Appia Communicationsannounced the completion of upgrades to its St. Louis data center. The company also released new and aggressive pricing.

“Our data center is open for business,” said Victor von Schlegell, president of Appia Communications. “It has dual generator back-up, security with badged access and 24×7 guards, carrier-neutral network access, and direct connections to our all of our managed services. And with our new pricing, it pays to move in.”

A single rack unit with power, Internet and space is $99 per month. Entire cabinets, including power, Internet access, and space can be purchased for $599 per month.

“If you are running out of space or power for critical servers and applications, we can help,” said Matt Siemens, vice president of marketing for Appia. “With our 24-hour hands-on support and available backup data center in Dallas, our data center services provide more security, scalability, and redundancy than most customers can build for themselves, at a fraction of the cost.”

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Steve Jobs died at the age of 56. Here we see Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005. In it he talks about getting fired from Apple in 1985, life & death.

R.I.P. Steve..

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Telecom master agent Telarus Inc.,added Ethernet (Fiber) to its patented real-time carrier pricing research tool GeoQuote.

The technology paves the way for independent agents partnered with Telarus to check for Ethernet broadband availability and pricing in seconds; a process that currently takes days and weeks.

Adam Edwards, President & Co-Founder of Telarus, Inc.

“We are very enthusiastic about our new-found ability to quote 10M to 1GB fiber opportunities in real-time,” said Adam Edwards, president of Telarus. “As we continue to partner with agents who focus on larger opportunities, Ethernet is becoming one of our core product sets. Agents are selling it in droves and, more often than not, the carrier with fiber in a customer’s building wins the deal. It only made sense to focus our R&D dollars to develop technology that could give agents access to this information in a quick and efficient way. With better access to pricing and carrier availability, agents feel like they get better service from Telarus and we cut down on the unqualified quote volume from our carrier partners. Everybody wins.”

Using “lit building” lists, or addresses of buildings that carriers have a physical fiber presence, in addition to above-ground and subterranean fiber maps, GeoQuote is able to determine the likelihood of a carrier being able to service a customer and at what price. The carriers who have volunteered their information to be a part of this quoting system include industry leaders such as: AboveNet, AboveNet, AT&T, ACC Business, Broadview Networks, Level 3, PAETEC, Qwest Business, and Time Warner Cable Business Class. Telarus expects to have more carriers quoting by the end of the year.

“The million dollar question agents are ask is ‘is it accurate?’” added Andrew Morgan, VP of Web Development for Telarus. “To that we give an enthusiastic ‘yes’! GeoQuote knows where all of the lit buildings are, it knows where fiber runs, and it knows the typical pricing carriers offer on 10M, 20M, 50M, 100M, 250M, 500M, and 1G circuits. The only unknown is the build-out fee, but that cuts down on 90 percent of a carrier’s workload while giving agents valuable information in seconds. The ability for agents to get pricing quickly for their clients is critical to their business.”

In addition to actual and budgetary pricing, GeoQuote also delivers a visual representation of the carrier fiber environment via Google maps. This technology allows for high-level research in the event the customer isn’t within the pre-subscribed distance (in feet) from any lit buildings.

“This new software is a real game-changer,” added Lance Akins, VP of Sales for Telarus, Inc. “Never before has it been so easy to sell high-end Ethernet broadband pipes than now, through Telarus. Since most of our carriers price the IP portion of the circuit based on simple rate sheets, we decided to speed things up a bit and give our enterprise agents a real leg up.”

Take geoquote for a spin at TelecomSupportDesk.com

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The Broadband Forum and the IPv6 Forum announced their cooperative effort to empower the successful adoption of IPv6 in broadband deployments worldwide, creating the ecosystem that will ensure the continued success of the Internet as new applications and user expectations grow beyond the bounds of the IPv4 protocol. The two organizations are collaborating to incorporate Broadband Forum network and testing specifications into the IPv6 Forum’s Certification Program.

The Broadband Forum is a global consortium of around 200 member companies dedicated to the development of the full potential of broadband. The organization develops specifications for wireline broadband providers including IPv6 enabled end to end network architectures. The Broadband Forum gives special focus to interoperability and aspects of deployment such as integration into existing networks and migration strategies between technologies.

In March, the Broadband Forum launched its BroadbandSuite™ 4.0 release– specifications that enable the integration of the IPv6 protocol into existing network and remote management platforms.  The release enables network support of IPv6 from core to user in fiber and DSL network deployments worldwide. It provides the capability for networks to scale to address practically limitless numbers of devices. Future enhancements have the potential to enrich the user experience (supporting secure, mobile and nomadic applications) and enable the proliferation of connected user devices and machine-to-machine communications. Most importantly, this IPv6 toolkit helps service providers reduce the impact of IPv4 protocol exhaustion on their existing services while ensuring the growth of new users, devices and applications .

