TelecomWeb News Digest articles from December 2005

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from December 2005

TDC Agrees To $15.3B Leveraged Buyout.
December 1, 2005... A consortium of private-equity companies made up of Apax Partners, Permira Advisors, Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Providence Equity has offered $15.3 billion for Danish telco TDC in what would be one of the largest...

Vermont Blesses Verizon/MCI; 6 States To Go.
December 1, 2005... The Vermont Public Service Board has given its green light to the proposed $8.5 billion Verizon Communications/MCI merger transaction, making it the second state to do so this week; the action came late Tuesday shortly after the Public...

Video Version Of Skype Hits The Web.
December 1, 2005... eBay subsidiary Skype today launched a public beta test of the widely expected video version of its free PC-to-PC voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software, replete with such niceties as integration with Microsoft's Outlook personal...

ST Engineering Unit Wraps iDirect Purchase.
December 1, 2005... A U.S. unit of Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd. (ST Engineering) today completed the estimated $165 million acquisition of iDirect Technologies, a privately held vendor of broadband satellite modems and Internet Protocol- based...

Nokia Expands Production In China.
December 1, 2005... Handset giant Nokia revealed plans to expand its mobile-device production in Dongguan, China, claiming the additional capacity is expected to give it new flexibility in meeting the growing market demand not only in China and Asia but also in...

COLT Draws A Pair Of Aces.
December 1, 2005... Pan-European service provider COLT Telecom has landed what looks to be the most lucrative contract in its history - a $94.5 million data network design-and-management contract from AOK, Germany's largest compulsory health insurer. ...

APCO Hits Back On VoIP 911 Waivers.
December 2, 2005... After voicing concerns earlier (TelecomWeb news break, Nov. 8), the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International yesterday categorically said it was opposed to portions of a proposed Senate bill requiring the...

Broadband Brouhaha Brews Down Under.
December 2, 2005... Australia's Telstra has threatened to cancel its plans to build a $5 billion next-generation network unless the Australian government agrees to a new regulatory regime under which it won't have to let competing carriers use its shiny new...

NTT Shifts IP Business; Verio Loses.
December 2, 2005... Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone has shifted direct responsibility for its global IP network and enterprise hosting businesses from Verio - the original U.S. company NTT acquired several years ago to enter private managed network...

Intelsat, APT Forge Satellite Alliance.
December 2, 2005... Intelsat Limited and APT Satellite Company Limited today inked a strategic cooperation agreement to work together, using their combined satellite fleets, to market each other's satellite capacity and ground resources, and to provide broadcast...

Alltel Completes Western Wireless Divestitures.
December 2, 2005... Alltel this morning reached agreements to sell the last two pieces of Western Wireless Corp. (WWC) that it needed to get rid of as part of the company's $6.5 billion acquisition of WWC this summer. Cingular will be picking up a rural service...

Why U.S. Subs Aren't Using Mobile Data.
December 2, 2005... Don't expect too many mobile users to embrace phone content with the same enthusiasm with which they have adopted previous digital media. Recent studies of usage patterns and attitudes among the growing audience for mobile data suggest a lot...

CWA Members Authorize AT&T Strike.
December 5, 2005... Late last week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said its members at AT&T voted to give union leaders authorization to call a strike if a fair contract cannot be reached. Failing a new agreement, workers could take to the picket...

NTL Eyes Virgin For Quadruple Play.
December 5, 2005... NTL, in quest of the fabled quadruple play, has made a $1.5 billion bid for Virgin Mobile, one of the leading wireless operators in the U.K. If the deal goes ahead, it will put NTL in position to offer broadband, telephony, digital...

Dispute Erupts At FCC Over CALEA Rules.
December 5, 2005... A battle at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is brewing over the regulator's August order that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and broadband access service providers comply with wiretaps and accommodate other official measures...

Cellular On Ice.
December 5, 2005... The first GSM cellular network in Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories is expected to launch this week, as Canadian cellular startup Ice Wireless begins service in Whitehorse and Inuvik. A string of other towns in the frigid Canadian north...

Verizon Considers Directories Selloff.
December 5, 2005... In anticipation of its estimated $8.5 billion takeover of MCI, incumbent local exchange carrier Verizon Communications now is reviewing a number of strategic alternatives for its domestic directories publishing business, including...

