GERMANY
BenQ Corp. completed its takeover of Siemens AG’s mobile-phone business, and the combined entity began operations Oct. 1. BenQ Mobile comprises 7,000 employees, a 5.2-percent worldwide mobile-phone market share and $6.7 billion in combined revenues last year. Clemens J. Joos, a Siemens’ executive who headed the company’s mobile-phone business before it was off-loaded to BenQ, will serve as the new entity’s chief executive officer. Former BenQ executive Jerry Wang will be BenQ Mobile’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. BenQ Mobile has a license to use the Siemens brand for the next 18 months. The company said it plans to introduce a combined BenQ-Siemens brand next spring. Under the terms of the agreement, Siemens paid BenQ $303 million and bought a 2-percent stake in BenQ for $61 million. Siemens also took a $121 million write-down related to the transaction.
UNITED KINGDOM
Navini Networks Inc. said it’s working with British Telecommunications plc on mobile WiMAX trials for the U.K. market and expects the trials to continue into the first quarter of 2006. U.S. telecom carrier BellSouth Corp., which owns 40 percent of the nation’s largest mobile carrier Cingular Wireless L.L.C., also is in trials with Navini’s broadband wireless access systems.
CANADA
Canadian telecom carrier Rogers Communications Inc. revised upward the number of new wireless subscribers it plans to announce for the third quarter. The carrier said the revision is due to significantly higher-than-expected net postpaid retail subscriber additions at Rogers Wireless. As a result, Rogers is adjusting its 2005 full-year guidance for total wireless voice and data net subscriber additions, including postpaid and prepaid retail subscribers, to 600,000 to 650,000, increased from a previous range of 450,000 to 500,000. The carrier plans to add 213,000 net additions in the third quarter compared with 173,400 net additions in the same quarter in 2004.
