Now Genie has his own personal telephone number!  Try giving him a call (hint: his voicemail will pick up)!

(864) 553-7111 OR 877-800-GENIE (4364)

Our YouTube videos are already ahead of the curve.  “Meet the Genie” is over 3,000 hits after being live for three weeks!  In YouTube standards, we’re off to an excellent start!

Visit the NuVox YouTube Channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NuVoxComm 
“Meet the NuVox Office Genie”: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeMX4ng1O5U 

“NuVox Office Genie Video Conference”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ex6pywyGkg

“SIP BeatVox with NuVox Office Genie”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfYxO35gnpk

Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service

Sunday, January 04, 2009

At the heart of much of the change is the Federal Communications Commission, which soon faces its own shake-up as at least one commissioner departs and Democrats take charge.

 

That could mean policy changes at an agency that oversees everything from cable providers and radio airwaves to public safety communications and broadcast indecency rules.

Overall, experts say, President-elect Barack Obama’s tech-savvy team will be more involved in telecommunications issues than the Bush administration.

“Obama looks at these issues as part of the solution to unemployment challenges and as an economic stimulant,” said Andy Lipman, who leads the telecom-media practice at the Bingham McCutchen law firm in Washington.

The FCC

The new FCC will begin taking shape in early January as the term of Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate ends. The president appoints commissioners for limited terms, with the party in power getting three of five spots, including the chairmanship.

Republican Chairman Kevin Martin may finish out his term as a commissioner, but outgoing chairmen traditionally leave the agency when a new party occupies the White House.

Obama is expected to appoint one of the commission’s two Democrats – Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein – as interim chairman. One of them could get the long-term job, but many names have circulated as potential candidates.

One person often mentioned for either the top FCC job or the new position of America’s chief technology officer is Julius Genachowski, an Obama law school friend and transition team adviser who worked at the FCC.

While Senate confirmation could take months, Obama’s FCC chairman will arrive with a well-defined agenda, said Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press.

“The president-elect has been so clear and detailed about what he wants to do in telecom and media policy, whoever becomes chairman is going to inherit that set of expectations,” he said.

Broadband

Perhaps the biggest expectation involves improving the availability of high-speed Internet access. That goal is likely to be a part of the massive stimulus package that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress ambitiously want to enact soon after he takes office on Jan. 20.

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Obama said this month. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online … that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”

Figuring out how to make that happen has prompted considerable debate, with lawmakers, consumer groups and tech companies chiming in.

“They need to create some kind of mechanism that encourages industry to quickly start deploying faster and farther,” said David Kaut, an analyst with the Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. investment firm. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny that it produces jobs in the near term and not just jobs already scheduled.”

The Telecommunications Industry Association and other players favor tax breaks and grants to encourage network building.

Responsibility for overseeing parts of the plan may fall to the FCC, which has a variety of efforts underway to improve Internet access.

Increasing funding to existing programs may be more effective than creating new ones, Kaut said.

One floated proposal involves supporting a broadband rollout through a $7 billion fund that draws on monthly phone bill fees to subsidize calling service in rural and poor communities.

Digital TV

As wrangling over broadband plays out, another mammoth change takes center stage on Feb. 17 as the nation’s TV broadcasters cut off analog signals. The goal is to offer new digital channels with improved picture and sound quality while freeing up radio airwaves for uses such as wireless broadband.

The switch mainly affects about 20 million homes that only receive over-the-air TV programming. Many others have some sets unconnected to pay-TV service.

To watch digital programming on older analog sets, consumers need converter boxes. The government is offering coupons to help pay for the them.

But when the digital deadline comes, “inevitably you’re going to have lots of people with problems,” Scott said. Recent surveys indicate many consumers remain confused or misinformed about how it will work.

Key lawmakers told the FCC’s Martin this month that his agency should make smoothing the digital transition the No. 1 priority in the weeks before the inauguration. Martin canceled a meeting on other issues.

The digital changeover has “sucked the oxygen” out of every other telecom topic before the FCC and will dwarf everything else in the first few months of 2009, Lipman said.

Net Neutrality

One issue facing a priority shift is net neutrality, or the idea of an open Internet where network providers don’t interfere with Web content and treat all traffic the same.

In August, a precedent-setting FCC decision found that cable giant Comcast Corp. violated federal policies when it blocked customers from sharing online videos and other large files.

Obama has made net neutrality a top communications priority and some lawmakers would like it to be part of a national broadband strategy.

However, the urgency behind government action has faded in recent months as the online content and network sides have come closer together, Lipman said.

He said the issue could flare up if Comcast wins a legal challenge to the FCC ruling, prompting Congress to defend the agency’s authority.

But that decision is a year or two away, Kaut said, and with the FCC handling the issue case by case, the heat is off a legislative push.

Mergers

The Obama FCC also is expected to apply more scrutiny to mergers while resisting telecom deregulation and weaker media ownership rules.

The new commission may swing back toward President Bill Clinton’s FCC, which exerted tighter control over industry, said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst based in Atlanta. He said companies complained then that regulations could not keep pace with changing technology.

“When the Bush administration took over, the pendulum swung all the way to other side,” resulting in enormous consolidation, Kagan said. He said the challenge for the Obama administration is finding a middle ground.

Robert Crandall, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, said that despite Democratic concerns about consolidation, the new FCC may resist being too strict “at a time when the economy is in the tank.”

Cable

One industry looking forward to change at the FCC’s cable, which has battled with Chairman Martin over a variety of issues including ownership limits and his push for “a la carte” programming, where cable subscribers buy only the individual channels they want.

Some in the industry worry about new net neutrality restrictions, but many FCC watchers expect pressure on cable to ease and the a la carte issue to fade as broadband becomes the top priority.

Lipman said cable companies typically do better with Republicans in power, but without Martin “paradoxically cable will probably end up doing better in the Obama administration.”

article taken from: http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/level-3-gets-selective-default-rating.html

Level 3’s Money Situation ‘Tantamount to Default’

Level 3 Communications Inc. (LVLT) is having a very tough go of things. In between trying to buy back stocks to stave off bankruptcy, the Colorado-based carrier received a big blow on Monday from ratings firm Standard & Poor’s.

S&P cut Level 3’s ratings to selective default.

“These rating actions follow the completion of below-par debt tender offers for two of the three issues, and Standard & Poor’s viewed these offers as distressed and, as such, tantamount to default,” said Susan Madison, an S&P credit analyst, in a prepared statement.

Level 3’s stocks closed at 65 cents on Monday, a drop of 4.41 percent.

NuVox, a US-based communications services provider, has announced that VoxNET, the company’s multi protocol label switching solution, is now available across the US. VoxNET provides multi-location customers managed, wide area private network solution across a multi-state footprint.

According to the company, with the nationwide release of VoxNET, its customers with office locations outside the company’s traditional service area can connect all of their locations. NuVox’s private, fully-meshed data network ensures that each customer’s data, video, and critical company information is secure.

The release of the new VoxNET product is the latest addition to NuVox’s product suite. Earlier in 2008, NuVox launched its unified messaging services, including voiceMail to e-mail and fax to e-mail services. The company also launched FireWall, a managed network security product, designed to bring the latest in network protection to business customers.

Chris Benyo, executive vice president of sales and marketing for NuVox, said: “With the enhancement of VoxNET, NuVox is now truly a single source communications provider. VoxNET provides our customers with a seamless, quality of service, communications solution to meet the unique and ever-changing demands of their businesses.”