Also: Sygate fixes Google Desktop Search cache vulnerability; Speculation has Juniper announcing TX multichassis router interconnect system; Congress increases H-1B hires; HP to spend $200 million on layoffs
Nov. 24 marked the one-year anniversary of local wireless number portability for wireless service providers across the U.S. This feature lets users switch their wireless phone numbers to another carrier. The FCC mandate on portability didn’t create the demand industry watchers expected, says Clint Wheelock, director of wireless research at In-Stat/MDR. The FCC reports 7.8 million wireless numbers were ported since last November, with more than 2.8 million ported after May. Tim Kridel, a senior analyst at Mobile Competency, says more users are taking advantage of porting, although not in droves. “Listening to carriers, about 30% of new activations are from porting” requests, Wheelock says. Despite some trouble at AT&T Wireless in late 2003, porting in general is going well, he says. For example, Verizon Wireless lowered a porting fee it was charging all customers. Verizon Wireless says that since March it has collected $15 million – 40 cents per month, per phone number – to help pay for the cost of managing porting. It is lowering its monthly charge to 5 cents per month, per phone number. Porting was expected to have a big effect on customer churn, Wheelock says, but instead it is “an amplifier to churn that was already happening. We didn’t see mass porting of numbers.” According to some users, taking their business to a new carrier while keeping their wireless numbers, reduced their annual wireless service costs by half.
Sygate has shipped a fix for a vulnerability that lets Google Desktop Search cache Word documents that are supposed to be quarantined and purged from computer hard drives. The company is making the fix available to its customers and partners that sell versions of the software, including Array Networks, Aventail, Juniper and Netilla. The vulnerability affected only Word documents that were accessed during secure desktop sessions. Google Desktop Search, which is still in beta, managed to cache its content in clear text and to make that content available after virtual desktop sessions ended.
Juniper has an announcement slated for Dec. 6, the week of Cisco’s annual analyst meeting. Speculation has it that Juniper, in an effort to steal some of Cisco’s thunder, will announce availability of its TX multichassis router interconnect system along with a customer deployment. The TX is designed to connect multiple Juniper T-series core routers into a multi-terabit system and competes with Cisco’s recently announced and highly touted CRS-1 multi-terabit router. Juniper would neither confirm nor deny a TX announcement.
Congress is letting employers hire 20,000 more foreign high-tech workers under a special visa program. Previously, businesses were limited to hiring no more than 65,000 workers annually through the H-1B visa program. They reached that figure in one day, Oct. 1. But Congress added the extra 20,000 in its $388 billion spending bill last week. A coalition led by companies such as Microsoft, HP and Texas Instruments pushed for the extension. H-1B visas are granted to foreign workers in specialty professions such as architecture, engineering, medicine, biotechnology and computer programming. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over. Unions and other critics say the program lets businesses fill jobs with less-expensive foreign labor. Those that use the program say they cannot find enough Americans with the necessary math, science and engineering skills. In addition, Congress doubled H-1B visa application fees from $1,000 to $2,000.
HP plans to spend $200 million over the next six months on staff reductions, the company said last week in a regulatory filing. It did not specify which business areas the staffing cuts would affect. The company has continuously adjusted its workforce since buying Compaq in 2002, which quickly led to cuts of more than 17,000 jobs from the combined company. HP estimated the total cost of its 2003 fiscal year restructuring plans at $791 million. In the first nine months of its 2004 fiscal year, which ended July 31, HP recorded restructuring costs of $101 million. HP has about 145,000 employees worldwide.
