Caron Carlson

Less than a month after taking the helm of the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Michael Powell appears to be trying to change the course of an unwieldy bureaucracy to create a faster-moving and more responsive agency. And with at least three of the five commissioner seats awaiting new occupants, the agency is poised for change. […]

The Washington metropolitan area is experiencing its share of downsizing in the technology industry, but researchers say the outlook is good. The suburban region south of the city has become well-known as Silicon Valley East, but even within the city limits, the technology industry grew 374 percent between 1994 and 1999, from 70 technology companies […]

As confusion mounts for agencies and businesses required to comply with the security and privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a key health care industry group is asking the federal government to revisit the regulations. The request comes even as vendors continue to roll out services aimed at helping enterprises deal […]

As the U.S. economy slows, and growth in residential long-distance voice service diminishes, Sprint Corp. is searching far and wide for high-end customers, expecting to find them in the business capitals of Asia and Europe. For corporate customers, the international expansion means that increasingly there will be one point of contact to deliver services to […]

It is an axiom in the trans- portation business that when a bus line is losing riders, supervisors should resist the urge to cut routes and retire vehicles, and instead add more stops and perhaps some lights and benches. A similar philosophy is taking hold in the telecommunications industry, where carriers, seeing increasingly diminished revenue […]

As the communications industry weighed security problems early last week at the annual ComNet conference here, just a few blocks away advisers on President Bushs transition team were weighing the creation of a technology export council to address some of those very issues. For businesses seeking a safer way to communicate over the Internet, the […]

Barely out of the gate, members of the 107th Congress are racing to address the question of online privacy, and, already, a half-dozen bills have been introduced. Meanwhile, privacy and consumer groups have joined to inject provisions on security, access rights and liability, and the industry is establishing its own platform to ward off burdensome […]

If youre in the market for a fresh-faced telecommunications service provider, dont expect to see a rash of new entrants knocking at your door during the tenure of newly named FCC Chairman Michael Powell. If Powell is as deregulatory in action as he has been in word, experts say CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) are […]

The instant messaging conditions imposed by federal regulators as part of their approval that created the newly formed AOL Time Warner Inc. will have little impact on efforts to improve IM interoperability, according to rival providers. IM industry coalitions are striving to develop a standard that allows customers to communicate with one another, much like […]

Washington is more eager than ever to get its arms around the Internet, and much of the work of the 107th Congress will revolve around e-commerce and other online issues. For all the conventional hand-wringing over the perceived perils of a Congress closely divided along party lines, insiders say e-commerce-related initiatives will sidestep partisan loyalties. […]