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...
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...
ATLANTA-Satyam Enterprises Ltd., a regional partner of LHS Group Inc., said Global System for Mobile communications operator Fascel Ltd. in Gujarat, India, selected LHS' client/server-based customer-care and billing system, BSCS, to support its wireless service.Satyam Enterprises will provide customer-care and billing services for more...
MOUNT PROSPECT, Ill.-Illinois Superconductor Corp. announced it signed a test agreement with an international system supplier for Japan's third-generation cellular system for its RangeMaster Extreme filter.Under terms of the agreement, the system supplier will purchase two three-sector RangeMaster systems for an undisclosed price, said...
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...
German telecom operator Mannesmann AG said it executed its option rights on shares of Italian mobile operator Omnitel, raising its stake in the company by 1.5 percent to 55 percent.TSR Wireless L.L.C. signed a two-year connectivity agreement with Internet provider ZipLink Inc., under which...
WASHINGTON-Three consumer groups have asked the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block AT&T Corp.'s planned acquisition of MediaOne.The Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and Media Access Project jointly filed a formal document at the two agencies saying the merger...
Amidst increased media publicity over capacity problems in its New York City market, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. last week granted a contract to Lucent Technologies Inc. that calls for the vendor to replace Ericsson Inc.'s equipment in the country's largest wireless market.Ericsson-AT&T Wireless' main...
WARSAW-Poland only received two bids by the Aug. 23 preliminary bid deadline for a 25-percent to 35-percent stake in government-controlled Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA), according to press reports.The two bidders apparently are SBC Communications Inc. and France Telecom.Along with basic wireline services, TPSA has the...
SAO PAULO-Brazilian cellular operator Telesp Cellular S.A., operating in the state and city of Sao Paulo, announced today it launched a new prepaid product, "Peg & Fale," designed to meet the needs of lower income segments.Peg & Fale has neither an activation fee nor...
WATERLOO, Ontario-Research In Motion Ltd. said it will supply Venezuela-based carrier Telcel Cellular with its Inter@ctive 950e pager, the Spanish language version of the Inter@ctive 950.The deal will allow Telcel to become the first Mobitex operator in Latin America to offer the RIM messaging...
The next round in the fight to popularize voice paging has begun, this time in Latin America, as Mexican paging operator RadioFlash became the first carrier to launch a voice paging service over a FLEX network using speech compression technology from OmniVoice Technologies Inc.OmniVoice's...
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -L.M. Ericsson reported July 29 that German cellular operator T-Mobil has now deployed its Ericsson General Packet Radio Service system for testing. The T-Mobil-Ericsson GPRS contract was the first announced in the world back in January.The Ericsson GPRS packet-switching equipment, installed in...
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...
WASHINGTON-Nextel Communications Inc. is charging that private wireless receives a subsidy because it does not pay for its licenses. The enhanced specialized mobile radio operator made the remarks in reply comments filed at the Federal Communications Commission.The FCC is establishing a record on what...
BULGARIA-The sole Bulgarian Global System for Mobile communications mobile operator MobilTel awarded Siemens Information and Communication Networks Group a contract to equip its mobile radio network with intelligent network services.MobilTel will implement Siemens' INXpress as a basis of its intelligent network services. The two...
STOCKHOLM-Ericsson Inc. said Turkish telecommunications operator Turkcell signed an agreement for Ericsson's WISE high-speed Internet solution, a five-component system designed to provide fast connections from a Global System for Mobile communications network to the Internet, and to maximize the throughput of datacom services.Implementation will...
HELSINKI-Finnish telecommunications operator Sonera posted profits before taxes and extraordinary items of $238.9 million (EUR224 million), a 19-percent increase over the same period in 1998. Its earnings per share were 25 cents, up from 20 cents per share for the first half of last...
News that Nextel Communications Inc. received government approval to pursue 95 personal communications services licenses held by bankrupt designated entity NextWave Telecom Inc. dumbfounded and angered several large carriers last week and put into question whether the Federal Communications Commission brokered a back-door deal...
Sprint PCS's awaited introduction of nationwide commercial Internet-access services will begin in late September, announced the company.Targeting business users and a wide range of consumer customers that are heavy Internet and e-mail users, Sprint PCS will hit the market with Sprint PCS Wireless Web,...
The economy is rolling along, wireless subscriber additions are climbing and merger and acquisition activity is heating up.This is good news for the personal communications services industry, which last year found itself suffering from tight financing and a general underperformance in small capitalized stocks....
LONDON-Mannesmann Aktiengesellschaft and its financing subsidiary, Mannesmann Finance B.V., plan to sell up to $2 billion in euro-denominated commercial paper that will, in part, help finance planned telecommunications investments.Mannesmann, headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany, is engaged primarily in three business sectors: telecommunications, engineering and automotive. Mannesmann...
HONG KONG-Smart-card solution provider Schlumberger said Hong Kong mobile operator Sunday plans to upgrade its subscribers' phones to user-programmable multiservice terminals using Simera 32 Java-compatible subscriber identity modules and an Aremis application management server, both from Schlumberger. The system would allow subscribers to download...
Analysts have long criticized operator-assisted dispatch as the weak link in the alphanumeric paging chain, citing its inherent lack of privacy and potential for misinterpreted messages.But users have accepted these faults because there was no other way to get text messages to alphanumeric subscribers....
