Cellular-News for Wednesday 5th April 2006

Cellular-News -

[[ Financial ]]

Softbank To Procure About Y1.28 Trillion For Vodafone Japan Buy

Softbank Corp. plans to procure around Y1.28 trillion from a syndicate of Japanese and overseas financial institutions for its planned acquisition of the Japanese unit of Vodafone Group, people familiar with the transaction said Tuesday. ...

NTL Agrees To Buy Virgin Mobile For $1.68B

U.K. cable operator NTL Inc. on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy Virgin Mobile, the virtual mobile network operator mostly owned by Richard Branson, for 962.4 million pounds ($1.68 billion). ...

SingTel Could Pay Up To S$4.2 Billion In Dividend For FY06 - Analysts

Singapore Telecommunications could pay shareholders a bumper total dividend of up to S$4.2 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31 due to the absence of large acquisitions in the past 12 months, analysts said. ...

OTE Looks To Dispose Of 90% Stake In Armenia's Armentel

Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) Tuesday said that after consultation with the government of Armenia, it's examining options to dispose of its 90% stake in Armentel. ...

Russia's MTS buys stakes in four minor regional companies

Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has bought controlling stakes in four minor regional Russian companies, MTS said in a statement Tuesday. ...

Analyst: Ola suitors face complex challenges

Companies interested in becoming a technology, management and financial partner for mobile operator Colombia Mvil (Ola) have challenges that could go far beyond the fact that Ola's total net revenue in the past three years is negative US$386mn. ...

America Mvil to acquire Verizon LatAm assets for US$3.7bn

Verizon Communications has agreed to sell its Caribbean and Latin American telecommunications operations, including a stake in Venezuela's Cantv, to Mexican group America Mvil (NYSE: AMX) for US$3.7bn, the company said in a statement. ...

[[ Handsets ]]

Battle for Mobile OS Domination is Over - report

Many people believe that the future battle on the mobile market will be between the mobile operating systems. Especially Microsoft and Symbian are competing to become the future operating system (OS) on the mobile market, but also PalmSource, Linux b...

Golden Walkman from Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson is launching a golden flavoured upgrade to its W800 Walkman phone. Available in Titanium Gold the W700 is the 8th Walkman phone from Sony Ericsson. The Walkman music player even works with the phone turned-off - great for use on flights...

[[ Legal ]]

Judge 'Struggling' With Sprint Side Of UbiquiTel Suit

A Delaware judge Tuesday said he is "struggling" with a key argument Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) is using to defend itself against accusations it has breached affiliate agreements with UbiquiTel and iPCS. ...

[[ Mobile Content ]]

Mobile TV Takes Center Stage At Wireless Trade Show

While video on the cell phone was merely a gimmick last year, it's become a full-blown feature and will be one of the main focuses at this year's CTIA Wireless trade show. ...

Fox TV Content For Mobile Phones

Proteus says that it has significantly expanded distribution into the Latin American wireless market with a broad and exclusive partnership with Fox Latin American Channels. As a part of the deal, Proteus and Fox have launched "MyFox," a new cell pho...

Don't Ignore Older Mobile Content Customers - report

School-age teens and young adults are the leading users the mobile applications sector in Britain and Germany, says M:Metrics. In its February Benchmark Survey, the measurement firm found that Generation M, 13 to 24-year-olds, are the most predispos...

[[ Network Contracts ]]

Ericsson and Mascom Partner to Introduce 1800MHz to Network

Mascom, the leading cellular operator in Botswana, has awarded Ericsson a US$1.4 million contract to add 1800MHz spectrum to its network as part of its strategy to improve the quality of its service and provide a platform for future growth. This foll...

Thai Operator Orders Billing Platform

WeDo Soft has announced a partnership with AIS, a Thai cellular service provider, who has chosen to integrate RAID, the company's Revenue Assurance Solution. AIS wanted to implement automated, integrated, end-to-end Revenue Assurance processes, which...

[[ Network Operators ]]

Russia's VimpelCom starts Beeline campaign in Ukraine

Ukrainian Radiosystems (URS), a subsidiary of Russia?s second largest mobile operator VimpelCom, on April 1 started advertising campaign for VimpelCom's Beeline brand in Ukraine, Kommersant business daily reported Tuesday, citing representatives of U...

Entel PCS aims for 15% growth in 2005

Chilean mobile operator Entel PCS forecasts growth of 15% this year, in line with growth expectations for Chile's mobile industry as a whole, local newspaper El Mercurio quoted Entel PCS general manager Hernin Mari as saying. ...

Official says Russia's MegaFon cuts tariffs in Chechnya threefold

Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon has cut its tariffs for mobile services in Russia's constituent republic of Chechnya threefold, Muslim Khuchiyev, deputy chief of staff of Chechnya's president and government, told ITAR-TASS Tuesday. ...

MegaFon launches network in Norilsk

Mobicom-Novosibirsk, a subsidiary of Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon, has launched its mobile network into commercial operations in the Norilsk industrial area and the Taimyr Autonomous District, MegaFon said in a statement Tuesday. ...

Telenor Aims To Take Reclaim No 2 Spot In Sweden

Telenor's newly-acquired Swedish mobile telecom unit aims to reclaim the number two position among business users it had several years ago, the unit's chief executive, Johan Lindgren, told reporters at a press meeting in Stockholm Tuesday. ...

Landlines Follow Where Cellular Leads

Cable & Wireless in The Cayman Islands as extended its landline network to an island that had uptill now only had cellular phone capabilities. The Cayman Islands' stronger network Cable & Wireless has completed a major programme of work in Little Cay...

Nigerian Operator Expands Coverage

Nigeria's Glo Mobile says that it has extended its GSM network coverage to every state in the country. According to a recent report presented to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Globacom has covered all major Nigerian cities and towns wh...

[[ Regulatory ]]

Telenor, NTC To Make Joint Application For Egypt Licence

Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor, Tuesday said it will cooperate with Egyptian company National Telecommunications Holding to make a joint application to deliver a mobile network in Egypt. ...

EU Warns Countries Over Failing To Apply Telecom Rules

The European Commission Tuesday sent formal warnings to more than a dozen countries for breaking European Union telecommunications rules. ...

[[ Statistics ]]

Number of fixed CDMA-800 users up 16.4% in Ukraine in Jan-Mar

The number of subscribers to fixed CDMA-800 services increased 16.4% on the year to 135,000 users in Ukraine in January-March, the Association of CDMA operators of Ukraine said Monday. ...

[[ Technology ]]

NTT Docomo Unveils New Mobile Credit Card Service

Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo unveiled Tuesday a new mobile phone-based credit card service, which it plans to roll out later this month. ...

Four Factors Critical to Near Field Communications Market

Near Field Communication (NFC) is still in the early stages of commercial development. ABI Research has identified four factors that will be critical to the technology's successful deployment over the next few years. According to Erik Michielsen, the...