• TWC promotes Laine
By Traci Patterson
Time Warner Cable (TWC) has promoted Julie Laine to group VP of regulatory. Laine will be responsible for legal and regulatory matters relating to Time Warner Cable’s video, voice and data services.
Laine most recently served as the VP and chief counsel for telephony. She joined TWC in 2002 from IP telephony company Net2Phone Inc., where she was associate general counsel.
She previously served as an attorney advisor in the Policy Division of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Common Carrier Bureau, where she worked on issues relating to local telephone competition, broadband deployment and telecommunications mergers.
• AT&T U-verse Voice hits Indy
By Traci Patterson
AT&T’s U-verse Voice service is now available in parts of the Indianapolis area. U-verse Voice brings together AT&T home phone, wireless, broadband and TV services – all on one bill.
AT&T U-verse Voice completes the company’s IP triple-play and is available to all new and existing U-verse TV customers in the Indianapolis, Bloomington, Muncie and Anderson areas of Indiana, the company said.
AT&T U-verse Voice is delivered over AT&T’s fiber network. Advanced features include: combined AT&T U-verse Voice and AT&T wireless voicemail with U-verse Messaging, which provides a single voice mailbox that can be accessed from any phone line or PC; U-verse Central, an online management portal where subscribers can manage all of their voice-related services; Call History; Click to Call; an online address book; Locate Me; and other traditional calling features.
• YouTube hooks up with TiVo to deliver videos to DVRs
By Mike Robuck
TiVo and YouTube announced yesterday a partnership between the two companies that will allow YouTube’s videos to be downloaded onto TiVo’s broadband-connected digital video recorders (DVRs).
The new feature works on TiVo’s Series3 and high-definition (HD) DVRs. Over the next few weeks, TiVo said it will rollout a software upgrade to Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs that will enable the videos to be pulled into the DVRs.
“With YouTube content now available on TiVo, on top of all the movies, music videos, songs and TV shows that are simply unavailable on cable and satellite, TiVo subscribers have more choice on their TV sets than any other TV viewers in the world,” said Tom Rogers, president and CEO of TiVo.
• Veraz names Rohrbach VP of worldwide sales
By Traci Patterson
Veraz Networks has named William Rohrbach to the role of VP of worldwide sales. In this role, he will oversee the company’s global sales and business development efforts.
Rohrbach joined the company in 2007 and previously served as VP of strategy and business development. Prior to Veraz, Rohrbach held the position of VP of sales for the Verizon accounts at Ericsson. He also held executive sales and business development positions at AT&T and Lucent, including strategy and business development for AT&T Europe and wireless market leadership for the Caribbean/Latin American and North American regions for Lucent.
Veraz provides application, control and bandwidth optimization products that enable the evolution to the Multimedia Generation Network (MGN).
• thePlatform acquires assets from Chirp Interactive
By Traci Patterson
thePlatform has acquired assets from San Francisco-based Chirp Interactive Inc., which provides Internet applications that combine social networking and media consumption capabilities.
As part of the deal, thePlatform will have access to certain Chirp assets, as well as to Chirp’s technical development resources since some Chirp personnel will become employees of thePlatform. thePlatform said that it will not continue Chirp’s services moving forward, but that it will build new community and content discovery features into its media publishing system, using the expertise of Chirp’s core product development team.
Additionally, thePlatform announced that it is now actively investigating ways to attract technical talent from Silicon Valley, including opening a branch office. thePlatform’s system manages the logistics process behind the publication of broadband video, from the content owner to the consumer.
More Broadband Direct:
• Verizon clears last hurdle in offering services in NYC
• Cable ops sign MOU with NCMEC to combat child porn
• Optimum Lightpath buys into N.J.
• Cox boosts Internet speeds for N. Virginia business customers
• Embarq draws scrutiny for NebuAd relationship