CWU, the communications union, says the pay award negotiated with BT Group is the best employees can expect and "strongly recommends" it is approved at a ballot scheduled for mid-December.

In an email to members – seen by us – the union said it "strongly recommends that you vote to accept the proposal, as it is the maximum that can be achieved by negotiation leverage via the industrial action.

"The proposed agreement is the company's final position," it added in the missive to tens of thousands of BT engineers and call center operators among its membership. This follows eight days

Cisco has created a design framework that will in coming years be applied to the user interfaces for all its security products.

Called Magnetic, the framework was quietly introduced to Cisco's Meraki range in July 2022.

Speaking today at the Cisco Live conference in Melbourne, Australia, Cisco's executive veep and general manager for security and collaboration Jetu Patel said Magnetic will become standard in all of Cisco's products in coming years.

The effort is not just cosmetic: Patel said 50 percent of security breaches happen because end users struggle to work with complex products. Magnetic is designed to simplify management,

Lumen Technologies Tuesday said it would double the size of its US intercity network to 12 million fiber miles by the end of 2026. When complete, the telco says the network will connect 50 major cities across the United States at data rates of up to 400Gbps.

According to Lumen — formerly CenturyLink — the expansion will serve both the company’s internal services and fiber, which the telco sells to enterprise and government customers for use in their private networks. For instance, a customer might lease fiber from Lumen to connect its datacenter to a cloud service provider or colocation

SpaceX is developing a new satellite fleet designed for government use.

The Musk-owned space company didn't so much announce Starshield as it simply added it to its website without many specifics, as is to be expected from a satellite program designed with the national security in mind.

According to SpaceX's Starshield page, the satellites will function as a "secured satellite network for government entities" that will use the same basic tech as Starlink, though with extra capabilities focused on three areas: Earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads. 

The latter category refers to Starshield satellite buses, the main body of the

Cisco has managed to avoid a $2-plus billion payment for patent infringement on a technicality that has nothing to do with the patents.

The case has its roots in 2018 when an outfit named Centripetal Networks alleged Cisco had stolen tech Centripetal described to it under a non-disclosure agreement.

Centripetal sued and won. US District Judge Henry Morgan described Cisco’s behavior as “willful and egregious” and slapped it with over $2 billion in fines and royalties.

Then came a twist.

During the conduct of the case the judge learned that his wife held $4,688 worth of shares in Cisco, a