2002

NEW DELHI, India—Leading Thai operator AIS has decided to unlock its network access code to allow customers to procure handsets of their choice from any source—legal as well as smuggled …

PLANO, Texas—French vendor Alcatel Alsthom has laid off 450 more workers in the United States, making a total of 1,500 job cuts since November last year. The company said the …

BONN, Germany—German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom reported its T-Mobile wireless division posted $4.1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of this year compared with $2.5 billion reported for the …

WASHINGTON—The numbering crisis is over, said Michael Altschul, senior vice president and general counsel for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. “The whole numbering crisis seems to be over. … …

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Proxim Corp., created from the merger of Proxim Inc. and Western Multiplex Corp., announced Kevin Duffy has been made general manager of the company’s newly formed broadband services division. …

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Datastick Systems Inc., developer of software and peripherals for Palm OS handhelds, announced it will develop a software interface exclusively for Oceana Sensor Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of …

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—Openwave Systems Inc. and wireless application developer Digital Bridges expanded their partnership, the companies announced. Openwave paid an undisclosed sum for a minority stake in Digital Bridges, and …

PARIS—French vendor Alcatel said it opened a third-generation center in Taiwan, calling it the first fully functional 3G/UMTS system in Taiwan and the first member of the company’s 3G Reality …

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.—Sprint PCS signed a letter of intent with eOne Global, an affiliate of electronic payment provider First Data Corp., to establish a mobile payment network enabling customers to …

LONDON—A new report stated the number of contract mobile subscribers has increased in the United Kingdom for the first time since 1999. J.D. Power and Associates said the number of …

SAO PAULO, Brazil—3G Americas announced its endorsement of this year’s 3GSM Americas 2002 and the Mobile Evolution Expo, to begin December 4 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “This event is absolutely …

BEDMINSTER, N.J.—Verizon Wireless is launching another global positioning system-enabled handset, the company announced. The 9155-GPX from Audiovox Communication Corp. will be available this week in addition to the SCH-N300 from …

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Consolidated Telecom selected Vyyo Inc. to provide its multichannel multipoint distrbution service equipment for a broadband deployment in Dickinson, Scranton and Killdeer, N.D., Vyyo said. The deployment is comprised …

CARACAS, Venezuela—Lucent Technologies and Telcel BellSouth announced a three-year agreement to continue building a cdma2000 network in Venezuela. The initial deployment of 1x equipment has begun in Caracas and will …

DUBLIN, Ireland—A contract awarded to Vodafone Group has become the subject of a formal appeal to the Irish telecommunications industry regulator. A 130 million euro (US$120.4 million) contract for the …

NEW YORK—Tele2 said it won a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) license in Luxembourg from the country’s Ministry of Telecommunications. Tele2’s Luxembourg operator Tango received the most points in the …

HELSINKI, Finland—Nokia Networks said it signed an agreement to buy a 10-percent stake for US$35.8 billion in Redback Networks Inc., with an option to increase its shares in the future. …

SAN JOSE, California, United States—Worldwide mobile-phone unit sales reached 93.8 million units in the first quarter of 2002, a 3.8-percent decline from first-quarter 2001, according to Dataquest, a unit of …

TOKYO—NEC, the leading handset maker in Japan, announced that it shipped 2.5-generation (2.5G) handsets for China Mobile. China Mobile is the largest mobile carrier in China with 115 million subscribers. …

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Pakistani operator Mobilink said it reached a subscriber base of 500,000 customers, and predicts it will have 1 million subscribers by year-end. The operator, owned 90 percent by Orascom …

TOKYO—KDDI, the second-largest operator in Japan, announced that it succeeded in offering what it called the world’s first experiment for a third-generation (3G) and wireless local area network (WLAN) dual …

DENVER, United States—A potentially important deal between Motorola and Multitone Electronics has fallen through, Motorola confirmed, which leaves the paging and messaging landscape still more uncertain. Last year, Motorola announced …

TOKYO—According to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office, 94.9 percent of Japanese under 30 years old have their own mobile phones. The government conducted the annual survey of 1,300 …

NEW DELHI, India—Indian cellular operators have demanded immediate removal of cellular-phone ownership as a criterion for mandatory filing of income-tax returns, saying it is discriminatory. The move led to a …

MANILA, The Philippines—Wireless communications will emerge as an integral part of the Filipino workplace as enterprises adopt mobile networks in their operations, according to Roger Wong, vice president for enterprise …