Telecommunications (International Edition) articles from April 2004

Telecommunications (International Edition) archives from April 2004

Multiplying mobile: the mobile industry seems embarrassed over the continuing success of SMS when it wanted users to adopt much more sophisticated technologies.(Commentary)(NTT DoCoMo Inc.)(Short messaging service)
April 1, 2004... Norwegians, it transpires, send a lot more SMS than other countries (even neighbouring Scandinavian ones), but no one knows why. Popular telecom belief has it that SMS may have even contributed to a change of government in the Philippines,...

Time is right for residential VoIP, says Level 3.(US)(Telecommunications[R] International)
April 1, 2004... Level 3, a US-based wholesaler of telecom services, has announced the 'next phase' of its voice strategy. Following on from the launch of its VoIP products for businesses and call centre operators in the US last year, Level 3 is to unveil two...

Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen.(Europe)(Venture Capital Conference)
April 1, 2004... Venture capitalists are just that. They risk some capital to make a return. They even have a somewhat unsavoury reputation for making a fast buck without long-term commitment. The word vulture is bandied about. However, if Elisha Yanay,...

Events.(Calendar)
April 1, 2004... International Forum on Marketing and Sales for Mobile 27-28 April London, UK http://www.ibctelecoms.com Global IP Carriers 27-29 April London, UK http://www.carriersworld.com/2004/ipc_uk FT World Mobile...

Nokia pushes ahead with PoC.(News in Brief)(Push-to-talk over cellular)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Ericsson, Motorola Siemens and Sony Ericsson have launched joined interoperability tests for push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) technology while Nokia has gone down its own, slightly different, route. All of the vendors state that they aim to...

No helping hand for Reach?(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Telstra will not put fresh equity in Reach, the undersea cable venture that it owns together with PCCW. Analysts had suggested that Telstra and PCCW might need to put US$500 m into Reach, which had a loss of US$113 m in the six months to...

Vodafone takes fixed-line partner.(Vodafone Group PLC)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Jazztel and Vodafone Espana are to collaborate in Spain on the provision of corporate services, according to a report in Reuters. Jazztel, which is an alternative carrier with last mile connectivity, focuses on the business market and has...

Infonet adds WiFi access.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Infonet, a US-based managed service provider for multinationals, launched its MobileXpress Professional service last month. Comprising MobileXpress client software, developed in partnership with Boingo (a US-based WiFi hotspot aggregator), the...

BREW passes 100 million mark.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... More than 100 million applications based on BREW, the mobile OS platform of Qualcomm, have been downloaded to devices since its launch more than two and a half years ago. The US-based CDMA chipmaker further reports that the rate of application...

T-Mobile goes flat-rate for data.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... To simplify data rates for business customers, T-Mobile is introducing time-based charging schemes. Last month, T-Mobile UK announced that customers of its GPRS/3G Multimedia Net Card, which retails at [pounds sterling]199 ([euro]296), would be...

Thinking big in a small market: multimedia services for consumers; managed IT services for corporates; mobile expansion in central and eastern Europe. Rudolf Fischer, COO, Telekom Austria (Wireline), outlines the group's vision for growth.(View from the Top)(Telekom Austria AG)
April 1, 2004... How does an incumbent, with a long history of domestic dominance, defend its market share and protect margins in the face of competition? How does an incumbent, listed on the stock market, demonstrate to shareholders a compelling strategy for...

A bright idea? Web services, when applied to the mobile world, have the potential to boost operators' ARPU (but only with the cooperation of content and application providers).(Wireless World Focus)(Cover Story)
April 1, 2004... What if software application providers could utilise, with the minimum of fuss, the capabilities of the mobile network? You know, things like location-based information, billing, authentication and messaging. And what if mobile users could...

Africa strives to get online: a combination of poor infrastructure, high access costs and lack of incentives for foreign investment is holding back internet growth in Africa.(Africa)
April 1, 2004... The internet. For most of us it's a basic utility, as pervasive, reliable and instantaneous as turning on a tap or switching on a light. Not so, however, for hundreds of millions of Africans for whom the Digital Divide is already wider than the...

FWA not fade away? Despite its difficult past, vendors claim that fixed wireless access (FWA) still has a place in some markets--not least when WiMax arrives.(Wireless World Focus)(fixed wireless access)
April 1, 2004... There was a time, around four years ago, when fixed wireless access was hot. This quickly passed, like a heat wave in the Hebrides, but that did not stop quite a few companies buying licences to provide fixed wireless access and planning IPOs....

GSM: grow some more? Where is the growth in GSM services?(Wireless world focus)(Global Systems for Mobile communications)(Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)
April 1, 2004... Mobile operators, as the market is very aware, have invested huge sums of money both in licences and in network roll out. The oft-touted shock-horror figure is around [euro]110 bn sunk into UMTS licences in Europe alone. To add insult to...

FMC on the comeback trail: there are signs that fixed-mobile convergent (FMC) services are now being taken seriously by both operators and enterprise users.(Wireless World Focus)(fixed and mobile convergence )
April 1, 2004... It seems that ever since the first mobile phones appeared on the market in the late 1980s, the industry has been talking about fixed/mobile synergies in one form or other. Despite a significant degree of speculation revolving around so-called...