March 2002

BOSTON, United States—The Egyptian carrier Orascom Telecom has been granted the license for a second GSM network in Tunisia, the Tunisian Ministry of Communications announced. Orascom Telecom presented the highest …

AUSTIN, Texas, United States—Motorola said it licensed its i.250 GSM/General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) mobile phone platform to Eastcom Communications, one of China’s biggest original design manufacturers. “The i.250 innovative …

HELSINKI, Finland—Nokia Corp. announced two third-generation contract wins this week, the first with Germany’s E-Plus Mobilfunk and the second with T-Mobile International. Nokia will be the main supplier for E-Plus’ …

TOKYO—KDDI, the second-largest operator in Japan, is going to report a 200 billion yen (US$1.6 billion) special loss for the fiscal year which will end in March 2002, because the …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—Despite upbeat statements from equipment manufacturers and the organizers, this year’s CeBIT exhibition would seem to have been hit with bad news, particularly for the cell-phone industry, together …

JOHANNNESBURG, South Africa—South African mobile network operator MTN reported that it suspended its free PC-to-mobile short message service (SMS) on Mtnsms.com following an unsustainable third-party cost increase. A company spokesman …

TOKYO—KDDI, the second-largest operator in Japan, will launch its third-generation (3G) service based on cdma2000 on 1 April, the carrier announced. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo launched FOMA 3G services in …

TOKYO—Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba, two leading electronic manufacturers in Japan, partnered for third-generation (3G) handsets and will begin collaborating next month on the development of a new platform for multimedia-enabled, …

NEW DELHI, India—Thuraya mobile satellite services, being offered by Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Company of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), has reached a subscriber base of 32,000 in about 25 …

NEW YORK and HANOVER, Germany—Lucent Technologies and Nokia cut their estimates, owing to what the network equipment makers described as weak demand for telecom equipment. Nokia cut its estimates just …

SAN JOSE, California, United States—For the first time in its history, the mobile-phone industry experienced a drop in unit sales in 2001, according to Dataquest. Worldwide mobile-phone sales totaled nearly …

CULVER CITY, California, United States—Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment formed Wireless Services, a new group that will focus on developing and distributing new mobile-specific entertainment applications, games and services featuring Sony …

LONDON—Currently representing 10 percent of total carrier revenues, short message service (SMS) is the dominant data contributor to carrier average revenue per user (ARPU), and its value is expected to …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—Having heard that T-Mobile plans to launch third-generation (3G) services in 20 German cities during the third quarter, Vodafone D2 responded this week by announcing plans for a …

LONDON—Vodafone Group subsidiary Vodafone Global Products and Services signed an agreement with Siemens to supply a global location enabling server platform allowing Vodafone and third parties to create location-enabled applications. …

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—Unif

BEIJING—The China Unicom Group has received approval to issue A-shares, denominated in the local currency and reserved for Chinese citizens. The issue may take place in the coming months on …

TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo. the leading mobile carrier in Japan, plans to launch a wireless local area network (WLAN) service in April. According to the firm, DoCoMo will develop a datacard-type mobile …

NEW DELHI, India—RPG Cellular Services, operating in the Chennai circle, plans to invest 500 million rupees (US$10.3 million) by June this year to expand network capacity. The expansion will see …

LONDON—Digital Bridges, a mobile entertainment services provider, purchased the software assets of GR8, a supplier of mobile ring tones and logos. Financial details were not disclosed. Digital Bridges said the …

HANOVER, Germany—Nokia formed an alliance to integrate RealNetworks’ digital media technology on its mobile devices and network solutions. “Under the alliance, Nokia will include the mobile version of the RealOne …

MURRAY HILL, New Jersey, United States—Compaq Computer signed an agreement with Lucent Technologies to collaborate in speeding up wireless capabilities in Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC and Compaq Evo notebooks, which …

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Ericsson said it licensed its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and third-generation (3G) technologies to Swedish company Benefon, which is developing telematics products that will combine mobile access, mobile …

SAN DIEGO, United States—Qualcomm signed an agreement with Japanese carrier KDDI to enable the carrier’s handsets with Qualcomm’s Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) technology to enhance KDDI’s data services …

TORONTO and LONDON—Several vendors say negative downgrades and estimates from analysts this week. Nortel Networks suffered a debt downgrade from Moody’s Investors Service barely a day after the company announced …