The Federal Communications Commission ended the year with a Friday afternoon vote approving the $86 billion merger of AT&T Co. and BellSouth Corp., though the way in which some commissioners...

Continue reading "2006 Ends with AT&T/Bell South Approval - What About IPTV?"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 29, 2006 09:48 PM in Communications

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The hidden story in Apple's latest SEC filings has nothing to do with the fuss over back-dated stock options and everything to do with its transformation into a consumer electronics...

Continue reading "iPod, not Mac now leads Apple's revenues"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 29, 2006 02:19 PM in Computing

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Among Gary Smith's "top ten" EDA topics for 2007 is one I hadn't expected. It's a warning about the perils of outsourcing IC design, and possibly losing control of your...

Continue reading "The perils of IC design outsourcing"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 28, 2006 05:02 PM in EDA Software

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Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs is one of Apple's biggest assets. But there are times when an industry icon can be an albatross and this is one of...

Continue reading "A heartbeat away from chaos"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 28, 2006 02:25 PM in Computing

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The disruption of undersea fiber cables after the 7.1-point earthquake off the coast of Taiwan Dec. 26 started many analysts talking about revisiting low-earth orbit satellites as a backup for...

Continue reading "Fiber, Satellites, and Fault Tolerance"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 28, 2006 12:03 PM in Communications

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Cable Card slots that is. Set-top box makers are gearing up to support the FCC mandate that all new set-tops support slots for Cable Card, the PCMCIA Type II cards...

Continue reading "Set-top slots come to Vegas!"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 27, 2006 07:39 PM in Computing

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Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper held a gaffe-filled press conference Dec. 27 at Denver International Airport, trying to promise better response to disaster-like weather conditions. He prefaced his warnings about a...

Continue reading "Real-Time Tracking is Useless if You Can't Manage Your Physical Assets"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 27, 2006 06:44 PM in Communications

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Rumor has it that Microsoft may have to wait for cost reduction relief on it's Xbox 360 video gaming console, thanks to a decision by semiconductor foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing....

Continue reading "Rumor mill: Chartered pushes out manufacturing of 65-nm Xbox chip"

Posted by Dylan McGrath on Dec 27, 2006 05:27 PM in Consumer

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News that Mentor Graphics Corp. has acquired electronic system level (ESL) provider SpiraTech raises a question: what are Mentor's plans for CY, a SpiraTech proprietary language that uses assertions to...

Continue reading "What's Mentor doing with a proprietary ESL language?"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 27, 2006 01:58 PM in EDA Software

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Good on Phil Hester, AMD's CTO, for putting one of his brightest minds on long-term planning and planting him in Microsoft's turf....

Continue reading "AMD hunkers down in Redmond"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 26, 2006 01:07 PM in Computing

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I received this explosive commentary from an unnamed but leading expert on low-k dielectrics technology for IC production:...

Continue reading "Ultra-low k: fraud and waste"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 26, 2006 12:43 AM in Semiconductors

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Analyst David Motozo Rubenstein from Jefferies Japan Ltd. on chip-equipment makers Hitachi Kokusai Electric (HKE) and Tokyo Seimitsu of Japan:...

Continue reading "Up in smoke"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 26, 2006 12:00 AM in Semiconductors

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Perusing a stack of newspapers arriving on Saturday as Colorado dug out from its blizzard, I noticed the Colorado Springs Gazette carried a better-late-than-never story on the IEEE awarding a...

Continue reading "Colorado's Ferro King"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 23, 2006 06:29 PM in Semiconductors

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My colleague Mark Lapedus reports today that Wall Street expects AMD will lower some processor prices 8 percent to hang on to design wins and keep pace with Intel which...

Continue reading "With Intel rising, AMD picks up its pace"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 22, 2006 01:31 PM in Computing

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Toshiba has cancelled the much-anticipated exhibition of its 55-inch surface-conduction, electron-emitter display (SED) flat-panel televisions, which was to take place at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas....

Continue reading "Toshiba 55-inch SED TV bows out of CES party"

Posted by Dylan McGrath on Dec 21, 2006 07:27 PM in Consumer

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Looking for something for the engineer who has everything? How about a nice book on SystemVerilog? Such books are, it turns out, "best sellers" for 2006....

