Telekom needs to fork out RM1.3b
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TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd will need to fork out an additional US$344.5mil (RM1.31bil) next year on top of the US$314mil and US$156mil it is paying for stakes in Indonesiaâs Excelcomindo (Excel) and Indiaâs Idea Cellular respectively.
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VIENNA: Telekom Austria, seeking faster growth in eastern Europe than it can find at home, is in exclusive talks to buy Bulgariaâs largest mobile phone operator for about e1.6bn ($2.1bn), it said on Monday.
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Business & money: Â·  EC looks at forcing down price of mobile roaming Â·   Worries over high costs  for business
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Austria's largest mobile phone operator Telekom Austria said Monday it won the right to purchase 100% of Bulgaria's largest cellular phone operator MobilTel (M-Tel) for EUR1.6 billion.
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Germany&#39;s KfW state development bank said Monday it was selling up to euro3 billion (US$3.7 billion) in Deutsche Telekom shares and offering options on another euro1 billion (US$1.
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By Kamarul Yunus  PT EXCELCOMINDO Pratama (XL), a unit of Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM), plans to spend about RM116 million to lay a fibre optic network in Indonesia, a company spokesperson said.
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The biggest wireless service provider keeps getting bigger
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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BT GROUP is likely to clinch a controversial $1 billion (Â£550 million) expansion deal this week in a third attempt to build a substantial overseas presence in America.
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A barrier to 3G adoption has long been the price of the phone itself. However, LG has been selected as a winner of a contest to produce a low-cost handset that would retail for about $100 and operate on GSM Networks.
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Total Access Communications, Thailand's second-largest mobile phone operator, said it intends to spend Bt30bn ($853m) to expand its network in rural areas over the next three years, in spite of political and economic uncertainties.
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TELSTRA has announced a $750 million off-market share buy-back as part of its capital management program. Telstra expects to return $1.
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ERICSSON Australia Pty Ltd was chosen to supply and service Telstra Corp Ltds 3G mobile capacity for the next five years. The agreement involved contracts worth more than $100 million to develop the Telstra
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(InfoWorld) - Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson believes companies will be able to make 3G (third generation) mobile phones for as little as $70 next year as component makers step up their efforts to simplify the handsets, an executive said. The low-cost 3G handset would likely allow users to browse the Internet, and use messaging and voice services, according to Sean Gowran, president of Ericsson Taiwan. Low-cost handsets have been aÂ buzzword in the industryÂ for the past few years as a way to tune more people into the existing global GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) wireless network. The GSM Association (GSMA) has evenÂ launched a contestÂ to inspire mobile phone makers to create a low-cost 3G handset, an idea similar to their contest a year ago aimed at producing a GSM handset for under $30.Â Motorola won that contest. Demand for the low cost GSM phonesÂ has been brisk in emerging markets such as China and India this year, where mobile phone use is growing at frantic pace. India recently announced its strongest month ever for wireless subscriber growth, at 6.71 million people in October. The figure brings its total to 136.22 million subscribers, up from 75.9 million at the end of last year, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. By 2010, there will be 405 million mobile phone subscribers in India, according to market researcher iSuppli, thanks to ultra-low-cost handsets. In China, theÂ number of wireless handset usersÂ climbed to 449.02 million at the end of October, up from 393 million at the end of last year, according to the Ministry of Information Industry, that country's telecom industry regulator. Ericsson believes that efforts to reduce costs have had a big impact on the mobile phone industry. Cheaper components, and fewer components will be vital to efforts to develop a $70 3G handset. "The number of components is dropping dramatically," said Gowran. Fewer components reduces manufacturing complexity and can allow handset makers to reduce materials costs. The difference between a low-cost 3G handset and a high-end one will be huge, he said. An advanced handset with all the latest features, smart phone computing capabilities, the latest digital camera functions, multimedia applications with plenty of memory and the ability to use push mail and mobile TV will still be more expensive at around $500. Gowran also clarified that the $70 target is not an end-user price, but a cost-to-make price, and that Ericsson would not be producing such phones since it does not build mobile handsets anymore. The Sony Ericsson Mobile CommunicationsÂ joint venture with Sony took over all Ericsson handset production, and Gowran said he could not speak on behalf of the company. The original talk regarding low-cost 3G handsets was given by Robert Puskaric, the head of the mobile platforms division at Ericsson, at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom World 2006 conference in Hong Kong. The exhibition runs through Friday.
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It's crunch time for Europe's mobile telephone giants. After spending billions of euros on third-generation licences, they now hope to persuade millions of customers to make the switch to the new 3G services with high-speed Internet access and video and music downloads.
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(InfoWorld) - Mobile operators need to rethink how they price their 3G data plans to better compete with fixed-line broadband services, according to the top executive at Singaporean operator MobileOneÂ (M1). "Operators need to move forward," said Neil Montefiore, M1's chief executive officer, in a phone interview ahead of the Telecom World exhibition and conference organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Hong Kong. Last week, M1 announced plans to offer a faster 3G data service based on HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), an upgrade to WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) networks that increases download speeds from 384KbpsÂ to 3.6Mbps. That service will be available in Singapore starting Wednesday. Rather than increasing its prices with the introduction of the faster service, M1 decided to offer users of the existing service a discount. It dramatically cut the price of its 3G data plan that offers unlimited access, from S$68 (US$44) per month to S$22 per month,. In addition, M1 introduced two HSDPA data plans with unlimited access -- one offering a maximum of 1.8Mbps and another offering 3.6Mbps -- for S$38 and S$68, respectively. Mobile data services based on 3G technology are generally expensive to use, partly because operators charge for data using a per-byte or per-minute pricing model similar to voice. As a result, 3G data services primarily serve business customers who can afford the premium charges, rather than the average mobile user. "We've got to look to the future," Montefiore said. "We've got to be competitive with current fixed broadband prices." Prior to the price cut, M1 sold about 500 3G data cards each month to users who wanted mobile data access. What impact the new pricing levels will have is not yet clear, but Montefiore does not expect to see a dramatic surge in adoption. These mobile user numbers could rise, as most Singaporean broadband users are still locked into 24-month service plans for their existing broadband connections, Montefiore said. "Over time, it will be an attractive way to get online," he said, adding that M1 will offer a more detailed forecast in January when the company announces its financial results. Telecom World runs through Friday, Dec. 8.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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One year on and deregulation disappoints