* Insight promotes key three
Insight Communications has promoted three top executives.

Dinni Jain, previously EVP and COO, was named president, but will retain his COO duties. Michael Willner will continue as vice chairman and CEO.

John Abbot has been elevated to executive vice president. Abbot a former SVP, will also remain Insight’s chief financial officer.

Chris Slattery has been promoted to EVP of field operations. Previously, Slattery was SVP of field operations.

* SkiTAM ’06 on a record pace
Organizers of the 2006 SkiTAM event say all sponsorship categories have been sold out and the money raised will reach record levels.

SkiTAM, however, won’t reveal final numbers until after the event, which runs March 30-April 2 in Vail, Colo. The event, launched in 1995, has raised about $3.5 million for the U.S. Disabled Ski Team.

The annual event, headed up by the CTAM Rocky Mountain Chapter, is responsible for raising more than half of the USDST’s budget.

* Taslimi joins Coaxsys
Coaxsys Inc., maker of coax-based home networking gear for IPTV and other applications under the “TVnet” brand, has appointed Ali Taslimi as vice president of corporate development.

Taslimi began his carreer at AT&T Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. Since 2000, he has worked extensively in broadband networking and IPTV technologies at Alcatel USA and Occam Networks.

* Amino fights fire with Firefox
The IPTV equipment sector may be ripe for consolidation, but that hasn’t stopped equipment suppliers from trying to differentiate themselves.

Among them, Amino Communications said it will port the open source Firefox browser into its line of IPTV set-top boxes. 

Amino is expected to offer the browser and leverage it for IPTV navigation by Q3 2006.