Daily News Briefs

Astral Point Communications co-founder Bruce Miller was recently promoted from vice president of engineering to the newly created position of executive vice president of technology and advanced development. Chuba Udokwu, formerly vice president of engineering and product assurance at Lucent Technologies, has joined Astral Point as the new vice president of engineering. Astral Point Communications develops equipment to manage optical bandwidth for new types of services in the metro optical network sector.
In a letter last week to Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and 18 other senators asked the FCC to accept an independent commission's recommendation to beef up support for the Universal Service Fund, which helps companies recoup the often exorbitant costs of bringing telecom services to remote and sparsely populated areas.