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General
Telecom News
Portugal Telecom's
profit jumps 118% in Q4 (From Telecompaper.com, March 4,
2010)
- Portugal
Telecom reports fourth-quarter revenues of EUR 1.811 billion, up 6.7
percent from EUR 1.697 billion in the year-earlier period. Adjusting for
the effects of the consolidation of Telemig, lower
MTRs and using constant exchange rates, revenues
would have increased by 2.3 percent year-on-year. EBITDA rose 5.6 percent
year-on-year to EUR 648.0 million, while Portugal Telecom's net profit
jumped 118.8 percent to EUR 312.0 million.
Revenues from fixed-line operations increased by 1.3 percent year-on-year
to EUR 501.4 million, as a result of the robust performance in retail
revenues, which were up by 3.9 percent year-on-year despite continued
pricing pressure in the business segments and decline in directories, due
to the challenging economic conditions. EBITDA at
the activities declined 7.2 percent to EUR 195.2 million. PT has around 2.746
PSTN/ISDN lines at end-2009, down from 2.843 million in December 2008. Retail
net additions in the fourth quarter amounted to 109,000 customers, as a
result of the significant growth of the pay-TV service, which accounted for
76,000, bringing the total pay-TV base to 581,000 t 31 December. ADSL net
additions in the quarter reached 50,000 to a total ADSL base of 862,000 users
at the end of the fourth quarter.
TMN's revenues dropped 7.0 percent to EUR 382.8 million, while
EBITDA rose by 1.5 percent year-on-year to EUR 166.7 million, equivalent to
a margin of 44.4 percent at end-December. The number of
mobile customers increased by 180,000 in Q4 to 7.252 million. A
continued focus on acquiring postpaid customers, including mobile broadband,
resulted in postpaid customers accounting for 30.8 percent of total
customers, up by 2.9 percentage points from the year-eralier
period. Data revenues increased by 0.8 percent in the fournth
quarter and accounted for 23.7 percent of service revenues, up from 22.9
percent last year. Mobile ARPU dropped 8.8 percent to EUR 15.9, from EUR 17.5
a year earlier.
France Telecom misses
expectations (March 1, 2010)
- French
telecom giant France Telecom (NYSE: FTE - News) has reported results for
full year 2009 with earnings per ADS of $1.58 missing the Zack Consensus
Estimate of $2.65.
Net income
fell 26% year-over-year to €3 billion (US$4.18 billion), largely due to a €964
million (US$1.3 billion) charge stemming from a dispute with EU competition
authorities related to an illegal tax exemption received by the carrier
prior to 2003. The bottom-line was also hit by lower mobile termination
rates (inter-operator fees) in key markets.
Revenue
France
Telecom, which operates one of world's leading telecom brands "Orange",
reported a consolidated revenue of €45.94 billion (US$64 billion), down 3.7%
year over year, missing the Zacks Consensus
Estimate of US$74 billion. For the fourth quarter, revenue fell 5.8% to €11.54
billion (US$17 billion).
The revenue
decline was primarily due to unfavorable exchange rate fluctuations (British
pound versus Polish zloty and the Romanian lei). Revenue was also hurt by
the recession-driven discontinuation of landline phone use by customers.
EBITDA & Margin
The operator
reported EBITDA (restated) of €16.33 billion (US$22.8 billion) in 2009, which
declined 4.4% from 2008, resulting in a fall in EBITDA margin to 35.5% from
35.8%. This decline is a result of stringent price regulation and adverse
currency exchange swings.
Revenue by
Key Markets
Revenue in France, the
company's largest market with 51% of group sales, declined 0.4% year-over-year
to €23.6 billion (US$33 billion) in 2009. For the fourth quarter, revenue
fell 2.3% to €5.9 billion (US$8.7 billion). The decline is largely due to
erosion in the legacy fixed-line business, partly offset by growth in
wireless and data services.
The UK, the
company's second-largest market, posted a 13.8% year-over-year decline in
revenue to €5.1 billion (US$7.1 billion) as a result of beleaguered
economic conditions, adverse exchange rate impact and regulatory pressure. Revenue
for the fourth quarter fell 8.5% to €1.29 billion (US$1.9 billion).
France
Telecom's UK operation (Orange UK) remains challenged by the cutthroat
price competition as bigger rivals like Telefonica's
O2 UK and Vodafone continue to boost their market shares. Revenue in Spain and Poland fell by 4.4% and 26%, respectively,
in 2009.
Telefonica profit up 22% on
Latin America growth (From The Gulf News, February 27, 2010)
Madrid - Telefonica posted a larger-than-expected 22 per cent
increase in fourth-quarter profit fuelled by revenue growth in Latin America.
Net income
rose to 2.44 billion euros from 2 billion euros a year earlier, Madrid-based
Telefonica said yesterday in a regulatory filing.
Sales grew 1.2 per cent to 14.98 billion euros. Analysts had predicted
profit of 2.2 billion euros on sales of 14.58 billion euros, the average
estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Chairman and
chief executive officer Cesar Alierta is betting
on Latin America to add growth and
promising higher dividends to attract investors discouraged by the Spanish
econ-omic recession, the worst in six decades. Telefonica repeated a pledge to increase dividends
through 2012 and forecast revenue growth for 2010.
"The
company's outlook and reiteration of goals should help boost confidence,"
said Francisco Salvador, a strategist at Iberian Equities in Madrid.
Telefonica shares rose 1.4 per cent to 17.13 euros as of 10.38am
in Madrid.
Before yesterday, the stock lost 13 per cent since the start of the year. Sales
in Spain declined 1.6 per
cent to 5.05 billion euros while revenue in Latin
America climbed 8 per cent to 6.33 billion euros. Revenue from
Eur-opean operations outside Spain fell 3.9
per cent to 3.48 billion euros.
Deutsche Telekom
posts unexpected loss (From The
Gulf News, February 26, 2010)
Bonn - Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's
biggest phone company, posted a loss in the fourth quarter primarily on a writedown in the value of its Greek unit.
