Cellular-News for Monday 13th March 2006

Cellular-News -

[[3G News]]

China Homegrown 3G Standard To Test In Hong Kong

A small trial network of China's homegrown third-generation mobile phone standard will be set up in Hong Kong soon, according to a Hong Kong government-backed wireless industry association. ...

Foreign Ownership Cost DiGi.Com Malaysia 3G License-Paper

KUALA LUMPUR (AP)--Malaysia's No. 3 mobile phone operator, DiGi.Com, failed to win a lucrative third-generation mobile phone license because it is foreign-owned, a newspaper reported Sunday, citing the country's communications minister. ...

Romanian 3G Spectrum Dispute Solved

A radio spectrum dispute between Vodafone and RomTelecom in Romania has been resolved with RomTelecom shutting down trial networks which used 3G spectrum allocated to Vodafone. RomTelecom had been granted a temporary license to use the spectrum so th...

Vodafone Deploys HSDPA in Portugal

Vodafone Portugal says that it has begun the roll-out of HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) capability on its 3G network. At this stage, HSDPA technology access is available to a selected group of individual and business customers in Lisbon, C...

[[Financial News]]

Australia's Telstra To Expand Ties With Asia: CEO

Australia's Telstra will continue to look at opportunities to expand its ties with Asia, Chief Executive Solomon Trujillo said Friday. ...

India Spice Telecom: Telekom Malaysia Buys 49% Stake

Telekom Malaysia has taken a 49% stake in India's Spice Telecom, said a senior executive of the mid-sized mobile phone company Friday. ...

TDC: Polish Polkomtel Shareholders Accept Sale Offer

Danish telecommunications group TDC, Friday said the Polish shareholders in Polkomtel has accepted its offer to sell 76% of its holding in the Polish mobile telecommunications operator. ...

Telemar posts US$516mn profit, up 48%

Brazilian telecoms group Telemar posted profits of 1.11bn reais (US$516mn) for 2005, up 48% compared to 2004, the company said in its earnings statement. ...

Vietnamese Operators Plan Stock Floatation

Vietnam's VinaPhone and MobiFone plan to equitise and issue shares on the stock market before year's end, according to parent firm Viet Nam Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (VNPT). VinaPhone assets, in terms of user subscriptions, reached US$...

[[Handsets News]]

Cingular, T-Mobile Confirm Component Issues With Razr

Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA confirmed they had pulled a number of Motorola Razrs because they were inadvertently disconnecting phone calls. ...

Kyocera expects 50% handset revenue growth in 2006

US CDMA mobile handset manufacturer Kyocera Wireless aims to grow its sales in Brazil by 50% in 2006 compared to 2005, Fabio Castanheira, Kyocera's general manager in Brazil, told BNamericas. ...

LG expects 80% jump in handset sales in 2006

The Brazilian division of South Korean electronics colossus LG expects to record an 80% jump in mobile phone sales to 6.3 million units in

2006 from 3.5 million in 2005, LG announced at the Telexpo in São Paulo. ...

Linux And Microsoft To Overtake Symbian - report

At 3GSM in Barcelona, Symbian had announced that shipments of its mobile operating system almost tripled from 14.4 million units in 2004 to 33.9 million units in 2005, the fourth consecutive year that Symbian enjoyed a growth rate in excess of 100%. ...

Nokia Opens Indian Handset Factory

Nokia has inaugurated its new manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, Chennai, India. The manufacturing facility in Chennai is Nokia's fifteenth manufacturing facility globally. Nokia is the only company in India whose facility manufactures both mob...

[[Messaging News]]

RIM Upgrades BlackBerry Servers

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced the immediate availability of BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server -- Small Business Edition v4.1 for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino. Incorporating feedback from thousands o...

[[Network Operators News]]

Resolving Network Problems In Guyana

Guyana Telephone & Telegraph has responded to local media complaints about congestion on their GSM network and published a program to aleviate the situation as soon as possible. For its part, GT&T has responded to what it felt were a number of inaccu...

Qtel Gets New HQ Building

Qatar's Prime Minister, H.H Sheikh Abdullah Bin Khalifa Al Thani, officially opened Qtel's new headquarters building. The 27 storey Qtel tower is fitted with IP based telephony, WiFi on every floor and advanced high-speed video conferencing facilitie...

Turkcell Opens New R&D Center

Turkeys Turkcell has opened a new R&D Center, which brings together all of the Company's research and development operations in a single location. Over 260 engineers dedicated to developing mobile communications technologies and services will staff t...

[[Offbeat News]]

Greek Wiretaps Probe Summons Senior Ericsson Official

ATHENS (AP)--A parliament committee probing the wiretapping of Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and top officials during the Athens Olympics summoned a senior Ericsson (ERICY) executive Friday to testify. ...

British Workers Encouraged To "Switch Off" From Work

British workers have been warned not to allow mobile technology to harm their work-life balance at the launch of a new public-private sector business group, led by Orange. The Orange Future Enterprise Coalition (OFEC) has brought together government,...

[[Personnel News]]

Gent To Quit As Vodafone Life President - Breaking Views

Vodafone Group's Life President Chris Gent is to step down, Web site BreakingViews.com said Sunday. ...

[[Regulatory News]]

Subtel: Industry should concentrate on mobile, broadband, VAS

Chile's telecommunications sector is expected to have a positive year and the industry should concentrate in areas of growth such as mobile, broadband and value-added services, local newspaper Diario Financiero quoted Chile's telecoms regulator (Subt...

New Licenses for Fixed and Mobile Services in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has announced plans for liberalising the telecoms market in the Arab nation. The CITC has employed consultants, Arthur D. Little to assist it in a series of public consultatio...

[[Reports News]]

New Report Into Global Telecoms Development

Although there has been global progress in improving access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), poor countries still lag behind in making ICT applications commonplace in governments, schools and business, says the World Bank in a new...