The IPv6 Forum’s aim is to drive the development of the IPv6 Ready Certification and Logo Program, bringing together the industry in order to deploy IPv6 on a large scale and ensure the interoperability of all devices. The organization’s IPv6 Ready CPE Test Plan draws on the IPv6 work of the Broadband Forum.

“BroadbandSuite™ 4.0 is already becoming a globally accepted reference on IPv6, ensuring that the industry can address the exponentially growing device and smart gateway requirements of next generation broadband,” said Christophe Alter, Broadband Forum’s Technical Chair. “The work delivered through BroadbandSuite 4.0 allows service providers to activate IPv6 in their networks today. The IPv6 Forum’s Certification Program will ensure interoperability, allowing the industry to deploy with confidence.”

Both organizations are actively supporting World IPv6 Day, the industry’s opportunity to test IPv6 activation on a world-wide scale, sponsored by the Internet Society. The event takes place on June 8th, 2011, and along with many other major organizations, the Broadband Forum will enable IPv6 support on its website and network. The goal of this 24 hour “Test Flight” is to motivate organizations across the industry, including Internet Service Providers, search engines, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies, to prepare for IPv6 traffic support to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

“IPv6 represents the future of the Internet and the Broadband Forum’s work on standards and specifications is a great enabler. Working with the Broadband Forum allows us to ensure that our Certification Program meets the needs of the industry,” said Latif Ladid, IPv6 Forum President and Senior Researcher at University of Luxembourg, Security and Trust (SnT) Center, chairman of the EU IPv6 Task Force and Emeritus Trustee of the Internet Society, the organization that is running World IPv6 Day.

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Master agent Telarus today announced their agent rewards program as well as the release of GeoScan 2.0, what the company calls the industry’s first comprehensive carrier research tool.

GeoScan 2.0

Adam Edwards, President & Co-Founder of Telarus, Inc.

“GeoScan 2.0 is a must-have for any telecom agent who offers more than small handful of carriers to their clients,” said Adam Edwards, president of Telarus. “In just seconds, an agent can use GeoScan 2.0 to get a very high-level view of which carriers are in the picture and which carriers are not. Knowing right away which carriers not to contact is a huge time-saver for both the agent and the carrier.”

GeoScan 2.0 is comprised of a proprietary database of CLLI codes, zip codes and lata codes compiled by Telarus through eight years of research and development. Using this locally stored information, GeoScan 2.0 can return results in just seconds, without waiting for an API/XML connection to any carrier partner as is required for price quoting in GeoQuote.

“The beauty of GeoScan 2.0 is that it is very, very fast,” added Andrew Morgan, VP of Web Development of Telarus. “With an increase in speed comes a decrease in granularity. GeoScan 2.0 was developed to be a very high-level qualification tool; to know who is ‘in the ballgame’ before going too far down the road with a carrier who won’t be able to service the customer. Especially with larger deals, narrowing down the field early is important.”

“Ethernet is increasingly becoming one of the most popular products on the market,” said Rob Butler, VP of Sales – West for Telarus. “Among the many products quoted in GeoScan 2.0, Ethernet will be among the most valuable due to its ability to figure out which carriers have fiber in a particular market. Agents need this information at their fingertips not only to be the first to bid, but to gain their customers’ trust.”

Telarus sasys GeoScan 2.0 is also unique in its ability to keep itself up-to-date. The technology actively monitors the results that are returned by GeoQuote, the real-time quote generator that has ties into nearly all carrier pricing systems. When GeoScan finds a location serviced by a carrier that it didn’t know about, it automatically updates itself in an effort to regulate its own accuracy.

Telarus agents who have reached Gold and Platinum status can also customize GeoScan 2.0 by adding carrier footprints and product matrices for vendors not offered by Telarus. Agents who have yet to reach those production levels will be able to customize GeoScan 2.0 for a nominal monthly fee. The non-customizable version of GeoScan is free of charge to all Telarus agents.

Telarus Agent Rewards Program

The program, divided into four levels, offers agent perks that include software tools, VAR and subagent referrals, and travel to company events.

“Volume speaks volumes,” said Adam Edwards, president of Telarus. “This new rewards program is a tangible expression of our commitment to our top producers and most loyal agents. In the past we’ve given all of our tools away for free in an effort to give every Telarus agent an advantage in the marketplace, but going forward we’ll be offering our new technology as a perk to reward agents who focus on Telarus.”

The Agent Rewards Program in its current form offers CustomerConnect – a new prospect mining and communication system, the ability to add non-Telarus carriers to GeoScan 2.0 – a new carrier research technology, new VAR and subagent referrals, free airfare and hotel to future Telarus events, the Elite Package, and much more to qualifying agents. Reward levels are recalculated each month based on an agent’s total book of billed revenue with Telarus, excluding base rolls. The new program provides a huge incentive to increase sales and to combat attrition.

