All Things Digital

As the anniversary of the iPhone’s market debut approaches, the Mac faithful are quickly succumbing to Apple (AAPL) Rumor Seasonal Affective Disorder, an ailment most often associated with the lead-up to Macworld.

Fueling that trend today is a memo, purportedly leaked from inside AT&T (T), instructing employees not to schedule any vacation between June 15 and July 12 to ensure sufficient staffing for “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch.” This, of course, is being taken as proof positive that the 3G iPhone will arrive at market sometime during that timeframe. And for good reason, AT&T issued a similar mandate last year prior to the iPhone’s official debut.

Meanwhile, Vodafone (VOD) and Telecom Italia (TI-A) said today that they’d both won contracts to bring the iPhone to Italy this year, the first time Apple has allowed two mobile carriers to distribute the device in a single country.

An interesting bit of news and one that lends some validity to recent reports that Apple is stepping back from the exclusive iPhone distribution arrangements it’s been inking to spur iPhone growth abroad. “Apple’s either turned a corner that they’ve had to turn, or that they’ve chosen to,” Technology Business Research’s Ezra Gottheil said of the Vodafone and Telecom Italia deals. “I don’t know if they prefer the exclusivity, and the revenue sharing that goes along with it, or just prefer to sell iPhones and grow their share of the [handset] market.”

So after months of negotiations and posturing, Microsoft (MSFT) has given up its efforts to buy Yahoo. And according to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, that’s good news.

Indeed, people close to Yahoo (YHOO) said that Yang and Co. greeted the withdrawal of Microsoft’s bid as a victory, with a celebratory exchange of high-fives. In a hopeful statement posted to the Yahoo blog in the wake of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s stink-bomb of a kiss-off letter, Yang looked toward the future with a beatific, albeit vacuous, grin stretched ear-to-ear.

… Has this experience changed us? Of course, it has. We’ve emerged a stronger, more focused company with an even greater sense of purpose. I’m so proud of how this company has come together, put the noise aside, and showed the world that we have the resolve and determination to thrive in challenging times.

… So, what’s next? With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders. We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of. And, we’ll also continue to pursue strategic opportunities that position us for long-term success.”

Yeah, good luck with that come tomorrow, Jerry. My guess is by market close, you’ll be “focusing your energy” on damage control for YHOO’s new 52-week low. Perhaps it’s time for another 100-day review of the company, seeing how ineffective that last one was. At this point, it seems the only so-called “sacred cow” you’re going to slaughter is your company’s share price …

EarthLink will have several hundred fewer jobs to offshore come tomorrow. This afternoon, the struggling Internet service provider announced plans to sack 900 employees–about half its workforce–as part of a broad corporate restructuring that will shutter company offices in San Francisco; Orlando, Fla.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Harrisburg, Penn. “While we see this as an important first step in unlocking the underlying value that we believe is in our company, we are only eight weeks into the process of repositioning EarthLink for the future,” newly appointed President and CEO Rolla Huff said in a statement. “These changes get our cost structure in line, but there is much more to do. We expect to announce additional steps as we continue our work over the coming weeks and months.”

“Additional steps” in this case is a euphemism for “more layoffs to come,” as the company will also “substantially reduce its presence” in Atlanta and Pasadena, Calif.

What this all means for EarthLink’s already faltering municipal Wi-Fi effort remains to be seen. As Om Malik notes, its future is, at best, dubious. EarthLink’s “MuniFi experiment hasn’t gone according to plan, even though the company was successful in signing up quite a few cities for MuniFi networks,” Malik writes. “But EarthLink’s San Francisco effort, for example, is mired in a political morass. The Arlington (Va.) and St. Petersburg (Fla.) MuniFi networks are currently on hold. We are being told that Don Berryman, who used to run the MuniFi business, left the company three weeks ago. More importantly, the company is carrying the costs of Helio, an expensive MVNO effort. Helio, after starting out with $440 million in backing from SK Telecom and EarthLink, recently raised another $200 million ($100 million each from the two partners.) Will EarthLink follow through with this (and future) investments, remains to be seen. Helio is estimated have $40 million in operating costs, not an easy pill to swallow considering that the company continues to lose subscribers in its core ISP business. EarthLink is between the rock and a hard place: If it gets rid of those money-losing businesses, then it is left with a business whose growth engine is negative.”