Telecommunications (International Edition) articles from June 2004

Telecommunications (International Edition) archives from June 2004

Home, sweet (networked) home.(Commentary)(Editorial)
June 1, 2004... Without a truly out-of-the-box experience, home networking--at best-is going to be incomplete. At worst, it will be commercially dead on its feet Call me a luddite, but for me, the biggest challenges of business networking can...

Europe: a borrower be (within limits).(Global News Analysis)
June 1, 2004... During the big network build-outs of the 1990s, operators borrowed billions to fund network expansion and M & A--billions that some did not pay back. Ebone, KPN-Qwest and Viatel are high-profile examples of alternative operators that filed for...

South Korea: broadband ambitions undimmed.(Global News Analysis)
June 1, 2004... Broadband internet access in South Korea, the telecom world's most heavily penetrated country, has probably peaked with market saturation, admits the country's dominant fixed operator, KT. According to figures taken at the end of 2003, some...

What did you say?(Telecommunications Industry)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... "The question will be: can we maintain that personal touch and make money? If we can't, Morgan Stanley will fire me." Lucy Woods, CEO, Viatel, on serving the SME market "Now it's time to say hello to the naysayers." Pierre Danon, CEO,...

Hungary could auction 3G licences.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Hungary is reported to be planning to auction four 3G licences by August this year. All three of the current mobile operators in Hungary--T-Mobile Hungary. Pannon GSM (which is owned by Telenor) and Vodafone Hungary--are said to be interested...

Chinese vendor success in Egypt.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Huawei and ZTE, two major Chinese vendors, both announced CDM WLL contract wins at ITU Telecom Africa, held in Cairo, Egypt, last month. Huawei announced an extension to its partnership with Telecom Egypt through a contract to deliver and...

BT cuts wholesale local loop charges.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... BT is to cut wholesale local loop access charges by up to 70 per cent, a move that its competitors have been demanding for some time. As of 1 June, the price for its shared local loop access service will fall from [pounds sterling]4.42 to...

Nokia admits 'surprise' over clamshells.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Nokia has admitted that the popularity of clamshell phones took it by surprise, according to a report in Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish daily newspaper. "Perhaps we should have paid a bit more attention to what was coming out of the Far East,"...

BT ups fixed-mobile ante.(News in Brief)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... BT has declared that Bluephone handsets will be commercially available before the end of this year through its partnership with Alcatel, Ericsson and Motorola (Bluephone handsets will allow telephony over mobile and fixed networks). The UK...

Easynet: ten years on; CEO, David Rowe, claims IP service advantage.(View from the Top)
June 1, 2004... Ten years ago, David Rowe founded Easynet. Originally starting out as an ISP serving business customers in the UK and France, the company now has operations in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. It targets...

VoBB rises in Japan: voice over broadband (VoBB) has the potential to disrupt telecom markets around the world. It's already gaining ground in Japan.(Broadband Revenue Creation)(Cover Story)
June 1, 2004... If you are an incumbent sitting on a nice, steady flow of cash from switched voice services that run over your last mile, why would you undermine that? The answer, unsurprisingly, is, you wouldn't, unless the alternative offered better margins,...

The PON comes to China: China is becoming the world's largest buyer of fibre and is starting to roll out PON networks.(Broadband Revenue Creation)(Passive Optical Network)
June 1, 2004... Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) is an almost unheard-of luxury in Europe, limited to "small pockets of deployment", as Dr Peter Kjeldsen, an analyst with Gartner, points out. In Asia, however, where governments are keen to further the development of...

Demand on the increase for end-to-end session management.(Sponsored Supplement)
June 1, 2004... As service providers carry more and more telephone calls via voice-over-IP (VolP), they are finding a need for session management that goes beyond the network edges and into the network's core. At the same time, there must also be control at...

3G for the masses: Vodafone's launch of consumer 3G services is a major milestone for the mobile industry--but it's still business as usual.(Broadband Revenue Creation)(Third Generation Services)
June 1, 2004... The moment which has been so eagerly awaited has finally arrived... So starts the Vodafone press release, issued last month, declaring the commercial launch of 3G services for consumers in Germany and Portugal. And it seems like the wait...

New services or bust? International carriers are looking to managed IT services to generate growth. Telecommunications[R] international looks at the IT moves being made by Equant and Infonet.(Broadband Revenue Creation)
June 1, 2004... Most established telcos face the same problem: how to grow their business when revenue from traditional services is either flattening or declining. In the case of Infonet and Equant, both international managed network service providers,...

Advanced lessons in softswitches: by using advanced softswitches, carriers can offer a range of profitable services and--arguably--exceed PSTN levels of reliability.(Broadband Revenue Creation)(Public Switched Telephone Network)
June 1, 2004... The telecom industry is undergoing significant change and will continue to do so with the growth of VolP. This industry shift began with the creation of the 'Internet Phone' in 1995 and continued at breakneck speed until 2001 when the telecom...