Platinum Equity agreed to pay $323.4 million cash to acquire Electro Rent, a company that rents, leases and sells servers, PCs and electronic test equipment, they said in a news release Tuesday. The deal, expected to close in 90 to 120 days, requires approval by Electro Rent stockholders and “various regulatory agencies,” they said. Electro Rent will “greatly benefit from additional resources and experience to further enhance our already high inventory, service and support standards,” said CEO Steven Markheim.
The GAO said it's recommending that the White House Office of Management and Budget finalize draft guidance for identifying and prioritizing “legacy” IT systems at federal agencies that need to be modernized or replaced. The GAO said about 75 percent of the federal government's more than $80 billion in IT spending during FY 2015 went to funding IT operations and maintenance. Operations and management spending increased over the previous seven fiscal years, resulting in spending on IT development, modernization and enhancements activities to decline by $7.3 billion between FY 2010 and FY 2017, the GAO said in a report Wednesday. GAO also recommended 13 federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, Justice and Treasury, address at-risk and obsolete investments for IT operations and maintenance.
Vonage backed an FCC order allowing interconnected VoIP providers to obtain phone numbers directly from numbering administrators, a decision NARUC is challenging in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (NARUC v. FCC, No. 15-1497). NARUC lacks standing to bring its challenge and hasn't shown that the FCC lacks authority to provide interconnected VoIP direct numbering access, intervenor Vonage said in its brief (in Pacer) Thursday. It also said there's no statutory requirement the FCC classify VoIP as a telecom service in order to give interconnected VoIP providers direct numbering access, as NARUC argued (see 1604050013). The FCC defended its order last week (see 1605200002).
A hearing on AT&T's motion to dismiss Herring Networks' complaint about its carriage on U-verse (see 1603110064) is scheduled for June 27 before U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder of Los Angeles. In an opposition filing (in Pacer) Monday, Herring said AT&T's motion to dismiss is "replete with boilerplate arguments" and its claims of fraud, breach of contract and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing "are all sufficiently pled." The fraud allegedly came when AT&T misrepresented its plan to expand its U-verse platform and concealed its plans to buy DirecTV, the implied covenant claim stemming from AT&T's obligation not to frustrate Herring's rights under the U-verse agreement and the contractual claims coming from the telco's now-breached agreement to put Herring's networks on DirecTV. AT&T, in its motion to dismiss filed last month, said Herring "is essentially asking this Court to rewrite the terms of a contract that it once agreed to, but now apparently regrets," its 2014 agreement with Herring specifically says the programmer has no right to have its content carried on any other video system AT&T might buy, and the contract specifically says the telco has the right to shut down U-verse without recourse to Herring.
The FTC approved Vonage and Oracle acquisitions of cloud companies, in early termination notices Friday. The commission OK’ed Vonage’s $230 million acquisition of Nexmo, a communications platform-as-a-service company. Also, the FTC approved Oracle’s $663 million acquisition of Textura, which provides construction contracts and payment management cloud services. The Vonage deal was announced in a May 5 news release and the Oracle deal was announced in an April 28 news release.
The Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council meets June 22, the FCC said in Friday's Federal Register. CSRIC approved five working groups' recommendations at the council's last meeting in March, including a set of best practices on 911 call rerouting between public safety answering points and several reports on the security of other communications systems (see 1603160061). The June meeting is set to begin 1 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room, a notice said.
GoDaddy sought FCC approval to transfer FreedomVoice's international Communications Act Section 214 authorization to the domain name registrar as part of GoDaddy's purchase of the cloud-based communications company. GoDaddy said Tuesday it was buying FreedomVoice for $42 million in cash and up to $5 million in “future milestones” payments. FreedomVoice currently holds Section 214 authorization to provide international telecom services between the U.S. and “international points on a facilities and resold basis,” GoDaddy said in Thursday's filing. GoDaddy/FreedomVoice “will serve the public interest by further facilitating the provision of cloud-based communications and other services to small businesses,” GoDaddy said. “This transaction will not impact FreedomVoice's customers, and will be virtually transparent to customers in terms of the service they now receive.”
The FCC issued a protective order in its review of Verizon's roughly $1.8 billion buy of XO Communications (see 1602220071). Safeguards for confidential and highly confidential information were established under the Wireline Bureau order in docket 16-70 listed in Friday's Daily Digest.
Proposed FCC undersea cable outage reporting rules should be revised "to reflect the practical concerns unique to submarine cable systems," AT&T and the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA) said in a filing Thursday in docket 15-206 on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Operators need a transition period of at least one year to implement new requirements; anything less would be "unrealistic," they said. Many undersea cable systems are consortium-owned, requiring "complex negotiations and coordination among members to implement technology and procedures for reporting," and many belong to multiple consortia, further complicating changes, they said. Because older undersea cable systems may not be able to detect all outages, "affected operators will need to incorporate new technology and coordinate with other consortium members to ensure they receive notification of reportable outages," they said. On another issue, NASCA said it's more realistic to give operators a 24-hour window to report outages than a proposal that they report within hours. Many smaller operators have fewer than 10 employees and they will be focused on repairing service when disruptions occur, the filing said, also noting that outages on the other side of the world could occur when employees are sleeping. AT&T and NASCA urged the FCC to scrap a proposed interim report duty that "adds an extra burden on operators without any material benefit" to the agency. "Between the time of an initial outage notification and the time of scheduling a repair, when the interim report would be due, operators would not have additional material information about the outage or its cause. The cause -- if discoverable at all -- could likely only be determined during the course of the repair," they said. Unlike terrestrial counterparts, undersea operators can't gain immediate access to trouble spots that are often "thousands of kilometers offshore" and deep in the sea, they said.
The FTC OK’d Mitel’s $1.96 billion buy of Polycom, Mitel said in a news release Thursday. The Canadian telco announced the deal last month (see 1604150056). It's expected to close in Q3, subject to shareholder approval and regulatory OKs from Russia and Germany.