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25th March 2002 Archive

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  • Marconi pulls out of credit talks with banks

    End game

    Marconi has ditched plans to seek an extended line of credit after concluding that the current downturn in telecoms equipment spending will last longer than forecast. In other words, it does not think it will sell enough kit to pay back the extra money it would owe. But without this money, Marconi cannot pay back the money it …

    Business 25 Mar 2002, 09:28

  • Home broadband market to hit $88bn by 2007

    Music downloads fuel uptake

    The residential market for broadband access will be worth around $88 billion by 2007, an estimated sevenfold increase in revenue over the next five years. Industry consultancy ARC Group estimates that by 2007 almost 300 million business and residential premises worldwide will be wired up to broadband. By 2007, broadband will …

    Broadband 25 Mar 2002, 09:29

  • Compaq recalls defective iPAQ SD memory card

    Quietly does it

    Compaq has issued a customer advisory notice for the SD memory card. This may fail "after a short period of use" in the iPAQ H3800 Series Pocket PC, the company says. The problem appears to be confined to a few batches of 64MB and 120MB cards, and you can check if yours is one of those affected by looking at the LOT code at the …

    Personal 25 Mar 2002, 09:47

  • Motorola & Nortel ‘merging wireless kit divisions’

    Defensive posture

    US electronics giant Motorola Inc is planning to sell its mobile network business to Canadian networkingquipment vendor Nortel Networks Corp - although there are said to be issues about how Nortel, which alongside Lucent Technologies Inc, appears to be on the brink of financial collapse as demand for telecoms and networking …

    Mobile 25 Mar 2002, 10:19

  • Oracle plans $1bn app outsourcing push

    Major Offensive

    Oracle Corp is planning a major offensive into the application outsourcing market, which it hopes will generate $1bn in additional sales over the next five years, John O'Brien writes . Speaking at an analyst conference, chief financial officer Jeff Henley said: "There is a multibillion-dollar growth opportunity for Oracle …

    Software 25 Mar 2002, 10:20

  • Show me a (European) home where the GPRS roams

    Vodafone claims a first

    Vodafone has introduced GPRS roaming across Europe - a first from a mobile operator, it says. The service works in 12 countries. Here's the list: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. At present, GPRS roaming in Germany is limited to a few cities, …

    Mobile 25 Mar 2002, 11:12

  • Computacenter confirms £150m BT gig

    Gains union support

    Computacenter today confirmed that it has won an outsourcing contract worth £150 million over five years to supply desktop services to BT. Happily - for PR purposes, if nothing else - the Communications Workers Union (CWU)is supporting the deal. Computacenter is taking on 362 BT staff under TUPE regulations. The contract kicked …

    Channel 25 Mar 2002, 11:45

  • Registry hack turns XP Pro into server, vice versa

    Update of old NT gag unleashed

    A routine currently circulating on the web reawakens the old controversy over how different the workstation and server versions actually are. NTSwitch, apparently produced by Hungarian outfit 3am Labs, is claimed to allow various versions of Microsoft workstation operating systems to be turned into server versions, and vice …

    Software 25 Mar 2002, 12:17

  • Infineon touts 1GB DDR part

    Engineering sample out now

    Infineon today announced the release of engineering samples of 1GB DDR SDRAM modules. The company also says it has demonstrated working 2GB DIMMS last month at the Intel Developer's Forum. And it's giving another showing to the 2GB beast, running on Intel's Plumas/Prestonia platform, at JEDEX this week in Santa Clara. The new …

    Channel 25 Mar 2002, 12:45

  • Bell Labs sets distance record for optical transmissions

    2.56Tbps over 4,000km

    Boffins at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, have doubled the distance record for high-bandwidth, ultra long-distance transmission by sending 2.56 terabits of information per second over a distance 4,000km. The previous transmission record was 1.60 terabits of information per second over 2,000 …

    Data Networking 25 Mar 2002, 12:52

  • Snook joins Carphone Warehouse

    Retailer 'upgrades' outlets

    Hans Snook, the founder of Orange, is joining Carphone Warehouse, Europe's biggest mobile phone retailer, as non-exec chairman. Charles Dunstone, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, is relinquishing the chairman's seat, but retains the reins as chief executive Snook's appointment coincides with the news that his new company …

    Business 25 Mar 2002, 15:36

  • Orange to increase SMS charges

    Monthly subscribers feel the squeeze of 10p messages

    Orange is increasing the cost of sending a text message for some of its subscribers. From April 22, Orange's Talk 60, Talk 150, and Talk 500 customers will be charged 10p per SMS message, up from the 6p or 7p per message (depending on tariff). In a statement, Orange said the increase in SMS fees brings these talk plans into …

    Data Networking 25 Mar 2002, 15:48

  • Novell spoofs XP flying people – video

    And I feel....

    We're grateful to Reg reader Mike Brady for the following link to a Novell spoof video poking fun at the XP flying people ad campaign. It's short, so we won't spoil it for you. Find it here and enjoy. ®

    Software 25 Mar 2002, 16:11

  • MS planned to keep secure music APIs secret – Allchin

    But the RPFJ fixes that, he claims

    A small section of Jim Allchin's deposition for the Microsoft trial we'd overlooked until now casts an interesting light on the way Microsoft had been planning to give itself an edge in secure music distribution. Jim tells us that in accordance with the commitments the company has made in the Revised Proposed Final Judgment ( …

    Software 25 Mar 2002, 16:15

  • Virgin.net wins PeoplePC gig

    Maybe 30K customers. Maybe not

    Virgin.net has won exclusive UK ISP rights for PeoplePC, the supplier of corporate PCs-for-the-workforce at home. This could add a "further 30,000 Virgin.net customers in 2002", but of course, the figure is contingent on the uptake of PeoplePC's offers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. We are instead supplied with …

    Channel 25 Mar 2002, 16:26

  • Intel PR berating AMD PR rating

    MHz the only way punters know what they're getting

    Recently, we noted the different benchmarks recorded by two P4s both running at the same clock speed, but with different cores. Intel's decision to distinguish the two CPUs with the use of an 'A' muddied its message, in the consumer space, that clock speed is everything, we argued. Add a letter to the clock rating and you're …

    Channel 25 Mar 2002, 17:58

  • Picture this: image-based passwords

    MS prototype

    Darko Kirovski, cryptography and anti-piracy researcher at Microsoft, last week showed the press a prototype of an image-based password system at the software giant's offices in Mountain View, California. He clicked on a number of points on a screen emblazoned with the flags of different countries which, he explained, …

    Security 25 Mar 2002, 21:42