Cellular-News for Tuesday 25th April 2006

Cellular-News -

[[ Financial ]]

Russia's MTS gets $1.33 billion syndicated loan

Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has concluded an agreement with a number of banks to take out a syndicated loan of up to U.S. $1.33 billion, MTS said Monday. ...

Tiscali Denies It Is In Talks For UK Unit Sale

A spokeswoman for Italian Internet service provider Tiscali denied "categorically" Monday the company "is in talks with Vodafone Group or any other company for the sale of its U.K. unit." ...

[[ Handsets ]]

Return of the Payphone: Ultra Low Cost Handsets Getting Down to Business

The GSM Association recently announced that its Emerging Markets Handset program is exceeding expectations: mobile operators in Bangladesh, China, India, and Russia have already purchased 12 million of its Ultra Low Cost Handsets (ULCH). But will the...

BenQ Mobile Forging Ahead with Realignment of Model Range

To accompany the publication of its figures for the first quarter of

2006, the Taiwanese BenQ Group is announcing a strategic handset initiative. Following the launch of 12 new mobile phones under the BenQ-Siemens brand since January, the company say... [[ Legal ]]

IPOC Fund: Court Stops Alfa From Selling MegaFon Stake

Bermuda-based IPOC International Growth Fund said Monday it has obtained an injunction from a St Petersburg court preventing Russian Alfa Group from selling its 25.1% stake in MegaFon. ...

[[ Mobile Content ]]

Mobile Video: Who's Watching? Who's Going to Watch? And Why?

Watching video on mobile devices has a long way to go before it becomes a ubiquitous practice among mobile phone users, according to a new report published by The NPD Group. According to the report, while

28% of all mobile phones in use in February 2... [[ Network Contracts ]]

Huawei Wins Turnkey GSM Contract

Oasis, the Congolese operation of Millicom International, has awarded Huawei a turnkey contract to provide a brand new GSM network. Under the first phase of the contract, Huawei will supply and install its Huawei EnerG GSM technical platform and depl...

[[ Network Operators ]]

Improved Roaming for Asia-Pacific

Seven Asia-Pacific operators are forming an alliance to offer joint roaming and marketing services to customers. FET (Taiwan), Hutchison Essar (India), Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong and Macau), KT Freetel (South Korea), DoCoMo (Japan), Indo...

Vodafone Japan moves HQ

Vodafone K.K. says that it will move its headquarters from Atago in Minato Ward, Tokyo to Higashi-shimbashi, also in Minato Ward, to start operations at the new location progressively from 1 May 2006....

[[ Regulatory ]]

Chechnya's deputy PM wants competition on mobile mkt

The government of Russia's constituent republic of Chechnya wants to see competition between mobile operators in the republic, Ziyad Sabsabi, deputy prime minister of the republic, told a round table meeting on Monday. ...