“This program is just one way that we can say ‘thank you’ as a company for the trust and hard work of our most loyal partners,” said Doug Miller, VP of Operations for Telarus. “We strive to treat each agent with great care and we pride ourselves in our ability to support everyone. This new program will go even further in providing red-carpet treatment of our most loyal and consistent agents.”

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American consumers won’t be getting any more telemarketing pitches from robocaller Fereidoun “Fred” Khalilian, under a settlement reached by the Federal Trade Commission. Khalilian has agreed to be permanently banned from the telemarketing business in order to settle FTC charges that he and his company allegedly used pre-recorded robocalls to sell consumers auto service contracts.

Khalilian and his company, The Dolce Group Worldwide, LLC, are the latest robocall operation shut down as part of the FTC’s crackdown on deceptive prerecorded calls. According to the FTC, the operation, doing business under the name My Car Solutions, conned consumers into paying thousands of dollars by leading them to believe that the company was affiliated with auto dealers and manufacturers, and that it was offering to sell them extended auto “warranties.”

Khalilian is well-known to the FTC as a result of a 2001 settlement that banned him from all travel-related telemarketing, and required him to pay $185,000 in consumer redress for making deceptive pitches for travel packages.

In June 2010 the FTC filed a new complaint against Khalilian, alleging that since 2009, he and his company marketed “extended” auto warranties by blasting consumers with pre-recorded robocalls. These calls warned people that their car warranties were about to expire and instructed them to “press one” to talk with a representative. Consumers were then transferred to telemarketers who said they were from the “service contract department,” and they would “verify” information about the consumers’ cars and “confirm” other information, including their zip code.

The telemarketers then transferred consumers to a “senior specialist” who allegedly made more misrepresentations. Only after consumers bought the supposed warranties did they discover that My Car Solutions was not affiliated with their car manufacturer, and that the contracts did not cover “the entire engine,” did not provide “bumper-to-bumper” coverage, and excluded certain “pre-existing conditions.” Consumers who tried to get their money back – typically between $1,300 and $2,485 per warranty – found it nearly impossible.

The court order settling the FTC’s charges bans Khalilian and The Dolce Group from telemarketing or helping others to telemarket, prohibits them from making any misrepresentations or omissions when selling any goods or services, and includes a monetary judgment of more than $4.2 million, the amount of consumer harm the operation caused. Under the order, Khalilian will satisfy part of the judgment by turning over corporate and personal property totaling approximately $50,000. The FTC is authorized to take action to collect the remainder of the outstanding judgment from the defendants. The settlement order contains additional provisions to ensure the defendants comply with its terms.

The Commission vote authorizing the staff to file the consent order settling the court action was 5-0. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on November 24, 2010, and resolves the FTC’s charges against Khalilian and The Dolce Group Worldwide, LLC, doing businesses as My Car Solutions. The Order has been signed by the judge and entered by the court.

The Commission also has authorized the staff to withdraw a contempt action pending against the defendants in the Middle District of Florida related to violations of Khalilian’s previous FTC Order.

NOTE: This stipulated final order is for settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by the defendant of a law violation. A stipulated final order requires approval by the court and has the force of law when signed by the judge.

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Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:

• James X. Dempsey, Member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

President Obama also announced his intent to appoint Kevin J. Kennedy as a Member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.  His biography is below.

President Obama said, “These talented individuals bring a wealth of experience to their new roles.  I am confident they will serve the American people well, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:

James X. Dempsey, Nominee for Member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

James Dempsey is Vice President for Public Policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a non-profit public policy organization focused on privacy, national security, government surveillance, and other issues affecting the future of the Internet.  Mr. Dempsey joined CDT in 1997, holding senior roles in the organization, including Executive Director (2003-2005) and head of CDT’s West Coast office in San Francisco, CA.  Prior to joining CDT, he served as Deputy Director of the non-profit Center for National Security Studies and Special Counsel to the National Security Archive.  From 1985 to 1995, Mr. Dempsey was Assistant Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights.  From 1980 to 1984, he was an associate at Arnold & Porter, LLP.  Mr. Dempsey clerked for Judge Robert Braucher of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  He has been a member of several bodies addressing privacy and national security issues, including the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee advisory board, the Industry Advisory Board for the National Counter-Terrorism Center, and the Transportation Security Administration’s Secure Flight Working Group, among others.  He holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individual to a key Administration post:

Kevin J. Kennedy, Appointee for Member, President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee

