Virgin Mobile USA LP has agreed to hire International Business Machines Corp. to handle information technology operations and develop new applications.
Under the Friday agreement, New York-based IBM will hire 44 Virgin Mobile employees at current pay levels for two years.
The companies expect a five-year initial term for the agreement, from May 15, 2008, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. New Jersey-based Virgin Mobile can extend the agreement, which also includes engineering services, for one year. The agreement will provide undisclosed IT-related operational cost savings and help the company compete in new product and service delivery, according to a release.
Virgin Mobile will pay IBM through fixed and variable charges, the latter of which will change depending on Virgin Mobile’s need for services. Fees for operations and infrastructure will depend on factors such as the number of servers or workstations needed, the filing said. Network operations center, application development and certain other fees will be hourly. Charges will be adjusted beginning in 2010 based on general economic indicators.
Financial terms of the agreement are not being released.
Virgin Mobile can cancel the agreement with 180 days’ notice plus a fee and deferred transition costs. It may also have to pay wind-down charges for canceling third-party agreements, ending leases or firing employees. The charges wouldn’t apply if IBM didn’t meet certain service levels or violated the agreement.
If either party ended the agreement, Virgin Mobile could ask IBM to provide continuing services for one year to 15 months.
Virgin Mobile plans to file the agreement with the SEC in conjunction with its second-quarter financial report.
On June 27 , Virgin Mobile agreed to buy Helio for about $39 million in equity.
United Kingdom-based Virgin Group and Sprint Corp., the predecessor of Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp, each invested as much as $150 million in mid-2002 to form Virgin Mobile.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
- October 4th, 2007
- 1:47 pm
AT&T has signed a five-year contract to provide telecoms and network management services to IBM. The deal could generate up to US$5 billion for AT&T and builds on a previous relationship between the carrier and the chipmaker.
Meanwhile, AT&T says it will take a $60 million charge this year for technology services procured from IBM but adds that neither the financial hit nor revenues accruing from the new management deal will affect its fiscal 2007 results.
Back in the United States, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have asked AT&T and its peers to outline the extent of their “co-operation” with federal agencies in terms of domestic spying and surveillance activities.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee this week required the carrier – along with its rivals Qwest and Verizon – to explain in detail how government agencies approached them to “request” access to the subscriber records of US citizens.
Qwest claims to have rejected such federal demands but the other major national US operators are believed to have voluntarily complied with illegal government agency “requests” without being compelled to do so by legal warrant.
“If reports about the government surveillance programme are accurate, Congress has a duty to inquire about whether such a programme violates the Constitution, as well as consumer protection and privacy laws,” says the head of the committee, Rep. John Dingell.
He adds that the committee plans to “examine the difficult position of the phone companies who may have been asked by the government to violate the privacy of their customers without the assurance of liability protections.”
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
- August 24th, 2007
- 9:56 am
An online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits by IBM shows a fall in the use of TV as the primary media device. The findings suggest that personal internet time is rivalling TV time. A total of 19 percent of consumer respondents said they spend 6 hours or more each day on personal internet usage, with 9 percent of respondents reporting the level of TV viewing. A total of 66 percent said they watched 1-4 hours of TV each day, compared to 60 percent using the internet for 1-4 hours a day for personal reasons. A total of 23 percent of respondents said they used a portable music service such as iTunes, 7 percent said they had a video content subscription for their mobile phones, 11 percent said they used a PC-based music service and 18 percent claimed to have an online newspaper subscription. In the US, 24 percent of respondents said they had a digital video recorder (DVR). The online survey was conducted between mid-April and mid-June. It generated 885 respondents in the US, 559 respondents in the UK, 338 respondents in Germany, 263 respondents in Australia and 378 respondents in Japan.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Nortel and IBM recently unveiled their plans to deliver a simple and cost-effective solution for businesses that makes the move to IP telephony and unified communications as easy as a software upgrade. As part of IBM’s unified communications and collaboration (UC2) strategy, this new solution will combine leading software and hardware from IBM with advanced IP telephony and multimedia capabilities from Nortel.
The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution, targeting small to medium businesses (SMBs) and branch offices, will integrate IBM’s System i business computing platform and the IBM Lotus Sametime unified communications and collaboration platform with Nortel’s suite of VoIP and multimedia technologies into a complete Unified Communications solution that runs on a single system.
The Nortel-IBM solution will allow for the consolidation of VoIP, multimedia collaboration and other core business applications onto a single, robust and highly-scalable System i platform that will be complemented by a portfolio of SIP clients and allow for connectivity to Nortel’s purpose-built data portfolio for SMBs.
The integration with Lotus Sametime will deliver
advanced telephony plug-ins to Lotus Sametime’s existing unified communication and collaboration tools, which include capabilities such as instant messaging (IM), Web conferencing, mobile device support and voice and video chat. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will provide users the flexibility to select the method of collaboration best suited for the task at hand along with the integration and reliability of the System i platform. For example, Lotus Sametime users will be able to review their contact list to determine who is on their Nortel phone, and also click-to-call or click-to-conference, to immediately connect with contacts via their Nortel telephony system on System i.
