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Kirkland-based Digeo partners with Sunflower Broadband

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The media centers, made by Motorola, integrate high-definition television with a digital video recorder and let users watch one channel while recording another.

The deployment is expected to begin in the third quarter, the companies said. Terms of the deal were not revealed.

Sunflower, which serves customers in Kansas, will become the fourth cable operator to use Moxi products.

Sprint

VoIP partner is link to small cable firms

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sprint announced today its second Internet phone service partner, this time to establish a niche with small- and medium-sized cable companies.

USA Companies, a Kearney, Neb., cable provider with 63,000 customers in Nebraska, California and Montana, said it hopes to have the service in subscribers' homes by early next year.

Terms of the five-year deal were not disclosed.

In December, Time Warner Cable, with 11 million customers, said it would use both Sprint and MCI to provide phone service through voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).

More and more cable companies want to get into phone service as a way to remain competitive, especially as satellite companies and even local telephone carriers snatch customers by offering video and high-speed Internet capability.
 
In voice over Internet, customers make calls with their regular phones, but the calls travel as packets of data over the Internet instead of on a traditional telephone line.

Once the data reach a switching station, the call is transferred to Sprint's phone network and into the format that reaches most phone users.

The biggest problem facing small carriers, such as USA Companies, is they lack the money to build a telephone network.

Sprint already owns local and long-distance service networks, much of which lie dormant in the evenings when businesses are closed but many residential customers want to make calls.

Electronics industry

Phones taking over functions of PDAs

SAN JOSE — True to most predictions, the personal digital assistant is slowly being absorbed into the cellphone.

Worldwide shipments of basic personal digital assistants dipped 2 percent in the second quarter, with so-called smart phones making inroads.

Makers of handheld computers, or PDAs, shipped 2.2 million units in the quarter, according to figures released last week by market-research firm IDC.

In all of 2003, sales of handheld organizers without phone functions slipped 18 percent, IDC said.

Sales of smart phones, which combine organizer functions with voice capabilities and more, continue to rise as more technologies converge in smaller confines.

Compiled from Seattle Times business staff and The Associated Press