DUESSELDORF, Germany-German operator E-Plus has purchased the UMTS infrastructure of embattled company MobilCom for about $23 million. The acquisition ends speculation about the future of MobilCom's third-generation network. MobilCom was forced to end its 3G buildout when shareholder France Telecom stopped funding the company...
Hutchison's 3 is one of the European carriers to blaze the trail for third-generation UMTS technology with a launch of its services in Sweden, emphasizing mobile video communication."We offer today mobile video and other advanced services at attractive prices for the frequent user of...
ST. LOUIS-Amdocs announced Romanian Vodafone affiliate Connex will extend its Amdocs Enabler implementation with the Amdocs eCare and Amdocs PRM applications, allowing it to add advanced billing functionality for its networks as required."Amdocs Enabler's modular architecture and pre-integration with complementary Amdocs products facilitates the...
DUBLIN, Ireland-Vodafone Ireland said it opened its third-generation network, although it will initially be available only to several "key business partners." The network provides data speeds of up to 144 kilobits per second, enabling faster downloads and enhanced voice capacity than current services, the...
LAS VEGAS-The Mobile Enterprise Alliance was launched in the U.S. this week at the NetWorld+Interop show in Las Vegas.The new industry group, created to promote the benefits of a mobile work force to enterprises and IT managers, originally launched in Europe in March and...
DUBLIN, Ireland-Cisco has announced plans to introduce a wireless local area network (WLAN) mobile handset later this year. While details of the exact launch date and pricing are still to be confirmed, the device is expected to be available in the United States before...
DUBLIN, Ireland—Vodafone has announced plans to restrict access to adult services over its network just 24 hours after wireless research and consulting company Strategy Analytics suggested in a new report that adult content on mobiles would not be as lucrative as other forms of...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—In what appears to be almost an unseemly rush to protect their parochial businesses, five Asian operators—CSL of Hong Kong, Maxis of Malaysia, MobileOne (M1) of Singapore, Smart of the Philippines and Telstra of Australia—have formed the Asia Mobility Initiative (AMI), which...
HELSINKI, Finland-In a statement of intent clearly intended to accelerate the pace of rollout performance in Sweden, TeliaSonera has laid down a marker that the company will launch its "first wave" third-generation (3G) services to customers in Sweden during the first quarter of 2004.However,...
In the sweepstakes of third-generation (3G) contracts, smaller equipment vendors hope to outplay the bigger names by taking advantage of their product strengths and delays in Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) rollouts.Companies like Motorola, Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies are at the low ebb...
MELBOURNE, Australia-Vodafone announced it will launch its Vodafone Live! service from 21 April. The service offering will include multimedia messaging service (MMS) and polyphonic ring tones. At the same time, Hutchison Telecommunications announced that its third-generation (3G) service will begin 15 April. It will...
DALLAS-Telematics company ATX Inc. announced it will expand into Europe with the opening of a call center and data facility, and marketing and customer service operations."Establishment of ATX Europe GmbH, is a reflection of the company's continued success and drive to maintain a vehicle-centric...
LONDON-As the tender process for Bahrain's second GSM license draws to a close, three candidates, including MTC Vodafone, Wataniya Bahrain and Kalaam, have been short-listed from the original list of 10 companies. The final decision is expected to be announced 16 April and the...
OSLO, Norway-An agreement among Sweden's operators to allow customers to send multimedia messaging services (MMS) between competing networks has failed to encompass all the country's operators, as giant TeliaSonera has yet to get on board.With MMS widely tipped by both studies and pundits to...
MELBOURNE, Australia-Two of Australia's national mobile carriers will do battle for third-generation (3G) subscribers by mid-year.Telstra introduced its cdma2000 1x network, an upgrade of its CDMA network, to consumers this week. The operator launched corporate 1x services last December, and now the service is...
TOKYO and LONDON-Vodafone Group plc and J-Phone Co. Ltd. both announced strong subscriber numbers for their respective multimedia messaging services.Vodafone said it has met its target of 1 million Vodafone Live! customers by end-March. The global operator said 375,000 Live! users are in Germany,...
HELSINKI, Finland-Norway's National Oil Fund (NOF), capitalized at US$100 billion and the largest of Europe's state-managed investment funds, has resolved to downgrade investments in telecom and broadband wireless stocks in a bid to improve return on investment in 2003.Thirty percent of the NOF's capital...
DUBLIN, Ireland-The latest figures from the Irish telecommunications industry regulator indicate that third operator Meteor is still making little impact on the dominance of Vodafone and MmO2.During the final three months of last year, Meteor had just 4 percent of the mobile-phone market, compared...
HANNOVER, Germany-SAP, Hewlett-Packard and Vodafone Group said they have signed a letter of intent for collaboration to bring to market, "a suite of mobile capabilities designed to increase the work force productivity of large enterprises, initially in Europe, the Middle East and Africa."
HANNOVER, Germany-SAP AG, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Vodafone Group plc said they have signed a letter of intent for collaboration to bring to market, "a suite of mobile capabilities designed to increase the work force productivity of large enterprises, initially in Europe, the Middle East...
TOKYO-J-Phone, a Vodafone company in Japan, gained 164,800 new subscribers in February, according to a survey compiled by the Telecommunications Association of Japan.Due to the strides made by J-Phone, the market share of the three Japanese mobile companies as of the end of February...
HANNOVER, Germany-Research In Motion Ltd. released two new BlackBerry devices, the 6210 and the 6220, for users in Europe."We continue to lead the industry with a growing choice of wireless handhelds that satisfy the demanding requirements of both large corporate customers and individual business...
TOKYO-KDDI on Wednesday announced it would reduce the communications fee from a fixed-line telephone to a mobile phone by 25 percent starting 21 April. Due to the price cut, the communications fee from a fixed line to mobile will be reduced from 120 yen...
NEW YORK-Although 2002 "was a very difficult year" because new landline competition squeezed profits, Matav, Hungary's incumbent carrier, rode the country's rising tide of wireless penetration and gained significantly in terms of mobile customers and associated revenue growth, said Elek Straub, chief executive officer...
