FRANKFURT, Germany-Deutsche Telekom said it signed an agreement to sell its 24.5-percent stake in Wind, its joint venture in Italy. Enel and France Telecom will purchase the stake for about $2.5 billion.After the transaction, Enel's stake in Wind will increase to 56.6 percent from...
MILAN, Italy-The Italian government has proposed to use a two-stage process to award five Universal Mobile Telecommunications System licenses later this year. The proposal combines a "beauty contest" with an auction, with the government expecting to raise more than $11.2 billion.The first phase of...
GENEVA-With auction prices of the United Kingdom's five third-generation licenses beating even the most inflated analyst forecasts, all eyes are now on Italy, which is set to allocate five 15-year Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) licenses in a few months.Europe's largest mobile market with...
NEW YORK-Managing solely for the bottom line can come back to bite companies at tax time, with the perverse result of hurting the financial statements so important to existing and potential stakeholders.The adage that there is never time to do it right but always...
NEW YORK-The Federal Communications Commission 700 MHz auctions in May will be "a significant industry-transforming event and near-term catalyst ... in the race toward wireless data," John Bensche, senior analyst for Lehman Brothers Inc., said.Bidding teams could well include Internet service and content providers,...
HandsetsPhilipsPhilips introduced several new handsets. The Ozeo GSM dual-band mobile phone offers a new user interface and a large LCD display with five text lines. The carousel icon screen feature simultaneously displays up to five visual icons representing the phone's functions and features. The...
The first thing you need to know about me is that I am a lot like my pet bulldog: When I get ahold of something, I do not let go. Change is hard for me, so my decision to change mobile-phone providers was not made...
France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom made significant moves to part ways last week with France Telecom agreeing to purchase Deutsche Telekom's and Sprint Corp.'s stakes in the Global One joint venture for a total equity value of $3.88 billion.The move ended a struggling and...
BEIJING-China's two telecom operators-big brother China Telecom and little brother China Unicom-soon will face the competitive onslaught of foreign heavyweights such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom and WorldCom.After China joins the World Trade Organization (WTO), expected some time during the first half of the year,...
"I now felt for the first time absolutely certain that the day would come when mankind would be able to send messages `round the wires, not only across the Atlantic, but between the furthermost ends of the earth."Guglielmo Marconi could certainly justify his statement...
I never fully experienced the joy of eating shrimp until I lived in Florida.Being a North Dakota girl, my shrimp choices had been limited to basket-fried, deep-fried, beer-batter fried or broiled in enough butter that it just as well could have been fried. In...
BEIJING-Tough times lie ahead for equipment suppliers and operators with the establishment of China Mobile expected to slow equipment purchases and with China Unicom still struggling to end its China-China-Foreign contracts and feverishly trying to secure alternative financing.With China Mobile still in its infancy...
HONG KONG-China Unicom is still seeking to end more than 30 China China Foreign (CCF) joint ventures it has formed with foreign companies, including France Telecom, Sprint Corp., Telecom Italia, Bell Canada, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Metromedia International, Daewoo Corp., and several Hong Kong companies,...
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla.-In response to the devastation caused last year by Hurricane Georges, Motorola Inc. made available its Hurricane Tracker software application.Developed for Motorola's PageWriter 2000 two-way pager and PageWriter 2000X two-way wireless communications center, Hurricane Tracker can provide users with updates of approaching...
Water and power outages more than violent wind affected wireless networks as Hurricane Floyd skirted the East Coast last week.AT&T Corp. Friday apologized to customers for wireless network outages in parts of metropolitan New York and New Jersey caused by the hurricane.The company said...
TranscryptTranscrypt International Inc. said its EFJohnson subsidiary launched a new line of mobile and portable radios designed to operate on Motorola Inc.'s Smartnet and SmartZone systems in the 800 MHz frequency band. The portable radio comes with three keys or a dual-tone multifrequency keypad....
When Eric Doggett took the helm of Glenayre Technologies Inc. three months ago, he found himself captain of a ship lost at sea.A slowdown in the global paging infrastructure market took much wind out of the company's sails, while problems with paging device production...
BEIJING-China Unicom has big ambitions. That's no big news. When it was established in 1994, the company hoped to capture one-third of the mobile phone market and a 10th of the fixed-line market by 2000. However, today it has less than a 2-percent market...
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...
CoherentThe Coherent original equipment manufacturer division of Tellabs launched a complete design verification kit for its CEC-128 Integrated Echo Canceller multichip module. The kit consists of a CEC-128 plug-in module and a CD with full operating software, application notes and data book. The module...
Deutsche Telekom AG has about $18 billion at its disposal after its $11-billion secondary offering last week, and speculation is running high about what acquisitions it will make in Europe and the United States."I will not name names today," Ron Sommer, chief executive of...
ElectofuelElectrofuel Inc. announced the Lithium Ion SuperPolymer battery, which has an energy density of 470 Wh/liter and 183 Wh/kilogram, almost doubling the previous endurance records of rechargeable batteries. With the SuperPolymer battery, laptop computers will run 15 or more hours on a fully charged...
WASHINGTON-U.S. Digital Communications Inc. announced it has begun curtailing the operations of its International Satellite Group Inc. subsidiary, citing difficulties in selling Iridium L.L.C. goods and services."Due to the well-documented shortcomings of the Iridium satellite telephone platform, and the corresponding inability of the International...
