Telecommunications

State utility officials voted Thursday to overlay a new area code in the San Fernando Valley -- an action that follows a decade of emotional debate and effectively ends the Valley's longtime reputation as the land of the 818. The decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will also add a new area code to a number of communities north of San Diego. Beginning in May 2009, all new telephone numbers issued in the 818 area will take a 747 area code.

AT&T Inc. customers who obsessively play World of Warcraft while downloading dozens of movies: Your days of online impunity may be numbered. AT&T has joined the ranks of telecommunications companies that are exploring the idea of limiting the amount of bandwidth that subscribers can use each month. The company began this month to apply such limits, testing the policy first in Reno. Subscribers to AT&T's slowest Internet service there will be limited to downloading 20 gigabytes of data per month.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Monday he would nationalize his nation's telecommunications and electricity industries and take over four major oil production facilities controlled by foreign companies. The moves would accelerate the pace of Chavez's pledged socialist transformation of Venezuela, the eighth largest exporter of crude oil worldwide and the fourth largest foreign supplier to the United States.

The Pentagon is not violating privacy rights by requesting information from financial institutions, telephone companies or credit bureaus in suspected espionage and terrorism cases, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. He defended the requests as a "perfectly legitimate activity" that serves in part to protect personnel on hundreds of military bases within the United States -- "potential terrorist targets," in Cheney's words.

Cellphone carriers have long sought the next big thing to produce the sort of revenue they now collect from customers who use their handsets simply for talking. But ring tones, Internet browsing, streaming video, e-mail and a host of other services have failed to take off as expected. All data offerings accounted for less than 11% of the industry's total service revenue in the first half of last year. That's part of the reason even big mobile phone companies that won't be selling Apple Inc.'

Shares in Venezuela's largest telephone company plunged Monday after President Hugo Chavez said the government would take control of it before compensating private owners, including Verizon Communications Inc., for the hundreds of millions of dollars they have invested in the enterprise.

Verizon Wireless added 2.3 million customers, most of them prized monthly subscribers, to put a shine on a fourth quarter in which Verizon Communications Inc.'s profit was cut by restructuring costs. In reporting the 38% drop in quarterly profit Monday, Verizon Communications emphasized that growth in its DSL and new FiOS Internet businesses had outpaced the loss of traditional telephone customers. In the final three months of 2006, Verizon earned $1.

The Venezuelan government agreed Monday to buy Verizon Communications Inc.'s 28.5% stake in Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela as President Hugo Chavez seeks control over key industries. The accord calls for the government to pay $572 million, or $17.85 a share, 11% more than the Venezuelan company's closing share price Monday of $16.08. The acquisition price was disclosed after the end of regular stock trading. Nacional Telefonos shares rose as much as 2.9% to $16.55 in after-hours trading.

Morgan E. O'Brien is used to jolting the wireless industry. Now the Nextel co-founder is back in the start-up business and again aiming to shake up the airwaves. In the 1980s and '90s, the former Federal Communications Commission staffer helped stitch together a nationwide network from mobile radio frequencies once used only by taxi drivers, truckers and pizza deliverymen. The result, Nextel Communications Inc., rose to challenge the major cellular companies, then merged with Sprint Corp.