Wireless Asia articles from December 2002

Wireless Asia archives from December 2002

Reality micro-bytes. (Unwired).(mobile applications sector)
December 15, 2002... The mobile applications sector these days may not actually be minting cash, but it is at least shrouded by a healthy sense of reality. That's progress from two years ago when hundreds of apps hit the market, only to sink without trace. The...

OS wars: Sendo dumps MS for Nokia. (News Analysis).(Microsoft Corp.)
December 15, 2002... Microsoft's moment of triumph as it officially entered the handset market last month turned quickly sour when it was dumped by its long-time mobile partner Sendo. The US giant celebrated the launch by France Telecom's Orange of the first...

802.11g jumps the gun. (News Analysis).(Linksys Group Inc. product line)
December 15, 2002... Hardware manufacturer Linksys turned some heads at the annual Comdex trade show in Las Vegas with the announcement of its new 802.11g product line. The Wireless-G line of PC cards, and access points--which was scheduled to ship to the consumer...

Smart platform strategy. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(Nokia Corp. Series 60 platform)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Nokia is taking the game right up to Microsoft, and is showing other handset makers how it is done, with its Series 60 platform. The platform, built on the Symbian OS, is available to other vendors on an open source, though commercial basis....

The UWB challenge. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(ultra wideband usage forecasts)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Ultra Wideband is a long-used US military technology now given a commercial lease:of lilt' thanks to limited approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Pyramid forecasts real-world applications for the secure, low-power system by the...

Asia's key role in making Wi-Fi real. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Wi-Fi has the whiff of the dotcom era--"the funny names, the extravagant growth projection, the sheer hype". But how sustainable is a business built out of islands of wireless access? Viable business models are yet to emerge in the US market,...

Push-to-talk: the Next-el big thing? (News Analysis).
December 15, 2002... Is push-to-talk the next big thing in the wireless industry? It's certainly hot in the US, where Nextel has 9 million enterprise customers, generating 150 million calls a day Push-to-talk is an inherent feature of the Motorola-supplied iDen...

Portals ride mobile wave to profit. (News Analysis).(Sohu.com and Netease.com post 3Q 2002 profits with help of China Mobile)
December 15, 2002... Fewer than 18 months after two of China's top Internet companies were almost delisted from Nasdaq, Sohu.com and Netease.com both posted profits, albeit meager ones, for Q3, 2002. While the companies' CEOs are busy taking bows, most of the...

W-CDMA's small step forward.(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Key W-CDMA players have announced what looks like a cut to the patent licensing fees to core technology of the 3G standard. Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens and NTT DoCoMo announced in November they had "reached a mutual understanding" on licensing...

NTT DoCoMo says it received a request from Dutch telecom operator KPN to inject more capital into the Dutch company while maintaining it's current 15% voting interest. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... NTT DoCoMo says it received a request from Dutch telecom operator KPN to inject more capital into the Dutch company while maintaining it's current 15% voting interest. The request was made as KPN is to purchase new shares to be issued by KPN...

Hutchison Whampoa plans to open 300 shops in the UK by the end of 2003 to sell its 3G services. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Hutchison Whampoa plans to open 300 shops in the UK by the end of 2003 to sell its 3G services. The group insists it will have paying 3G customers by the end of the year, despite a Financial times report that Hutchison may not get its hands on...

Meanwhile, Hutchison's European 3G arm, H3G, will spend at least 100 million euros ($98 million) to advertise 3G services in italy. (Movements).(Hutchison 3G Europe)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Meanwhile, Hutchison's European 3G arm, H3G, will spend at least 100 million euros ($98 million) to advertise 3G services in italy, with a mass media campaign starting from March next year.

Nokia is taking aim at the games market with N-Gage, a color, multimedia mobile phone that plays games stored on memory cards. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Nokia is taking aim at the games market with N-Gage, a color, multimedia mobile phone that plays games stored on memory cards. N-Gage, to be launched in February, was one of seven new devices unveiled in November.

