United Kingdom
British Telecommunications plc is close to a deal with Viag, the German utility, that would give it access to the Austrian telecom market and more control in Switzerland, the Financial Times reported. BT will take a 50-percent stake in a new holding company, Viag Telecom. BT and Viag are partners in Viag Interkom, a Deutsche Telekom rival that provides mobile, fixed and Internet services, each holding 45 percent of the venture. Viag has a 20-percent stake in Connect Austria, and a 42.5-percent stake in Orange Switzerland.
InterVoice-Brite Inc. announced BT Cellnet extended its agreement to have InterVoice-Brite manage BT Cellnet’s prepaid wireless services. The contract extension is for 26 months of managed services, valued at $75 million, with the potential for increased revenue based on customer demand, said InterVoice-Brite.
Finland
Getronics and Nokia Corp. announced a partnership to deliver e-business solutions. Getronics will integrate Nokia Wireless Application Protocol technology with its Internet solutions for financial services and other industries. Getronics offers the E-Bank electronic banking framework used by European banks to deliver Internet banking services. The company is setting up WAP centers of excellence in Finland and Italy.
Finnish carrier Sonera announced it licensed Software.com’s InterMail messaging platform to offer its customers remote access to their e-mail. The new system can route e-mail messages to a mobile phone or pager, the company said.
SWEDEN
L.M. Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard and Telia announced a plan to cooperate in a joint pilot project to run Wireless Application Protocol-based mobile Internet services on HP’s e-speak electronic services platform. In the pilot project, Telia will deploy HP’s e-speak platform in its mobile network, with Ericsson contributing the WAP solutions and terminals. According to HP, e-speak allows spontaneous and secure interactions across firewalls without the need for prenegotiated names and standards, and can be developed using any programming language.
