Business Communications

You Say Your Workers Can't Read But have you considered teaching them how? Somebody else's job? That's not what Budget Rent-a-Car thought. Or Tri-Lite Manufacturing or Trans-America Occidental or Price Pfister. Where does training basic literacy stop and other basic training begin? Educators like E.D. Hirsch, author of the best seller "Cultural Literacy" (Houghton Mifflin), insist that pure skill cannot be taught. All skills arrive embedded in a body of knowledge.

ViaSat Inc. is acquiring WildBlue Communications Inc., a provider of high-speed Internet access via satellite, for $568 million in cash and stock. Privately held WildBlue, in which Liberty Media Corp. holds a 37% stake, will become an operating subsidiary of ViaSat, which makes satellite communications equipment for defense and consumer markets. ViaSat, of Carlsbad, Calif., plans to buy WildBlue for $443 million in cash and $125 million in new common stock. Liberty will appoint a representative to ViaSat's board.

Local government and business officials met with civic leaders from 53 cities without leaving the city during a teleconference designed to share ideas on addressing social and economic problems. About a dozen representatives from cities and corporations throughout the county participated in the event last week. The program linked them with peers thousands of miles away, said Debra Walters, spokeswoman for the Volunteer Center, which organized the event locally.

Until recently, the Mexican mobile phone market was about as exciting as a dial tone. Consumers were turned off by high costs and poor service and debilitated by the 1994 peso devaluation. At the end of 1998, the number of subscribers per capita was half that of Chile, Argentina or Venezuela. But fresh competition and a recovering economy have suddenly set the Mexican market ablaze; it is now Latin America's hottest wireless country.

The 15 or so employees on Jeanne Logozzo's marketing team at software maker Optika rely on a detailed communications plan to reach their boss in an emergency. Logozzo, who splits her time between her home office in Boston and corporate headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., drafted the plan to reassure her employees that she was always available. The plan requires employees to page Logozzo if it's an urgent matter but to use voice mail or e-mail if the issue can wait.

Tenants at the Offices of South Coast Plaza are beginning to use an advanced fiber-optic system that rapidly speeds up data transmission. Workers completed the system in November, and businesses at the office park on Town Center Drive and surrounding South Coast Metro are plugging in through five competing phone companies, administrators said. The lines can be accessed throughout the 2,200-acre South Coast Metro District.

Top executives often are clueless about what goes on at the lower levels of their organizations, and the consequences can be disastrous. One of the most tragic examples is the 1986 Challenger space shuttle accident that killed all seven crew members. It was blamed, in part, on the failure of headquarters officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to find out what some agency engineers already knew about potential safety hazards.

Many of the nation's largest companies respond to e-mail at a snail's pace, according to a recent survey of Fortune 100 firms by a Northern California software company. Four companies took at least a week to reply to the simple e-mail query, "What is your corporate headquarters address?" sent during business hours on Nov. 9. One of the titans of the high-tech industry, Hewlett-Packard Co., took 23 days. The survey was conducted by Brightware Inc., a Novato, Calif.

Security has always been paramount to Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, which swaps new designs and other sensitive information between its headquarters in Newport Beach and an engineer in Iceland, a marketing team in the south of France and manufacturing facilities in South Korea. The Internet couldn't be trusted to keep such information secure, so for years Rockwell executives have paid millions of dollars annually for access to data lines that only they could use.

Twelve professional sports franchises have declared bankruptcy. Following are the cases and the outcomes: National Hockey League 1975 Pittsburgh Penguins Cause: Team owners Tad Potter and Peter Block owed the IRS $500,000, and the government intended to get its money. The feds seized tax dollars and even locked the doors of the Civic Arena to send a message to ownership. The team had no choice but to file for bankruptcy when employees couldn't get into their offices.

Many of the nation's largest companies respond to e-mail at a snail's pace, according to a recent survey of Fortune 100 firms by a Northern California software company. Four companies took at least a week to reply to the simple e-mail query, "What is your corporate headquarters address?" sent during business hours on Nov. 9. One of the titans of the high-tech industry, Hewlett-Packard Co., took 23 days. The survey was conducted by Brightware Inc., a Novato, Calif.

Top executives often are clueless about what goes on at the lower levels of their organizations, and the consequences can be disastrous. One of the most tragic examples is the 1986 Challenger space shuttle accident that killed all seven crew members. It was blamed, in part, on the failure of headquarters officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to find out what some agency engineers already knew about potential safety hazards.

Security has always been paramount to Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, which swaps new designs and other sensitive information between its headquarters in Newport Beach and an engineer in Iceland, a marketing team in the south of France and manufacturing facilities in South Korea. The Internet couldn't be trusted to keep such information secure, so for years Rockwell executives have paid millions of dollars annually for access to data lines that only they could use.

The 15 or so employees on Jeanne Logozzo's marketing team at software maker Optika rely on a detailed communications plan to reach their boss in an emergency. Logozzo, who splits her time between her home office in Boston and corporate headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., drafted the plan to reassure her employees that she was always available. The plan requires employees to page Logozzo if it's an urgent matter but to use voice mail or e-mail if the issue can wait.

Tenants at the Offices of South Coast Plaza are beginning to use an advanced fiber-optic system that rapidly speeds up data transmission. Workers completed the system in November, and businesses at the office park on Town Center Drive and surrounding South Coast Metro are plugging in through five competing phone companies, administrators said. The lines can be accessed throughout the 2,200-acre South Coast Metro District.

The Internet's ability to let people communicate and share information with millions of others across multiple continents undoubtedly accounts for much of its appeal. But it is the more prosaic task of improving information sharing within individual companies that may ultimately account for a lot of Internet profits. Microsoft cited these rapidly growing corporate "intranets" as a central factor in its decision, announced Tuesday, to acquire a Cambridge, Mass.

British oil giant BP can easily afford to pay the $4.5 billion in oil-spill settlement costs announced Thursday, but analysts said a more difficult task may be rebuilding its reputation. BP agreed to the fines and other payments to the federal government and others and pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts related to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers in April 2010. It also agreed to a misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, a misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and a felony count of obstruction of Congress.

Fisher Business Communications, which provides advertising and public relations for the high-tech industry, has opened a new division at its Santa Ana headquarters. The company has added three clients since the beginning of the year in the fields of medical technology and biotechnology. The new unit will serve those clients. Company President Robert J. Fisher said a direct-mail campaign to high-tech companies has met with good response.