Tag: phone hacking

21st Century Fox is buying UK’s Sky in $14.6 billion deal

Following talks last week , 21st Century Fox has agreed to buy Sky, the UK’s largest pay-TV network, for £11.7 billion ($14.6 billion). The UK-based pay-TV broadcaster and broadband provider counts nearly 22 million subscribers in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria. That’ll give Rupert Murdoch’s Fox a delivery platform for content from its 20th Century Fox movie studio and Fox TV network, along with cable TV channels like FX, Fox Sports and National Geographic. The deal “creates a global leader in content creation and distribution, enhances our sports and entertainment scale, and gives us unique and leading direct-to-consumer capabilities and technologies, ” 21st Century Fox said in a statement . As part of the deal, Sky headquarters will stay in London and continue a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) expansion of its headquarters. Rumored talks last week valued Sky as high as £18.5 billion ($23.2 billion). The Rupert Murdoch-owned media empire already owns 39 percent of Sky and tried to buy the remaining shares back in 2010. However, the company abandoned the attempt after several of the company’s tabloids became embroiled in a the so-called phone hacking scandal. With Brexit significantly weakening the pound, Sky has become significantly cheaper for US-based Fox, making it ripe for an acquisition. Source: 21st Century Fox

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21st Century Fox is buying UK’s Sky in $14.6 billion deal

Fences as primitive phone networks

Somewhere between two-cans-and-a-string and Ma Bell lies the barbed wire fence telephone networks used by ranchers in the early 20th century. From CF Eckhardt’s short history of these “rural telephone systems” at TexasHillCountry.com : Across much of the west, to the west of old US 81 (present I-35) in Texas–and not a small part of it east of that demarcation–there was already a network of wire covering most of the country, in the form of barbed-wire fences. Some unknown genius discovered that if you hooked two Sears or Monkey Ward telephone sets to the top wire on a barbed-wire fence, you could talk between the telephones as easily as between two “town” telephones connected by slick wire through an operator’s switchboard. A rural telephone system that had no operators, no bills–and no long-distance charges–was born. Most ranch perimeter fences joined at corners, and in most cases the top wires touched each other or were even interwoven for strength. Where it became necessary for a telephone system to cross a road, all that was required was two posts about 15 feet long, buried about 3 feet into the ground for stability, and enough wire to go from one top fence wire up to the top of the post, across the road, and down the other post to the top fence wire on the other side. ” Before Maw Bell – Rural Telephone Systems In The West ” More at BLDGBLOG: ” Fence Phone ”

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Fences as primitive phone networks