In a victory for consumer privacy, a federal appeals court has upheld a 1992 ruling that credit reporting agencies may not sell consumer credit information except for the purpose of determining credit eligibility.

VeriSign and First Data Merchant Services bough the assets of CyberCash, the online credit card transaction company.

Qualcomm is on track with its new G3 chips .

Greg Keizer of ZDNet gives tips for troubleshooting your DSL line.

ISP News

MSN announced they have 5 million subscribers, displacing EarthLink as the number 2 ISP behind AOL. Meanwhile, EarthLink is focusing on broadband customers instead of dialup.

Excite@Home wants to get out of the media business to focus on its broadband services. The company now has 3.2 million users of its cable modem service.

The scuttlebutt is that AOL will have to raise prices to meet earnings forecasts.

Because of an unnoticed clause in its contracts, AT&T may not be able to offer DSL in some areas until 2006.

The FCC is prepared to significantly reduce fees that phone companies make to each other to complete calls. The fees frequently come into play with calls to ISPs. The fees are reciprocal, but ISPs make significantly fewer calls than they receive, resulting in positive revenue for the companies providing the ISP's phone service.

Winstar has defaulted on some of its loans and faces bankruptcy.

A judge lifted the restraining order that prevented Juno from displaying banner ads to its users. NetZero had persuaded a previous judge to issue the restraining order in December to protect it patent on banner technology. As a result, Juno missed much of its advertising revenue for the first quarter.

Beleaguered ISP PSI posted a fourth-quarter loss of US$3.2 billion. The company reported that it has defaulted on some of its equipment leases, and may go out of business or reorganize under bankruptcy protection.

First it was Internet through power lines. Then it was Internet through airplanes. Now it's Internet through water pipes. (Though note the date on the article.) For more yuks, see DutchWater.com.

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