ViaSat Springboards Into Asian Market.
December 5, 2005... ViaSat Inc. believes its planned acquisition of Efficient Channel Coding Inc. (ECC) will provide the entree it needs to crack markets in the Asia Pacific region served by the recently launched IPStar satellite. ECC, a producer of...

German Wireless Market Faces 'Armageddon'.
December 6, 2005... German discount supermarket Aldi - where three out of every four Germans are said to sometimes shop - tomorrow will launch its own house-branded prepaid cellular service, sparking what European analysts think will be a massive price war in...

ConEd Finds A New Buyer For Broadband Unit.
December 6, 2005... New York's giant power company Consolidated Edison (ConEd), after a year of trying, may finally get out of the broadband business. It's signed a pact to sell its Con Edison Communications (CEC) subsidiary to triple-play CLEC RCN Corporation...

Feds Flunk Emergency Communications...
December 6, 2005... The federal government's post-9/11 movement on numerous homeland security and preparedness fronts to date remains disappointing, with meeting the needs of first responders' emergency communications among the areas where the United States...

...While Markey Suggests DTV Date Shift.
December 6, 2005... The deadline for the broadcasters' transition from analog to digital television (DTV) could be moved back due to Republican and Democrat disagreements in the House over funding for digital set-top-box converter subsidies and other aspects of...

Wireless LED Market Heads For A Showdown.
December 6, 2005... According to Boston-based research firm Strategy Analytics, those companies focused on supplying LEDs for wireless LCD and keypad backlighting functions will see their revenues fall 41 percent by 2009. The group's newest report, Camera...

Motorola R&D 'Disrupts' Current Network Ideas.
December 6, 2005... Gary Grube, corporate vice president/wireless access research at Motorola, is bullish on alternative networking, and he says his company is looking past the traditional approach to future communications, which was based around traditional...

BGAN Begins.
December 7, 2005... Inmarsat today formally put its satellite-based mobile broadband global area network (BGAN) services into commercial operation. The service is initially available across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with service to North and...

FT, ZTE Ink Smartphone R&D Pact.
December 7, 2005... France Telecom (FT) signed a strategic research-and-development deal with China's ZTE under which the two, as an initial project, will work together to develop 3G smartphone handsets based on the open-source Linux operating system. The...

Telekom Austria Ramps Slovenian Mobile Takeover.
December 7, 2005... Telekom Austria Group says its mobilkom austria wireless subsidiary cut a new deal that accelerates the acquisition of the remaining 25-percent stake in its Slovenian mobile operator unit Si.mobil.d.d. (Si.mobile), saving the company several...

Yankee Group Polls Canadian Trendsetters.
December 7, 2005... Market research/consulting house The Yankee Group, today disclosed the results of its 2005 Canadian Technologically Advanced Family (CTAF) Survey, finding the country's trendsetters are spending increasing amounts of money on wireless,...

Ericsson Books Landmark 3G Managed-Services Deal.
December 7, 2005... Sweden's Ericsson AB inked a massive seven-year contract to manage U.K. wireless carrier 3's 3G mobile network and IT infrastructure - a deal said to be the biggest managed-services pact in Ericsson history and one of the biggest such deals...

Is Yahoo! Trying To Snake Skype?
December 7, 2005... Yahoo! has added several enhancements to its VoIP services, including PC- to-phone calling, inbound calling and better integration with the rest of the features in the Yahoo! Messenger client, but is it trying to be a better service provider...

Sprint Enters Professional Services Market.
December 8, 2005... Sprint Nextel this morning took the wraps off a new operating unit - Sprint Enterprise Mobility Inc. - aimed at creating voice and data mobility solutions for large businesses and government customers. The plan, which includes everything...

NENA OKs Interim VoIP E911 Architecture.
December 8, 2005... The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) board approved the group's "Interim VoIP Architecture for Enhanced 911 Services," NENA's first major standard on the VoIP and Enhanced 911 (E911) system interface and the first major overhaul...

BT Lines Up IPTV Content Providers.
December 8, 2005... A slew of competition-critical content deals are setting the stage as BT moves closer to cutting over its forthcoming IPTV service, set to launch in 2006. With BSkyB already hovering around the eight million-subscriber mark and in the...

AT&T Seeks Online Sales Promoters.
December 8, 2005... The "new" AT&T (formerly SBC Communications) today unveiled a third- party marketing and sales initiative that asks other enterprises to promote AT&T services on their Websites in exchange for commissions on any business booked. The...

