Telstra receives telecom licences in Japan and Singapore (Australia, Asia)
Australian telecom operator Telstra has reportedly been given operating licences in Singapore and Japan, enabling the operator to expand its footprint in the Asian continent. As per company reports, Telstra plans to open and operate voice and data networks that will allow the company to build the local backbone required for new cable submarine capacity to Singapore.
Further, the company has reportedly claimed that the license enables them to offer voice and data services as well as systems and facilities locally. As per sources, the operator had previously received three telecom licences in India for providing customers with international telecommunication services.
AT&T hails data growth as a growth driver (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Data growth has been claimed to drive the growth process in the wireless industry and not prepaid voice service. AT&T has been very active in providing cellular services for everything, be it dog collars or medicine bottle caps.
However, the response generated by the services has been low. The company has decided to provide more data services to devices and people as its growth driver as the industry wrestles with new sources of revenue.
According to Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Inc.’s wireless and consumer operations, the company has positioned itself as well for the next wave of growth with emerging devices and denied that subscriber growth in the prepaid voice business is surpassing the postpaid business and claimed that the postpaid contract business still has still opportunity to keep revenue flowing by signing up more data plans.
Postpaid business, which took a hit in the first quarter as the industry reported dramatically slower growth. De la opined that AT&T would continue to explore different models for data services, including wholesale and prepaid agreements for connected devices
Smartphones costlier: Verizon tells FCC
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In order to break service contracts for smart phones, Verizon Wireless has doubled the fees on the customers. According to Verizon, the difference between what it pays manufacturers for phones and what it
charges contract customers is more than twice as large for smart phones as it is for standard cell phones.
The explanation was given after Federal Communications Commission asked the carrier to tell the reason behind doubling the maximum early termination fee for smart phones to $350 from $175. Earlier, Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the FCC needs to increase its oversight of the wireless industry and improve its enforcement of consumer protection rules.
Smartphones takes more time for sales and customer service workers to help customers understand advanced features and functions on the handsets, thereby increasing the cost. Verizon has also been inquired by FCC about $1.99-a-megabyte data access fees that have appeared on the bills of customers who don’t have data plans but who accidentally initiate data access by pressing a button on their phones.
In reply, Verizon has said when customer starts using a data service but then quickly shuts it off, the fees is not charged.
AT&T launches new iPhone application (America)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In order to allow the user to provide specific feedback about network coverage, American operator AT&T has launched a new iPhone application which will also capture the GPS coordinates when a call
fails, when there’s no coverage, no data service, or there’s poor voice quality.
When the user will submit its complaints, AT&T will send them an SMS, acknowledging that the event happened.The app has already received 23 comments. While most of the users have given lot of stars, there are some who have used the opportunity to show their disgust.
However, AT&T has also admitted that the company has no idea what are the holes in the network.
Local vendors lose out again as eMobile signs Huawei
The rollout of Japan’s newest W-CDMA nationwide mobile network by eMobile, the new mobile subsidiary of leading DSL wholesaler eAccess Ltd, is gathering pace and causing not a few surprises and disappointments among vendors.
eMobile announced late in July that it had selected Huawei Technologies from 15 global vendors as a second prime network vendor to work alongside Ericsson, which in March was awarded the contract for the nationwide core network and the 1.7-GHz radio network in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.
Huawei will start by deploying networks in Sapporo and Sendai. This is the first contract for Huawei or any Chinese network vendor in Japan, and it means that Japanese vendors have completely lost out on this pioneering 3.5G network business worth $3 billion to $4 billion. “The choice of Huawei was an extraordinary shock to Japanese vendors,” eMobile and eAccess CEO Dr Sachio Semmoto told Wireless Asia.
Japanese vendors are not the only shocked and disappointed vendors. Lucent Technologies was passed over yet again. One year ago Lucent appeared to be in pole position with eAccess after working on apparently successful trials combining HSDPA and Lucent’s IMS. Lucent was presented as eAccess’ partner in several high profile PR social and events.
Among the reasons cited for the selection of Huawei by eAccess are its strong product development skills, quality management systems in IP technology and small base stations.
eAccess has done an impressive job of fundraising for the new venture. eMobile now has equity and debt financing totaling 363 billion yen ($3.16 billion). The companies are planning to offer seamless IP-based fixed and mobile services with data services starting in March 2007 and voice services following in Spring 2008.
Putting up a state-of-the-art nationwide mobile network, of course, is costly and eAccess will struggle to reach the 85% coverage required by the government within five years under its present business-financing plan, even though the network will be IP-based.
NTT DoCoMo spent $20 billion on its W-CDMA network and Vodafone Japan around $10 billion on its latest network. From this perspective, it is easy to understand the decision to partner with Huawei, which has risen quickly by combining advanced technology with low prices.
eMobile’s ambitious strategy contrasts sharply with IP Mobile, Japan’s other mobile start-up, which announced that it has secured just over 4 billion yen to build its network. Non-Japanese vendors have also secured a significant part of the contracts so far awarded by IP Mobile.
Source- http://www.telecomasia.net.
Technorati : Asia, Cell Phones, Ericsson, HSDPA, Huawei, Japan, Vodafone, eAccess
Ice Rocket : Asia, Cell Phones, Ericsson, HSDPA, Huawei, Japan, Vodafone, eAccess
