Lesley Stones , Information Technology Editor
Johannesburg
STELLENBOSCH Telkom CEO Sizwe Nxasana believes the increased competition poised to shake up the telecommunications market from next February will give Telkom new opportunities to grow its revenues.
But he is not offering consumers any shortterm hope that their phone bills will fall .
«We continuously review our prices, and will review them in the context of a liberalised market,» he said.
«We still have areas where our prices may be too low and some which are too high, and it’s a question of balancing them to make sure we make a profit.»
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By Kelvin Taylor
The Olympic Games are now history, but not AT&T’s (NYSE: T) $25 million ad campaign to redefine its image. After years of getting clobbered by the regional Bell companies such as BellSouth (NYSE: BLS), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Sprint (NYSE: FON), and MCI (Nasdaq: MCIP), the company has turned its business focus from traditional phone service to networking.
In July, AT&T announced it would discontinue offering new long-distance service to residential customers in seven states. This is a long way from its «Ma Bell» phone company image. For decades, AT&T was dominant in the long-distance business. But thanks to the popularity of cell phones and the Internet, customers have been dumping traditional phone services. «Reach Out and Touch Someone» has a new meaning altogether.
As Alyce Lomax reported, the telecom sector isn’t out of the woods yet. AT&T was very slow to recognize the changes, and it continued to lose business to the regional bells and start-up companies such as Vontage, which offers calls using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This technology has been waiting in the wings for several years, but it has begun to take off now that 25% of the nation’s homes have subscribed to a high-speed Internet service. This does limit access to those areas with cable or DSL service available.
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By Susan Stock
Lansing State Journal
It’s a cell phone nation for the more than 44,000 Michigan State University students who swarmed back onto campus last week.
Speed dial buttons blazed as students hooked up with friends and checked in with far-off family members.
«I use it for everything,» said Tecreshia Hoover, a 19-year-old sophomore. «My dorm phone isn’t even hooked up.»
Growing flip phone affinity among students isn’t just cool and convenient, it has big financial ramifications for cell phone companies and university housing departments.
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Ruth E. Hernandez Beltran.
New York’s Hispanic bodega owners will have their own line of products on the shelves by the end of the year, hoping to combat high costs of brand-name items and offer better prices to clients.
Customers will be able to purchase varied products from Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, after the bodegueros, as the owners of the Latino neighborhood grocery stores are known, reach agreement with manufacturers in those countries to create an exclusive line for the New York Bodega Association.
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