Nokia Goes Retail In Top-End Markets.
December 8, 2005... Following the lead of many top consumer-electronics manufacturers worldwide, Finland's Nokia is set to open several retail outlets - dubbed Nokia Flagship Stores - in "shopping capitals of the world." The first store opened its doors today,...

Update: Virgin Mobile Turns NTL Down For Now.
December 8, 2005... Virgin Mobile Holdings' board has rejected cable provider NTL's proposed merger plan, forwarded to the wireless carrier earlier this week (TelecomWeb news break, Dec. 5), because the $1.4 billion price has been deemed too low. In a...

Injunctions Shut Up Two Wireless Telemarketers.
December 9, 2005... Early last fall, Verizon Wireless decided to take on the telemarketing industry in a move backed by the wireless industry (TelecomWeb news break, Sept. 2, Sept. 1). Today, the carrier won injunctions against the bi-coastal companies that...

Panasonic Retreats Temporarily From Cellular Market.
December 9, 2005... Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd subsidiary Panasonic Mobile Communications Co Ltd said this morning it is shutting down its 2G-2.5G GSM/GPRS cellphone operations outside of Japan, laying off 1,000 workers and shuttering or re-purposing...

Alltel Spins Landlines To Valor.
December 9, 2005... In an identify shift mimicking plans by the Sprint Nextel combination, Alltel today disclosed that, via a stock transaction worth about $9.1 billion, it is selling off all of its landline telecom activities to the Valor Communications Group...

FCC Ready To Stem Junk Fax Deluge.
December 9, 2005... In its last meeting of the year, the Federal Communications Commission today issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on how to control - if not stamp out - what some have called a "pandemic" of unwanted junk faxes hitting consumer,...

Europeans Approve UWB, NGN Standards.
December 9, 2005... In separate developments today, European standards organizations were buoyant as Ecma International, a nonprofit industry association, approved its first specifications for ultra-wideband (UWB) short-range, high-speed wireless...

BBB To NetZero: It Ain't Broadband.
December 9, 2005... United Online says it's going to appeal part of a ruling by the Council of Better Business Bureaus' (BBB) National Advertising Division (NAD) demanding that it discontinue advertising claiming that NetZero "HiSpeed 3G" dial-up Internet...

Strike Averted: AT&T Reaches Union Deal.
December 12, 2005... AT&T yesterday reached a last-minute tentative agreement on a new labor contract with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), covering nearly 12,000 workers. The agreement...

UAE Unveils Second Phone Company.
December 12, 2005... The United Arab Emirates (UAE) took the wraps off of what will be only the second regional phone company in the Emirates. The new company, to be called The Emirates Company for Integrated Telecommunications (EITC), will start life with...

FCC Nominations On Senate Slate Tomorrow.
December 12, 2005... Tomorrow morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is scheduled to consider the long-awaited nominations of Republican Deborah T. Tate and Democrat Michael J. Copps to the Federal Communications Commission...

Telsim Goes On The Block.
December 12, 2005... The auction of Number Two Turkish cellular carrier Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon (Telsim) started today, with the final bidding set for tomorrow - broadcast live and in color on Turkish television - and ending years of turmoil surrounding...

Boucher Predicts February Telecom-Reform Action.
December 12, 2005... According to Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, February 2006 will be the earliest the committee will mark up telecom-reform legislation. Disappointment...

IEEE Gives WirelessMAN Standard The Nod.
December 12, 2005... Late last week, the IEEE okayed IEEE 802.16e, the mobile WirelessMAN standard that will facilitate the global development of mobile broadband wireless access (BWA) systems. The standard amends and extends the IEEE 802.16 WirelessMAN...

Vodafone Bid Wins Telsim Auction.
December 13, 2005... The U.K.'s Vodafone early this morning outbid a field of competitors in a televised open auction for ownership of Number Two Turkish cellular carrier Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon (Telsim), with a winning bid of $4.55 billion. The final...

Ericsson Slapped With Tax-Evasion Charges.
December 13, 2005... The Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau today charged Ericsson with sending false invoices to the tune of $49 million in 1999 and 2000 from a Swiss subsidiary to cover up payments made to Bank Austria in Vienna, thus helping the company...

EarthLink Buys New Edge For $144M.
December 13, 2005... EarthLink signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held New Edge Networks, a Vancouver, Wash.-based communications service provider, in a proposed cash-and-stock transaction worth approximately $144 million. The Atlanta-based...

