eBay founders give Tufts $10 million for new school
MEDFORD – Tufts University will be the beneficiaries of a $10 million donation from two of its alumni, Pam Wesley and Pierre Omidyar, who combined her idea and his expertise to found eBay, Inc., the biggest auction site on the Web. The couple, who married in 1999, after establishing eBay, Inc., plan to spread the donation over five years as their contribution to the College of Citizenship and Public Service that Tufts plans to open this fall. Their investment will also finance financial aid for 24 undergraduates annually, according to The Boston Globe.
Sonus gets first customer for new product
WESTFORD – Sonus Networks, Inc., announced that it has its first customer for a product that will offload Internet traffic from voice telephone networks, Intermedia Communications, Inc., of Tampa, Fla. Intermedia serves 90,000 customers for voice, data and Internet services. For that purpose it will buy an unspecified number of Sonus equipment to divert its customers’ Internet-bound traffic from voice-circuit switches to improve its network efficiency. Sonus officials said the contract was an introduction into what has been predicted to be a $10 billion market.
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Early Mass. ISP being bought by Virginia firm
LYNN – Shore.Net, one of the oldest Internet service providers in the country, is being acquired by Primus Telecommunications Group, Inc., of Virginia, for $43 million, according to The Boston Globe. Obtaining Shore.Net, which was founded in 1993 when the Internet was beginning to gain public popularity, is part of Primus’s plan to become a national application service provider, an ASP. ASPs provide companies with software to run programs that organize data to be sent over the Internet. That relieves the companies of the expense of purchasing the software. According to the report, Shore.Net’s headquarters here will be used as a data center and the headquarters will be moved to another building. The company expect to increase the number of employees from its current 85 to 150 next year.
Digital Broadband adds RI to Internet network
WALTHAM – Digital Broadband Communications, Inc., announced that it has won a contract to bring high-speed Internet access to 48 municipal libraries in Rhode Island. Digital Broadband is working to offer business data and voice services throughout Rhode Island by the end of the year. Digital Broadband already has a similar contact with Massachusetts for supplying high speed Internet access to schools and municipal buildings throughout Massachusetts. The company plans to use that arrangement as a means to reach business and telecommuting customers. Digital said it already has direct subscriber line technology in 15 of the 25 Bell Atlantic central offices in Rhode Island and expects to have its equipment in the other 10 by the end of the year.
Tufts Health Plan sued by regulators
MEDFORD – New Hampshire has sued Tufts Health Plan of New England, asserting that Tufts was negligent in pulling out of New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island last fall and abandoning 145,000 members. Paula T. Rogers, New Hampshire insurance commissioner, said that the Tufts HMO had misled creditors, subscribers, and employers, including Bath (Maine) Iron Works, about the company’s creditworthiness and established premiums below anticipated expenses. The health plan is reported to have lost $140 million since it started in 1995. A Tufts legal representative said the suit had been expected and that the company believes “we have a strong defense to each of the claims,” The Boston Globe reported.
Lease signed for New Bedford aquarium
NEW BEDFORD – Officials of New Bedford Aquarium have signed a 99-year lease for the five-story ComElectric building on Cannon Street. The proposed aquarium is scheduled to open in 2004. With “Man and the Sea” as its theme, a design team is working on exhibits for the museum. The objective of the exhibits will be to reflect the region’s ocean experience as seen through the area’s past, present and future.
In other New Bedford museum news, the Whaling Museum announced that another $1 million donation had been pledged for the renovation of the building. The donation by Irwin Mark Jacobs, New Bedford native and founder of Qual.comm, a wireless communications company in San Diego, Calif., brings the total contributed for the renovation to $10 million, one million short of the goal for capital improvements. A room in the museum to be named for Jacobs will house the skeleton of a blue whale that was found off the coast of Newport two years ago after it had been struck and killed by a tanker. That room is to be opened in July, according to the museum announcement.
State backs new Mt.Greylock development plan
BOSTON – The latest plans to develop Mt. Greylock, the state’s highest peak, have been endorsed by the state’s environmental officials. Various plans for development have risen and fallen over the last 15 years with developers and environmentalists taking different views of what would best serve the 1,000 acres of rolling hills and meadows on the side of the 3,491-foot mountain. The latest proposal calls for the state to pay for public recreational facilities and Greylock Management associates, a private Boston development partnership to pay for the rest. The proposal calls for a 200-room inn and conference center, an environmental education center, an 18-hole golf course, hiking and cross-country skiing trails, and up to 300 private vacation homes on about 200 acres. A Department of Environmental Management spokesman said DEM and Mt.Greylock Management are still negotiating how they would split the costs of development.
(Compiled from news reports and releases, print and electronic.)