The net loss
was three million euros on a 500 million-euro impairment charge, the Bonn-based
company said in a statement Thursday.
Analysts had
predicted a profit of 597.6 million euros, the average of seven estimates
compiled by Bloomberg. In the year-earlier period, the company had a net
loss of 730 million euros on costs related to job cuts. Sales rose 0.6 per
cent to 16.2 billion euros.
Chief
Executive Officer Rene Obermann is banking on
cost cuts to boost profit as the economic slump slows demand for phone
services. Having slashed expenses by 5.9 billion euros between 2005 and 2009,
Deutsche Telekom said today it plans to cut costs
by 4.2 billion euros by the end of 2012.
"Cost
discipline was key to getting through economically
challenging times," he said in the statement.
Expense cuts
and rising sales in emerging markets led Vodafone Group this month to raise
its full-year cash flow forecast. BT Group, the UK's biggest fixed-line
operator, said earnings rose 11 per cent in the fourth quarter before
interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation and
costs to cut jobs.
Sony Ericsson could return to profit
this year (From The
Gulf News, February 19, 2010)
Barcelona - Sweden's
Ericsson stands by its ailing Sony Ericsson phones venture, and expects the
business to move into the black towards the end of 2010 as new phones hit
the shelves.
"Over
this year we will see continuous improvement in financials we will get into
profitable quarters, more towards the end of the year," Jan Wareby, Ericsson's Multimedia unit head, told Reuters
at the Mobile World Congress yesterday.
"From an
Ericsson perspective, the venture has all the sense in the world. The
strategic logic has not changed. Actually, a lot of logic to do the joint
venture has started to materialise and will do
even more in coming years," he said.
Sony Ericsson
reported its seventh straight quarterly loss in January and said there
would only be slight growth in the market this year.
Management
had not previously said when it expected the firm to move back into the
black.
Ericsson has
in the past financially supported the venture, but Wareby
said this was not needed at the moment.
Wareby said Sony Ericsson, the global number four phone maker,
would be helped this year by new launches. The firm
unveiled three new models on the eve of the mobile fair's opening.
Bharti's bid for Zain assets faces hurdle in Nigeria (From The Gulf News, February 16, 2010)
Dubai - Bharti Airtel's plan to buy
most of the African assets of Kuwait's Zain
for $10.7 billion may face challenges even before it begins its due
diligence.
India's largest
wireless company's plan can't include Zain's Celtel Nigeria
unit until an ownership dispute with Econet
Wireless Holdings on that business is resolved, Econet
chief executive officer Strive Masiyiwa said.
"Zain Nigeria
is not for sale," Masiyiwa said in an
interview in Johannesburg
on Monday.
For Bharti, troubles in Nigeria,
Africa's most-populous nation and the
continent's fastest-growing telecommunications market, may be an indication
of what it might be up against in the 15 countries where it's seeking to
take over Zain's operations.
Kuwait's Mobile
Telecommunications, or Zain, and Bharti said in statements yesterday that they will hold
exclusive talks until March 25 on the assets.
Bharti fell as much as 9.6 per cent in Mumbai trading, the
most since October 6. Zain shares were suspended
from trading in Kuwait.
They last traded on February 11 when they advanced 3.9 per cent to 1,080
Kuwaiti dinars. The stock has soared 23 per cent
in the last week, giving the company a market value of 4.64 billion Kuwaiti
dinars.
Econet, based in a suburb of Johannesburg,
is seeking to overturn a 2006 deal in which Celtel
bought a 65-per cent stake in Nigerian mobile operator Vmobile,
since renamed Zain Nigeria. Econet,
with 5 per cent of Zain Nigeria, says
it should have had the right of first refusal on those shares.
Case in
arbitration
Econet's Masiyiwa said the case is
still in arbitration and that until that process has been completed, "Nigeria [operations]
cannot be sold, it is not for sale, there can be
no due diligence by Bharti or any other party."
Zain bought Celtel International
for $3.4 billion in 2005 to expand into 13 African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria.
Senjam Raj Sekhar,
vice-president of corporate communications at Bharti,
did not reply to an e-mail or a text message seeking a comment on the
Nigerian situation. Zain spokesman Ebrahim Adel couldn't immediately be reached for
comment on the matter.
British Telecoms profits hurt by
pension row (From The
Gulf News, February 12, 2010)
London - A looming
and potentially lengthy row over pensions at British Telecoms (BT) overshadowed
solid third-quarter results from the former state-owned BT company, sending its shares to a six-month low yesterday.
BT used its
third-quarter results to announce a long-awaited triennial pension
evaluation which put the deficit at £9 billion, and said it would implement
a 17-year scheme to fund it.
Under the
plan, BT will continue to make deficit payments of £525 million per year
for three years, as previously announced, rising to £533 million in real
terms for the following 14 years.
It said the
plan would have to be submitted to the pensions
regulator for review, which has already indicated it has "substantial
concerns" with certain features of the agreement.
Chief
executive Ian Livingston told reporters the regulator would continue to
look at the plan and could then decide to refer it to an independent panel
and said the whole process could take a "very, very long time" to
settle.
Livingston declined to
say what concerns the regulator had.
Meeting
obligations
"This is
a prudent valuation and a recovery plan which re-affirms BT's commitment to
meeting its pension obligations," Livingston
said.
"The
operational improvements we are making in the business are generating
sufficient cash flow to support the pension scheme whilst allowing us to
pay dividends, invest in the business and reduce debt."
Independent
pension consultant John Ralfe, who is not
involved with BT, said the regulator should be happy with the size of the
deficit and the assumptions used on longevity and the discount rate.
He said the
time-frame was likely to be the main problem.
T-Mobile says U.K. review could delay Orange
merger to 2011 (January 26, 2010)
(Bloomberg) -
Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile division said it
would prefer the European Union rather than U.K.
authorities to review its proposed merger with France Telecom SA’s Orange unit in the U.K. to speed up approval.
