www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telefonica SA has revealed that it wants raise its current stake of 8.37% in China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. According to Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta, the synergies with Telecom Italia SpA are working out very well, and that the company is satisfied with the current situation.
Earlier it was reported that Telefonica was planning to bid for Telecom Italia, in which it now only holds an indirect minority stake.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: No offers have been received by Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Co., better known as Zain for its Africa assets. Earlier it was reported that France’s Vivendi, France Telecom and the U.K.’s Vodafone Group are holding talks with Zain to buy the company’s Africa operations.
Zain, which has been in discussions with the international companies for about two months, could sell its Africa assets for $11-$12 billion and the resignation of chief executive officer Saad Al Barrak intensified the talks.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Following the success of a two month pilot scheme, 3G service has been launched by MVNO TelstraClear over Vodafone’s network for business customers. The launch date has been preponed to take advantage of disgruntled customers in the wake of Telecom New Zealand’s recent 3G network failure.
The cellco used to provide services over Vodafone’s network but switched to Telecom in 2007 following a dispute but decided to move back to Vodafone after Telecom decided in May 2009 not to allow the MVNO to take credit on its 3G network.
According to TelstraClear, is targeting the post-paid market and is aiming for 100,000 subscribers within the next three years.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The HSDPA-enabled 3G network has been expanded by Malaysian mobile operator DiGi Telecommunications, offering theoretical downlink speeds of up to 14.4Mbps, in Sarawak, in line with its previously announced expansion plans.
68% of the population in Ipoh and 45% of those living in Kuching is covered by the launch and it is expected to reach 98% and 55% respectively by the end of March 2010. MYR100 million (USD29 million) investment has been further planned by DiGi to further enhance its footprint in Sarawak and Perak in the next three years.
According to DiGi CEO Johan Dennelind, DiGi was aiming to offer services in three further Malaysian states by the end of this year, with Johor Baharu said to be the next target and also added that DiGi’s existing 3G network already has coverage of almost 100% of Kota Kinabalu as well as 70% of both Penang and the Klang Valley, having inaugurated commercial services in March 2009 in the latter.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In a move to make Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel) more attractive to potential buyers, Zambian government might offer a number of fibre pairs to the operator which are currently controlled by state-owned power company Zesco. Seven of twelve fibre pairs that Zesco has will be transferred.
Of the remaining five, two are used by Zesco to manage its power network; one is used by South Africa-based MTN, which owns a mobile operator in Zambia, while the last two are not currently in use.
Currently, Huawei is in the process of rolling out a fibre backbone for Zamtel, but it remains incomplete and by comparison to Zesco’s existing infrastructure is significantly less expansive.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Warid Telecom (Bangladesh) whose 70% stake was acquired by Indian telco Bharti Airtel will be renamed Airtel Bangla Ltd and will be operational under this name by the end of this month.
The acquisition has been approved by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) while the investments plan has been submitted under which Bharti is set to pay off Warid’s debts of BDT2.3 billion (USD33 million) to local financial institutions along with massive network expansion under an initial BDT21 billion budget.
According to the BTRC, Warid telecom launched in May, 2007 signed up almost three million subscribers by end-December 2009.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Due to Venezuela’s rising inflation and the devaluation of the Bolivar, the net profit of Telefonica will be reduced by nearly EUR 548 million. Telefonica’s second largest revenue generator in Latin America is Venezuela which accounted for almost 7 percent of revenues in the first nine months of 2009.
However, the company feels that the fiscal gains of EUR 591 million from a Spanish law would offset the loss. Spanish law allows firms to deduct from taxes goodwill charges from foreign acquisitions and spread that deduction over a 20-year-period.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez devalued the Venezuelan currency in relation to the US dollar by 50 percent on January 8, 2010, to an exchange rate of VEF 4.3 per dollar from VEF 2.15, and set a rate of VEF 2.6 per dollar for imports of essential items such as food and medicine. After this devaluation, the value of the assets of Telefonica became EUR 1.81 billion less.
This led to the reiteration of earnings targets by Telefonica.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Belgian operator Belgacom will launch its revamped internet offerings on March 1, 2010. Internet Start with 2 GB is the entry-level package; Internet Comfort with 8 GB is the standard package and Internet Favorite with 75 GB will be the heavier usage package.
EUR 18.90 per month will be charged for Internet Start with speeds at 2 Mbps, EUR 32.50 for Internet Comfort with 12 Mbps speed. Internet Favorite and Internet Intense will provide 20 Mbps for EUR 42.90 and EUR 56 respectively. Larger mailbox volumes of 1 GB will benefit all packages.
Additional volume could be bought by customers exceeding their data limits. with Start and Comfort customers paying EUR 1 per extra 1 GB and Favorite clients EUR 5 per extra 20 GB. Both new and existing customers can avail the new offering.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3 UK along with comScore have launched a GSMA Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) service in the UK. Anonymous mobile internet usage data will be taken from all five UK mobile operators by the service to provide insights into mobile media consumption.
It was shown by the data that about 16 million people in the UK accessed the internet from their handsets in December 2009 and viewed a combined total of 6.7 billion pages and spending an aggregate of 4.8 billion minutes online in the months.
70 percent of both total pages viewed and total time spent online on mobiles were accounted by the top 10 sites. Smartphone devices have resulted in this rapid growth of mobile internet usage in UK. 29 percent of the UK total mobile internet audience is of smartphone users.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vodafone Qatar and Gulf Bridge International signed a deal to provide a landing station the latter’s submarine cable in the Gulf state.
GBI cable system is scheduled to launch in 2011 and designed to operate for up to 25 years. It will connect telecommunication operators and other communications firms in the region via a core ring, which can re-route traffic thereby increasing resilience.
All the countries of the Gulf region will be connected by the GBI cable system and it will also provide onward connectivity to Europe and Asia. The cable system will have a design capacity of up to 5 Tbps on certain cable sections.
The system will also have capability to meet the rapid growth in demand that has been forecast for traffic originating and terminating in the Gulf.
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