract with Vertrue ends December 20.

The three Connecticut-based marketing firms … Read more

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that more than 3,500 sex offenders from his state have been purged from Facebook and MySpace.

Both companies have long had policies against registered sex offenders using their services, but the implementation of New York's new Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act ("E-Stop") has made it easier for the sites to identify perpetrators from the Empire State.

Facebook, according to Cuomo, was able to identify and disable the accounts of 2,782 registered sex offenders. MySpace deleted 1,796 accounts.

Cuomo has long been concerned about … Read more

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the CIA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and three other government agencies on Tuesday for allegedly refusing to release information about how they are using social networks in surveillance and investigations.

The nonprofit Internet rights watchdog group formally asked more than a dozen agencies or departments in early October to provide records about federal guidelines on the use of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr for investigative or data gathering purposes, according to the lawsuit.

The requests were prompted by published news reports about how authorities are using social networks to … Read more

Updated 5:10 p.m. PDT with information about the financial details of the deal.

Comcast is very close to sealing the deal to acquire NBC Universal, CNBC anchor and reporter David Faber reported Tuesday. The only thing left to do is sign the papers.

Faber said in a story posted on the CNBC Web site that the deal is expected to be formally announced on Thursday. But CNET sources close to the deal say the final details could take longer to tie up, and the final announcement could be pushed back until early next week.

Earlier Tuesday, The New … Read more

All top five server vendors globally saw declines in revenue and shipment in the third quarter of 2009, with Sun Microsystems registering the biggest fall, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

In a report released Monday, the research firm noted that Sun saw its server revenue drop 32 percent and unit shipments dip 38 percent in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.

IBM experienced a 12 percent decline in revenue growth, though it clocked the highest revenue in the market for the quarter at $3.4 billion. Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu saw their revenue decline 15 … Read more

General Electric and French media company Vivendi have reached a tentative agreement, which will clear the path for cable giant Comcast to buy NBC Universal, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The stories cite unnamed sources who say under the terms of the deal GE will buy Vivendi's 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for roughly $5.8 billion. Vivendi's ownership of NBC is one of the hurdles that stood in the way of GE selling the TV and movie company to Comcast in a deal worth about $30 billion.

The … Read more