Cellular-News for Thursday 9th February 2006

Cellular-News -

[[ 3G ]]

Indonesia Telkomsel,Indosat, Excelcom Win 3G Licenses

The Indonesian government has awarded PT Indonesian Satellite, PT Excelcomindo Pratama and unlisted PT Telekomunikasi Selular, or Telkomsel, licenses to operate 3G networks, Indonesian Communication Minister Sofyan Djalil told reporters Wednesday. ...

Nokia Wins Network Expansion Contract With 3 In UK

Nokia says it has received a network expansion contract in the U.K. from mobile operator 3, owned by Hutchison Whampoa. ...

Regulator Asks Hutchison To Highlight 3G IPO Risks - Source

Italian stock market regulator Consob has placed unusually strict disclosure requirements for Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s planned initial public offering of Italian mobile phone unit 3 Italia, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday. ...

Mobilcom Founder: Letter Aids Claims Vs France Telecom

Gerhard Schmid, the founder and former chief executive of German firm Mobilcom believes he has a good chance of making prior minority shareholder France Telecom liable for the financial consequences stemming from its termination of a contract between...

KPN, Telfort Put Rollout Of 3G Networks On Hold

Dutch telecommunications operators Royal KPN and Telfort have put the rollout of their third-generation mobile networks on hold, pending the outcome of a study into the possible synergies that can be reached by integrating the networks, the operators...

ANALYSIS: Can Sunbeach's CDMA mobile model work?

PREMIUM - Barbadian ISP Sunbeach is gearing up to launch a new CDMA mobile service as early as mid year. However, while the company's CEO Ian Worrell is confident that Sunbeach will differentiate itself through roaming and advanced data services, analysts are ...

HSDPA Launched in Kuwait

Kuwait's Wataniya Telecom yesterday opened its High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) network, making it the first operator in the Middle East and Africa region to offer mobile services beyond 3G. The solution, provided by Nokia, covers Kuwait and...

[[ Financial ]]

FOCUS: VimpelCom shareholders' conflict worsens, future unclear

PREMIUM - The conflict between two key shareholders of Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom has worsened in the last few weeks, creating problems for the company. Analysts see no easy exit from the situation since both shareholders want to incre...

Comcel to invest US$66mn in infrastructure in 2006

Colombian mobile operator Comcel plans to invest 150bn pesos (US$66.4mn) to expand its infrastructure in 2006, local daily Portafolio reported. ...

Knowledge Management for Customer Service: Critical Ingredients for Success

As enterprises increasingly use customer service to differentiate themselves; knowledge management has gained prominence as a strategic initiative. This eGain whitepaper discusses the critical ingredients of success as it relates to knowledge management strategy, technology, people and processes.

CLICK HERE - Download New Whitepaper

Compliments of eGain

[[ Handsets ]]

Camera Phone Demand Soon to Peak - report

Phones with the ability to take images, both still and video, have captured about 40% of the wireless phone market, reports In-Stat. Despite the products' popularity, many camera phone users want higher resolution, the ability to use storage media, a...

SonyEricsson Tops Handset Sales In January

The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, has released their "Top 10"-list for January 2006. The list is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile phone cases that have been ordered from Krusell duri...

[[ Legal ]]

Telenor Commences Arbitration Against Alfa Group

Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor, Wednesday said it has commenced an arbitration proceeding against Alfa Group Russia's subsidiary Storm LLC in connection with Storm's violations of the shareholders agreement of Ukrainian mobile operator...

Nortel Reaches Proposed Class-Action Settlement

Nortel Networks Corp. has agreed in principle to settle two significant class-action lawsuits against it, which result in the payment of $575 million in cash and the issuance of 628,667,750 of its shares, or about 14.5% of its current equity. ...

Qualcomm: Court Orders Broadcom Must Remove ITC Action

Qualcomm says a district court permanently enjoined Broadcom Corp. from going ahead with infringement claims against it, regarding two patents. ...