“Combined with Nortel’s unified communications technology, the simplicity of System i allows small and medium-sized clients to take advantage of IP Telephony in an accessible form that also delivers rich functionality,” said Mark Shearer, general manager, IBM System i. “The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will be designed to run the business processing and real-time collaboration needs of a small or medium-sized business simultaneously with IP telephony on a single system, so IT employees can focus on the business, not managing technology.”
The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will be sold through approved Nortel resellers and IBM solution providers who will be provided with training and tools for selling and supporting the product. The solution complements Nortel¡¯s existing SMB portfolio of voice and data offerings such as the Business Communications Manager (BCM), Business Ethernet Switch (BES) Business Secure Router (BSR) and Business Access Point (BAP).
“This offering provides Nortel channel partners with a remarkable opportunity to grow with a unified communications solution from two worldwide leaders, and represents our commitment to open platforms and applications with industry-leading partners,” said Lori McLean, Nortel general manager, Nortel-IBM Alliance. “This integrated solution makes the move to IP telephony along with unified communications as easy as a software upgrade on IBM System i.”
According to InfoTech’s 2007 InfoTrack for SMB IP Telephony Market Analysis and Forecast, the combined revenue for SMB converged applications is expected to grow from $526 million in 2006 to $1.83 billion in 2011. The report also confirms that SMBs strongly believe that Unified Communications applications represent the greatest potential business value and the highest IT spending among the various categories of SMB converged applications. Nortel and IBM understand this trend. Their collaboration on the easy-to-manage, easy-to-secure and highly reliable System i platform will enable SMB customers to realize the benefits of unified communication.
In addition to IP-PBX call features such as call routing, voice mail and unified messaging, the solution is expected to integrate with select e-mail clients. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution is expected to be initially available in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Nortel and IBM have unveiled plans to deliver a solution that makes the move to IP telephony and unified communications possible with a software upgrade. As part of IBM’s unified communications and collaboration strategy, the new service will combine software and hardware from IBM with advanced IP telephony and multimedia capabilities from Nortel. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications service will integrate IBM’s System i business computing platform and the IBM Lotus Sametime unified communications and collaboration platform with Nortel’s suite of VoIP and multimedia technologies into a complete unified communications service that runs on a single system. The Nortel-IBM solution will allow for the consolidation of VoIP, multimedia collaboration and other core business applications onto a System i platform that will be complemented by a portfolio of SIP clients and allow for connectivity to Nortel’s purpose-built data portfolio for SMBs. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will be sold through approved Nortel resellers and IBM solution providers who will be provided with training and tools for selling and supporting the product. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution is expected to be initially available in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Intel, Google, Dell, HP and a range of other computing, environmental and research groups have started the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The goal of the project is to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promoting the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide. The main target is 90 percent efficiency for power supplies by 2010, which if achieved, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year and save more than USD 5.5 billion in energy costs. Initial companies who intend to participate in the initiative represent both the demand and supply side of the computer industry, including computer manufacturers and chipmakers, as well as environmental groups, energy companies, retailers and government agencies. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative licensed its name from the WWF Climate Savers program, which involves several companies working to reduce their carbon footprint. The initiative’s energy efficiency benchmarks will initially follow the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star guidelines, but with increasing requirements during the next several years. Other initial members of the initiative are Advanced Micro Devices, Canonical, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, Coldwatt, Delta Electronics, eBay, EDS, EMC, Fujitsu, Hipro Technology, Hitachi, IBM, LANDesk Software, Lenovo, Linux Foundation, MIT, Microsoft, Natural Resources Defense Council, NEC, One Laptop Per Child, PG&E, Power-One, Quanta Computer, Rackable Systems, Red Hat, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems, Supermicro Computer, Ubuntu, Unisys, University of Michigan, Verdiem, World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund and Yahoo!.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
SDA-India writes…There seems to be a paradigm shift in the outsourcing space as IBM has received a ten-year outsourcing contract from Indian mobile network operator Idea Cellular. The deal is estimated to be worth between USD 600 -800 million.
Under the terms of the deal, IBM will handle services like billing, revenue assurance, credit collection and subscriber management, and manage the IT infrastructure of India’s fifth largest mobile operator.
IBM has 53,000 people in India. Company CEO Sam Palmisano said the company would invest USD 6 billion in India over three years through 2009 to expand service centres catering to customers globally.
IBM had entered into a similar deal in 2004 from Bharti Enterprises, which operates India’s largest cellular service provider, Bharti Airtel. The contract also stood at USD 750 million and was for ten years.
This move only depicts India’s maturity and skyrocketing economy. Many Indian companies have reached a stage where they can themselves outsource operations to multinational companies.
Wireless Mobile Telecom
Virgin Mobile, IBM enter IT service agreement (USA)