If it were dealt
with in Brussels, “then you could be looking
at approval like the end of February,” Richard Moat, managing director of T-Mobile U.K.,
told reporters in London
today. “Approval could be given in 2011” if the process came back to Britain,
Moat said.
The French
and German phone companies agreed in September to merge their Orange and T-Mobile mobile-phone businesses in the U.K.,
potentially creating the country’s largest operator. British competition
authorities this month said they are asking for industry opinion on whether
to seek jurisdiction over the merger.
The Office of
Fair Trading said Jan. 14 in a statement that it would ask if it would be
“appropriate” to call the merger in for review in Britain, as a prelude to
potentially asking the European Union to give up its own investigation.
Telefonica SA’s O2 mobile-phone unit
and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.’s
3 have said the deal should be reviewed by British regulators, rather than
the EU, because its effect will be felt in the U.K. Consumer groups have also
said they favor a U.K. review.
‘Relaxed
Deadlines’
Asked whether
he expects the U.K.
authorities to call in the merger for review in Britain, Moat said today: “I
don’t know, it’s impossible to say.” T-Mobile and Orange need the deal
to be approved in order to start implementing the proposed merger, he said.
Moat said he
doesn’t expect U.K.
authorities to be “less favorable” to the deal than the European
regulators. “But Brussels would be faster
because Brussels has established deadlines,
while the U.K.
has rather relaxed deadlines,” Moat said.
Under its
usual review process, the European Commission will rule on the deal by Feb.
15, the Brussels-based agency said Jan. 12. The commission can then approve
the transaction or extend the investigation by 90 working days. A referral
to the U.K.
level could alter this timetable.
The
Orange-T-Mobile combination could “distort the market” in the U.K. for some
types of mobile services by giving a large share of wireless spectrum to
one company, O2 U.K. Chief Executive Officer Ronan Dunne said this month.
The merged
Orange-T-Mobile company would control 84 percent of available wireless
spectrum on an 1800-megahertz band that’s useful for high-speed services, 3
U.K. Chief Executive Officer Kevin Russell said in an e-mail on Jan. 7.
Dutch telecom KPN reports earnings rise
in Q4 (January 26, 2010)
AMSTERDAM (AP) --
Royal KPN NV, the largest Dutch telecom, reported
a sharp rise in fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday, due mostly to tax
breaks and job cuts.
Net profit
was euro1.09 billion ($1.54 billion), up from euro297 million in the same
period a year earlier. That includes a euro705 million tax credit at its
German mobile telephony arm E-Plus. After a review, KPN discovered it can
take more tax deductions from past losses at E-Plus than it thought.
Sales fell
9.3 percent to euro3.37 billion as business customers in particular cut
usage or switched to cheaper services.
KPN has cut
or outsourced 3,554 jobs in the past year, around 10 percent of its work force,
which was 33,148 at year-end. It said it planned
to cut or outsource an additional 2,000 jobs in 2010.
KPN said
operating earnings grew by 4.2 percent in the Netherlands to euro939 million.
At its
international division that holds E-Plus, Germany's third largest mobile
carrier, operating earnings were up 1.3 percent to euro387 million.
Analyst Stefaan Genoe of Petercam Bank said the results were a "mixed
bag."
"KPN's overall sales performance remains weak...but
costs are managed well," he wrote in a note on the earnings, and
repeated an Add rating on shares.
Shares were
down 1.2 percent to euro11.805 in early trading in Amsterdam.
KPN paid its
net debt down to euro11.1 billion at year end from euro11.7 billion at the
end of the third quarter.
It announced
plans to buy back euro1 billion worth of shares in 2010 and is targeting a
dividend of euro0.80, a 16 percent increase from euro0.69 in 2009.
Globe Telecom to put up 2,000
additional sites for 3G, WiMax (From ABS CBN News, January 26, 2010)
MANILA,
Philippines - Globe Telecom, Inc. said Monday it would add 2,000 more sites
for third-generation or 3G mobile phone services as well as for its
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access or WiMax
service this year.
Gil B. Genio, Globe Telecom head for business and carrier
services and chief executive officer of unit Innove
Communications, Inc., told reporters in a briefing yesterday that the
company would beef up its 3G and WiMax networks.
“We plan to
add 1,000 sites for both 3G and WiMax throughout
the year, not necessarily through building new sites but also upgrading our
old sites to handle the systems,” said Mr. Genio.
At the end of
2009 Globe Telecom had 3,000 3G and 900 WiMax
sites in addition to 60,000 regular cellular sites.
Mr. Genio said Globe Telecom would concentrate its WiMax rollout within urban areas which have a greater
demand for data transfer, and the 3G network in both urban and rural areas
because “3G is also used to call and text, not just send data.”
Upgrades for
the network will be done by placing antennas on existing towers. The cost
of building stand-alone physical structures for 3G or WiMax
will be more than the cost of the electronics to be placed, he said.
Only Globe
Telecom and Smart Communications, Inc. are offering WiMax
services in the country.
To boost the
broadband speed and capacity of Globe Telecom’s system, the company said it
has invested $60 million in the new Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC)
system.
“Our initial
activation in the SJC is 40 gigabytes per second. Last year Globe alone had
a data capacity of 21 gigabytes per second so the SJC can bring more
capacity. In fact it would be seven times more than the capacity three
years ago which was less than one gigabyte,” said Mr. Genio.
Globe Telecom
said this would cover the high data capacity used by business process
outsourcing clients and other consumers.
The SJC
system is owned by a consortium of telecommunication and technology firms
in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These
are Globe Telecom, Google, KDDI Japan, Network i2i of India, Reliance Globalcom
of Bermuda, Telemedia
Pacific Inc., Ltd. of Hong Kong, SingTel of Singapore, and PT Telekomunikasi
International of Indonesia.
Globe Telecom
increased its net income for the nine-month period ending September by 12%.
Profits rose to P9.9 billion from January to September 2009 from P8.8
billion in the same period in 2008. Subscribers to the mobile business
dropped to 23.1 million from 23.7 million due to the deliberate churning
out of some “lower-quality” subscribers.
