NEW YORK-AAPT Ltd. announced last week it awarded Samsung Electronics of South Korea a $205 million turnkey contract to design, construct, operate, maintain and provide systems integration services for its new Code Division Multiple Access network in Australia.The carrier plans to launch commercial CDMA...
HandsetsNokiaNokia announced a new NMT 450 analog handset, to be available in the third quarter, that features true 3-volt technology and the Nokia NaviKey concept. The Nokia 640 weighs 195 grams and has a standby time of up to 80 hours and talk time...
Dear Editor: I just received your July-August issue of Global Wireless and read with great interest the article on pages 22-23 titled, "Middle East: Region Sees More Hints of Privatization."I can fully understand how Israel has become part of the Middle East, but it is beyond...
More than 660,000 U.S. and Canadian customers subscribed to GSM wireless service in the second quarter of 1999, according to the North American GSM Alliance. This brings the total number of GSM customers in North America to 4.2 million.CanadaBell Canada announced plans to purchase...
BUCHAREST, Romania-Until recently, the dominant system in European paging was POCSAG. POCSAG paging networks, designed and installed 20 years ago, are now significantly overloaded and have reached the end of their economic lives.Beginning in 1994, a new standard, ERMES, was implemented in some European...
SINGAPORE-As Vietnam's mobile phone market tries to recover from the effects of the Asian economic downturn, increasing damage is being caused by regulations and business practices that heavily favor national carrier Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications (VNPT) at the expense of foreign competitors, industry observers...
United KingdomDeutsche Telekom is acquiring U.K. operator One2One from Cable & Wireless and MediaOne Group. Deutsche Telekom Chairman Ron Sommer called the acquisition "key" to Deutsche Telekom's international strategy and said it is an important step toward offering a cross-border mobile product.British Telecom (BT)...
SANDTON, South Africa-Tanzania has been described as one of the least-developed countries in the world per capita, yet only recently prominent local investors with international backing have described it as "Africa's rising star."Taking advice that the country needs to make its business environment more...
ATHENS-Smart Tourist Guide is the latest offering from Greek cellular operator Telestet. With the new offering, callers can dial 1230 within 500 meters of any one of 18 popular Greek tourist spots and receive a description of the site in any one of four...
NEW YORK-Wireless carriers can only imagine scaling back their costly call-flooded customer support centers and slashing the overhead that comes with them. And wireless users long to regain those wasted afternoons on hold with a receiver glued to their ears only to find they've...
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-PCS arrived in South America a year ago, and various signs already point to its success. Already, one PCS operator in Chile has surpassed the number of subscribers held by a traditional cellular operator in the country. In addition, payment of US$1.273...
AlbaniaIn the country's largest move to privatize to date, the Albanian Privatization Ministry said it is prepared to sell between 51 percent and 85 percent of Albanian Mobile Communications, the state mobile phone monopoly, to investors, according to a Reuters report. AMC began offering...
DUBLIN, Ireland-The mobile communications market in Eastern Europe offers massive untapped potential for cellular operators and market entrepreneurs. Indeed, some companies have already taken a stake in operators there, expecting exponential subscriber growth like those experienced in countries such as Sweden, Italy and Ireland....
AustraliaLeap Wireless International announced that it is selling its wholly owned Australian subsidiary, OzPhone Pty. Ltd., to an affiliate of AAPT Ltd., Australia's third-largest telecommunications company, for Australian $25 million (US$16.3 million). OzPhone holds licenses covering 6 million potential customers in numerous regions. The...
SEATTLE-Tegic Communications and Optimay GmbH, a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies Inc., announced they signed a licensing agreement that allows Optimay to integrate the Chinese language version of Tegic's T9 Text Input software with Optimay's Global System for Mobile communications Phase 2 Protocol Stack and...
Wireless industry members agree smart phones will become a critical differentiating factor for handset vendors and mobile-phone operators within the next two years, but the proliferation of these devices remains relatively unknown.For handset providers, smart phones represent an opportunity to extend their products, boost...
OSLO, Norway-NetCom ASA, which operates Global System for Mobile communications 1800 MHz service in Norway, reported its profits before tax were $11.5 million for the second quarter ended June 30, up from $5.1 million for the same period last year.NetCom GSM subscribers increased by...
Soon my constant companion will leave me-no I don't mean my husband or my adorable bulldog-rather I mean my Sprint Spectrum phone.I (along with all of the other Sprint Spectrum subscribers) am being "upgraded" to Sprint PCS. In other words, I am being moved...
Finnish operator Sonera Ltd. agreed to purchase 9.1 percent of GSM operator Powertel Inc. last week, giving Powertel a financial partner to pursue strategic acquisitions.Sonera will acquire 100,000 Powertel shares from Ericsson Inc. for $122.7 million, throwing another player into the Global System for...
HELSINKI-Beijing Nokia Mobile Telecommunications Ltd. and Hunan Unicom announced they signed an agreement to expand their Global System for Mobile communications network in China.The $13 million contract will increase network capacity in the cities of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiang.Under terms of the agreement, Nokia...
STOCKHOLM-L.M. Ericsson signed a contract valued at $80 million with Guangdong Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. to expand the carrier's Global System for Mobile communications network in the Guangdong province.Nanjing Ericsson Communications, one of Ericsson's eight joint ventures in China, will provide the equipment.The project,...
China Unicom is working to oust foreign investors from its telecommunications projects this fall, and it appears investors may not leave quietly.The Chinese government has ordered China Unicom, the country's second telecommunications operator, to wind up all China-China-Foreign (CCF) partnerships by the end of...
LucentLucent Technologies Inc. introduced software that will turn down transmitter power levels when the user is not speaking into the handset, effectively increasing talk time by extending battery life up to 30 percent. The discontinuous transmission feature will be generally available for network operators...