Samsung says it won't have its first W-CDMA phone on the market until the third quarter of 2003. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Samsung says it won't have its first W-CDMA phone on the market until the third quarter of 2003. The company expects the global mobile phone market to grow moderately to 435 million units in 2003 from some 4to million units this year.

Ericsson is set to replace its chief executive next year in a looming reshuffle of top management and its board. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Ericsson is set to replace its chief executive next year in a looming reshuffle of top management and its board. Ericsson chairman Michael Treschow says he has been considering the issue of the succession of chief executive Kurt Hellstrom,...

Regulators worldwide have been paying increased attention to virtual monopolies in mobile call termination markets, according to Yankee Group. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Regulators worldwide have been paying increased attention to virtual monopolies in mobile call termination markets, according to Yankee Group. The Asia-Pacific in particular has seen a growing trend of wireless interconnection coming under...

Swedish police detained three people on charges of spying on Ericsson on behalf of an un-named foreign intelligence service. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Swedish police detained three people on charges of spying on Ericsson on behalf of an un-named foreign intelligence service. As well as telecoms equipment, Ericsson also works on military missile and radar systems.

British mobile phone maker Sendo dumps Microsoft's Smartphone operating platform in favor of Nokia's OS. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... British mobile phone maker Sendo dumps Microsoft's Smartphone operating platform in favor of Nokia's OS. Sendo chief executive Hugh Brogan says the switch was intended to get access to the source code for Nokia software and therefore customize...

Inmarsat launches a new mobile wireless service that it says offers businesses, small and large, high-speed data services via satellite at speeds of up to 144kbps virtually anywhere in up to 99 countries. (Movements).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Inmarsat launches a new mobile wireless service that it says offers businesses, small and large, high-speed data services via satellite at speeds of up to 144kbps virtually anywhere in up to 99 countries. The service, Inmarsat Regional BGAN, is...

Beijing: the ministry of information industry allocates 155 MHz of spectrum to TD-SCDMA. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Beijing: The Ministry of Information Industry allocates 155 MHz of spectrum to TD-SCDMA, while W-CDMA and cdma2000 are allocated 60 MHz each.

Beijing: Datang Telecom Technology Group will invest 1 billion yuan ($120 million) in TD-SCDMA technology in 2003. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Beijing: Datang Telecom Technology Group will invest 1 billion yuan ($120 million) in TD-SCDMA technology in 2003. By no coincidence, its partner Siemens also announces plans to spend 50 million euros ($49 million) this fiscal year on...

Hong Kong: China Unicom will buy nine GSM mobile networks and CDMA operations from its parent for 22.5 billion yuan ($2.7 billion). (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Hong Kong: China Unicom will buy nine GSM mobile networks and CDMA operations from its parent for 22.5 billion yuan ($2.7 billion). Unicom will pay 4.8 billion yuan in cash and assume 17.7 billion yuan in debt to buy the networks, which have...

Hong Kong: Mobile operator CSL is still weighing up the possibility of using its 800 MHz spectrum to build a cdma2000-tx network. (New map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Hong Kong: Mobile operator CSL is still weighing up the possibility of using its 800 MHz spectrum to build a cdma2000-tx network. The existing TDMA service has less than 5,000 users, analysts say.

Bangkok: Growth in new mobile subscribers in Thailand will slow down in 2003 due to fierce competition, predicts Boonklee Plangsiri, executive chairman of Thailand's largest telecoms group, Shin Corp. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Bangkok: Growth in new mobile subscribers in Thailand will slow down in 2003 due to fierce competition, predicts Boonklee Plangsiri, executive chairman of Thailand's largest telecoms group, Shin Corp. This will force operators to join forces...

Islamabad: Pakistan will auction two cellular telephone licenses next year and permit new landline operators. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Islamabad: Pakistan will auction two cellular telephone licenses next year and permit new landline operators once the monopoly of state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Co. Ltd. ends in December.

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia's mobile subscribers totaled 8.57 million in September, up 16% from 7.4 million at the end of 2001. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia's mobile subscribers totaled 8.57 million in September, up 16% from 7.4 million at the end of 2001. This was boosted by competition between its five carriers as they fight for customers in a fast-consolidating market....

Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia pushes through the takeover of Celcom (Malaysia), despite objections from Celcom's long-time foreign partner and 8% shareholder Deutsche Telekom. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia pushes through the takeover of Celcom (Malaysia), despite objections from Celcom's long-time foreign partner and 8% shareholder Deutsche Telekom. Under the deal, Telekom Malaysia will sell mobile arm TM Cellular...

Kuala Lumpur: Celcom denies a news report. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Kuala Lumpur: Celcom denies a news report that extra accounting discrepancies worth 750 million ringgit ($197 million) had been uncovered during ongoing audits at the company.

Singapore: Mobile One launches an initial public offering to raise between S$875 million ($500 million) and S$1.06 billion.(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Singapore: Mobile One launches an initial public offering to raise between S$875 million ($500 million) and S$1.06 billion, the largest IPO in the city-state in three years.

Seoul: the Ministry of Information and Communication busts four telecoms firms for illegal handset subsidies. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Seoul: The Ministry of Information and Communication busts four telecoms firms for illegal handset subsidies. SK Telecom is banned from securing new subscribers for 30 days. Rival cellcos KTF and LG Telecom are ordered to stop signing up new...

Seoul: SK Telecom's third-quarter net profit jumped 52% as it added subscribers and more customers used phones for email and games. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Seoul: SK Telecom's third-quarter net profit jumped 52% as it added subscribers and more customers used phones for email and games. But profits fall short of analysts' forecasts and represent a 3.5% dip from the second-quarter due to losses...

Tokyo: the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) raids the offices of J-Phone on suspicion of handset price-fixing, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Tokyo: The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) raids the offices of J-Phone on suspicion of handset price-fixing, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun. The FTC is reportedly investigating the possibility that J-Phone forced retailers to stick to designated...

Tokyo: the cam-phone craze that gave the saturated Japanese mobile market a much-needed boost this year has apparently lost its momentum. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Tokyo: The cam-phone craze that gave the saturated Japanese mobile market a much-needed boost this year has apparently lost its momentum. Mobile phone sales for October grew at their slowest pace on record, with all three mobile operators...

Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo, J-Phone, KDDI and Tu-ka Cellular Tokyo team up to study the possible biological effects of exposure to radio waves, in response to growing health concerns over mobile phone use. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo, J-Phone, KDDI and Tu-ka Cellular Tokyo team up to study the possible biological effects of exposure to radio waves, in response to growing health concerns over mobile phone use. The research, already being undertaken by...

Taipei: Nortel Networks and Ericsson file separate complaints contesting a T512.05 billion ($346 million) contract awarded to Nokia by Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom for 3G equipment. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Taipei: Nortel Networks and Ericsson file separate complaints contesting a T$12.05 billion ($346 million) contract awarded to Nokia by Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom for 3G equipment. Nortel's beef is that its bid was T$4 billion cheaper than...

Taipei: Taiwan Cellular will repurchase 100 million shares at a price of between T$44.70 and T$19.60 per share for employee share bonuses. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Taipei: Taiwan Cellular will repurchase 100 million shares at a price of between T$44.70 and T$19.60 per share for employee share bonuses. The buyback, which would account for about 2.22% of Taiwan Cellular's outstanding shares, will take place...

Seoul: The board of F approves a plan to buy a 57% stake in sister company KT ICOM. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Seoul: The board of F approves a plan to buy a 57% stake in sister company KT ICOM. Under the plan, KTF will purchase a 46.58% stake in KT ICOM at 18,227 won per share, totaling 849.1 billion won ($712.1 million), from KT, and another 10.69%...

Revolution in the air: the FCC wants to free up spectrum allocation with a radical plan to let the market and open access rule. If it works, the US will go from having the world's worst spectrum policy to deploying the best. .(Cover Story)
December 15, 2002... If there is an unloved bastard child of global wireless, it is the US. While Europe and Asia created seamless 2G roaming, Americans fumbled their way to national coverage. While Asian users switched on to SMS and mobile data, North Americans...

