United Kingdom
L.M. Ericsson and U.K. operator One 2 One signed a $320 million contract under which Ericsson will supply radio base stations and base station controller equipment to expand One 2 One’s Global System for Mobile communications network.
Canada
Philsar Electronics announced an agreement with IBM Corp. under which IBM will manufacture wireless communication integrated circuits for Philsar using IBM’s Silicon Germanium technology. As part of the long-term agreement, Philsar plans to license certain intellectual property to IBM. Philsar said it plans to work with IBM to integrate SiGe technology into several of its radio signal processors where high performance and low power consumption are required, including products for emerging wireless networking applications.
Japan
Toshiba Corp. and Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. have agreed to jointly develop cellular handsets that will handle voice and data transmission via analog and digital standards, including Code Division Multiple Access technology. Toshiba said Oki will send 20 engineers to Toshiba’s Hino plant in northern Tokyo for one year to facilitate the research and development of new tri-mode terminals. Toshiba said the two companies will supply their new terminals to U.S. equipment maker Audiovox Corp. on an original equipment manufacturer basis, as early as 2000. Oki’s U.S. subsidiary, Oki Telecom, in August stopped manufacturing handsets for the U.S. market, citing too much competition in the CDMA market.
France
Kingston-SCL said it migrated all six of France Telecom Mobile’s Itineris billing platforms to Jupiter version 1.2 in 36 hours. “The migration was handled jointly by teams at Kingston-SCL and FTM. All migrations took place on weekends to minimize user downtime and involved a lot of overnight work,” said Jill McInnes, director of projects for Kingston-SCL. Jupiter version 1.2 will provide FTM with enhanced functionality, including Year 2000 compliance, more flexible tariffing of Mobile Terminated Calls in three key areas and volume discounts on airtime, said Kingston-SCL.