Continue reading "Last-minute gift idea: SystemVerilog books"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 21, 2006 06:41 PM in EDA Software

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Yes, to those of you who know I live at 7500 feet near the booming Duckburg of Monument, Colorado, I am still alive, I do have power, I'm looking at...

Continue reading "Sweeping Out the Ashes, Plowing Out the Snowdrifts"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 21, 2006 03:58 PM in Communications

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Two data points this week worth really paying attention to. The first is that Maxim founder Jack Gifford is retiring. The second is an op-ed by pundit Michael Malone in...

Continue reading "Doctor's orders"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 21, 2006 01:48 PM in Industry

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Word on the street is that Nikon grabbed a 193-nm immersion lithography order at Samsung, one of ASML's biggest customers. Nikon will ship its 610C scanner to Samsung by mid-2007,...

Continue reading "Samsung buys Nikon litho tool"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 21, 2006 12:55 PM in Semiconductors

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KLA-Tencor plans to reduce expenses and cut costs, reportedly including layoffs, according to FBR Research, an investment banking firm....

Continue reading "Layoffs at KLA-Tencor?"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 21, 2006 12:22 PM in Semiconductors

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NEC issued a recall of consumer PCs in Japan after the power supplies in two desktops reportedly caught fire....

Continue reading "Are desktops burning?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 21, 2006 02:34 AM in Computing

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We've all heard a lot about India's potential as the Next Big Market. Well it's already happening in cell phones....

Continue reading "India trumps China in new cell users"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on Dec 21, 2006 12:22 AM in China

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A recent survey conducted by emulation vendor EVE suggests that surprisingly large numbers of chip designers are using hardware/software verification, hardware-assisted verification, and assertion-based verification. Perhaps most surprising: 60 percent...

Continue reading "IC verification users push bleeding edge"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 20, 2006 09:16 PM in EDA Software

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The news of the day (Dec. 19) is the acquisition of optical proximity correction (OPC) provider Brion Technologies by lithography giant ASML. With it comes a question — is OPC...

Continue reading "Brion acquisition questions where OPC belongs"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 19, 2006 07:35 PM in EDA Software

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I took my camera along for a ride along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and a visit to Storm Ventures. There I trained it on Ryan Floyd and Tae...

Continue reading "A Storm a brewin'"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 19, 2006 02:48 PM in Industry

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I agree wholeheartedly with EE Times Editor in Chief Brian Fuller's complaints on the inanity and ubuquity of TV. Problem is, according to two studies from Information Gatekeepers, the combined...

Continue reading "Trashy Content or No, HD/IPTV Represents 90+% of Internet Growth"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 19, 2006 11:23 AM in Communications

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An executive from Spansion said Monday that a shortage of engineers in China is a concern as it scouts the country for suitable site to build a fab....

Continue reading "Spansion cites lack of fab engineers as gating factor for China fab"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on Dec 18, 2006 09:47 PM in China

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The lithography-tool companies love to slam each other, but as the song goes, why can't we just be friends? Chip makers just want a production-worthy, 193-nm immersion lithography system for...

Continue reading "Immersion litho vendors are all wet"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 18, 2006 09:08 PM in Semiconductors

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Nusym is a stealth-mode EDA startup that's promising the most significant breakthrough in IC functional verification in a decade. Nusym's CEO, Venk Shukla, is short on specifics, but there are...

Continue reading "Tracking an elusive verification startup"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 18, 2006 06:58 PM in EDA Software

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A January Plugfest at the University of New Hampshire could give the IMS Forum some enhanced credibility. Since the International Packet Communications Consortium evolved into IMS Forum last spring ,...

Continue reading "Plugfest Could Aid IMS Forum Credibility"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 18, 2006 05:05 PM in Communications

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Vivace Semiconductor, a conservatively funded started that has planted itself firmly in China, today announced it has struck a deal with Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co., Ltd. of Beijing. The...

Continue reading "Winning in the Middle Kingdom"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 18, 2006 03:45 PM in Industry

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Word is the consumer PC is about ready to give Tivo and the set-top box a run for their money....

Continue reading "Consumer PCs turn on TV…finally"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 18, 2006 12:10 PM in Computing

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The Optical Internetworking Forum has been so successful in developing Layer 1 and 1.5 interconnect standards in a variety of media, they ended up merging with the Network Processing Forum...

