Cellular-News for Monday 23rd January 2006

Cellular-News -

Improvements to cellular-news

Our news partner, Prime-Tass has opened a bureau in Croatia's capital Zagreb, which will be responsible for covering news in the Balkans.

This development will improve cellular-news coverage of the fast growing telecoms markets in the former Yugoslavia region.

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[[3G News]]

China Issues Homegrown 3G Mobile Phone Standard

China issued specifications for its third-generation mobile phone technology, TD-SCDMA, to foster the "timely" standardization of infrastructure based on the homegrown system, the Ministry of Information Industry said Friday in a statement on its Web...

Austria Launching HSDPA This Month

Austria's mobilkom says that it plans to launch its HSDPA network in some districts of Vienna by the end of January and to begin sales of HSDPA data cards now. A free software upgrade to HSDPA for owners of the UMTS+EDGE data card will be introduced ...

[[Financial News]]

Motorola CFO: Co Will No Longer Provide EPS View

Motorola will stop providing quarterly per-share earnings forecast starting in the July conference call, according to the company's chief financial officer. ...

Telecom Italia Sells Venezuela Mobile Operator

Telecom Italia said Friday it had sold its Venezuela mobile phone unit Digitel Venezuela for $425 million, the proceeds of which the Italian telecommunications company said would be entirely used to cut debt. ...

Hurricane Katrina Damages Alltel 4Q Profits

Alltel Corp.'s fourth-quarter profit fell 5.7%, reflecting incremental costs of $9.5 million for Hurricane Katrina. ...

Alltel Sees Average Revenue Per User Growth Slowing In 2006

Alltel Corp.'s rate of average revenue per user growth is likely to slow in 2006, an executive said Friday. ...

Venezuela Digitel Buyer Plans Fusion With Cell Cos

A Venezuelan firm that has offered to purchase cellular company Digitel also plans a merger with two cellular operators to create a company with national reach. ...

Millicom contemplates asset sale

European mobile holding company Millicom International Cellular has entered a process of due diligence to contemplate selling its operations worldwide, the company said in a statement. ...

Singapore Operator Sees Shrinking Subscriber Base

Singapore's MobileOne (M1) has reported that it ended last year with

1.246 million customers made up of some 809,500 postpaid customers and 436,200 prepaid customers. This is the first time that the company has reported a fall in its subscriber base.... [[Handsets News]]

Sensetech Rides Success Of Motorola's Razr With Funding

Slim is in -- and paying off -- at Korean start-up Sensetech. After signing on to supply super-thin keypads for Motorola's popular Razr cellphones and new Pebl line, Sensetech scored $5.5 million from venture capitalists. ...

Study Finds No Cancer Link To Mobile Phone Use

Mobile phone use doesn't lead to a greater risk of brain cancer, a study by the British Medical Journal revealed, according to a report on the BBC News Web site Friday. ...

Russia's Euroset representative says to enter Moldova soon

Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset plans to enter the Moldavian market soon, Alexander Melnichuk, press secretary of Euroset's Eastern Europe branch told Prime-Tass Friday. ...

Motorola LatAm market share up 2 percentage points

US equipment manufacturer Motorola maintains its position as the leading mobile handset provider in Latin America and actually increased its market share by two percentage points during the fourth quarter of 2005, the company said in a statement. ...

[[Legal News]]

Australia's Telstra Rejects Legal Claim On Disclosure

Australian telecommunications company Telstra Corp. said Friday it will reject a legal claim being pursued in the Federal Court regarding its disclosure practices. ...

Proximus Confident Of Positive Outcome In Antitrust Probe

Belgacom's mobile arm Proximus said Friday it is "surprised and indignant" after accusations from rival mobile firm Base that it is abusing its market position. ...

[[Messaging News]]

ANALYSIS: Controversy over Cofetel SMS ruling

A January 12 ruling by Mexico's telecoms regulator Cofetel has renewed controversy surrounding the ongoing saga of SMS exchange between mobile operators and trunking operator Nextel Mexico, analysts say. ...

Mobile 365: MMS to take off over next 18-24 months

US mobile messaging and data services provider Mobile365 expects Central American telecommunications operators to make a big push to promote multimedia messaging services over the next 18-24 months, Mobile365 Americas region VP Gregory Dunn told BNam...

