By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
Can’t make it to France this summer?
In the digital age, the next best thing to being there might be this: a French phone number.
Primus Telecommunications on Monday will become the first major broadband phone provider to add an international flavor to anything-goes, Internet-based calling.
Customers of Primus’ Lingo Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service will be able to choose a local number in cities — including London, Paris and Tokyo — in more than a dozen countries.
The number, which costs $9.95 a month, can be used only for incoming calls as a second line to basic Lingo service. At $19.95 a month, Lingo users already get unlimited local and long-distance calls, including unlimited calls to Canada and Western Europe.
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Useful Tool Against Identity Theft
By ANITA RAMASASTRY
Phishing (pronounced «fishing») is a particularly pernicious type of Internet identity theft scam. So far, little has been done to stop it. But that will change if a promising new anti-phishing bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy.
In this column, I will explain the merits of Leahy’s bill. I will also explain why legislation like this is still needed, even despite the fact that President Bush has just signed new federal identity theft legislation into law.
What Is «Phishing»? A Brief Primer
Here’s how phishing works:
An Internet user receives an official-looking e-mail that purports to have been sent by a familiar business or organization — for example, an Internet service provider (ISP), bank, online payment service, or even a government agency. The user reads the message because it looks official.
The message says that the Internet user needs to «update» or «validate» his account information by clicking on a given link — or else some dire consequence, such as suspension of the user’s account, may occur. The users clicks on the link.
The link takes the user to a copycat web site that looks very much like the site of the business or organization mentioned in the email. In fact, however, it is a phony site.
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It sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, but this time of year comes earlier than it used to.
Sure, we’re still in the thick of hurricane season, Labor Day is three weeks away, and there are more mosquitoes than footballs flying around. But the South Florida school year is under way, and with it arrives a new season of events and initiatives in the tech and telecom sectors.
Since the summer shortens our attention spans, I’ll keep the items brief:
>With the new season, AT&T Corp. is launching a new identity. In July it decided it would stop competing in the residential long-distance market. So if the biggest long-distance company is getting out of long-distance, what will it do?
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www.SaveOnCommunications.com offers a helping hand to AT&T customers.
Bedminster, NJ AT&T has announced that it will be permanently exiting the residential local and long distance marketplace.
AT&T cited recent regulatory decisions as the reason for the pullout from selling consumer services. It is not clear what, if any, recent regulatory decisions could be blamed for the company’s departure from the stand-alone long distance market, as only local UNE-P services have been affected by regulatory decisions in recent months. AT&T took the opportunity to stress that it would now focus on serving business customers, although it still plans to market consumer services based upon VOIP technology.
AT&T also stressed that it would not be disconnecting existing residential customers, but would only stop accepting new orders for consumer services, and cease all associated consumer marketing. With no new calling plans being introduced, it is most likely felt that existing long distance customers will eventually leave when prices for the service are no longer competitive. A sale of the company’s existing customer base is also not out of the question, as rumors of just such a sale have been circulation in the telcom community for well over a year now. For that matter, the sale of AT&T itself as a whole has been widely speculated at. So far, none of those rumors have materialized though.
PUMMY KAUL & HUMA SIDDIQUI
NEW DELHI, AUG 15: The US-based investment firm Capital Group has bought over 4.2 crore equity shares out of the 6.2 crore shares offloaded by global equity major Warburg Pincus in the telecom major Bharti Tele-Ventures (BTVL), last week. The rest of the shares have been sold to a few other FIIs.
Capital is believed to have closed the deal with Warburg at Rs 155 per share in return for 4.2 crore shares in Sunil Mittal-promoted BTVL. This, however, could not be confirmed with BTVL. It is also not known whether Capital has made any investments in India so far, or not. One of Capital Group’s largest companies is the third largest mutual fund in the US, the American Funds. It manages $500 billion.
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