Continue reading "Streaming Packets, Courtesy of OIF"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 18, 2006 10:13 AM in Communications

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Software startup PeakStream, Inc. launches today its development environment for high performance computing (HPC) systems that use multicore processors, one small step toward the new reality in computing....

Continue reading "One small step for multicore"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 16, 2006 10:45 AM in Computing

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The big Nintendo Wii news over the past couple days has been the company's recall of the wrist straps for the Wii remote. Apparently they are prone to malfunction. And...

Continue reading "Wii, Wii, Wii… all the way to the bank"

Posted by Dylan McGrath on Dec 16, 2006 01:01 AM in Consumer

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Welcome to the new EE Times EDA blog. I'd like to get your feedback, your hot topics, and your opinions about what's going on with chip, FPGA and pc-board design....

Continue reading "A user-friendly EDA blog"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 15, 2006 12:37 PM in EDA Software

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Sony President Ryoji Chubachi says Sony's manufacturing problems are no different from anyone else in the digital age. I don't buy it. And I don't buy Sony....

Continue reading "I don't buy it"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 15, 2006 11:09 AM in Industry

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The Accellera standards organization is launching a new effort to come up with "interoperable" metrics for verification coverage. It's a laudable goal, so long as it doesn't oversimplify a complex...

Continue reading "Can verification coverage standards work?"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 14, 2006 06:16 PM in EDA Software

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Engineers have been saying for more than a year that there's just not enough cool new stuff in Windows Vista to drive much new business. Now the financial guys are...

Continue reading "The vista on Vista"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 14, 2006 02:33 PM in Computing

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The British bad-kid tech Web site The Register was taking needless hits from a Forrester Research analyst this week, who in turn was taking needless hits from hedge-fund managers over...

Continue reading "Forrester, iTunes, The Register and the "well, duh" factor"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 14, 2006 09:42 AM in Consumer

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Looks like Intel is definitely going to deep-six its Spring developer forum in San Francisco, opting to haul all its goodies over to Beijing instead....

Continue reading "China benefits from Intel IDF cutbacks"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on Dec 13, 2006 11:43 PM in China

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Newcomer Fabbrix Inc., which proposes to bring regular structures to nanometer chip design, reminded me of an older EDA startup, AmmoCore. There could be a connection, an AmmoCore co-founder said....

Continue reading "Fabbrix and AmmoCore: birds of a feather?"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 13, 2006 05:19 PM in EDA Software

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Promoting Sanjay Jha to COO of Qualcomm Inc., and bringing in Len Lauer of Sprint Nextel, could have immediate positive impact on the company....

Continue reading "Jah and Lauer: Qualcomm Plays Nice?"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 13, 2006 12:21 PM in Communications

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MSR is gearing up a small team to explore parallel programming languages and compilers now that so many of the Intel and AMD CPUs going out the door are...

Continue reading "Microsoft Research lays parallel paths"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 13, 2006 10:06 AM in Computing

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Yep, it's looking like China will also chip in to the chaos that we love to call the broadcast mobile TV market....

Continue reading "Another $&%@! mobile TV standard?"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on Dec 13, 2006 01:33 AM in China

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Warning: don't try this at home. For all the CrackBerry addicts out there, please remember that "convergence" doesn't cover using your BlackBerry in the bathroom....

Continue reading "BlackBerries and urine don't mix"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on Dec 12, 2006 11:32 PM in China

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It's not often that a startup comes along with the potential to change IC design as we know it. I think Fabbrix Inc. has that potential — but it has...

Continue reading "Can Fabbrix re-weave IC design?"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 12, 2006 06:38 PM in EDA Software

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I've been a bit cranky this quarter. No, strike that, very cranky. But you can't blame me. I've come across a lot of data points that, candidly, are disturbing (one...

Continue reading "Candidly, we have issues"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 12, 2006 06:08 PM in Industry

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I had a dinner last week down in the Valley and took advantage of the opportunity to pull off the highway in a very strategic spot. That spot is Sand...

Continue reading "Face time with Drew (with video)"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 12, 2006 02:08 PM in Industry

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A moment of silence please for the Advanced Switching Interconnect, a technology whose SIG Web site officially died today....

