Nortel Networks has rejected Research In Motion’s bid for the wireless infrastructure assets Nortel is unloading as part of bankruptcy proceedings. RIM said Monday night that it intended to offer $1.1 billion for Nortel’s CDMA and LTE businesses, but was told it could do so only if it agreed not to bid on other Nortel assets, something it had intended to do.
Read More »
The Federal Communications Commission imposes decency standards on publicly broadcast radio and television signals. No surprise, then, to hear it’s looking to do the same to the free wireless Internet service it envisions in the AWS III spectrum. At its December meeting, the FCC is expected to push forward with another major spectrum auction, one that would require the winning bidder to use a portion of those airwaves to offer a free, and smut-free, broadband service.
Read More »
Disciplined capital allocation is a key priority for Time Warner. That said, the company “may have overpaid” for Bebo, the social-networking site it acquired for $850 million cash back in March. So said Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes in an interview with Portfolio.
Read More »
Can a search advertising alliance between Yahoo and Google possibly pass regulatory muster? We may soon find out. Now that investor-tormentor Carl Icahn has filed a proxy slate to unseat Yahoo’s board with the intent, one way or another, to push the company back into merger negotiations with Microsoft, an obviously panicked Yahoo is scrambling to pull together a search-ad deal with Google.
Read More »
Microsoft may launch a hostile bid for Yahoo as early as today. That’s the big news this morning from those mysterious “people familiar with the situation” who are quick to note, as they always are, that the “situation” is still fluid and Microsoft may also drop the bid entirely or sweeten it a bit.
Read More »
So much for eBay’s Feedback Profile. The online auction pioneer has been getting quite a bit of negative feedback for its decision to ban sellers from leaving “negative” or “neutral” comments about buyers.
Announced last week along with some other changes, the move is designed to eliminate retaliatory feedback. Apparently, eBay believes its slowing growth is [...]
Read More »
Looks like eBay CEO Meg Whitman may make good after all on her pledge that no CEO should stay more than a decade. Whitman, the public face of eBay for the past 10 years, is reportedly preparing to retire. She has been delegating more tasks to deputies over the last few months and is expected to decide on her retirement in the coming weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports, quoting “people familiar with the matter.”
Read More »
BEA Systems made good on its promise to allow the deadline to lapse on Oracle’s $17-per-share offer to buy the company. And Oracle made good on its threat to drop the bid. Minutes after 5 p.m. PDT yesterday, the deadline set by Oracle for BEA to agree to its offer, the company issued a terse, [...]
Read More »
Now that the Federal Communications Commission has voted to adopt only two of the ” ‘Four Opens’ of Successful Open Access,” the question on many minds is “Will Google bid in the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction?”
In his July 20 letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote, “should the Commission expressly adopt [...]
Read More »