• AT&T faces suit on overtime pay
By The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) – A handful of current and former employees of AT&T Inc. are suing the telecommunications giant to get overtime pay that they claim the company has wrongfully withheld from them.

The employees say they do not have enough discretion in their jobs to be classified as managers, a status that exempts them from federal regulations requiring more pay for extra time on the job.

Steven Wittels, an attorney for the employees, said the plaintiffs are seeking class-action status to represent as many as 5,000 so-called "level one" managers at AT&T. He said they are asking for total damages of $1 billion. The seven plaintiffs involved filed suit in both Atlanta and San Francisco.

AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said the company has no comment on the case.

• Cisco wins U.S. govt. OK for Starent purchase
By The Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – Cisco Systems Inc. said Wednesday it had cleared a U.S. antitrust review and expects to complete its $2.9 billion acquisition of Starent Networks Corp. in the coming days.

Cisco, the world's largest maker of computer networking gear, said the U.S. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission had ended a mandatory waiting period to review the deal.

Tewksbury, Mass.-based Starent makes equipment that allows carriers to tie their wireless networks to the Internet. On Friday, Starent said its shareholders had endorsed the deal. Cisco is paying $35 a share in cash.

Cisco shares were up a penny in after-hours trade at $23.46 on Friday, after closing down 3 cents at $23.45.

• Arris shines at Cable Europe Labs’ interop
By Mike Robuck

Suwanee, Ga.-based Arris made the most of a recent trip overseas for a Cable Europe Labs Interop event that was hosted by Excentis.

Arris said it successfully demonstrated several key technical interoperable capabilities using its EuroDOCSIS 3.0 C4 CMTS, D5 Universal Edge QAM and Touchstone TM722 telephony modem during the interop.

"This has been a very exciting and successful event for Arris," said Claudio Cerioli, Arris' senior vice president for EMEA. "It proves that our CMTS, Universal Edge QAM and CPE products can be relied upon to perform at top capacity in multiple vendor scenarios, including robust EuroDOCSIS 3.0-based services in both I-CMTS and M-CMTS architectures. This gives our current and future customers the confidence they need to deploy multi-vendor solutions and widens their choices as they look for the most reliable, scalable and available solutions possible.”