Swedish telco Telia upgrades LTE network
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: For delivering speeds of 100Mbps in the city of central Stockholm, the mobile broadband base stations have been upgraded by Swedish mobile operator Telia. Upgradation process of the rest of its LTE base stations will begin this spring.
The upgradation will help the customers to access the web with practical speeds of up to 80 Mbps. Currently, central parts of Stockholm, as well as Stockholm’s districts Alvsjo, Kista and Hammarby Sjostad is covered by Telia’s LTE network. Launch of LTE in 25 locations in Sweden are also on Telia’s cards.
In the third quarter, LTE network will be expanded to Lund, Vasteras, Malma, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Linkoping. LTE network will be expanded to Lund, Vasteras, Malma, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Linkoping while other cities will be covered by the network by the end of the year by the end of the year. Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks deliver Telia’s LTE network.
MTNL to add 2 million subscribers in two cities (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Addition of two million lines each in New Delhi and Mumbai has been planned by Indian state-run telecom company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd on its global system for mobile communications technology.
Addition of 200 telecom towers in New Delhi and 291 towers in Mumbai has also been planned by the company during the current fiscal year that ends March 31. Equipment to set up 500,000 additional broadband lines in New Delhi and Mumbai would be installed by MTNL.
According to junior Telecommunications Minister, Gurudas Kamat, out of the total two million, one million GSM capacities has already been commissioned in Delhi and Mumbai each, and remaining is under installation. Currently, MTNL has 784,000 broadband users in the two cities.
STT to buy stake in U Mobile & VNPT
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Malaysian cellco U Mobile stake will be taken up by Singapore Technologies Telemedia. The announcement for the strategic partnership agreement will be made by the two companies on Monday.
NTT DoCoMo and KTF were the earlier partners of U Mobile which exited the company and now ST Telemedia is widely expected to become the latest foreign investor in U Mobile.
10% stake in VNPT Global, the offshore arm of Vietnam’s VNPT Group has also been announced by ST Telemedia.
However, financial terms of the deal are still not disclosed. VNPT Global operates in Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and the Czech Republic.
Vodafone and Mobcast join hands for eBook Giveaway
As a part of Vodafone UK’s ‘Free Fridays’ campaign, the company has joined hands with digital book service provider Mobcast. Under this campaign, the company will offer its customers an opportunity to download free five best-selling e-books on their mobile phones on March 12.
The company earlier enjoyed a huge success for its ebooks facility on its Vodafone 360 platform, where Mobcast’s ebooks are available in English and local European languages.
Names of some of the bestsellers offered by the company includes the first title of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’, the current chart-topper of Sophie Kinsella’s Twenties Girlâ€, another best-seller written by James Patterson, The Murder of King Tut’, fiction from Alex Preston, This Bleeding City’, and in conjunction with the Tim Burton film release and the classic Alice in Wonderland†by Lewis Carroll.
The book by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattooâ€, has now been transformed into a movie and the customers will also be offered a chance to win the private screening of this film. A dedicated microsite has been developed by Vodafone to promote the giveaway.
Motorola to roll out Android smartphones in China
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Android smartphones incorporated with the Bing search engine will be rolled out by US vendor Motorola in China by the end of this month. Bing search and map functions will be added by Motorola to its Android-powered smartphones, as part of a global alliance just signed with Microsoft. A new widget that also includes the Microsoft search engine along with a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on its mobile browsers will be included by the company.
A new feature on the Android handsets for China was announced by the company in the month of January in the wake of the Google-Chinese censorship debacle. The new article would have enabled the users to select their own search provider, including local search champion Baidu.
The first customized Android device supporting Wi-Fi and WAPI, the Motorola XT701 was launched by W-CDMA operator China Unicom earlier this week.
BSNL launches 3G EVDO plans for internet users (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 3G EVDO plans has been launched by state owned India telco, BSNL, thus adding a spice to the already firing price war in the country. The plan offers substantially lower access charges for consumers on the move. Though the service is a pan India move, it’s still not confirmed whether Delhi or Mumbai are a part of the plan.
No specific cities have been named by BSNL which will receive the 3.1 mbps speed, and which will switch to lower speeds. The move of the company reflects that it is encouraging users to take the unlimited plan, which will cost Rs. 750 per month for users who sign up until the end of March 2010, after which it will increase to Rs. 999 per month.
Grameenphone users to book rail tickets via mobile (Bangladesh)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The world is going mobile and with so many developments happening in the telecom world, the most benefited are the mobile users. Mobile operator Grameenphone has taken a step ahead to make the life of its users a bit easier. Commuters in Bangladesh can now reserve train tickets 10 days in advance over their mobile phone through Grameenphone’s Mobitaka service.
The payment for the tickets can be done by using the balance in the user’s Mobitaka account. The operator has collaborated with Computer Network Systems (CNS) Limited which is the Bangladeshi equivalent of IRCTC. CNS took over the computerized reservation and ticketing system of Bangladesh Railway in 2007.
All Inter-city trains starting from Dhaka Kamlapur, Dhaka Airport and Chittagong stations would be offered the mobile ticketing service initially. The service will be expended to all other intercity trains gradually. A menu from the mobile phone will be entered by the users and travelling information would have to be fed to book the tickets.
After the above steps, the user will get an option to either book the tickets for a stipulated time period or purchase immediately if the seats are available. Through an SMS, a digital train ticket number will be sent from which paper-based ticket from the train station at the time of travel could be obtained. A service fee of BDT 20 per seat will be charged along with the ticket cost.
Partner prepares for LTE deployment (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The preparatory work for the deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services has been started by Israeli mobile network operator Partner Communications. A tender is supposed to be held by Partner for proposals on an upgrade to its existing core network. Besides a tender would also be held for an additional network components that would enable it to launch commercial 4G services as soon as it received the requisite frequencies.
Israeli Defence Force is expected to release fourth-generation spectrum by early 2012. 900MHz band of spectrum currently held by Partner is also resolved to be used by the operator. At present, 2100MHz band is used by Partner for its third generation services. Vendors other than its current main supplier Ericsson will be considered by the firm. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent have all been mooted as possible vendors of interest.
According to an official at Partner, NSN and Huawei are companies that have shown that they have impressive solutions for rolling out an LTE network, alongside Ericsson and the company will upgrade its core network to IP so that it can unite voice and data, and the firm will upgrade the network to speeds of 21Mbps and 42Mbps in the future.
Verizon-Frontier deal receives judge’s disapproval (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The state regulators have been advised by administrative law judge Lisa M Tapia to disapprove Verizon’s deal to divest operations in 14 states to Frontier Communications in a USD8.6 billion deal.
The deal will see fixed line service for a total of 4.8 million customers change hands. The deal was agreed between the two parties in May 2009 but the regulatory approval was awaited for the best part of a year.
According to Tapia, evidence presented in the case in front of the Illinois Commerce Commission did not support the sale because the transaction would leave Frontier too laden with debt to be able to properly manage the lines and other infrastructure.
Frontier’s ability to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service will also be diminished by the proposed re-organization.