Kevin Kennedy is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Avaya Inc., a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.  Prior to joining the company in January 2009, Dr. Kennedy was President and CEO of JDS Uniphase Corporation (JDSU) and also served as a member of the JDSU board of directors.  From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Kennedy served as COO of Openwave Systems, Inc. and spent close to eight years at Cisco Systems, Inc., most recently as senior vice president of the Service Provider Line of Business and Software Technologies Division. Earlier in his career, he spent 17 years with AT&T Bell Laboratories.  Dr. Kennedy was a member of the board of directors of Polycom, Inc. and currently serves on the board of directors of KLA-Tencor Corporation and is a member of the board of regents of Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Kennedy holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in engineering from Rutgers University and a B.S. in engineering from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

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The Federal Trade Commission today announced it is seeking public comments on whether and how to strengthen the Caller ID provisions of the Telemarketing Sales Rule. By requiring telemarketers to provide Caller ID information, the Rule allows consumers to screen out unwanted calls. The FTC seeks comments on how to make Caller ID more useful to consumers and combat technologies that hide telemarketers’ identities.

“Beefing up the Rule’s Caller ID provisions will help the FTC keep pace with rapidly changing technologies and more effectively fulfill its consumer protection mission,” said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Currently, the Rule’s Caller ID provisions require telemarketers to provide consumers who use Caller ID services with either a telephone number for the telemarketer or the number of the seller or charitable organization represented by the telemarketer. Some Caller ID services also display names of up to 15 characters to identify the caller. The Rule promotes telemarketer accountability and helps the FTC and other law enforcement agencies to identify telemarketers that engage in improper telemarketing, including telemarketers that call numbers on the Do Not Call Registry.

Under the Rule, telemarketers must provide the name of the telemarketer, seller, or charitable organization to such Caller ID services, if the telemarketer’s carrier makes this available. The Caller ID regulations give telemarketers flexibility in determining what telephone numbers to transmit, and in determining whether the name of the telemarketer, or the name of the seller or charity, is displayed on Caller ID services.

Not all businesses abide by the these Caller ID requirements, however, as seen in recent FTC cases that charge telemarketers pitching fraudulent extended auto warranties and credit card interest rate reduction programs with violating the Caller ID requirements. Since 2005, the FTC has initiated 10 enforcement actions that charge abusive telemarketers with concealing their identities from consumers. The FTC’s request for comments notes that “spoofing” or manipulating Caller ID names and numbers may become more common as telemarketers increasingly use advanced telecommunications technologies.

The Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announced today does not put forward a specific plan for strengthening the Telemarketing Sales Rule’s Caller ID provisions. Instead, it provides information on how Caller ID services work, and explains how the benefits of Caller ID services are undermined when telemarketers use technology to block transmission of Caller ID, to transmit false information, or to transmit a telephone number or name that does not clearly identify the source of the call.

The FTC is seeking comments on a range of Caller ID-related questions to help inform its understanding of this issue, including:

• How widespread is consumer use of Caller ID services to screen unwanted calls, and do consumers use other services that rely on the transmission of calling party numbers (CPN), such as call-blocking equipment, to avoid unwelcome telemarketing calls?
• Would changes to the Telemarketing Sales Rule improve the ability of Caller ID services to accurately disclose the source of telemarketing calls or improve the ability of service providers to block calls in which information on the source of the call is not available, or has been spoofed?
• Should the FTC amend the Caller ID provisions of the Rule to recognize or anticipate specific developments in telecommunications technologies relating to the transmission and use of Caller ID information, and if so, how?
• Should the FTC amend the Caller ID provisions of the Rule to further specify the characteristics of the phone number that a telemarketer must transmit to a Caller ID service? For example, should the Rule require that the phone number transmitted be one that is listed in publicly available phone directories, a number with an area code and prefix that are associated with the physical location of the telemarketer’s place of business, a number that is answered by a live representative, or automated service that identifies the telemarketer by name?
• Should the FTC amend the Caller ID provisions to allow a seller or telemarketer to use trade names or product names, rather than the actual name of the seller or telemarketer, in the name information displayed by Caller ID services?

The Commission vote approving the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was 5-0. It can be found on the FTC’s website and as a link to this press release, and will be published in the Federal Register soon. Comments submitted in response to the questions in the notice must be received by January 28, 2010. Comments can be submitted here. All comments received will be posted on the FTC’s website at: www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm.

Click here for information about the Do Not Call Registry or to register a phone number. Once a number is on the Registry, it never has to be re-registered.

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At the Federal Trade Commission’s request, a U.S. district court has approved a settlement shutting down two groups of Florida-based telemarketers that allegedly flooded consumers with misleading pre-recorded robocalls falsely promising to reduce their credit card interest rates.

The agency reached a settlement that permanently bans the two related operations from making robocalls and selling debt relief services. The settlement orders are the latest in a series of enforcement actions the FTC has taken to rein in robocallers, especially those who try to take advantage of consumers affected by the economic downturn.