Last
November, Globe Telecom said its broadband business had grown to 320,000
subscribers, mainly due to the higher take-up of its Tattoo mobile
broadband service. In its third-quarter financial report, Globe Telecom
said broadband revenues grew to P2.2 million from P1.3 million, or a 69%
increase.
Nokia announces X6 16 GB Phone (From I4U News, January 26, 2010)
- A new Nokia
phone is due out this winter. The X6 16 GB (via Electronista)
will be available in four colors. There will be an all-white model and a
white with yellow highlights model. The X6 will not come with the
"comes with music" download service.
The X6 sports
a 5 MP camera with a dual-LED flash and a Carl Zeiss
lens. It has photo-editing capabilities and dedicated video output. It
handles Ovi Maps and can also access Michelin and
Lonely Planet travel guides. The X6 comes pre-loaded with Spore, Asphalt4,
and DJ Mix Tour. Pricing has not yet been announced, but the 16 GB version
will be less expensive than its 32 GB counter-part.
Motorola seeks BlackBerry
ban in US (From CNET News, January 25, 2010)
- Motorola
has joined Eastman Kodak in asking U.S. authorities to ban imports
of BlackBerry devices, in a dispute over patents.
On Friday,
Motorola said it had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade
Commission, alleging that BlackBerry maker
Research In Motion is infringing on five Motorola
patents with its products. According to Motorola, RIM used to have a
license for the technology in question, but that licensing deal expired in
2007.
The news
comes a week after Kodak filed its own complaint with the ITC, claiming
that RIM is violating its patent for color image previewing and also asking
for an import ban. Kodak has made the same allegation against iPhone manufacturer Apple.
Ericsson cuts 1,500 more jobs, profit
plunges (January 25, 2010)
STOCKHOLM (AFP) –
Ericsson announced on Monday an extra 1,500 job cuts under restructuring
which bit deeply into fourth-quarter net profit at the firm, the world
leader in phone network equipment.
Total
announced job cuts are now about 6,500, generating huge restructuring
charges with the intention of bringing equally huge cost savings.
But Ericsson
chief executive Hans Vestberg refused to issue a
forecast for 2010 earnings, telling reporters it was "too early"
to say how the market would develop, financial daily Dagens
Industri said in its online edition.
The Swedish
telecom giant, which has some 83,000 employees worldwide, said sales had
dropped in the fourth quarter owing to cuts in investments by mobile phone
operators in a number of markets, including in developing nations in
central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In a sign of
the impact of the economic crisis on the telecom industry, Ericsson's net
profit plunged by 92 percent to 314 million kronor (30.7 million euros,
43.4 million dollars) between October and December.
That was in
contrast to a net profit of 3.89 billion kronor in the same period of 2008,
the company said in a statement.
The profit
was much lower than expected as analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had
forecast a net profit of 3.23 billion kronor.
Restructuring
costs nearly doubled to 4.3 billion kronor in the fourth quarter, compared to
2.3 billion kronor in the same period in 2008, and for the full year the
charges totalled 11.3 billion kronor, the company
said.
The company
estimated that its restructuring programme would
cost up to 14 billion kronor and bring annual savings of between 15 billion
and 16 billion kronor.
"When
the initial (restructuring) programme was
announced in January 2009, it was anticipated that the actions would result
in a reduction of the number of employees by some 5,000, of which about
1,000 in Sweden,
Ericsson said.
"The
5,000 has been exceeded and is estimated to reach approximately 6,500," the company said in the statement.
Ericsson has
also suffered from the difficulties at its two joint ventures, Sony
Ericsson and ST-Ericsson, which together chalked up charges of 1.46 billion
kronor.
Sales fell by
13 percent to 58.3 billion kronor in the fourth quarter in the wake of the
global economic crisis and growing competition from telecom equipment
industry with the rise of China's
Huawei.
Ericsson said
the anticipated decline in sales of older GSM networks had accelerated
owing to the economic crisis, but was not yet offset by the growth in
mobile broadband and investments in next-generation IP networks.
"During
the second half of 2009, Networks' sales were impacted by reduced operator
spending in a number of markets," Vestberg
said in a statement.
"During
2009, operators in a number of developing markets, especially Central
Europe, Middle East and Africa, became
increasingly cautious with investments, he said.
"Meanwhile,
other markets including China,
India and the US
continued to show good development with major network buildouts,"
Vestberg said.
Despite the
gloomy earnings report, the company said it planned to increase its
dividend to shareholders from 0.15 kronor to 2.00 kronor.
Ericsson
shares were down by 1.6 percent at 70.70 kronor on the Stockholm stock exchange in midday
trading.
Telco denies merger between Telecom
Italia-Telefonica Holdings (January 22, 2010)
(Bloomberg) - Telco SpA,
the holding company that controls Telecom Italia SpA,
denied a report of a possible merger with Telefonica
SA’s shareholder Criteria CaixaCorp
SA, published by la Repubblica today.
Telco’s
shareholders commented in a joint statement today.
India's GTL to take
over Aircel towers (From the Financial Times, January 15, 2010)
- Mumbai
India's GTL Infrastructure yesterday said it would take over the tower
assets of Malayasian-controlled Indian mobile
phone operator Aircel in a deal that is expected
to herald consolidation in the country's vast cellular tower sector.
GTL
Infrastructure, India's
largest independent tower operator, will pay Rs84 billionn
for 17,500 towers with rights to roll out 20,000 more for Aircel, a unit of Malaysia's Maxxis
Communications.
"This
transaction is likely to result in significant revenue opportunity for the
company in the range of Rs85 billion to Rs170 billion over next 5
years," GTL said in a Bombay Stock Exchange announcement.
The deal
comes as India's
mobile operators are increasingly in need of cash to fund a fierce price
war and to bid in a forthcoming government auction of spectrum for third
generation cellular networks.
The country
has a vast network of 400,000 mobile towers, which operators are expected
to use in the coming months to raise capital, either through outright
sales, such as Wednesday's Aircel deal, or
through initial public offerings.
