short takes.

On Internet privacy: "Even businesses with good reputations are

beginning to lose the trust of their customers and employees. As a result, companies that are working very hard to advance privacy interests on the Internet are finding that their ability to relate to customers and employees is being hampered by what other companies may--or may not--be doing."--Gary Clayton, founder and CEO of the Privacy Council, on an Odyssey survey showing that 82% of online households strongly agree that government needs to regulate how companies use personal information; 92% say they do not trust companies with such information.

On ATM: "Customers typically have one network for voice and another network for data. At any given time, neither network is working at 100% capacity. The pay-per-use approach is far less costly for the customer, especially in bursty high-bandwidth applications."--Douglas Westtund, vice president of marketing for AT&T Canada, which joined with DataComm Industries to offer Canada's first bandwidth-on-demand service for ATM.

On e-business: "The biggest challenge for Internet merchants is `being found.' Most small and medium-sized e-merchants will not have the resources to build the level of promotion and brand awareness that will cause potential customers to seek them out. For many service providers, giving merchants privileged access to their customer base is the biggest value they can bring."--Dan Ridsdale, Ovum senior analyst and co-author of the report, "E-Commerce Services for Internet Merchants: Market Strategies."