According to the FTC, JPM Accelerated Services and related defendants made thousands of illegal pre-recorded robocalls to consumers, identifying themselves only as “card services” and offering lower credit card interest rates. Consumers who pressed “1″ after hearing the automated pitch were transferred to live telemarketers who falsely told consumers that JPM’s services would allow them to dramatically lower their credit card interest rates.

The complaint alleged that the telemarketers charged an up-front fee typically ranging from $495 to $995, and promised consumers they would save thousands of dollars in a short period of time as a result of the lower interest rates, and that they would be able to pay off their debts faster. The defendants also falsely stated that if consumers did not save thousands of dollars from lowered interest rates, they would receive a full refund of the up-front fee.

After collecting the fee from consumers, however, JPM allegedly failed to deliver the promised interest rate reductions and savings, and routinely refused to honor its money-back guarantee. The FTC complaint also charged the defendants with violating the Telemarketing Sales Rule by calling consumers on the Do Not Call Registry, blocking or “spoofing” caller ID, and making unlawful robocalls.

The settlement orders also impose judgments of $5.9 million against defendants associated with JPM, and $3.2 million against six individual defendants associated with an affiliated operation called IXE Accelerated Financial Centers, LLC. The judgments represent the amount of money consumers lost through these robocall schemes. The judgments are suspended, based on the defendants’ inability to pay, but will become due if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition. Two of the defendants in the IXE operation, Ivan X. Estrella and Jaime Hawley, also are liable for an unsatisfied $75,000 judgment recently entered against them in a case brought by the Florida Attorney General.

The Commission vote authorizing the consent orders settling the court action against the individual defendants was 5-0. The orders were filed in the U.S. District Court for Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division on November 9, 2010, against: 1) Ivan X. Estrella, Jamie M. Hawley, and Kimberly Nelson; and 2) Jeanie B. Robertson, Brooke Robertson, Alexander J. Dent, Micha S. Romano, Paul Pietrzak, and Ashley M. Westbrook. Estrella, Hawley, and Nelson worked with the IXE corporate defendants listed below. The rest of the individual defendants worked with the JPM corporate defendants. At the FTC’s request, the court also has dismissed the charges against Paige Dent.

The court is reviewing the FTC’s request for a default judgment against the corporate defendants in this case, including the IXE corporate defendants (IXE Accelerated Financial Centers, LLC; and IXE Accelerated Services Inc.), and the JPM corporate defendants (JPM Accelerated Services Inc.; IXE Accelerated Service Centers Inc.; MGA Accelerated Services Inc.; World Class Savings Inc.; Accelerated Savings Inc.; and B&C Financial Group Inc.). The proposed default judgment includes monetary judgments of $3.2 million against the IXE corporations, based in Orlando, Florida, and $5.9 million against the JPM corporations, based in Melbourne, Florida.

International Cooperation

The FTC brought this action with valuable assistance from other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada, including: the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the Attorney General of Florida; the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs; the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission; and the Toronto Strategic Partnership, which includes as member agencies the Competition Bureau Canada; the Toronto Police Service Fraud Squad – Mass Marketing Section; the Ontario Provincial Police Anti-Rackets Section; the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading. Valuable assistance also was provided by the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida.

The FY 2010 National Do Not Call Registry Data Book

The FTC today also issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2010, which can be found on the FTC website and as a link to this press release. In its second year of publication, the Data Book contains a wealth of information about the Registry for FY 2010, including:

• The number of active registrations and consumer complaint figures since the Registry began in 2003;
• FY 2010 complaint figures by month and complaint type;
• FY 2010 registration and complaint figures for all 50 states by population;
• The number of entities accessing the Registry by fiscal year; and
• An appendix on registration and complaint data by consumer state and area code.

According to the Data Book, at the end of FY 2010 (September 30, 2010), the Do Not Call Registry contained 201,542,535 actively registered phone numbers, up from 191,453,515 at the end of FY 2009. In addition, the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls decreased from 1,808,354 at the end of FY 2009 to 1,633,819 at the end of FY 2010.

This year’s Data Book also reveals trends in complaint data. In addition to providing information on the total number of consumer complaints per month, it also has data on the number of monthly complaints specifically related to pre-recorded telemarketing, or robocalls, and requests for a telemarketer to stop calling. After the FTC issued a Rule banning virtually all telemarketing robocalls starting on September 1, 2009, for example, the data show that the number of complaints about such calls decreased from 66,574 in October 2009 to 58,161 in November 2009 and just 51,882 in December 2009. The FTC remains committed to stopping deceptive, misleading, and otherwise unlawful robocalls, and will take action against entities violating the new rule.

Click here for information about the Do Not Call Registry or to register a phone number. Once a number is on the Registry, it never has to be re-registered.

NOTE: The stipulated final orders are for settlement purposes only and do not constitute an admission by the defendants of law violations. Stipulated final orders require approval by the court and have the force of law when signed by the judge.

