www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera, the Swedish based telco, has reportedly announced plans to make a public offer for the remaining shares it does not already own in Lithuanian incumbent telco TEO LT and Eesti Telekom of Estonia. TEO, at present, is 60%-owned by the Nordic company via its holding vehicle Amber Teleholding. TEO’s other major shareholders are East Capital Asset Management (5.15%), Lintel (4.67%), and the State of Lithuania (1.58%), with the remaining 28.6% listed on the Vilnius bourse. Meanwhile, TeliaSonera, through its regional holding company Baltic Tele, owns a 60.12% stake in the former state-owned monopoly Eesti Telekom, with the remainder held by the Estonian government (around 24.17%) and public investors. Eesti Telekom owns 100% of both fixed network operator Elion Enterprises and cellco Eesti Mobiiltelefon (EMT).
The telco will make an offer of LTL527 million (USD221 million) and EEK5.117 million (USD473 million) for the remaining shares in TEO and Eesti respectively. It will officially apply to the Lithuanian Securities Commission (LSC) for approval of the offering to the shareholders on 25 August, while the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has already been notified of the group’s decision to make an offer to the shareholders. The acceptance period is expected to begin on 9 September and last until 9 October, but is subject to change pursuant to the approval of the documents by the LSC and FSA.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Inge Lindberg has been appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO) within Telenor Sweden. Inge Lindberg comes from the role as Finance Director of Teracom. He will be part of Telenor Sweden’s management team.
Inge Lindberg, 44 years, has extensive experience from management positions in finance and telecom. He has worked as Financial Manager of Telia and Konsultchef at Deloitte Consulting with a focus on financial control. Since 2006 he is Director of Finance at Teracom.
Inge has solid industry knowledge and extensive experience from management in different companies. He is well aware of the industry’s challenges and become an important force in the development of Telenor’s operations in Sweden, says Lars-Åke Norling, CEO Telenor Sweden.
“Telenor Sweden has an exciting challenging position and I look very forward to being with and develop the company to meet the tough competition in the market, “says Inge Lindberg, incoming Finance Director Telenor Sweden.
Inge Lindberg succeeds Tomas Ljunglöf who chose to leave Telenor Sweden. Børge Moholt, currently Head of Business Performance in Telenor Nordic, becomes acting CFO during a transition period.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The European Commission, EU, will make an investment of nearly EUR 18 million in research to boost LTE – 4G mobile networks. The funding will be used for research on the enhanced version of LTE, LTE Advanced. In countries like Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK LTE trials are going on. The commercial launch of services will be made in Sweden and Norway in H1′10. In September 2009, the EC will roll out negotiations on the details with project consortia, including the flagship Artist4G that builds on the achievements of the Winner projects and unites 4G industry and researchers from Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The new projects are scheduled for launch in January 2010.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: According to a recent survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), the mobile susbcribers in Netherlands enjoy the cheapest mobile tariffs across the world. The survey compared the cost for an average user (780 phone calls, 600 text messages and eight multi-media messages) in 30 countries in August’08 and found prices varied from $11 to $53.
Netherlands was followed by Finland and Sweden with lowest tariffs. The highest prices were paid in the US, Canada and Spain.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera has reportedly made an announcement that an arbitration tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce has ordered Cukurova group to hand its remaining stake in Turkcell Holding to the Swedish telecoms group. The transfer is worth $3.1 billion in cash. With the transfer of stake TeliaSonera will hold a majority stake of 64.3% in the Turkish mobile operator.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators, said it is negotiating with mobile operators in the Middle East to launch the fourth generation (4G) mobile network, known as the world’s first commercial Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network in the region.
LTE is the next-generation mobile wireless broadband technology that will enable operators to offer enhanced wireless broadband services as well as Internet TV, mobile video blogging, on-line video games and the mobile office environment. One of the most significant aspects of 4G evolution would be the mass capability to achieve “mobile broadband anytime anywhere”.
Fredrik Landberg, VP Marketing Communication & Strategy of Ericsson in Saudi ArabiaEricsson in Saudi Arabia, said: “The 4G services will truly revolutionize your life by facilitating the means of communication for both institutions and individuals. These will include not only Internet telephones and videophones, but also easy teleconferencing, practical telecommuting, medical services such as remote diagnosis, interactive distance education, rich multimedia entertainment, digitally-controlled home appliances, and much more.”
LTE enables new levels of performance in terms of peak data rates, spectrum efficiency and delay. Ericsson has already demonstrated peak rates of 160 mbps. LTE can be deployed both in new and existing frequency bands and is designed to minimize the cost of network operation and maintenance.
The evolving technology of mobile broadband will provide key support in building sustainable cities that minimize the use of energy and reduce CO2 emissions.
The Gulf’s information and communication technology (ICT) market is one of the fastest growing in the world. Industry estimates show that a significant chunk of the new demand will come from Saudi Arabia. According to published reports, the number of mobile users in the Kingdom have risen by 31.6 percent from 28.388 million in 2007 to 37.35 million subscribers in 2008.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vodafone Portugal customers will be able to make calls on the networks of Vodafone operators in 19 countries, including the leading destinations in the European Union, for the price of the first minute in their national tariff. The offer applies between 1 July and 30 September 2009.
To benefit from this campaign, customers simply need to call 1222, activate Vodafone Travel and subscribe to the Summer Promotion. As from 1 July, subscribing customers will benefit from special terms from the date they subscribe until 30 September.
Vodafone operators can be found in the following countries: Albania, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Subscribing to the offer costs €4.90 (including VAT).
This promotion is part of the differentiation strategy of Vodafone’s roaming service aimed at making it even more competitive and attractive to customers, both by reducing prices and by launching new tariffs and services that meet its customers’ varied usage profiles.
For further information, please contact Vodafone Portugal’s Corporate Communications, Governance Support and Social Responsibility Department on +351.210.915.219 (phone), +351.210.915.480 (fax) or by e-mail at press.pt@vodafone.com.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Ericsson has appointed Hans Vestberg, presently Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, as President and CEO, w.e. f 1 January 2010. He is succeeding Carl-Henric Svanberg who will take on the position of Chairman of BP. Vestberg (44) joined Ericsson after university in 1991 and has served in various international managerial positions at Ericsson’s operations in China, Sweden, Chile, Brazil and the US.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Ericsson, a leading pioneer of LTE technology, confirms it has signed license agreements for LTE essential patents. Ericsson is a strong advocate for reasonable aggregated royalties and holds the industry’s strongest LTE patent portfolio. Ericsson is now taking the lead in establishing an industry practice to promote healthy market growth. This builds on Ericsson’s present global licensing program for GSM/WCDMA, now composed of more than 80 agreements and generating significant revenue.
Building on extensive experience in GSM and WCDMA, Ericsson has been driving the development of next-generation mobile technology – 4G/LTE – ever since its OFDM research in the early 1990s. Already today, at the dawn of the technology, Ericsson possesses a substantial number of standard essential patents that are key to developing 4G/LTE products.