Service Provider

PSINet Inc., the Internet service provider that paid more than $100 million to get its name on the Baltimore Ravens football stadium, said yesterday that it has agreed to purchase Transaction Network Services Inc., a provider of high-speed data services for credit-card and automated bank-teller transactions.The deal will allow PSINet, based in Herndon, Va., to offer electronic-commerce options to its customers.PSINet will pay $22.50 and one-half share of its stock for every share of Transaction Network, which is based in nearby Reston, Va. The purchase price equals about $45 a share -- 31 percent more than Transaction Network's closing price Friday.

Want to make your online home at The Yard?No problem, hon. The Baltimore Orioles begin offering their own nationwide dial-up Internet service today.The service offers O's fans their own "vanity" e-mail addresses and Web pages. So now you can be joe@theorioles.com. Or even mikemussinasbiggestfan@theorioles.com.Team officials are also planning to offer subscribers exclusive online chat sessions with coaches and players, live Web cams that broadcast batting practice, and the ability to listen in during the preseason draft sessions.

As an instant, global messaging and information service, the Internet is particularly beguiling to travelers.Send a postcard home from abroad, and the card will probably arrive back in the States a week or two after the sender does. Snap a picture with a digital camera, attach it to an electronic mail message, and send it home as a digital postcard in a matter of seconds. By tapping into the World Wide Web, the traveler can get detailed weather information, airplane and train timetables, news and sports scores from back home, and even language translation services.

IN THE RACE to connect homes to the Internet, the cable industry is pulling ahead of telephone carriers in technology and customers. But a regulatory battle appears to be on the horizon as the Federal Communications Commission examines Internet access and services and the fees charged to customers.On the one side are telephone companies, or "common carriers," which must allow customers to subscribe directly to any Internet or online service through their Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL). Typically a customer pays the phone company a flat rate for the phone line (including local phone service)

The Federal Communications Commission required companies yesterday that provide public-phone service to offer callers a rate quotation before connecting operator-assisted long-distance calls.The FCC's move was meant to address complaints from consumers who get surprisingly large bills for credit-card or collect calls from a pay or hotel phone.Such operator service provider (OSP) calls are routed through whatever carrier the phone's owner chooses, and high rates charged by OSP carriers caused more than 5,000 customer complaints to the FCC in the past two years.

A fast-growing local Internet service provider saw its electronic-mail system crash for most of the day on Tuesday, starting e-mail backups that won't be fully cleared up until today.Erol's Internet Services, which serves about 85,000 customers mostly in the Baltimore-Washington area, was attempting to upgrade its e-mail system from a personal computer-based network to a more powerful system when the new system crashed, said Chuck Money, director of Internet operations for -- Springfield, Va.-based Erol's.

Backing down in the face of stiff resistance from Wall Street and concern that the Internet would take over its hold on customers, America Online Inc. yesterday announced deep price cuts and dropped a controversial accounting practice that has helped make the company one of the year's biggest Wall Street losers.The Dulles, Va.-based online service provider also moved to beef up its mix of news, chat and entertainment by naming the founder of the MTV cable television network, Robert Pittman, as head of its new AOL Networks division.

Changes at School for the BlindIt was commendable that The Baltimore Sun thinks enough of the Maryland School for the Blind to provide front page coverage. Most Marylanders, or for that matter Baltimoreans, are not aware of the remarkable service the school has and is providing our community.However, I was disturbed when reading the April 17 article, for I find Joe Nawrozki has unfairly portrayed current leadership and conditions at the school.He is correct when he states that the school is facing troubled times, troubles that result from a continuing struggle to provide quality education to visually impaired children who, in most cases, also have other debilitating handicaps.

Brave New WorldYour "Highways of the Future" series (July 26-28) was quite informative.The discussion on "universal access" implies that provision of telecommunications service in particular (and, really, utility service in general) is imposed in some way artificially. In other words, big government forces business to perform a service that it would otherwise not do.Indeed, the author misquotes the "federal law" (namely, the Communications Act, which still governs all telecommunications in the U.S.)

Labor Day has come and gone, and I'm on the road again, lecturing. And listening. The following seem worthy of sharing:* Two CEOs. A captain of industry (mid-Atlantic states) pulls me aside after a talk and lectures me on business strategy. He talks in metaphorical terms, then sings the praises of pursuing vulnerable opponents in forgotten markets. Fine. Except that in a 15-minute monologue he never once shows the slightest interest in his products or people. He's animated, to be sure, but in a way that reminded me of nothing so much as Dr. Strangelove.

