Cellular-News for Tuesday 15th November 2005

Cellular-News -

[[3G News]]

Optus Launches 3G Network

Australia's Optus has launched its 3G services in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane's CBD and Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth airports. Optus will launch its 3G service with four simple capped plans and five subsidised handsets....

HSDPA PC Card Platform Offering Soft-Upgrade to 7.2Mbps

Icera has announced availability of its first Adaptive Wireless HSDPA Datacard Platform, which is enabling cellular datacard vendors to be first to market with next generation 3GPP Release 5 multimode HSDPA products. The platform supports Adaptive Wi...

[[Financial News]]

Australia's Telstra Declines Comment On CSL

Australia's Telstra Corp. declined to comment Monday on a report it plans to merge its Hong Kong-based mobile business, CSL, with New World Mobile Holdings Ltd. ...

O2 Signs Off On Strong 1st Half With Over 25 Million Users

O2 PLC, the U.K. mobile telecommunications company, Monday signed off as an independent company with a strong set of interim results which showed double-digit growth in its customer base to more than 25 million users. ...

Turkey, Oger Telecom Sign Agreement On Turk Telekom

Saudi Arabia's Oger Telecom said Monday it and the Turkish government have signed the shareholder agreement relating to the purchase of 55% of Turkish telecommunications operator Turk Telekom. ...

Telefonica To Up Stake In China Netcom To 9.9% - Source

Telefonica has signed an agreement that will allow it to raise its stake in the Chinese telecommunications operator China Netcom Group Corp. to 9.9% from 5%, a person close to the matter said Monday. ...

Russian mobile handset retailer Euroset denies 'minimizing' taxes

Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset has officially denied that "it used various schemes to 'minimize' tax payments and that it used fly-by-night companies in its activities," Euroset said in a press release dated November 11, citing th...

Ukraine's Astelit sees 2005-2007 investments at $1 bln

Ukraine's mobile operator Astelit plans to invest U.S. $1 billion in its network development by the end of 2007, the company said in a press release dated November 11, citing CEO Ahmet Tanyu. ...

Cosmote Lifts 2005 EBITDA Margin Forecast To Above 40%

Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA (COSMO.AT) Monday revised upwards its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, margin for calendar year 2005 to above 40%, from around

40%. ...

[[Handsets News]]

Three New Phones from Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson is launching three new handsets, aimed at the low-cost end of the market. Each handset has its own appeal and is firmly focused on making voice and text communications as easy as possible with the use of features such as one click navig...

[[Legal News]]

EU Opens In-depth Probe Into T-Mobile Buy Of Tele.Ring

The European Commission Monday launched an in-depth investigation into T-Mobile Austria's plan to buy rival Tele.Ring Service GmbH. ...

[[Mobile Content News]]

Vodafone In Universal Music Strategic Deal

Vodafone Group said Monday that it has signed a strategic alliance with Universal Music Group (UMG to deliver content and entertainment innovation to Vodafone live! customers. ...

Opera Upgrades Mobile Web Browser

Opera Software has released the latest version of its Opera Mobile browser for Symbian Series 60 (S60) handsets. Opera 8.5 for S60 comes with a new password manager for automatic log-in to sites. For the first time, the browser also features Opera's ...

[[Network Contracts News]]

Movistar Launches GSM Push-To-Talk Service In Argentina

Cellular provider Movistar has launched a new push-to-talk service in Argentina using its GSM network, becoming the second wireless operator in the country to enter the market. ...

[[Statistics News]]

GrameenPhone Passes Subscriber Landmark

Bangladesh's GrameenPhone says that it has recently crossed the 5 million subscriber-mark milestone. The company more than doubled its subscriber-base during the first 10 months of the current year. GP started the year with nearly 2.4 million subscri...

Decline In US Telecoms Online Experience - report

The Customer Respect Group has released findings from its Fourth Quarter 2005 Online Customer Respect Study of Telecommunications firms. By interviewing a representative sample of the adult Internet population, and by analyzing and categorizing more ...

Mobiles Overtake Landlines in Egypt - Nokia Top Handset Vendor

The research firm, BIS Shrapnel says that for the first time, total cellular subscribers at the third quarter of 2005 exceeded the fixed-line subscriber base, despite the relatively strong uptake of fixed line subscription in Egypt. By the end of Sep...

[[Technology News]]

Linux Mobile Phone Standards Forum Established

A consortium of telecommunications and technology companies Monday established a trade body dedicated to driving the adoption of the Linux operating system in Mobile phones. ...

Orange Offers Multimedia SIM Cards

Gemplus and Orange have jointly announced the world's first commercial launch of multimedia SIMs for Orange customers. The commercial launch is set for November 2005 and is based on a SAGEM handset. Other Asian handset manufacturers are planning to f...

Fixed Mobile Deployed on CDMA Network

Outsmart, a provider of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) solutions and Intelligent Networks (IN) based solutions, has announced a successful deployment of SmartFMC on an unnamed CDMA network. SmartFMC enables communication service providers to deliver ...

Radcom Deploys GPRS and CDMA Monitoring Platform

Radcom says that Rural Cellular Corporation (RCC), which does business as Unicel, has selected its cellular service monitoring and troubleshooting system. The Cellular Performer systems will help RCC/Unicel support delivery of 2.5 and 3G services to ...