Caron Carlson

The 109th Congress may have bold plans to tackle new laws over the next two years, but legislators returning to Washington this week face a stack of old regulatory business dredged up by industry and awaiting attention on Capitol Hill. A chorus of complaints about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002, for example, is pushing […]

With a chain of more than 370 hotels in 33 states and an environment of near-constant change, La Quinta Corp. was accustomed to receiving close to 1,000 telecommunications bills a month from about 100 service providers. Such numbers, which masked myriad cost inefficiencies, combined with intensifying network complexity to force the company to seek outside […]

To enable more IP-based WAN services, including voice over IP, at more enterprise sites around the world, MCI Inc. is expanding its Private IP VPN network offering and adding satellite service to its access options. MCI champions its Private IP service as an ideal way for companies with far-flung sites to connect all locations to […]

IT companies are digging further into voice communications, forcing change to traditional telephony that could leave a century-old communications industry unrecognizable in short order. As the telephone carriers struggle to adapt to packet-based networking, data companies are quickly adopting voice strategies of their own. Moreover, VOIP (voice over IP) is forcing the convergence not only […]

As early as this week, regulators plan to issue the latest in a series of rewritten rules governing the obligations of the Regional Bell Operating Companies toward their competitors. The stakes are high in the perennial war between the RBOCs and rival carriers, but if regulators dont get the new rules right, it could be […]

Businesses turning to managed and hosted services for a smooth path to voice over IP are discovering an uncomfortable reality—not all offerings are enterprise-strength. For Micro Office Solutions LLC, an office space rental company in Manhattan targeting small businesses, the attraction to VOIPs savings and simplicity led to just such a disappointing false start. “It […]

From the time the technology was technically possible, VOIP has held second-class status in telecommunications, unable to deliver a call with the reliability, quality and security of plain old telephone service. Equipment vendors have coddled it, carriers have dismissed it, and users have mostly waited to see if it could ever deliver the promising mix […]

Enterprise communications systems are no longer used simply as tools of convenience and sound business practice but increasingly as crisis-management programs as well. The mass notification industry is growing as more organizations implement emergency calling networks for their employees, partners and affiliates. Government agencies, schools and transport companies are on the forefront of the mass […]

Before recessing for Thanksgiving, Congress approved legislation that allows the tech industry to hire 20,000 additional foreign workers next year. The industrys lobby lauded the measure as a boon to the economy and U.S. competitiveness, but many in the industrys rank and file see it as a way for companies to take advantage of low-cost […]

The tech industry is redoubling its lobbying efforts to raise the cap on the number of foreign nationals permitted to fill skilled jobs in the United States. With slim hope of seeing legislation passed this year exempting the industry from visa limits on foreign workers, IT companies are setting the groundwork for the next Congress […]