Microsoft Targets Skype In MCI Deal.
December 13, 2005... Interexchange carrier MCI and software Microsoft today disclosed a global, multiyear partnership calling for MCI's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network services to work in tandem with Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger. According...

Thomson Buys Missing IPTV Piece.
December 13, 2005... Thomson is buying the Thales Broadcast and Multimedia (TBM) business unit in an acquisition Thomson says nets it the last piece it needed to offer end-to- end products and services in the IPTV, mobile TV and digital terrestrial transmission...

Consortium Cuts Over New Submarine Cable.
December 13, 2005... The Sea-Me-We 4 submarine cable, a mammoth 20,000-kilometer undertaking that links 14 countries from Singapore to France and one of the very few major undersea projects in the world during the past few years, officially opened for business...

Telindus Finds A White Knight.
December 14, 2005... France Telecom, playing the role of the so-called "white knight," has offered $680 million for Belgium's Telindus, handily trumping an earlier $582 million bid by state-controlled Belgacom. The Belgacom bid, made at the very end of...

FCC Nominations Go To Full Senate.
December 14, 2005... The nominations of Deborah T. Tate and Michael J.Copps to serve as commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission yesterday moved from the Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation to the full Senate for action. Tate is...

Poland's TP Hires Team To Fight VoIP Competitors.
December 14, 2005... Poland's dominant telecommunications carrier, Telekomunikacja Polska (TP), has turned to Italtel and Cisco Systems for the software and hardware to build a PSTN gateway to TP's multi-service IP network. The goal, TP says, is to enable it...

Teleglobe, T-Mobile (U.K.) Ink Transport Deal.
December 14, 2005... Teleglobe International Holdings Ltd and T-Mobile (U.K.) Limited - part of Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile International subsidiary - today signed an agreement calling on the global carrier's SS7 network to transport signaling traffic from the...

Fiat Parks In BT's Garage.
December 14, 2005... BT has landed a five-year, $536 million order from carmaker Fiat under which BT will manage Fiat's telecommunications services in 40 countries. As part of the deal, BT is also buying Fiat's domestic telecoms subsidiary, Atlanet SpA, for...

Post Katrina: Mississippi Gets Wireless Broadband.
December 14, 2005... BellSouth has begun deploying high-speed wireless broadband speeds as fast as 1.5 Gb/s in Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., modifying the company's original wireless broadband rollout plans in order to get service to residents of the...

RIM Nemesis NTP Teams With Visto; Next Target: Microsoft.
December 15, 2005... NTP, the outfit threatening to shut down Research In Motion's (RIM) popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service because of alleged patent infringement, has taken an equity stake of undisclosed size in secure push e- mail software house Visto...

Tuvalu Incommunicado.
December 15, 2005... This just in from the tiny island nation of Tuvalu: Phone service to the island has been down for the past two weeks. It's not clear just what's wrong. After all, we can't call, because the phones there don't work. But, apparently,...

ZTE Ships 3G Handsets To Hutchison.
December 15, 2005... Chinese manufacturer ZTE has begun shipments of 3G wireless handsets to Hutchison 3G in the U.K. as part of a broader supply agreement that calls for distribution in other European markets. The company's F866 model 3G handset are being...

Yahoo! Opens Research Center In NYC.
December 15, 2005... Yahoo! today said it opened a research center in New York City to focus on key technologies in "computer science and social media" relevant to its products and services. Billed as its East Coast research center, the new activity is part...

Research: Europeans Continue To Cut The Cord.
December 15, 2005... Tariff-tracking Tarifica, a sister company to TelecomWeb news break, has released a comparison of fixed-to-mobile versus mobile-to-mobile call charges across a number of European operators, revealing it can cost Europeans considerably more...

Amp'd vs. Sprint: Losing In Order To Win.
December 15, 2005... As youth-oriented mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Amp'd launches today, provocateur CEO Peter Addington nabbed some press last week by announcing a 99-cent price point for downloadable songs from his 200,000-tune MP3 library. This...

BellSouth Slashes Middle Management.
December 16, 2005... BellSouth will be releasing some 1,500 middle management jobs from its payroll, a move that will cost it $95 million upfront but one it believes will save the company $175 million annually after that. The staff reduction is part of "an...