Bharti Airtel, the country's number
one operator, Vodafone Essar, the industry number
three, and smaller rival Idea have a joint venture, Indus, that has 90,000
towers while Reliance Communications has its own company with 50,000
towers.
Both are
expected to hold initial public offerings in the near future.
Nokia says to offer free maps to smartphone users (January 21, 2010)
HELSINKI (AFP) –
Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, will offer free maps and
navigation services for its smartphone users, it
said Thursday in a move that puts pressure on players in the GPS industry.
"We are offering
global car and pedestrian navigation in 74 countries, in 46 languages ... Ovi Maps becomes completely free from this moment
onwards," Jukka Hosio,
director of Nokia's services marketing, told a press conference in Helsinki.
The move
follows and takes a step further a similar play by Google, which said last
year it would offer free navigation to users of Motorola's Droid cellphone model in the United States.
With its
global move, Nokia increases the pressure on key companies in the global
navigation market like Tom Tom and Garmin, which are likely to suffer from an increase in smartphones that support navigation applications.
Consultancy
firm iSupply said in September it expected the
GPS market to fall for the first time in 2009 after years of booming growth
and to fall off in the longer term afer a rebound
this year and next.
It expected
the number of smartphones with navigation
programs to exceed the number of GPS devices by 2014, whereas today there
are twice as many GPS devices compared to smartphones.
Shares in Tom
Tom slumped on the news from Nokia and were down
6.96 percent at 6.14 euros in Amsterdam at
1505 GMT while Garmin shed 2.72 percent to 35.10
dollars in New York.
For Nokia the
move is an attempt to boost its own position in the global smartphone market, where it has lost market share to
rivals like Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry.
In
mid-October, the Finnish firm posted its first loss in a decade, hit in
part by tough competition in the top-end smartphone
market.
"I
suppose Nokia thought it could stop some of the slide it has seen in the smartphone market with this move," said FIM
analyst Michael Schroeder.
"This is
such a tangible, useful service that the fact that it is being offered for
free will likely attract buyers. But will it be enough to stop the decline
in Nokia's market share, I don't know," Schroeder said.
Survey: EU mobile phone rates drop, but
still rich pickings (January 21, 2010)
LONDON (AFP) – An
EU drive against high cross-border mobile telephone charges has halved
prices, but operators are still making rich pickings and have raised
charges in other regions, a survey found on Thursday.
"A main
constraint on roaming usage is the lack of awareness by users, the chief
executive of the TCL company behind the report Margrit Sessions said, commenting on the effects of an
EU price cap.
The report
also said that operators had repackaged their pricing packages with the net
effect of making "roaming services to the US or other countries
relatively expensive."
The report
was published by Tariff Consultancy LTd., a firm specialising in providing marketing information.
"In our
survey over the three-year period since 2007, it is striking how little
unregulated roaming services pricing has declined," Sessions said.
"The user can end up paying ten times more for communications when
outside the EU."
She was
referring to regulations introduced by the European Commission to limit
contractual prices charged by national mobile telephone service operators
in the 26 EU countries for calls across borders but within the EU.
The
Commission acted in response to widespread complaints that such charging
structures were excessively high.
TCL found
that roaming rates for voice and text messages in the EU had halved as a
result. But very few operators were applying rates below the ceiling prices
laid down by the regulator, and the regulatory limit had now become the
standard.
The rates
charged to customers were about five times the wholesale ceiling rate paid
by the service providers for the capacity. However "individual
operator roaming rates vary from below the wholesale cap to more than ten
times the cap rate."
Operators had
responded to the price limits in the EU by various changes to their pricing
packages for calls to, and in, the rest of the world, with the broad effect
of raising those charges.
Some
operators had changed the way they defined their tariff regions with the
result that some countries that were previously included in the same same price band as the EU, such as the United States, the Asia Pacific region, Switzerland and Norway, now fell into an
increased price band.
And operators
were increasingly encouraging users to take bundled packages which
"bypass the EU roaming cap" by offering discounts "in return
for a weekly or monthly fee to selected holiday destinations but can
attract higher rates to EU countries zones" than laid down under the
rate cap.
The report
said that the price of a voice call from the EU to the next tariff zone
"has an average mark up of 200 percent," and the price of an SMS
call outside the EU to the next zone included an average mark up of 160
percent.
And the price
of mobile data roaming outside the EU to the next price zone had a mark up
of 270 percent.
Australian Government demands Telstra
split (From the BBC, September 15, 2009)
- The
Australian government has strengthened its demand for the country's biggest
telephone company, Telstra, to break up.
Telstra is
being asked to split its retail operations from its wholesale network.
The
government says this would help in the roll-out of a national broadband
network worth A$43bn ($30bn, £20.9bn).
The
government has been warning of a major regulatory shakeup of the telcoms industry.
"It is
the government's clear desire for Telstra to structurally separate, on a
voluntary and cooperative basis," said Communications Minister Stephen
Conroy.
Telstra has
not yet responded to the demand.
Cable tangle
Telstra was a
state-owned monopoly before it went mostly private in 2006.
It owns the
country's aging copper telecommunications network.
This could be
made redundant as the government pursues its plan for super-fast broadband
across the country.
Roll-out of
this new network would go faster if existing telecommunications providers
folded into it.
Legislation
underpinning the network was unveiled by Mr
Conroy and is to be submitted to parliament.
It gives
stronger powers to Australia's
competition watchdog and bars Telstra from additional wireless spectrum
until separation is completed.
The plans
will also force Telstra to sell off its cable network and interests in pay
TV arm Foxtel, and prevent it from acquiring
additional mobile spectrum.
Telstra
shares slumped shortly after the announcement.
Profits drop
Last month, the
new chief executive of Telstra, David Thodey,
downgraded earnings targets despite a 10% rise in profits over the year to
June.
Telstra's
mobile operations have been doing well but profits on
fixed line business is dropping.
