Cellular-News for Monday 19th December 2005

Cellular-News -

[[3G News]]

3G Research Program for the Middle-East The Qatar based telecoms operator, Qtel has announced a joint collaboration with Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), University of Qatar (UQ) and the College of the North Atlantic at Qatar (CNA-Q) to conduct research and studies into 3G technologi...

Vodafone Launches 3G in Hungary

Vodafone Hungary has launched its 3G services in Hungary. The first service from Vodafone will be high speed internet access on the new 3G network with the Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G data card. Attila Vitai, Vodafone Hungary 's CEO said: "Vodafone's ...

[[Financial News]]

Sweden's AaF Takes Over Operations At Ericsson Design Center

Swedish technical consultant Aangpannefoereningen AB Friday said it will take over the operations at the Ericsson Design Center in Lysekil on the Swedish west coast from Telefon AB LM Ericsson. ...

Cablecom Starts Mobile Service With TDC Unit

Swiss cable television operator Cablecom Holdings AG Friday launched a prepaid mobile phone offering, further heating up competition with telephone incumbent Swisscom AG. ...

Sprint Nextel To Buy Affiliate Enterprise Communications For $98 Million

Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to acquire affiliate carrier Enterprise Communications Partnership for $98 million, including the assumption of debt. ...

Sprint Nextel To Buy Velocita;Sees Closing First Half 06

Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to acquire Velocita Wireless through a stock purchase agreement in an effort to add spectrum capacity. ...

Russia's MTS ups stake in regional mobile operator to 100%

Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems, or MTS, increased its stake in mobile operator Telesot-Alania to 100% from 52.5%, MTS said Friday. ...

Nokia Opens New Office in India

Nokia has announced that it is to locate its new Nokia Global Networks Solutions Center in Chennai, India. The Solutions Center will perform network operation tasks for selected operator customers in the Asia Pacific region as well as Europe, the Mid...

[[Handsets News]]

Vodafone Group Japan Unit May Procure Handsets From Samsung

PREMIUM - Vodafone Group PLC's Vodafone KK unit in Japan is considering procurement of third-generation mobile handsets based on W-CDMA technology from Samsung Electronics Co., a Vodafone KK spokesman said Friday. ...

[[Legal News]]

Second NTP Patent Rejected In Non-Final Action

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a second NTP Inc. patent in what it described as a non-final action. ...

EU Criticizes Watchdogs On Mobile Roaming Charge

The European Commission Friday criticized French and other national telephone regulators for their failure to crack down on possible excessive charges for mobile phone roaming. ...

Russia's MTS says Kyrgyzstan's Bitel GSM operation restored

Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel has restored operations of its GSM network, MTS said in a statement Friday. MTS has recently bought a 51% stake in Bitel. ...

Kyrgyzstan's Bitel says 180 employees refused to come to work

About 180 employees of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel did not come to work Friday as they were afraid that their lives may be in danger, Bitel said in a statement on its official Web site Friday. ...

Patent Office Rejects 3rd NTP Patent In Non Final Action

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a third NTP Inc. patent in another non-final office action. ...

Contactless Payment Phones Tested in USA

A group of companies have announced an advanced Near Field Communication (NFC) trial for mobile phone applications including contactless payments, mobile content and premium arena services at Philips Arena in Atlanta, USA. The trial is the first larg...

[[Mobile Content News]]

51% of UK's Frequent Internet Users Are Interested in Mobile Banking

One in four users would consider switching banks if they were offered free mobile banking services and 51% would be interested in using a mobile banking service according to a survey of 2,127 UK online users, conducted by Forrester Custom Research an...

[[Network Contracts News]]

South Africa Gets Push-2-Talk

South Africa, Vodacom has launched the first Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) service to the South African business market. The communication experience of PoC can best be described as a walkie-talkie or two way radio communication experience, which ...

[[Offbeat News]]

Two SIMs, One Phone Number

Singapore's M1 is launching a service that enables its customers to have two SIM cards, but both sharing the same phone number. They can use this extra SIM card on another mobile device, including a datacard, a Blackberry, car phone, PDA or another m...

[[Reports News]]

Voice Competition Puts Squeeze on US Wireless Market

A new report from Strategy Analytics has highlighted increasing signs of weakness in the US wireless voice market, with average revenues per user (ARPUs) for voice services dropping 8% year on year and data services failing to make up the gap. The qu...

10% of Drivers Use a Cellphone While on the Move The USA's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released a report that finds 6% of drivers used mobile phones while driving in 2005 nationwide, compared to 5% in 2004. This result is from the National Occupant Protection Use Surv... [[Statistics News]]

Russia's MegaFon user base in Siberia up to 700,000 users

The subscriber base of Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon in the Siberian Federal District more than doubled to 700,000 users since the beginning of the year, the company's press service said Friday. ...

Brazil's Mobile Phone Mix Edges Toward Post Paid In Nov

Brazilian mobile phone companies saw the percentage of post-paid clients slightly rise to 23.7% in November from 23.5% in the month before, indicating that margins for operators may have improved slightly. ...

Four Million Musical Melons in South Korea

South Korea's SK Telecom has announced that 'Melon', a wired and wireless integrated music portal which opened in November of 2004, now has over four million subscribers. The number of paying subscribers who enjoy streaming music downloading services...

15 Million Mobile TV Users in the US by 2009 Ten years ago, it was the Internet that threw the telecom, media and marketing worlds into chaos. Starting next year, it will be the mobile phone, according to a new report from eMarketer, which forecasts that the number of US consumers who watch TV ...

Wireless to Generate 50% of Total Telecoms Revenues in 2007

The global telecommunications industry revenue will reach US$1.2 trillion by the close of 2006, with continued strong growth in wireless communications leading the way, says a new market analysis report from Insight Research. According to the new ind...

[[Technology News]]

ZTE Shows Off CDMA Video Services in China

China's ZTE says that it has become the first company to provision CDMA video service solutions in China, and only the second company to do so in the world. ZTE has successfully demonstrated video calls between video handsets, video handset and PC SI...

T-Mobile Signs Signalling Contract

Teleglobe says that it has established an agreement with T-Mobile UK to provide inter-carrier Signaling Connection Control Part (SCCP) transport of their signalling traffic from international roamers. Under the agreement, T-Mobile will directly conne...