Lockheed Martin, one of Baltimore County's larger employers, officially opened its sixth facility Monday in Woodlawn and announced plans to add 160 information technology jobs to a work force that exceeds 1,500. The company's Information Systems & Global Services division has refurbished and rewired a nearly 42,000-square-foot brick building on Woodlawn Drive near the Social Security Administration complex. In the past year, the company has hired about 200 employees in its efforts to provide a wide variety of services to SSA, which is continuing modernization efforts.

The city of Baltimore has sued Vonage America Inc., a leading Internet phone service provider, to collect a telephone excise tax that the company has argued it does not have to pay. Baltimore imposed a $3.50 monthly tax on telephone lines in 2004 as part of Mayor Martin O'Malley's plan to plug a budget deficit with new fees. The tax applies to cell phones and land lines. In the suit, the city argues that the tax also applies to certain Internet-based phone service offered by Vonage and other companies.

After my family's four-w have you covered eek battle with "customer service" representatives based in who-knows-where about our DSL connection, doing hand-to-hand combat for holiday gifts will be a piece of cake. And if "sales representatives" in the mall are more competent than my Internet service provider (hint: the company's name rhymes with horizon), no one will get hurt. There's lots of good stuff out there this year for the outdoorsman, woman and child in all price ranges, so let's get started.

My wife and I rarely fight about money. She's understanding about my modest technology expenditures, and I'm so glad that she's willing to manage the finances that it would never occur to me to question anything she spends. But for the past year, this good woman has been on the warpath about one recurring expense. "When are you going to get rid of that AOL account?" she asks. "It's not like you use the thing. What do we pay Comcast all that money for? Sometimes I think we sign over our whole paychecks to Comcast, and you still want to pay AOL?

A NEW FEDERAL court ruling focuses attention on a question that potentially touches millions of American consumers: When you get a home mortgage, should your lender be free to "mark up" your fees without limit? When your lender spent just $3 checking your credit electronically, should you have to pay a $65 credit-check line item on your settlement sheet? When your mortgage company pays $25 for an electronic valuation of the house you're purchasing, should it be permitted to turn around and whack you for $500 for your "appraisal" charge at closing?

PHILADELPHIA - Last-minute taxes were e-filed, digital baby pictures were viewed, and homework topics were Googled by customers of Comcast Corp.'s high-speed cable Internet access service Thursday night - and the company breathed a sigh of relief yesterday. The "intermittent" service disruptions that had pestered the company and its 7 million customers on several of the previous seven nights didn't materialize Thursday, Comcast reported. The root cause was identified as a "memory leak" in computers that direct Web surfers and e-mail to the right destinations.

Internet-based phone service is quickly emerging as the next big battleground in the telecommunications business. America Online Inc., the world's largest Internet service provider, will announce today its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service in Baltimore and 40 other markets nationwide. AOL will be entering the market a day after Verizon Communications Inc., the nation's largest local phone company, added a bargain plan and enhanced services for the Internet-based phone service it unveiled last summer.

ToadNet Inc. a privately owned Internet service provider located in Severna Park, has acquired Radicus Internet LLC, a Baltimore-based Internet service provider. The acquisition of Radicus Internet, which provides access and related services to business and residential customers in the mid-Atlantic region, further expands ToadNet's reach into the mid-Atlantic market. Radicus Internet's more than 1,300 business and residential customers gain access to ToadNet's full range of Internet services provided through its regional network.

A. Nayab Siddiqui thinks he is on to something big. The president and chief executive officer of Columbia-based Scientific Systems & Software International Corp. has spent the past 17 years building a company that provides training, Web site development, customer support, and systems and software development for a dozen government and corporate clients. But in the past few years, with revenue growth narrowing, the company developed a spectrum of Web-based applications to help in business organization.

ToadNet names new directors of marketing, sales Severna Park-based Internet service provider ToadNet has named directors of sales and marketing. Ed Kalb, director of sales, will oversee product development and sales efforts. Kalb co-founded Annapolis Internet, an Internet service provider that was sold in 1999. Francine Cyganlewicz, director of marketing, has held several marketing positions, most recently with Primus Managed Hosting Solutions of McLean, Va. ToadNet was founded as Toad Computers in 1986 by 14-year-old Severna Park resident David Troy.