Mr Thodey said in August that
Telstra was "engaging constructively" with Canberra on the new nationwide network
plan.
But he added
that Telstra also had a duty to look after shareholders.
France Télécom told to explain 23 staff suicides (From the TimesOnline, September 14, 2009)
- The French
Government has summoned the boss of France Télécom
to demand urgent action to reduce workplace stress after the suicides of 23
employees in the past 18 months.
Didier
Lombard, the chief executive of France Télécom,
will meet Xavier Darcos, the Minister for Work,
tomorrow to discuss steps to help workers at the Gallic telecommunications
group.
Christine Largarde, the Finance Minister, said today she had also
told France Télécom to call a board meeting ''as
matter of urgency''.
She said
directors needed to send out a ''very strong message to the personnel''
that the suicide rate at the former state monopoly was ''being taken into
account.''
Unions are
blaming the suicides on a modernisation programme that has led 10,000 employees to change jobs
over the past three years, with technical staff moved to call centres and sales departments.
Last week, a
32-year-old employee at Orange, the
operator's mobile telephone unit, committed suicide when she threw herself
out of a fourth-floor window at her office in Paris.
Her death
came after a meeting to discuss reorganisation of
the customer service department where she worked - adding weight to union
claims that restructuring is one of the reasons behind the suicides at
France Télécom.
A 48-year-old
technician in Troyes,
eastern France,
is recovering in hospital after stabbing himself in the stomach last week
during a meeting at which he was told he would have to take up a new post.
François Chérèque, secretary-general of the Confédération
Française Démocratique du Travail, said the suicides were "a call for
help about a problem linked to the place where the act happens".
France
Telecom has responded to the row by suspending restructuring, creating 100
additional posts in human resources and announcing the launch of
negotiations on workplace stress.
A spokesman
pointed out that France
has one of the highest suicide rates in Europe
at 17.8 deaths per 100,000 people per year.
France Télécom employs 102,000 people.
3 UK pushes for lower mobile
prices (From ComputerWeekly.com, September
14, 2009)
- The UK's smallest mobile operator, 3, has called
for regulatory reforms that will enable its business to grow in the face of
consolidation of the UK
mobile telecoms market.
Last week France
Telecom and Deutsche Telekom announced plans to
merge their UK mobile
businesses Orange
and T-Mobile to form a new market leader.
This will
reduce the number of UK mobile operators to four, but the new merged
company, Vodafone and O2 will all be much larger than 3.
Kevin
Russell, chief executive of 3 UK, said he supports the
merger, but called for reforms that will enable 3 to grow its business by
cutting prices to end users, according to the Financial Times.
If the
competition authorities approve the proposed merger between Orange UK and T-Mobile
UK, they
should allow 3 to attract customers by offering lower prices, he said.
Russell said
the competition authorities should consider cutting to nearly zero the
charges for mobile operators to connect to each others' networks.
They should
also ensure that, within 18 months, consumers can shift their mobile phone
number to another operator within two hours instead of two days.
Earlier this year,
3 launched a mobile package offering 15 Gbytes of
data for £15 a month in a bid to create a competitive advantage in the
mobile broadband market.
Also in
March, 3 gave away mobile broadband dongles for a limited time period in an
attempt to win more mobile broadband customers.
Uganda: Essar to take over Warid
Telecom (From allafrica.com, September 14,
2009)
-
Negotiations between the Dhabi Group, the owners of Warid
Telecom Uganda, and the Essar Group on a possible takeover of Warid telecom operations in Uganda are in advanced stages,
senior Warid officials disclosed recently.
Speaking in
an interview, the Head of Products and Services, Warid
Telecom Uganda, Mr Shine George disclosed that in about t three months
negotiations will be concluded with Essar Group
taking over control of Warid Uganda among many other
telecommunications portfolio of the Dhabi Group's African assets.
"There
are negotiations going on with Essar in India
and I can tell that in the next three months the negotiations will be over,"Mr Shine said, adding that the take over is
for the better and it is part of the consolidation process that is
happening all over the world.
Warid started its operation in Uganda in 2007 as the fourth
telecommunication service provider under the control and investment of the
Dhabi Group whose Chairman is the wealthy Sheik Nahayan
Mabarak Al Nahayan.Its
presence spurred the competition and helped to raise the quality of service
although the actual amount of call rates in the country has not significantly
reduced.
It is however
important to note that the Warid officials in Kampala are optimistic
that the take over will enable further expansion and innovation of more
tailor made products for different subscribers and company is promising to
be a force to reckon with.
SingTel to sell INQ's social networking phone (September 13, 2009)
HELSINKI
(Reuters) - Southeast Asia's biggest telecom operator, Singapore
Telecommunications , said on Monday it would start to sell a social
networking phone model INQ Mini 3G, targeting young customers.
The deal is a
milestone for INQ Mobile, a unit of Hong Kong's
Hutchison Whampoa, who so far has sold its phones
through Hutchison's operators in different countries.
"One of
the biggest operators has chosen us. This is confirmation that we are
serious," INQ's Chief Executive Frank Meehan
told Reuters.
INQ is
benefiting from its early move to make reasonably priced phones for
connecting to social networks and the Internet in general -- a move large handset
makers like Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Motorola (MOT.N) are only now following.
"Operators
are not looking at only differentiating at the top-end, but now they look
at many different price levels," Meehan said.
SingTel said it would unveil pricing details for the phone
later in the week when the model goes on sale in Singapore. INQ has earlier said
the model would cost operators less than $140, enabling many carriers to
offer it for free with monthly contracts.
INQ Mini 3G
is the first mass-market phone with an Internet-based Twitter client. The
phone will use Internet connections for sending the 140-character messages,
called Tweets, not text messages as in Twitter's own service.
Twitter has
seen explosive growth this year.
The majority
of visits to online social networks are still made by people sitting at a
computer telling their friends where they are and how they are feeling,
exchanging opinions on their favorite movies and music or up loading
pictures.
