MOSCOW—Sonic Duo, which has the third GSM license in Moscow, finally went on air in the capital this month after numerous delays caused by frequency problems. The main result is the arrival of the pan-Russian Megafon project of St. Petersburg-based Telecominvest holding in the...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—The much troubled German e-commerce developer Brokat Technologies has agreed to sell its mobile business unit to EOne Global, a U.S. company specializing in payment solutions via the Internet, for a reduced price of e28.25 million (US$24.8 million). Brokat said in August...
BEIJING—Broadband telecom network provider China Netcom is expected to be awarded a mobile license by the Chinese government soon.The company will start promotion of its wireless Internet access device called Mobile Office next week. It is China Netcom's first foray in mobile services and...
NEW YORK—Vivendi Universal has deployed MyNetonomy , developed by U.S.-based Netonomy, as the portal through which customers can purchase, activate and personalize services on Universal Music Mobile (UMM).Launched commercially in late September, the service delivers Vivendi Universal's music-oriented content over the GSM network of...
LONDON—French telecommunications regulator ART has said that it will cut the price of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones by nearly 40 percent during the course of the next three years. The decision will affect Orange and SFR, the country's two largest mobile...
PARIS—Alcatel said Taif Telecom, a mobile operator in Russia's Tatarstan Republic, selected it to expand its GSM 900 MHz network. The first phase of the extension should be completed by the end of the year.Taif Telecom's network covers more than 85 percent of the...
JAKARTA, Indonesia—Inquam, a venture company backed by Qualcomm, has marked its presence in Indonesia through an acquisition of Mobile Selular Indonesia (Mobisel) shares.Prior to the Inquam acquisition, the share composition in Mobisel was largely held by Amir Abdullah Rachman, president of Mobisel, and the...
WOODBURY, N.Y.-Comverse has been chosen to provide its unified messaging solution to Portugal's Vodafone, a mobile operator that has 2.6 million cellular customers and holds 35 percent of the market share in the country.Comverse's solution gives consumers a "one-stop" communications account with which they...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill.-Japanese mobile operator KDDI announced the 10 millionth mobile subscriber on its cdmaOne network has registered. The network, Japan's first CDMA digital cellular network, and the infrastructure were designed, manufactured and installed by Motorola Inc. in 1998. "We have listened to our...
Qualcomm Inc. has been looking for a European opening for its CDMA technology for some time. But so far, the technology has been effectively shut out in the region, other than a few CDMA fixed-wireless networks, mainly in Russia and other parts of Eastern...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—Having largely ignored the cellular industry until now, IBM Europe has announced its intent to become a major player by supplying services and information technology (IT) infrastructure to the major cell-phone operators in Europe and the Middle East markets. The company claimed...
WOODBURY, New York, United States—Comverse has been chosen to provide its unified messaging solution to Portugal's Vodafone, a mobile operator that has 2.6 million cellular customers and holds a 35-percent market share in the country.Comverse's solution gives consumers a "one-stop" communications account with which...
JOHANNESURG, South Africa—Intelsat is to launch 10 more satellites to improve its services to the Asia-Pacific region. The satellites currently already cover 53 territories in Africa, providing data, video, corporate and Internet services to the continent.Flavien Bachabi, sales and marketing vice president for Africa,...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Illinois, United States—Japanese mobile operator KDDI announced the 10 millionth mobile subscriber on its cdmaOne network. The network, Japan's first CDMA digital cellular network, and the infrastructure were designed, manufactured and installed by Motorola in 1998. "We have listened to our customers,...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Cell C, the third cellular license operator in South Africa, plans to officially go live on Saturday, 17 November. The operator announced at Telecom Africa 2001 this week that it will initially offer a prepaid package, Easy Chat, on a dual-band cellular...
HELSINKI, Finland—Tecnomen said it will expand the voice mail system of Venezuelan operator Digitel. Under the terms of the US$1 million deal, two Tecnomen systems— voice messaging services and intelligent call-back—each capable of supporting 170,000 subscribers, will be installed. According to Tecnomen, the systems...
TOKYO—KDDI, the second-largest mobile operator in Japan, announced it will launch location services using the global positioning system (GPS) satellite system and motion picture services with 64 kilobits per second (kbps) data speeds in early December. KDDI is losing market share in Japan, while...
WOODBURY, N.Y.—Comverse has been chosen to provide its unified messaging solution to Portugal's Vodafone, a mobile operator that has 2.6 million cellular customers and holds 35 percent of the market share in the country.Comverse's solution gives consumers a "one-stop" communications account with which they...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill.—Japanese mobile operator KDDI announced the 10 millionth mobile subscriber on its cdmaOne network has registered. The network, Japan's first CDMA digital cellular network, and the infrastructure were designed, manufactured and installed by Motorola in 1998. "We have listened to our customers,...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Mobile network operators MTN, Vodacom and Cell C recently signed a new interconnect agreement with fixed-line operator Telkom. Perceived as creating a "win win" situation for all operators concerned, the new agreement will see mobile networks gaining 79 percent of the revenue...
NEW YORK—U.S. power company AES has withdrawn its US$1.4 billion hostile takeover bid for Venezuela's CANTV. CANTV's shareholders approved a 15-percent share buyback last month to fend off the takeover.CANTV's board of directors agreed on a plan to repurchase 15 percent of its stock...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—Swedish cell-phone operator Telia plans to offer consumers a free three-month trial of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) in an attempt to reverse the ongoing negative image that the mobile Internet continues to attract. The company will be the first in Sweden...
HELSINKI, Finland—Denmark's TDC has blamed "technical problems" for its decision to delay the launch of its third-generation (3G) mobile-phone network in Switzerland. The launch, which had originally been scheduled to take place in 2002, will be postponed until 2003 "at the earliest" confirmed Kim...