TDMA's difficult migration: cellular standards continue to slug it out in the US market. TDMA and GSM players are pinning their hopes on EDGE--but experts are divided on its ability to outperform cdma2000. (Wireless Tech).(Time Division/Demand Multiple Access, Global System for Mobile Communication, Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution, Code Division Multiple Access)
December 15, 2002... The mobile standards battle is at its fiercest in North Amercia, where TDMA, GSM and CDMA are all on show. The putative GSM powerhouses of Cingular and AT&T Wireless are in the middle of difficult transitions from fully-loaded TDMA networks to...

Bluetooth for the masses: after a rocky start, Bluetooth is poised for greatness. It may or may not save GPRS, but cheaper manufacturing costs, support from Microsoft and new growth markets like the automobile sector may start pushing Bluetooth towards mass-market status as early as next year. (Wireless Tech).(General Packet Radio Service)
December 15, 2002... What a difference a year makes. Around this time last year, Bluetooth was just the latest in a string of wireless technologies victimized by its own hype. Products that had been promised to hit the shelves by 2001 had largely failed to...

Can porn help MMS overcome its WAPathy? (Wheel Of Industry).(multi-media services )
December 15, 2002... The headlong rush into multi-media services has begun--or has it? Since Lucas Chow of SingTel last year forecast a "GPRS Christmas 2001", the take-up of wireless data services in the "intelligent island" has been little short of disappointing...

Sharing the network. (Forum).(operators cutting costs)
December 15, 2002... The enormous cost of acquiring 3G mobile licences together with the additional costs of building out new networks has led to operators pursuing various degrees of network or infrastructure sharing so that costs can be shared. Broadly,...

AWSJ via GPRS. (out now).(Asian Wall Street Journal, General Packet Radio Service; SingTel, eSpace Technologies and Dow Jones launch news service)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... SingTel, eSpace Technologies and Dow Jones have launched a new, real-time financial news service allowing SingTel Mobile users to subscribe to premier content from Dow Jones Newswires and The Asian Wall Street Journal, accessed via GPRS...

Prepaid Wi-Fi. (out now).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Australian remote broadband access service provider SkyNetGlobal has launched a range of prepaid 802.11b services in blocks of 300, 720 and 1,200 minutes.

SIM apps. (out now).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Bluefish Technologies has announced a new range of SIM based applications for GSM operators, including Prepay TopUp, SIMecho (automatic back up of data such as address books to a network server), SIM Callback, MobileWrite-Up? (Webtype...

Tough Bluetooth AP. (out now).(connectBlue product)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... connectBlue has officially launched its "Rugged Bluetooth Access Point", which is specifically designed for use in exposed industrial environments. The product features a tough aluminum cover that can withstand dust, heat, humidity and high...

MMS Symbian client. (out now).(Magic4 offers new software)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Mobile messaging solutions vendor magic4 is now offering its partners an MMS Symbian OS--based client that offers a complete feature set, including integration to camera devices, slide show editor and viewer, Digital Rights Management support...

OMA's first standards. (tools).(Open Mobile Alliance)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... The Open Mobile Alliance has announced its first seven standards "enablers" aimed at stimulating the sluggish mobile content sector. The seven standards cover mobile browsing, MMS, digital rights management (DRM), DNS look-up, content...

Borland C++ goes mobile. (tools).(C++ Mobile Edition by Borland Software)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Borland Software has introduced C++ Mobile Edition, which allows Borland C++ customers to design applications for mobile devices based on the Nokia Series 60 smart-phone platform, which runs on the Symbian OS. Jointly developed with Nokia,...

Nokia licenses Blackberry. (deals).(Nokia and Research in Motion sign license agreement)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Nokia will license software from Research in Motion (RIM) to equip its products with popular Blackberry email software targeted at corporate clients. Nokia says RIM's software will be installed on several of its products, but the company won't...