INQ, however,
has proved the spontaneous and personal nature of much of that
communication also lends itself to the handset. The INQ1 model, dubbed the Facebook phone, won the award for best phone at the
Mobile World Congress trade show in February.
INQ1 and new
INQ models integrate key features of Facebook and
other social networking sites into the phone's address book, removing the
need to separately log on to the service.
Meehan said
the company plans to enter the increasingly crowded smartphone
market next year, introducing a phone to operate on Google's Android
operating system.
"For
customers there hasn't really been anything in Android world to set them on
fire," Meehan said. "We think we can, and we have to, leapfrog
quickly." Most other cellphone makers plan
to also introduce Android phones, and Motorola unveiled last week its first
cellphone to run on Android, but analysts
questioned if it could revive the once-dominant handset maker's fortunes.
LG to launch first Android mobile in Q4
(September 13, 2009)
- LG has
announced its first Android mobile, the LG-GW620, featuring a three inch touchscreen and slide out QWERTY keypad. Up until now,
all LG smartphones have used the Windows Mobile
OS.
The company
says it's designed to appeal to people 'who use their handsets for email
and social networking, keeping them connected to their work or personal
communities'. The phone joins the growing list of Android wins, including
Motorola's first Android-based smartphone, Cliq, which was announced last week and devices from
Samsung and HTC.
"The LG-GW620
will appeal to first-time smartphone customers by
offering a new and different kind of user experience," said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO
of LG Electronics Mobile Communications. "Our objective is to provide
a wide selection of smartphones to satisfy the
diverse preferences of today’s consumers. This Android phone is just one of
many smartphone models we plan to introduce
worldwide in the years ahead."
Few technical
details of the new phone were released by the company other than to say
full specs will be revealed when the LG-GW620 launches in the fourth
quarter of this year in select European markets. Earlier this month, LG
announced it plans to introduce a minimum of 13 new smartphones
over the next 16 months that will use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile including
the new 6.5 version, which launches in October.
Deutsche Telekom
mulls bid for Sprint Nextel (September 13, 2009)
LONDON
(Reuters) - German telecoms company Deutsche Telekom
is mulling a bid for U.S. rival Sprint Nextel , Britain's Sunday Telegraph
newspaper reported.
The paper
said Deutsche, which last week agreed a deal with France Telecom to combine
their British mobile phone businesses -- T-Mobile and Orange -- had appointed Deutsche Bank to
advise on a possible tilt at Sprint, valued at $11 billion.
Deutsche Telekom slashed its full-year profit forecast in April,
partly due to a weak performance in the United States.
A
spokesperson at Deutsche Telekom declined to
comment.
India schedules 3G
license auction for December (September 13, 2009)
- India's
auction of 3G and WiMax licenses is now scheduled
to be held in December, according to a notice on the Web site of the
country's Department of Telecommunications.
The auction
was originally scheduled for January of this year, but was postponed after
disagreement within the government on the minimum cost of the licenses.
Bidding for
3G licenses will start Dec 7, with the WiMax
auction scheduled to start two days after the 3G auction is complete,
according to the notice.
Both Indian
and foreign companies are allowed to bid for the licenses, but foreign
companies will have to set up joint ventures with Indian investors to run
services in the country.
A group of
ministers, set up to resolve the dispute over pricing the licenses, has named
Indian rupees 250 billion (US$5 billion) as the minimum revenue from the
auction of the 3G and WiMax licenses in the
country, India's Minister of Communications, A. Raja said last month.
The Ministry of
Communications will license four slots for 3G in each of India's 22 service areas, with
a fifth slot reserved for two government-run telecommunications companies.
A
telecommunications company bidding for 3G licenses in all 22 circles will
have to pay at least Indian rupees 35 billion, according to the new minimum
pricing proposed by the Indian government. By the pricing announced last
year, they would have to pay about rupees 20 billion.
Two
companies, Bharat Sanchar
Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar
Telephone Nigam Ltd., were allotted 3G spectrum
ahead of the auction, and have started offering services. The government
said last year that these companies would have to pay license fees equal to
the highest bid in each service area.
The final
date for applications from bidders is Nov 13.
EU urges Czechs to cut mobile
termination rates (September 12, 2009)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -
The European Commission has urged the Czech
Republic to reduce the country's
mobile termination rates, among the highest in Europe.
Termination
rates are wholesale charges that mobile operators charge rivals for
connecting calls on their networks.
"The
average mobile termination rate in the Czech Republic is the
second-highest in the EU," European Union Telecoms Commissioner
Viviane Reding said in a statement.
The
Commission, executive arm of the 27-country EU, said in a letter to the
Czech telecoms regulator that it was disappointed by a decision to maintain
higher rates despite calls from the Commission to cut them.
Turk Telecom seeking funding for mobile
network subsidiary (September 11, 2009)
Turkish landline operator, Turk
Telecom has started negotiations with the banks in order to secure the
funding it will provide to its mobile network operator subsidiary Avea, as part of the restructuring of Avea's long term financial liabilities.
In a brief statement the company said
that terms of the funding has not been specified yet.
Banking sources close to the deal told
Reuters that the company was seeking a US$600 million, three-year syndicated
loan.
According to the latest statistics
from the Mobile World analysts, Avea ended the
first half of the year with 12.4 million customers and a market share of
just under 20%.
Avea is 81% owned by Turk Telekom and remaining 19% by Is Bankasi.
Turk Telekom itself is controlled by Dubai-based Oger Telecom, with 30% of its shares held by the govenment, and 15% listed on the local stock market. Avea recently named Erkan Akdemir as its new CEO, replacing Cüneyt
Türktan who had held the post since 2006.
EU travellers
to get cheaper mobile phone calls from Wednesday (June 30, 2009)
BRUSSELS (AFP) -
European travellers will pay less to use their
mobile phones while abroad in the EU from Wednesday when new regulated
price caps take effect across the 27-nation bloc.
Under the new
limits, the price of making a call while abroad in the European Union will
fall to 43 euro cents per minute, excluding sales tax, from a previous
maximum of 46 euro cents.