Hong Kong Plans to Make Spam SMS Illegal

Hong Kong's Commerce, Industry & Technology Bureau is holding a two month consultation on a raft of anti-spam laws that would include messages sent to mobile phones, as well as the more traditional spam email problems. The regulations will only affec...

[[Mobile Content News]]

Ericsson Signs Music Deal With EMI

Ericsson says that it has signed a pan-European mobile music agreement with EMI Music. The agreement allows Ericsson to enable European mobile operators to distribute ringtunes and full-track downloads from EMI's catalogue in Europe. Around 12,000 ri...

LG Improves Digital Rights in Handsets

LG Electronics has ordered a DRM platform from Norway's Beep Science to deploy OMA based digital rights management services in its handsets. LG has chosen Beep Science to assure the OMA v2 DRM interoperability of the LG mobile devices....

SMS Alerts To Dominate Football Mobile Revenues - report

The 2006 football World Cup is seen as an opportunity to promote 3G, yet it will be established content, such as text-based services that will generate the most significant revenue, according to a report from Visiongain. The study found that the one-...

[[Network Contracts News]]

National GSM Roaming Agreement in Switzerland

Switzerland'd sunrise has signed a national roaming agreement with the new GSM mobile phone provider in&phone. The partnership - the first of its kind in Switzerland - will enable in&phone to provide its customers with national mobile phone services....

[[Network Operators News]]

PRESS: Russia's MegaFon to start operation in Kyrgyzstan in Feb

Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon plans to start operations in Kyrgyzstan, Ishenbek Sadykov, a spokesperson of the Kyrgyz government administration said, Vedomosti business daily reported Friday. ...

GSM Network Launched in Guam

Guam's telecoms operator, GTA has launched its new GSM network, with a new brand name for its wireless subsidiary. MPULSE wireless operation includes MPULSE GSM as well as MPULSE TDMA network of wireless service. MPULSE TDMA is GTA's original cellula...

Fixed CDMA Phone From Romanian Operator

The Romanian based CDMA operator, Zapp Mobile has launched a "fixed line" service that offers a conventional landline style handset, while relying on the company's CDMA network for connectivity. The service is available with the Z1110 phone, the firs...

[[Offbeat News]]

Fined for SMS Divorce Demand

Malaysia's Islamic Court has fined a politician US$145 for attempting to divorce his wife via SMS. Senator Kamaruddin Ambok had used the SMS to divorce his wife as is technically possible under Islamic Family Law -- but was given a stern lecture by Ju...

Nepal's Mobile Phones Shut Down - Again

Nepal's government has again shut down the country's two mobile phone networks as it clamps down on political unrest and the Marxist insurgency. Nepal's royalist government has also imposed a curfew after seven political parties said they would defy ...

[[Personnel News]]

Swisscom CEO Quits After Clash With Government

The chief executive of Swisscom AG, Jens Alder, resigned Friday after clashing with the Swiss government over his foreign-acquisitions strategy. ...

Wife Of Kenyan Hostage In Iraq Appeals For His Release

NAIROBI (AP)--The wife of a Kenyan engineer taken hostage in Iraq appealed for his release Friday, adding that she had no new information about her husband's fate or that of a colleague who was also seized. ...

[[Regulatory News]]

Mobile operators forced to assist in wiretaps, geolocation

Colombia's mobile operators will be required to assist the nation's law enforcement agencies in the investigation of crimes, even at the companies' expense, the country's presidential website reported. ...

Bangladesh Plans Registration For All PrePay Handsets

Bangladesh is planning to join the increasing number of countries that will require all PrePay handsets to be registered so that the authorities can track handset ownership. The move is being promoted in an effort to clamp down of the use of unregist...

[[Statistics News]]

Hong Kong China Mobile Adds 3.96 Million Subscribers Dec Vs Nov 3.92 Million

China Mobile (Hong Kong), the Hong Kong-listed arm of the world's largest mobile operator by subscribers, said Friday it added 3.96 million new customers in December, its biggest monthly increase in

2005. ...

Ukrainian CDMA Operator Subscriber Base Rises

The subscriber base of Ukrainian CDMA operator International Telecommunications Company (ITC) increased to 25,500 users in 2005 from about 8,200 in 2004, Vsevolod Volovik, ITC's marketing department director, said Friday. ...

Cell phone subscribers rise 40% in 2005

Nicaragua ended 2005 with 1.03 million mobile subscribers, up 40% compared to the 738,624 users registered by year end 2004, according to the telecoms regulator Telcor. ...