KPN to decide between retention and sale of French unit (Europe)
Leading Dutch telecommunications and ICT service provider, Royal KPN is expected to take a decision regarding its French business in the next six months. According to reports, amidst increasing competition in the French wireless market, the company will decide if it would sell its business in France or work towards strengthening its presence in the market.
KPN currently operates as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) under the brand ‘Simyo’ via the networks of Orange and Bouygues Telecom. Further, sources claim that competition is expected to intensify even more with the addition of mobile operator Iliad SA to the wireless market which currently includes Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom.
KPN to shut public payphone business (Netherlands)
Dutch former monopoly KPN Telecom (or Royal KPN) has announced that it is shutting down its public payphone business, arguing that the widespread availability of mobile phones has made them virtually redundant.
As per earlier statement released by KPN, the advertising group Hillenaar is teaming up with RBL Telecom to operate public phone booths in rural villages and other places which want to maintain such a service.
Under local law KPN was obliged to provide one public payphone per 5,000 of the population until 2008. Since then, it has rapidly begun to decommission thousands of loss-making phone booths.
Dutch telco KPN objects to 2.6GHz spectrum auction
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Injunction is prepared to be seeked by telecom operator Royal KPN against an upcoming Dutch wireless spectrum auction. As a reason the telco has revealed that it would allow market newcomers to acquire more spectrum than existing operators.
According to the telco, the country’s mobile market already has numerous mobile service providers, high quality services and relatively low prices.
The auction which was supposed to take place for 2.6GHz spectrum has already been delayed several times.
KPN to move court to block Dutch spectrum auction
Royal KPN NV, Telecommunications Company is all set to move the court to change the rules of the upcoming Dutch wireless spectrum auction. According to the company, the auction allows the new entrants to the market to acquire more spectrum than the existing operators.
The company is determined to seek an injunction against the auction. KPN is in favor of competition that provides long-term stimuli to the market but is of the opinion that this is insufficiently safeguarded by the current auction mechanism.
Ever since its first launch in 2007, the auction of 2.6 gigahertz frequency spectrum has already been delayed several times as the Dutch government has amended the tender.
German spectrum auction to have four bidders
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: All four established network providers of Germany are allowed to participate in the upcoming spectrum auction but no newcomers will be bidding. The announcement has been made by German federal network regulator Bundesnetzagentur.
An auction would be organized by the regulator for several spectrums in four bands which are not used any more by broadcasters or the military, including the most important spectrum, 800 megahertz band best suited to for fourth-generation networks.
According to Bundesnetzagentur, one interested party had expressed initial interest but has since withdrawn from the process, while another didn’t fulfill the conditions to participate in the auction. Details have not been divulged by the regulator.
The spectrum auction will start on 12 April at 1100 GMT, and the list of the bidders includes Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone PLC, Royal KPN NV’s E-Plus and Telefonica SA’s O2.
Mobile phone companies create lobby group
The world’s biggest mobile companies have created a body to review future technology, attempting to pull influence back from mobile phone manufacturers and standard organisations
Sprint Nextel, Vodafone, China Mobile, Orange, DoCoMo, Royal KPN and T-Mobile announced yesterday that they had formed the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative. NGMN will be a non-profit group based in London and won’t push a particular type of network but rather a set of guidelines for future technologies.
“We think that we can speak with a more organised and concerted voice that we have in the past,” said Steve Falk, vice-president of global standards at Sprint. Vendors and standards organisations had stronger voices in the development of 2G and 3G systems, he said, but carriers will represent the interests of their customers, the end-users.
The group is already consulting with phone manufacturers but will only include carriers as members. It may also be pitting itself against Qualcomm, which developed much of the current 3G technology but has been criticised for its royalty and licensing practices.
The NGMN is looking toward the technologies to follow 3G systems such as HSDPA and EV-DO. Carriers are still deploying and upgrading those networks, which are based on GSM and CDMA respectively, but even faster technologies are coming down the road.
Carriers will favour technologies covered by so-called Frand (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) intellectual property rules, Falk said. “One of the principles of NGMN is an open and transparent IPR [intellectual property rights] regime,” he said.
The NGMN believes greater harmony will lower costs and speed up product development for vendors too. “In some cases, 2G and 3G vendors have had to do very costly and time-consuming development on three to five different kinds of technology,” Falk said. Being able to focus on one or two tracks, in turn, will help bring products and services to mobile subscribers faster and more economically, he said.
Source- http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk
Technorati : 3G, CDMA, China Mobile, KPN, Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Sprint Nextel
Ice Rocket : 3G, CDMA, China Mobile, KPN, Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Sprint Nextel