Copies of the stipulated final orders and default judgment are available now on the FTC’s website and as a link to this press release. The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,800 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s website provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.

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NEW YORK, NY (OfficialWire) Telemarketers and other outbound call centers no longer have to wait days in order to get their Caller ID name (CNAM) changed. The premier CNAM company CNAMCallerID.com today announced an upgrade in their CNAM publishing technology.

“Through our advanced techniques and interfacing with the various API’s, we are now able to publish new CNAM CallerID data into the CNAM database in near real time. Studies showed this to be one of the most desired features in the contact center industry, and we are glad we are now able to publish these CNAM changes almost in real time.”, VP of Technology, Mr Steward, commented.

CNAM stands for Caller Name. Caller Name and Number is a very common premium feature in the United States and is often bundled with other premium phone services like call waiting and call forwarding. When a call is being received by a CNAM caller ID subscriber, both the caller name and telephone number are being displayed. This is a service the caller id subscriber has to pay for.

The caller name being displayed does not come from the phone’s memory but is passed to the caller id subscriber by the local phone company. Whenever they receive a call for a callerid subscriber, they look up the caller name in a central CNAM database so it can be displayed on the receiving party’s phone display.

As outbound call centers often work for multiple clients and campaigns, they deem it crucial that a correct caller ID name and number is being displayed on their outbound campaigns. By now being able to change the CNAM from a self-serve online portal, running new campaigns and managing their caller ID has become a whole lot easier and quicker.

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The glory days of an unlimited broadband appear to be nearing an end as ISPs look to implement caps and metered pricing for broadband services. In the not-so-distant-future, broadband users will be forced to pay on a metered basis in the same way as other utilities such as electricity and water, with customers only paying for what they use.

Unlimited flat-rate packages are a reflection of internet companies’ desire back in the mid-1990s to get potential customers to sign-up and explore the internet revolution. Now, with just under two billion people using the internet globally, companies are keen to reinvent and monitor how costumers utilize their bandwidth.

“We’re going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes, and at the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable,” Dick Lynch, Verizon’s Chief Technology Officer has said in the past. Frontier Communications made headlines last year when it claimed it would start implementing service caps as low as five giga-bytes per month.

It could be a case of one-ruining-it-for all; Cisco Systems found that one percent of global users are consuming 20 percent of global bandwidth, consistent with other findings that a small minority of users are consuming a disproportionate share of network resources.

With an impending move to a metered broadband, top executives from the Telecoms industry will meet at the Next Generation Telecoms Summit in December, to discuss the risks of implementing metered usage, the best practices to mitigate the risks, comparisons between US & Canadian attitudes and lessons a potential move from the mobile world would mean.

Those in attendance will include John Harrison, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, Sprint; Jim Zerbe, Director Product Development, T-Mobile; Tony Scicchitano, Executive Director IT Open Systems, Verizon; Joseph Houle, Lead Technical Architect, AT&T; Lance Condray, VP Strategic Services, Bandwidth.com; Victor Perez, VP Engineering and Operations, Comcast and Michael Coleman, SVP/CIO, Comporium Communications.

More recently, AT&T have stirred things up with an announcement that it was heading away from the all-you-can-eat buffet style of broadband and was keen to adopt consumption billing for wireless broadband. Verizon co-signed a manifesto with Google that outlined a set of network neutrality principles. Though the Verizon proposal was neither solely, nor explicitly about consumption billing, consumption billing was certainly implicit.

Service providers are definitely moving away from one size-fits-all, said Susie Kim Riley, the chief marketing officer for Tekelec (which earlier this year bought Camiant, which Riley co-founded). “There’s no disputing we’re moving away from that,” Riley said. “You see that with AT&T, you see that in Europe, and even when you read between the lines with Google and Verizon

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Leading names within the telecoms industry met last week in Latin America to discuss the future of the Cloud, and its effects for the continent.

Representatives from ­­­­Cable Vision – Federico Juarez Valdez, CIO, Telefonica Media Networks SA - Pedro Luis Planas, CTO LA, Grupo GTD – Cristian Eyzaguirre, CIO, Telefonica Media Networks Latin America – Javier Izquierdo, COO and COFETEL (Federal Telecommunications Commission) – Rodrigo Gutierrez Sandez, CIO – General Coordinator of Organisation and IT among others met in Mexico to discuss the advantages of moving to the cloud and how best to implement change at the NGT LA summit, an event hosted by GDS International.

The Information & Communications Technology (ICT) market will have a strong transformation over the next 10 years. Fixed and mobile network improvements, new infrastructure and application delivery models, along with more intelligent devices will change the way that consumers and businesses use technology, and ultimately the way they do business. It is still extremely important for service providers to set a roadmap for users to follow in order for them to be well prepared and to be successful in the current market transformation.

North America has already looked to the cloud to clean their data, reducing costs and implementing flexibility, but companies in Latin America are seemingly lagging behind; now these companies are seeing for themselves the opportunities for the taking.

