eWEEK EDITORS

Done Deal AT&T will swap $2.9 billion in stock for stakes in Excite@Home controlled by competitors Comcast and Cox Communications. The deal, expected for months, boosts AT&Ts stake in the high-speed Internet access company to 38 percent from 23 percent. More to the point, observers say, the move gives the telecom giant control of 79 […]

Will gigabit ethernet continue to proliferate in the enterprise and beyond? Marshall Eisenberg, director of product marketing for Foundry Networks, answers that question with a question: “How much do you like waiting?” he asks. “As long as people hate to wait, these network technologies will continue to be accepted into the marketplace.” The fact that […]

The nations capital, considered by many builders of metropolitan fiber-optic networks to be one of the most unpredictable municipalities to work with, is on the verge of finding out whether its sewers are lined with gold. CityNet Telecommunications, a company pioneering the use of Swiss-made robots to string fiber in sewer pipes in the U.S., […]

Qwest Communications Internationals decision to buy back $1 billion of its stock from minority shareholder BellSouth may have been a goodwill gesture between amicable telecommunications giants. But it also gives new impetus to speculation that the two companies still have an interest in merging. Joseph Nacchio,chief executive of Qwest, said he was happy to “help” […]

NorthPoint Communications, mortally wounded in the Digital Subscriber Line dustup, became the first major player to crawl under the protective umbrella of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Blaming Verizon Communications for placing NorthPoint in a precarious financial position last fall when it pulled out of their merger, NorthPoint Chief Executive Liz Fetter last week said the bankruptcy […]

After a wave of building exchanges to bring buyers online, some companies want to do more for sellers. “Today the B2B [business-to-business] equation is unbalanced towards buyers,” said Russ Henry, senior vice president of marketing at Trigo, one of several “sell-side” companies starting up. Trigo, which offers to hook up suppliers with Net markets, officially […]

Drkoop.com, the troubled online health site, is still in critical condition. Its health has not improved since it received a $20 million injection of equity financing in August while laying off 42 workers, 22 of whom were full-time staffers. The company, which has seen its stock value drop down to the 40-cents-per-share range, also has […]

In 1955, Betty Coxs newborn baby died. In 2000, the Internet helped bring her child back from the grave. Its an eerie but ultimately joyous turn of events that wouldnt have been possible before the Net made the world a smaller place, where good luck and a Good Samaritan intersected to profoundly change the lives […]

Sun Spot You may have noticed that some of us out here in California are a little caught up in this whole “electricity crisis” thing. Other than the hefty boost in my bill from Pacific Gas & Electric, I hadnt experienced any outages — that is, until I was listening in on Cobalt Networks coming-out […]

Earnings reports last week swooped down like an Alberta Clipper, suggesting the economy is headed for the deep freeze. Refreshingly, IBM, one bright spot and an accurate gauge of future IT spending, brushed aside this nonsense with a 28 percent rise in fourth-quarter earnings from a year ago. More important, IBM, according to Chairman Louis […]