Sprint Nextel Absorbs Another Reseller.
December 16, 2005... Sprint Nextel now owns yet another of its resellers, Enterprise Communications Partnership (ECP), paying $98 million plus an additional $2 million for spectrum owned by an ECP affiliate. The deal turns ECP's 52,000 customers in Alabama and...

Will Cellphones Be The Next 'Media War' For Banks?
December 16, 2005... One in four wireless users would consider switching banks if they were offered free mobile banking services, and 51 percent would be interested in using a mobile banking service. So says a survey of more than 2,100 U.K. online users...

An Early Present: Senate Intros, Blesses Telecom Bills.
December 16, 2005... The Senate was busy yesterday introducing or approving three telecom- related bills as the legislative body looks forward to taking its holiday break. A new telecommunications-reform bill proposes legislation that will create a...

sunrise Taps Ericsson For Mobi-TV Service.
December 16, 2005... Swedish giant Ericsson has won a three-year contract to make mobile television a reality in Switzerland. Mobile-service operator sunrise, which is part of TDC, plans to launch a number of new mobile video services in Switzerland, featuring...

Who You Gonna Call? Robo-Busters.
December 16, 2005... Detecting leaks and performing maintenance duties in America's aging network of natural gas pipelines eventually will be a job for wireless robots, according to researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla. "It is critical that these...

At Press Time: House Approves DTV Deadline Compromise.
December 19, 2005... TelecomWeb news break has learned that, having apparently reached a compromise over the weekend with key members of the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives early today narrowly approved legislation which calls for American broadcasters...

Dallas-Ft. Worth To Be BPL'd.
December 19, 2005... Current Communications said this morning that it has landed a $150 million, ten-year deal to install what will be the nation's largest broadband over powerline (BPL) system to date, a multipurpose "smart grid" that will serve about two...

U.K. Phone Retailer Buys Into The Carrier Business.
December 19, 2005... Carphone Warehouse Group has struck a deal to acquire telecoms firm OneTel from British Gas owner Centrica in a $233 million deal, while at almost the same time, Pan-European carrier Tele2 AB disclosed that it had sold its UK and Ireland...

WildBlue Tops 25,000 Subscribers.
December 19, 2005... Satellite broadband service provider WildBlue expects to have more than 25,000 subscribers by the end of the year, according to a statement by CEO Dave Leonard, who says demand has grown so swiftly that the company hasn't been able to meet...

Aussie Bank Grabs Taiwan Triple Play Operator.
December 19, 2005... Australia's Macquarie Bank Ltd. and a new media fund it set up barely a month ago have bought Taiwan Broadband Communications (TBC), the island nation's third-biggest broadband and cable TV operator, for $890 million. Macquarie...

Pakistani Carrier Joins The VoIP Club.
December 19, 2005... Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the country's national incumbent carrier, has interconnected with the iBasis network for international VoIP services and international calling route support, the Pakistani company's first...

RIP: Chiaro Networks.
December 20, 2005... Chiaro Networks, after burning through $220 million in venture capital, is closing its doors - the startup just couldn't make a dent in the core router market after eight years of battling Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks. According to...

Telecom Service Revenue Rebound Expected.
December 20, 2005... World telecom service revenues are expected to grow from less than $1.2 trillion in 2005 to slightly more than $1.5 trillion in 2010, reflecting an overall compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.9 percent, according to the latest global...

Sonofon Gets Danish 3G Licence.
December 20, 2005... Telenor's Danish subsidiary Sonofon has been awarded the fourth Danish UMTS licence, awarded by the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency, for $85.9 million, and immediately said that it will launch 3G services in the country next year. ...

LBS Take-Up Could Take Off In Pacific Rim.
December 20, 2005... According to new research from In-Stat, location-based services (LBS) may finally realize their potential in the Asia/Pacific region in the upcoming five years. Many industry soothsayers have labeled LBS as "the next big thing," and the...

And An LBS-Based NannyPhone Is Coming To China.
December 20, 2005... The Comtech Group today said that it has finished the model design and initial production of a children's telephone for the Chinese market that will tell parents where their kids are - the NannyPhone, if you will. Comtech said that its...

VoIP Guru Enters 911 Legislative Fight.
December 20, 2005... Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) pundit and self-styled guru Jeff Pulver, chairman of pulvermedia, has become embroiled in a dispute over proposed Senate legislation to codify Federal Communications Commission rules and regulations for...