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: 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: TeliaSonera, the Nordic mobile operator, has reported a rise in its Q2′09 profits and said it expected a higher core operating margin this year than last. Telia’s EBITDA excluding one-off items rose 13% to 9.04 billion Swedish crowns ($1.20 billion).
“Looking ahead, we expect that our efforts to lower addressable costs and capital expenditure will offset the negative impact from declining GDP and rising unemployment in our markets,” the company said in a statement.
“Therefore we are raising our outlook on the EBITDA margin and now expect a higher margin in 2009 than in 2008.”
Net sales for the quarter rose by 9% to 27.5 billion crowns versus an expected 27.3 billion, and the firm said it expected sales this year to be in line with or slightly below last year’s level, stripped for acquisitions and in local currencies.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Bytemobile, Inc., the global leader in mobile internet solutions for wireless network operators, today announced that China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC) has selected its Web Fidelity™ Suite content adaptation solution on the Unison™ Mobile Internet Platform to power Phase 1 of the carrier’s nationwide Web Gateway project. Initial deployment will take place at CMCC’s national Web Gateway center in Nanjing, enabling the delivery of open internet browsing on all mobile handheld devices over its new 3G TD-SCDMA network.
CMCC is the world’s largest wireless network operator, serving nearly 500 million subscribers. The group’s operating companies cover 31 provinces in China and command a 70% share of the mainland mobile market. The company delivers a variety of value-added services such as data, IP telephone and multimedia in addition to voice services. On January 7, 2009, the Chinese government awarded CMCC a TD-SCDMA license to expand its business to 3G network coverage. (more…)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Geocell, has applied to the Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC) for an extension of its licence. The combined GSM-900 and GSM-1800 concession of the TeliaSonera and Turkcell-backed Company will expire on 3 August. Geocell ended March with a subscriber base of 1.6 million, holds a market share of 41.2%, just behind market leader MagtiCom with 46.5%.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera Finland and Nokia Siemens Networks have signed a contract on the deployment of a 3G radio network on the 900 MHz frequency. The new network will extend TeliaSonera Finland’s 3G coverage in a cost efficient way. It will enable mobile broadband services in the remote areas of the country and help further increase service quality in bigger cities.
Nokia Siemens Networks delivers a full WCDMA/HSPA 900 radio network system to TeliaSonera Finland, including its award-winning, energy-efficient Flexi base stations and high capacity RNC 2600 radio network controllers. The new network will support fixed-mobile migration in the rural areas and save operational costs for the operator. (more…)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telenor Sweden, a major European telecommunications carrier, has deployed a second access solution from RAD Data Communications to extend Ethernet services to destinations throughout Sweden that lack fiber infrastructure.
The solution was RAD’s Egate-100, a device that aggregates Ethernet traffic over channelized STM-1/OC-3 or three channelized DS3 (T3) ports for hand-off to a packet switched network (PSN), together with RAD’s RICi network Ethernet termination units (E-NTUs), which deliver Fast Ethernet and mid-band Ethernet traffic to end users over multiple bonded E1/T1 circuits. Within the past year, this combined RAD solution has been used to provide new high-bandwidth Ethernet service to 15 major corporations nationwide.
“What was also beneficial for Telenor was the knowledge that they were already using RAD’s Ethernet-over-E1 technology,” notes Peter Heikenborn, Sales Manager at Lagercrantz Communication, RAD’s Swedish partner, which provided the solution to the operator and assisted in the deployment. “But what was even more convincing was that the new RAD solution reduced CapEx because it is significantly less expensive, even when considering the cost of the SDH node,” he continues. “In addition, it significantly lowers OpEx, given that it requires 80 percent less power and space,” Heikenborn adds. “These statistics alone justified deploying the Egate.”
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Geocell has slashed its roaming tariffs for outgoing calls and SMS of Geocell and Lai Lai subscribers in TeliaSonera group’s member operators’ networks in Europe and Asia. The tariffs have been reduced by 30%, whereas SMS/GPRS tariffs for Geocell subscribers have been dropped by 50%.
For more insight on Best Practices/Case Studies on Roaming Tariffs please contact christina@wirelessfederation.com
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Netcom and Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies have launched the live commercial LTE network in Oslo, Norway. The LTE network will be demonstrated live in Oslo between a laptop PC with a 4G modem and public internet/intranet, included downloads of high resolution photos, music, movies and mobile business applications, at higher speeds than most fixed internet accesses currently available. Using the LTE MIMO and OFDM technologies, the download peak data rate can reach up to 150 Mbps in one LTE cell with multiple terminals.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera has selected Ericsson to introduce a new mobile advertising service dubbed as Personal Pod Advertising in Sweden. The service is a part of Ericsson’s Mobile TV service, through which the advertisements can be sent out as podcasts overnight when traffic is low. It allows companies to offer ads tailored to fit consumers’ personal needs and interests and is to be launched commercially during 2009. The subscriber needs to create a personal user profile on the advertising companies’ websites, to avail this service. Followed to this, they will receive updates on their favourite brands via text, video or radio advertisements sent to their mobile phones.