Moving to the Cloud is a paradigm change, and much of the Telco and MSP market is fully aware of this. The issue is how to mature the approach to migrate from physical assets to virtualization, which stalls after a certain point, and then to an elastic infrastructure that can scale up and down on demand.

“To effectively implement these solutions, it is necessary to understand the real-time network and applications performance, risk, and quality of business service that impact user satisfaction and productivity. This understanding must bridge across all physical, virtual, and cloud environments, from the mainframe to distributed platforms.” Kenneth Arredondo – SVP and GM Latin America, CA

The NGT LA Committee believe that by maximizing telecommunication companies’ Cloud Computing services, capabilities and flexibility will be increased, time-to-market can be vastly reduced, and operational risks and costs can more easily be controlled. The committee hope that by implementing this they will see greater opportunities for offering new services and improving profit margins.

At this stage cloud computing is still relatively new.  IT companies, for the most part, must implement their cloud solutions alone, but with meetings such as the NGT LA summit more and more cloud aggregators and integrators will begin to emerge.

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Many pick their audio conferencing providers based on the rate per minute they get quoted. But unfortunately that quoted rate isn’t always the real rate.

Several conferencing companies add additional fees and surcharges to the bill, some are legit others aren’t (or are at least questionable). Often times, these customers are led to believe that the additional taxes and fees are just being “passed through” to the consumer and it is a cost of doing business. However, in many situations these taxes and fees are not being passed through at all. The phone company bills them and the customers pays for them and none of them get passed on any further. On top of that, only the per minute rate you were quoted is used to meet your contractual obligations, “the other charges” do not count towards meeting your minimums.

Conference bill “scams” & misleading charges

Many people are surprised to find out that the REAL RATE (figured by adding taxes, surcharges, miscellaneous charges, administrative charges, and other charges)they are paying for their audio conferencing service is up to 25% higher than what they were quoted. Usually, this occurs when customers purchase their conferencing services from a phone company and not a conferencing company.However we also see this happening with real conferencing companies. Generally, these additional fees are not very well explained at the time of purchase. In addition, it is not necessarily for a company to pay these charges. In reality, what they pay is considerably higher than the quoted rate. For an overview of what these are, please visit this link.

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• audio conferencing services taxes

“Over the past months we have worked to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet, based on the conviction that an open Internet is vital to innovation and private investment, competition, and free speech.

“These efforts — including the dedicated work of FCC staff and participation by a broad range of stakeholders — have over time changed the terms of a longstanding and acrimonious debate. We have moved from a world of four disputed and unenforceable open Internet principles — about blocking by broadband providers of lawful online content, applications, and services — toward the acceptance of six enforceable rules: the original four principles plus the concepts of nondiscrimination and transparency.

These would prevent broadband providers from wrongly playing favorites with lawful Internet speech or businesses, and would empower consumers and entrepreneurs with information about broadband choices and networks.

“We have made progress over the last year — but of course we still have work to do. Today, we take the next step. “Recent events have highlighted questions on how open Internet rules should apply to ‘specialized’ services and to mobile broadband — what framework will guarantee Internet freedom and openness, and maximize private investment and innovation. As we’ve seen, the issues are complex, and the details matter. Even a proposal for enforceable rules can be flawed in its specifics and risk undermining the fundamental goal of preserving the open Internet.

“Accordingly, the FCC’s Wireline and Wireless Bureaus are seeking further public comment on issues related to ‘specialized’ (or ‘managed’) services and mobile broadband. The information received through this inquiry, along with the record developed to date, will help complete our efforts to establish an enforceable framework to preserve Internet freedom and openness.

“As we move forward, the FCC will continue to be vigilant in guarding against threats to Internet freedom. We will be focused on a vision of a ubiquitous and superfast Internet, with flourishing entrepreneurship and vibrant start-ups, and massive private investment in Internet infrastructure, content, and services — an Internet that is an engine for our economy, and provides a world of knowledge and free speech accessible to all.”

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• net neautraility notice

Small businesses (SBs, or firms with less than 100 employees) in the U.S. are increasingly using web-conferencing solutions, like GoToMeeting, LiveMeeting and WebEx. According to a recent AMI-Partners report, nearly half of U.S. SBs are using web-conferencing solutions today, with penetration expected to grow to 80% in 2011. However, this trend also brings challenges to many web-conferencing providers. With increased use of these services, AMI is forecasting significant displacement to free web-conferencing offers.

“The recent economic downturn heightened cost management among U.S. SBs, and they identified web-conferencing as a viable, affordable alternative to travel,” says Brian Galgay, Manager of Cloud Services for AMI’s Marketing Strategy Consulting Group. “Over the last three years, U.S. SBs have seen additional benefits in using these solutions. Today, they no longer view web-conferencing as a cost-cutting measure, but rather as an effective, real-time collaboration tool.” However, any optimism among web-conferencing vendors regarding potential revenue growth should be balanced. This growth could be limited by displacement of U.S.