[[ Mobile Content ]]

Mobile TV and Mobile E-Mail Are Favorite Applications - survey

Downloading music to a mobile handset, accessing and editing e-mails on a mobile handset, watching television or the person at the other end on the display during a phone call - which services will wireless customers be using in the future, and what ...

[[ Network Operators ]]

O2 Abolishes Roaming Charges Between The Irelands

O2 Ireland has became the first operator in Ireland to abolish roaming charges between the Southern Republic of Ireland and British Northern Ireland for all of it's 1.6 million customers. In addition the company has abolished roaming charges across G...

Vodafone Japan Adopts Ethical Shopping

Vodafone Japan has announce its implementation of Vodafone Group's Code of Ethical Purchasing (CEP) with its main suppliers starting mid-February 2006 as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. The CEP is designed to promote safe and fair...

[[ Offbeat ]]

UK Mobile Users Upset At Poor Customer Service

New research shows that more than 40% of internet chat about UK mobile operators is related to customer service issues. Not only is customer care the most common topic of discussion, it also attracts the most negative sentiment, with only one UK oper...

[[ Regulatory ]]

Russian lower house OKs last reading of caller-pays bill

Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved Wednesday the third, and last, reading of a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle in Russia. ...

Movistar: Spectrum bidding rules on sale Feb 20

Mobile operator Movistar Chile has set February 20 as the date to start selling the bidding rules for the auction of 25Mhz of excess spectrum it has in the 800MHz band, local press reported. ...

Hutchison joins Movistar spectrum suitors

The Argentine unit of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications has put in a bid for the 35MHz of the spectrum mobile operator Movistar Argentina is expected to return to authorities, local press reported. ...

EU Urges New Rules To Cut International Mobile Phone Roaming Costs

BRUSSELS (AP)--The European Commission wants new rules to stop mobile phone firms charging travelers a higher price for making calls abroad, European Union Telecommuications Commissioner Vivane Reding said Wednesday. ...

Antonyuk: Russia gets 50 bln rbl annually in GSM frequency fees

The Russian government receives 50 billion rubles annually from GSM mobile operators in payments for frequency usage, Deputy IT and Telecommunications Minister Boris Antonyuk told a news conference Wednesday. ...

[[ Reports ]]

Spend on Wireless by Education Authorities to Soar

Juniper Research finds that the market for mobile and wireless in the education sector will grow exponentially from US$827 million in 2005 to US$6.49 billion in 2010. Overall expenditure will be made up of sums for the buying in of handheld and porta...

Enterprise Wireless Data Revenues Set to Top $22 Billion

Strategy Analytics has released a report that is predicting that business use of wireless data will step into the early mainstream market in 2006, growing over 20 percent to a market worth over US$22 Billion in North America, Western Europe and Asia/...

Wireless Industry Must Prepare For Radically Different Futures

The wireless industry could evolve in very different ways over the next five to ten years, demanding robust planning by network operators, technology vendors, service providers and regulators, according to a new report from Analysys Research. Major u...

[[ Statistics ]]

Analysts say Kyrgyz mobile subscriber base at 560,000 on Feb 1

The mobile communications subscriber base in Kyrgyzstan amounted to

560,000 users as of February 1, consulting company Expert said in a report released Wednesday. No comparisons were provided. ...

Survey shows Russia's mobile penetration up to 60% as of January

Russia's mobile penetration rate amounted to about 60% in January, up from about 56% in December 2005, according to a survey results of which were released Wednesday by Russia's ROMIR Monitoring. Russia's population amounts to about 142.8 million p...

Azercell mobile user base up 34.6% on year as of Jan 1

The subscriber base of Azeri mobile operator Azercell Telecom rose

34.6% on the year to 1.75 million users as of January 1, the company said in a press release Wednesday. ... [[ Technology ]]

Symbian OS License Costs Cut

Symbian has drastically cut the cost of Symbian software licenses for use in smartphones. The company says that its objective is to reduce the cost of using Symbian OS and further accelerate the uptake of Symbian OS in high volume segments. The curre...