Moto signs Java deals. (deals).(Motorola and Handango )(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Motorola signed several J2ME deals last month, including a deal with mobile software company Handango, which will provide more than 1,500 Java-based games, ring tones and graphics for Motorola's data-capable phones. Another deal with HillCast...

Privacy manager. (tools).(Nokia's iGMLC Privacy Manager)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Nokia has introduced the iGMLC Privacy Manager, a tool for managing subscriber privacy, as part of its mPosition solution for mobile location services. The privacy manager gives mobile subscribers full control over their privacy settings by...

GPRS QoS verification. (tools).(Actix launches new service)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Actix has launched a GPRS service verification solution (SVS) that enables verification of subscriber-perceived QoS and accelerating root-cause analysis of underlying problems that lead to poor QoS. The GPRS SVS provides automated performance...

Siemens developer program. (tools).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Siemens ICM has announces its new mobile phones Developer Program, which is part of the existing Siemens mobile Partner Program. Key technical information, developer tools and business support are provided.

RealNetworks expands deal. (deals).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... RealNetworks has expanded an existing deal with France Telecom spin-off Envivio, whose software encodes MPEG-4 standard video. Under the new deal, both companies will co-develop the "Mobile Producer"--a product that will allow audio and video...

China-US GPRS roaming. (deals).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... China Mobile and AT&T Wireless have signed a roaming agreement to provide GPRS roaming to their respective customers in the US and China. While the new GPRS roaming agreement covers all of AT&T Wireless' national service area, it will initially...

Celcom gets Hotmail. (deals).(Celcom Malaysia)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Celcom Malaysia and MSN Hotmail have struck an alliance allowing customers to access their Hotmail accounts via two-way SMS. Celcom customers will not only be able to access emails sent to their Hotmail accounts, but will also be able to reply...

StarHub partners MTV. (deals).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... StarHub is collaborating with MTV Asia to launch a new mobile and entertainment lifestyle package, targeting the youth market, in January 2003. The first project--centered around the MTV Asia Awards--will offer services such as downloading ring...

Bluetooth Palm no match for Wi-Fi. (Street Wise).(Palm Tungsten T)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 15, 2002... The new Palm Tungsten T is a powerful machine. It boasts a 65,000 color TFT screen, a 144 MHz Texas Instrument microprocessor, an expandable SD Card memory slot and wireless connectivity in the form of Bluetooth. Palm has put a lot of...

Shaking up spectrum. (Lynch).
December 15, 2002... The US Federal Communications Commission has proposed a sweeping overhaul of spectrum management that would overturn 90-year-old assumptions about scarcity and interference issues. The changes would see the current prescribed spectrum use...

Incorrect tune. (Short message: around the wireless industry).(cellular ringtones in China)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Chinese high school students are coming under scrutiny for their questionable choice of mobile ring tones. The official China Daily reports that a tune associated with Japan's invasion of the mainland, Japanese entering a village, has...

ACA on SMS. (Short message: around the wireless industry).(Australian Communications Authority)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) has re-issued its warning to consumers not to rely on SMS in an emergency. ACA Chairman Tony Shaw says that SMS is unsuitable for emergency situations--in which time is decidedly of the...

None dare call it SMS. (Short message: around the wireless industry).(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... Proposed security legislation in Hong Kong to be introduced under Article 23 of the territory's Basic Law has drawn plenty of debate and criticism over its vague definitions of treason, secession, sedition, subversion and theft of state...

Beware of lamppost. (Short message: around the wireless industry).(BT Wholesale to improve cellular service)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... BT Wholesale, British Telecom's infrastructure arm, has plans to install low-power cellular transmitters inside lampposts and telephone poles across the UK in a bid to not only improve cellular coverage, but also create pico cell sites for more...

Much ado about TD-SCDMA. (Short message: around the wireless industry).(China and the TD-SCMA standard)(Brief Article)
December 15, 2002... The Ministry of Information Industry's sudden public reaffirmation of TD-SCDMA in late October in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing evidently unnerved senior European Union official Franz Jessen, who felt it necessary to tell an audience...