SBs’ current budget allocation, as well as by actual reductions caused by these SBs’ uptake of free web-conferencing services. This trend is a part of the rapid growth of Cloud Services over the past 24 – 36 months, which has produced a large number of low-quality, free web-conferencing solutions.

With more conferencing solution providers competing for market share, free web-conferencing providers have started to differentiate their services by adding more robust features. As a result, the gap in features between free and paid solutions has narrowed significantly. This poses a direct challenge to the paid solution providers. As free solutions add more features like multiple user video-conferencing and desktop sharing, the paid solutions need to offer increasingly more enhanced web-conferencing solutions.

“Cloud Services has had a significant impact on ICT growth and, in particular, on this software category. The concept of premium web-conferencing solutions will evolve over the upcoming two to three years. Paid providers will have to bring the next generation of more advanced web-conferencing solutions to market, as the lower end of the market, enticed by free, limited offerings, moves away from premium, paid services. Conferencing solution providers willing to generate revenue from usage, and not from advertising, could protect such revenue erosion by investing in a richer, fuller product feature set or by specializing in targeted industry verticals,” concludes Galgay.

For the past 14 years, AMI-Partners has tracked the use of video- and web-conferencing solutions, among other ICT products, in the small and medium business markets. A new 30+ country study about Cloud Services is in process, covering in-depth insight on these businesses’ usage, perception and plans of conferencing solutions.

Upcoming Study Small and medium business preferences for Cloud-based application bundles, their price sensitivity and purchase channel preferences are further explored in AMI’s upcoming Worldwide SMB Cloud Services Study. This study provides comprehensive coverage of: Platforms and Devices; IT Infrastructure Services; Business Productivity Applications; Business Management/Line of Business Applications; and Unified Communications. Research will be available later in 2010.

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• web conferencing uptake in first year
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Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has warned of a frightening future where a data explosion will result in it being extremely easy to identify you, where you are, and what you are up to. Nothing to do with Google, of course.

Speaking at the Techonomy conference, he said: “If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go.”

Read more: http://www.techeye.net/internet/google-ceo-warns-of-data-explosion-and-future-without-privacy

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to propose a new program to help rural doctors get access to broadband in hopes of improving patient care. At the meeting set for Thursday, the agency will propose that $400 million a year from the Universal Service Fund should go to linking doctors and hospitals to the Internet at speeds of at least 10 Mbps.

Read the full story at Gigaom

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Valicom, a provider of telecom expense management (TEM) services announces the official launch of its new software as a service Clearview. The Clearview announcement puts the company on the leading edge of software solutions that enable customers to reduce and manage telecom expenses without reliance on telecom carriers or third party service providers. Valicom delivers powerful expense management solutions that deliver visibility, control, and financial savings. Valicom COO Jeff Poirior explains, “The marketplace has been clear in articulating its desire to become independent in managing telecom expenses and to reduce or eliminate dependence on telecom carriers and third parties to consolidate information and validate proper billing. Clearview® provides simple, efficient, on-demand Telecom Expense Management. We are so confident in its capabilities that we are offering new clients a thirty day free trial.”

Companies using Clearview will perform bill audit, bill payment, and contract negotiation as well as changes to telecom inventory without the need for outside assistance. They will also enjoy sophisticated reporting and trending capabilities. While many of Valicom’s competitors focus exclusively on large companies, Valicom’s Clearview solution is catering to the middle market: companies who spend between $150,000 and $2,000,000 in telecom, voice, and data services annually. Says Poirior; “The middle market has historically been ignored or, at best, under served. That situation now ends with Clearview®.”
Industry analysts have already begun to sing Valicom’s praises. A recent Forrester Market Overview study called out Valicom as an “emerging player” in the TEM marketplace and also cited Valicom as one of only two companies in the study to provide comprehensive expense management services as part of their core offering.

Clearview® combines Valicom’s TEM expertise and insight into a simple yet powerful, highly integrated technology platform with superior visibility and time to implementation and identified savings. Clearview® enables rapid identification of savings and increases personnel capacity by letting the client focus more resources on their core business. Clearview clients can take advantage of a variety of features including a customizable management dashboard, consolidated telecom inventory, and an interface that allows for instant adoption. Clearview allows the client to master the process, acquire industry best practices and reduce dependence on telecom and TEM suppliers.

Valicom has been a leader in telecom expense reduction, telecom billing management, telecom audit, and telecom finance for twenty years. Valicom is completely carrier independent and views itself as a values-driven organization. Valicom is certified by the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and is a regular participant in supplier diversity programs. For more information about Valicom and their services, visit Clearview.

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