Continue reading "ASI goes quietly away"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 12, 2006 12:41 PM in Communications

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It's a sensitive time for a number of consumer-focused chip vendors. The consensus is that plenty of near-term shakeout and consolidation is likely in this space, and some companies appear...

Continue reading "Ominous executive departures"

Posted by Dylan McGrath on Dec 12, 2006 12:18 PM in Consumer

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The slow painful death of Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching has left the UTOPIA (Universal Test and Operations Interface for ATM) port an unwanted stepchild in communication-chip worlds....

Continue reading "The Utopia That Wasn't"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 9, 2006 06:16 PM in Communications

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A small announcement from Mentor Graphics Corp. got me to thinking about a long-neglected topic in the electronics industry — printed circuit board design....

Continue reading "Going by the boards"

Posted by Richard Goering on Dec 8, 2006 07:59 PM in EDA Software

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Everywhere I go people say the music phone is one of the next big thing's in consumer electronics, but nobody has got it right yet....

Continue reading "Can Apple fix Moto's Rokr?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 8, 2006 03:38 PM in Consumer

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That's the rumor according to Bryan Lewis, chief chip analyst at Gartner Dataquest....

Continue reading "Analog and FPGA companies going private?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 8, 2006 01:33 PM in Semiconductors

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I could be barking up the wrong tree (again), LSI Logic's recent acquisition of Agere makes a lot of sense....

Continue reading "Off the (semi) wall"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 8, 2006 12:08 PM in Semiconductors

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Despite a recent and major setback, Infineon Technologies AG's communications-chip unit claims leadership in the growing single-chip, cellular-phone device market over Texas Instruments, among others....

Continue reading "Cell-phone chip setback"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 8, 2006 12:01 PM in Semiconductors

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Bruce Diesen, an analyst with Terra Securities ASA, is lowering his chip forecast. ''Our 2006 chip sales forecast is now 8 percent growth instead of 8.5 percent. We still expect...

Continue reading "Semi forecast"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 8, 2006 11:50 AM in Semiconductors

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Speaking of Applied Materials, the company is showing off a machine that supports both ALD and MOCVD for advanced gate stack applications....

Continue reading "Soul of a new machine"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 8, 2006 11:45 AM in Semiconductors

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A spokesman for Applied Materials Inc. dismissed rumors that the chip-equipment giant is laying off 5 percent of its workforce....

Continue reading "Layoff rumors"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on Dec 8, 2006 11:35 AM in Semiconductors

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There's no doubt the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) is a key group within the industry, but when it comes to picking keynote speakers, it's got a ways to go. I...

Continue reading "Another great speaker, not"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 8, 2006 11:07 AM in Industry

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Strange but true. Tandy Trower, general manager for Microsoft's robotics initiative, said he is having open dialog with various robotics companies about what would be the ideal hardware platform for...

Continue reading "Microsoft Robot 2007?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on Dec 7, 2006 02:03 PM in Computing

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WiQuest, a wireless IC startup, rolls a new product on Monday, Dec. 11. That's an interesting enough story, although I think the consumer market will be a year before it...

Continue reading "Designed in North America"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 6, 2006 07:04 PM in Industry

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David Cote, chief executive of WAN-optimizer pioneer Packeteer Inc., says there's no threat to dedicated appliances from the do-it-all router....

Continue reading "Replace the WAN Optimizer? Over My Dead Packet!"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 5, 2006 09:04 PM in Communications

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I bent analyst Doug Freedman's ear today over sushi in San Francisco, or, more accurately, he bent mine....

Continue reading "Sushi and silicon"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 5, 2006 08:06 PM in Industry

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Liberum Research is out with its latest analysis of C-Level change in American industry....

Continue reading "Change at the top"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 5, 2006 01:54 PM in Industry

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Analyst Will Strauss took the bluntest angle on today's announcement that LSI and Agere are merging for $4 billion. "This sounds like two old ladies trying to help each other...

Continue reading "LSI and Agere: Tale of two grandmas"

Posted by Brian Fuller on Dec 4, 2006 08:15 PM in Industry

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M&A's, ITU Telecom make for a Monday from hell....

Continue reading "Binge and Purge"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on Dec 4, 2006 07:45 PM in Communications

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