A Foolish Week of Telecom: Alcatel Lucent SA (ADR) (ALU), France Telecom SA (ADR) (FTE)

Two weeks after Alcatel Lucent SA (ADR) (NYSE:ALU) said Ben Verwaayen was resigning as CEO, the company has announced his replacement. Michel Combes, the former CEO of Vodafone Europe, and earlier, of France Telecom SA (ADR) (NYSE:FTE), will take over the reins of the troubled telecommunications equipment maker on April 1.

Alcatel-Lucent chairman Philippe Camus touted Combes as no stranger to the world of telecom:

“His deep knowledge of the industry as well as his experience of major business and financial transformation at a worldwide level will be pivotal in helping the company pursue its aggressive transformation… ,” Camus said in a company-released statement.

Alcatel-Lucent shareholders should hope that Combes also is as skilled at pulling the company out of its nose dive as the Denzel Washington character was at safely (mostly) landing the uncontrollable aircraft he piloted in the movie Flight.

Is DISH giving up?
Okay, everyone is aware of DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) trying to take the Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ:CLWR) deal away from Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE:S). What seemed like a solid deal form Sprint has been made a bit shakier with DISH’s counteroffer.

But it looks now like DISH chairman Charlie Ergen may be realizing the odds are not in DISH’s favor when it comes to taking control of Clearwire. During the D: Dive Into Media conference sponsored by AllThingsD last week, he admitted, “[T]he deck is stacked against us.”

And this week, during the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference call, he said that “If that transaction [Sprint-Clearwire] was to happen, Sprint would be the most likely partner.”

Clearwire’s not enough for some people
Sprint’s CEO, Dan Hesse, is acting like the “i” in Clearwire has already been dotted. Hesse told Bloomberg this week that the spectrum that would come to Sprint with the Clearwire deal would do, but only for a while.

“Clearwire would give us a strong spectrum position for a period of time,” he said. “But we also have a very long-term view, and we would want to acquire more spectrum.”

Other possible spectrum donors for the insatiable Sprint could be — as Phil Marshall of Tolaga Research told Bloomberg — U.S. Cellular, Leap Wireless International, Inc. (NASDAQ:LEAP), and even … DISH.

Little Mac hack attack
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)‘s Windows operating system is usually at the center of any story about PCs getting hacked. Macs have been generally thought of as somewhat immune to attacks from the cyber-underworld.

Unfortunately for Mac owners, that’s no longer the case. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) itself has reported that some of its own staff’s Mac computers have been violated.

Apple had “identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers,” it said in a statement.

Apparently, the malware entered Apple’s system after some employees visited an outside website that was infected.