Within weeks, US regulators will bring antitrust charges against Intel for hiding technology from customers and companies, USA Today reported, and in the longer terms the industry giant could face a broad case of using its girth to force computer-makers who license its microprocessor to buy ancillary Intel products.
Two weeks ago, Intergraph won an injunction against Intel in a suit that alleges Intel withheld key chip information from the company -- whose graphics computers use Intel processors -- while at the same time developing competing products.
While the Federal Trade Commission is likely to bring the first case against Intel in short order, the paper said the second case involving the sale of Intel "chip-sets" may take as much as a year to prepare because it "is not so clear-cut." The paper speculated that the FTC "could force Intel to make its microprocessing code available so PC-makers can use non-Intel chipsets."
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Senate panel targets Y2K: With escalating warnings about the millennium bug, Congress is getting serious about doing something to prepare for it. The Senate is forming a special committee to handle issues arising from the problem.
The panel, called the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, will be headed by Utah Republican Bob Bennett with Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd as vice chairman.
Reform efforts have fallen behind schedule, for example, on computers that run the air traffic control system and at the Departments of Agriculture and Education.
In February, the Clinton administration established a council to oversee efforts to correct the problem in government agencies.