The price of
receiving calls abroad will drop to 19 cents from 22 cents.
The lower
caps are part of an ongoing EU campaign to reduce the cost of using mobile
phones across European borders, known as roaming fees, after regulated
limits were first imposed in 2007.
The regulated
prices are also being extended, for the first time, to cover sending text
messages and surfing the Internet via phone.
"The
roaming-rip off is now coming to an end," said EU Telecoms
Commissioner Viviane Reding in a statement.
Under the new
rules, sending a text message from abroad in the EU will cost a maximum 11
cents, excluding sales tax, little more than a third of the previous EU
average of 28 cents.
In order to
reduce the cost of surfing the Internet from hand-held devices, the new
rules will also limit the price operators charge each other for
transferring a megabyte of data while a user is on the road to a maximum of
1.00 euros.
Mobile
operators will also have to bill customers by the second from the 30th
second of a call in order prevent them from rounding up to the highest
minute, a practice which can cost consumers dearly.
"I call
on the mobile industry to pass these savings on to data roaming customers
swiftly," Reding said.
"The
(European) Commission and national regulators will monitor data roaming
charges very carefully and assess next year whether the roaming market is
finally becoming competitive."
Dell to make iPod
touch-like gadget (From PC World, June 30, 2009)
- Dell is
developing a pocket-sized gadget fashioned after Apple's iPod Touch that will play music, videos, and connect
with the Web and is based on the Google Android mobile operating system,
according to reports in today's Wall Street Journal.
Dell hopes to
break a bad streak of luck with consumer gadgets. It wasn't very successful
with its DJ Ditty music player line or with the Axim
PDAs, which got axed a few years ago. Dell is
giving pocket-sized devices one more shot, this time with an iPod Touch-style mobile Internet device (MID). So will
it make a difference?
WSJ's report
says that Dell's upcoming MID is slightly larger than the iPod Touch, and does not have cell phone capabilities.
In development since last year, Dell's unnamed gadget will not rely on
Dell's in-house software team and instead should benefit from using the
Android OS.
We've seen
earlier this month a fuzzy photo of what it was supposed to be Dell's smartphone project, a Palm Pre look-alike. But we also
know that Dell's first mobile phone prototypes have been rejected by
wireless networks operators because the designs were too dull. This time
around though, Dell has more support from wireless carriers according to
the WSJ report.
Support from
a wireless carrier could help Dell sell the devices and may mean the gadget
could be married to a cellular data plan similar to how Verizon
is selling a Hewlett-Packard netbook today.
Another route for Dell is to sell this iPod
Touch-like device with a simcard slot. Dell's
sleek Adamo laptops have a simcard
slot (for attaching wireless carrier's cellular data card) but there's no
word on such capability on the company's MID.
Nokia has
also had three forays into the pocketable MID
market, with what the company calls "Internet Tablets." But these
devices have never really got off the ground because besides Wi-Fi, the only other way to connect to the Internet
was to tether the device to your mobile phone via Bluetooth. And if you
have a BlackBerry, an iPhone
or a Palm Pre, having a separate device to browse the Internet can be quite
useless.
Besides that,
Microsoft is also putting out a competitor to the iPod
Touch, in the name on Zune HD, which will have
strong multimedia capabilities and an Internet browser. So if Dell is
working on a nonmultimedia-oriented pocketable MID, without cell phone capabilities, then
the whole idea of the device might be a hard sell.
With that in
mind, the WSJ report mentions that the launch of the Dell MID (later this
year) could be delayed, or the project could be scrapped entirely, just like
it happened with the company's plans on launching a new music player
(targeted at iPod customers, of course).
At least the
WSJ report reconfirms that Dell is still working on a smartphone,
more specifically running Google's Android OS, due to be launched sometime
later this year, slotting in with earlier rumors from January.
France Telecom may
freeze fiber-optic investment, Echos says (June 30, 2009)
(Bloomberg) -
France Telecom SA is threatening to suspend investment in fiber-optic
cables that could bring high-speed Internet access to French households,
Les Echos reported, without saying where it got
the information.
The company
is opposed to a decision by the Arcep
telecommunications regulator authorizing rivals to demand that France
Telecom install fiber optic cabling in households that may use competitor
services, the French daily newspaper said.
Bringing
access to 3 million households represents an investment of 3 billion to 4
billion euros ($4.2 billion to $5.6 billion), the newspaper said.
EU steps up offensive on mobile
telephone fees (May 7, 2009)
BRUSSELS (AFP) - The
European Commission stepped up its offensive on mobile phone fees Thursday,
calling for a clampdown on rates operators charge to connect to each
other's networks.
The European
Union's executive arm urged national regulators to ensure that such
so-called termination rates are based on the real costs an efficient
operator incurs for passing on a call from another operator.
Such rates
vary widely among EU countries, from two euro cents per minute in Cyprus to 15 euro cents in Bulgaria with an average across
the 27-nation European Union of 8.55 cents.
That works
out to about nine times more than what it costs fixed-line operators to
pass calls between each other's networks, much to the concern of the
commission.
EU
Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding
said the situation benefited operators of big mobile phone networks because
they had more incoming calls from fixed-line operators and smaller mobile
operators.
"High
mobile termination rates are ... an indirect subsidy for the larger mobile
operators -- a subsidy that has to be paid by all fixed operators, by
smaller mobile operators and by all consumers," she told a press
conference.
"While
there may have been a greater tolerance of high mobile termination rates
when mobile networks were first being rolled out across Europe,
they can no longer be justified today, at this advanced stage of mobile
market development."
Concretely,
the commission move consists of recommending national regulators to follow
a set of principles when calculating a fair price for the cost of passing
calls between operators.
The attack on
termination rates is the latest move in a campaign by the commission to
bring down the cost of using mobile phones in Europe
by regulating prices lower.
It has
already set caps on the price of international calls on mobile phones and
last month pushed through legislation limiting the cost of sending text messages
and surfing the Internet with a mobile phone while abroad.
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