Canada
Bell Canada offered to purchase for cash up to 15.8 million of the outstanding common shares of Aliant, the largest telecommunications company in Atlantic Canada, at a price of US$18.40 per share. Such an acquisition would give Bell Canada, which already owns about 41 percent of the company, at least 51 percent of Aliant’s common shares. Aliant includes the NewTel Communications, MTT, NBTel and Island Tel operating companies, which each have wireless divisions.
United States
U.S. mobile handset sales surpassed 10.3 million units in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm Dataquest. Digital handsets accounted for 77.8 percent of U.S. mobile handset sales in the second quarter, while analog handsets totaled 22.2 percent of sales. “The growth of the U.S.
CDMA market continues to play havoc with the market-share fortunes of the industry’s traditional top-tier vendors,” said Bryan Prohm, senior industry analyst for Dataquest’s Mobile Communications Terminal Devices North America program. “For example, Nokia’s weak share in CDMA has prevented it from completely running away with the U.S. market. Motorola’s successful CDMA portfolio has helped it capture the number 2 position in the overall U.S. mobile handset market. Ericsson, which currently does not offer a CDMA product, slipped to the number 5 position.” Nokia currently leads the overall U.S. handset market with 31.7 percent, Motorola is second at 22.4 percent and Qualcomm third at 12.2 percent.
Omnipoint signed agreements to acquire East/West Communications, which holds five wireless licenses for markets covering a population of 22.2 million in the United States.
Deutsche Telekom launched T-Venture of America, a new U.S.-based subsidiary that will manage a US$100 million venture-capital fund focused on investing in the U.S. communications and information technology sectors.
Qualcomm said it was selected by Sprint PCS as a mobile technology provider for trials of third-generation wireless technology based on the 3G CDMA 1x multi-carrier mode of the IS-2000 Release 0 published standard.
Sprint PCS and Lucent Technologies announced they will conduct a trial of the third-generation CDMA 1X Radio Transmission Technology in the first half of next year.
