BRIEFS
SEC, WorldCom amend deal
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and WorldCom agreed to amend the settlement reached last year of the civil case brought against the bankrupt carrier for suspected accounting fraud, which resulted in the misstatement of $11 billion in revenues dating back four years.
The original agreement called for a civil judgment of $1.5 billion. However, the SEC agreed to accept a third of that — around $500 million.
The deal hinged on WorldCom’s successful emergence from the bankruptcy proceeding.
The amendment would retain the $500 million payment, but add to it the transfer of $250 million in common stock for the reorganized company to a distribution agent assigned by the federal district court for the Southern District of New York. The distribution agent then would disperse the stock to fraud victims.
SEC officials insisted that the supplemental relief would allow victims to share in the “potential upside of owning WorldCom stock” after the company emerges from bankruptcy.
CIR: 802.11g standard works for WLAN
The recent approval by the IEEE of the 802.11g standard is a major step forward for wireless LAN (WLAN) market, says a soon-to-be-released market research report by Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) Inc.
CIR’s study, “WLAN Chipset Markets: 2003-2007 — Customer Requirements, Market Forecasts and Product Differentiation Strategies,” points out that in the past, bandwidth and throughput have been a major limitation on the growth of the WLAN market, and that the 54 Mbps offered by 802.11g will be sufficient for most needs.
CIR also says that the ratification of the standard will lead to a slew of new product introductions, since manufacturers would now have a way of ensuring that their products will be compatible with the large number of installed WLANs based on the popular 802.11b standard.