Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers will learn his fate this week. Ebbers will be sentenced Wednesday for his March conspiracy and fraud conviction in connection with the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Ebbers faces up to 85 years in prison. Scott Sullivan, former CFO, who took the stand against Ebbers claiming the former CEO orchestrated the fraud that brought the second-largest telecom company to its knees, is expected to be sentenced in August. WorldCom is now known as MCI and emerged from bankruptcy in April 2004.

The SCO Group's legal battle with IBM continues its slow march to trial. In a ruling issued July 1, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball set a new trial date of Feb. 26, 2007. The jury trial had been scheduled to begin this November. The rescheduling, to give the parties time for pretrial preparations, came as Kimball granted SCO's request to depose IBM CEO Sam Palmisano. While IBM opposed the Palmisano deposition, saying that the information SCO sought could be gathered from other sources, Kimball ruled, "Mr. Palmisano could have unique personal knowledge related to the claims in this action." SCO filed its $3 billion lawsuit against IBM in 2003, claiming the company had illegally ported SCO's proprietary Unix code into Linux. IBM denies the claims.

Current Communications Group, a provider of broadband over power line service, has received funding from Google; Goldman, Sachs & Co. and The Hearst Corp., the company announced last week. Current Communications, which is selling BPL Internet service in the Cincinnati area, received "significant" funding from the three companies, says Scott Bruce, general manager of the company. Bruce declined to disclose the amount of investment, although The Wall Street Journal pegged the new round of funding at about $100 million. In March 2004, Current Communications and Cinergy Broadband LLC, a subsidiary of Cinergy Corp., announced investments of $70 million as the partners began rolling out BPL service in the Cincinnati area. The rollout includes broadband service and VoIP service.

Microsoft is set to release three software patches this week covering critical flaws in its Windows operating system and Microsoft Office. The company also plans to release an updated version of its Windows Software Removal Tool. The patches, which Microsoft calls "updates," will come as part of the company's regular monthly patch release cycle. Microsoft releases most software patches on the second Tuesday of each month, a date that has come to be known as "Patch Tuesday," by security professionals. The company did not release any details on the specific nature of the patches, except to say that some of them will be rated "critical," meaning flaws could allow malicious code to be installed on an affected computer without user action.

The U.S. Department of Justice is requiring Alltel to sell off some of its assets in three central U.S. states before completing a $6 billion acquisition of competing wireless carrier Western Wireless. The Justice Department, in a settlement announced last week, says it will approve the acquisition if a court approves its divestiture requirements. The Justice Department's conditions require Alltel, the sixth-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., to divest assets in Kansas, Nebraska and Arkansas. The FCC must also approve the merger. Alltel, with about 8.8 million wireless customers, announced in January its plans to acquire Western Wireless, the nation's ninth-largest wireless carrier, with about 1.4 million U.S. customers.

Business Objects SA will not face charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The business intelligence software developer warned last August that the SEC had opened an inquiry and intended to recommend that a civil action be initiated against Business Objects, alleging that the company violated provisions of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 relating to periodic reporting requirements. However, the informal inquiry has ended without recommendation for any enforcement action, the company said it had been told by SEC staff.