Vodafone interested in acquiring 10 percent stake in Metroweb (Italy)
Vodafone Italy is reportedly working to acquire a minimum 10 percent stake in Metroweb, a fibre-optic company. According to reports, Metroweb’s clientele currently includes Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Wind Telecomunicazioni and Fastweb, a unit of Swisscom.
Sources claim that the fiber-optic company had hinted at plans of extending its network in various cities of Italy with its prime focus towards the northern end. Further, F2i, the investment and infrastructure unit of Intesa Sanapaolo had reportedly agreed to pay $ 587 million to acquire Metroweb in May 2011, while Fastweb agreed to buy 11 percent of the company last month.
Swisscom appoints new HR Head (Switzerland)
Swisscom has appointed Hans Werner as its new Head of Human Resources and Executive Board Member.
He is currently International HR manager at Schindler Holding AG and has also worked at Swiss Re, where he was the head of Global Human Resources.
According to Swisscom, Werner will take up his new post in autumn 2011. Until then, the HR department will continue to be headed in the interim by Chief Financial Officer, Ueli Dietiker.
Vodafone Roaming Services teams up with BICS
BICS and Vodafone Roaming Services are pooling their resources to connect their two communities and achieve greater efficiencies.
BICS consists of Belgacom, Swisscom and South Africa’s MTN and it will initially use the partnership to manage their roaming traffic with Vodafone operators.
According to Daniel Kurgan, CEO of BICS, this cooperation is a major step for the mobile industry to guarantee seamless roaming for all mobile users when they cross national borders. It is a direct response to the expansion of the mobile environment globally in terms of subscribers, networks, technologies and applications.
Swisscom profits decline on flat revenues (Switzerland)
Swisscom has announced that its full-year revenues were essentially flat, with a 0.1% drop to US$12.42 billion – although at constant exchange rates, revenue would have increased by 2.1%. The Group’s Italian subsidiary Fastweb reported a 1.5% rise in net revenue in local currency to US$2.55 billion.
Net profit though came down by 7.1 percent to US$1.84 billion.
Excluding Fastweb, Swisscom increased net revenue by 2.3% to US$9.89 billion. The increase was largely attributable to the economic recovery, the acquisition of subsidiaries by Swisscom IT Services and growth in mobile communications and bundled products. As a result of the provision of US$107.33 million set aside in the first quarter of 2010 for the Fastweb VAT proceedings, operating income (EBITDA) fell by 1.9% to US$4.84 billion.
The number of mobile customers in Switzerland increased year-on-year by 226,000 or 4% to 5.8 million. In 2010 , Swisscom sold 1.38 million mobile devices, of which around half were smartphones. Revenue from mobile data traffic with Swisscom customers rose year-on-year by 33% to US$457.75 million. Overall price erosion in mobile communications in 2010 amounted to around 13% (price based on volume).
OnRelay and Swisscom Partner around Mobile PBX
Swisscom and UK-based software vendor OnRelay have agreed to expand their partnership around OnRelay’s new Unified MBX (UMBX) solution. UMBX was introduced by OnRelay in 2009 and has been trialed by Swisscom during 2010. The agreement allows Swisscom to resell Unified MBX to its business customers.
OnRelay’s Unified MBX is an all-software Mobile PBX that supports VMware and Xen based Cloud deployments as well as carrier grade hosting with tenanting, high availability and disaster recovery. In addition to its market leading MBX Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) software, UMBX includes a complete open source IP PBX, sipXecs v 4.2, which contains a wide range of new Unified Communications features, including unified messaging, web conferencing, enhanced IM and presence federation.
OnRelay’s UMBX solution allows us to make finally the Fix-Mobile Convergence happen for our customers. The Mobile becomes the preferred device with fully integrated PBX functionality.†says Christian Raas, Senior Product Manager, Swisscom. There are many benefits for our customers, like the increased employees mobility which allows a better rate of 1st attempt call acceptance leading to higher a customer satisfactionâ€, continues Raas.
We previously entered the Fixed Mobile Convergence space early with Swisscom and learned many lessons around the operational and technical complexities with FMC solutions and PBX integration that we were able to resolve with introducing UMBX,†commented Ivar Plahte, CEO of OnRelay. We are therefore extremely pleased to continue our working relationship with Swisscom around this new offering, which we believe brings together all the key concepts that allow an operator to cost efficiently offer a fully featured and manageable, turnkey Mobile PBX solution.â€
OnRelay’s UMBX is a mobile application driven Mobile PBX architecture that includes a sophisticated and user friendly office phone app for leading smartphone operating systems including Symbian, Blackberry, iPhone (available 1H’11) and Android (availability TBA). The UMBX system and its proprietary TINP protocol have been designed to operate fast and reliably over any cellular network globally, and do not rely on complex private or public VoWiFi based infrastructures.
Swisscom and Groupe E partner for Fribourg fiber network (Switzerland)
Switzerland’s Competition Commission is reviewing a proposed joint venture between Swisscom and electrical utility Groupe E focused on extending fiber-optic network connections in the canton of Fribourg. The proposed partnership is the third pairing with a utility that Swisscom has announced in recent weeks. Fiber to the home (FTTH) connections would be part of the network extension.
Swisscom and Groupe E, which is based in the western half of Switzerland, submitted the joint venture contract to the Competition Commission last autumn. The two parties say they expect a decision from the commission by this May.
The proposed joint venture will see Swisscom pick up 60% of the investment, with other partners†assuming the remaining 40%. The identity of the other partners was not revealed. The canton of Fribourg was named as another partner in the joint venture.
Swisscom recently announced similar partnerships with Energie Wasser Bern (see Swisscom, Energie Wasser Bern agree on Berne FTTH/FTTB networkâ€) and IWB (see IWB, Swisscom join for FTTP in Baselâ€) to build FTTH/FTTB networks in other parts of Switzerland.
As in these previously announced pacts, the Fribourg network extension would see the connection of four fibers in each area of use (flat, house, or commercial premises) to provide access for competitive carriers.
Swisscom collaborates with EWB to bring FTTH to Bern (Switzerland)
Swisscom, the dominant provider of fixed line telephony services in Switzerland, and local utilities provider Energie Wasser Bern (EWB) have inked a cooperation agreement to jointly finance and construct a fibre-optic network which will cover a third of all buildings in the city of Berne by the end of next year.
Four fibres will be laid per household with Swisscom and EWB taking one each for their sole use and leaving the rest open to lease as required. Deployment schedules expect that by 2017, 90% of all buildings will have a fibre-optic connection, and by 2020, the network will cover the entire city.
Overall construction costs for the project will be around US$226 million and Swisscom will provide 60% of the investment required while EWB will provide the remainder.
EWB will take on the fibre-optic network deployment for 70% of the city, while Swisscom will take responsibility for the remaining 30% of households and lay the necessary cables between neighborhood cabinets and telephone exchanges.
The two partners’ existing cable ducts will be used to keep the total cost of the investment to minimum. Both partners have granted each other long-term usage rights for the fibre-optic network.
ComCom to sell mobile frequencies next year
The Swiss Communications Commission (ComCom) is expecting to raise several hundred million Swiss francs from an auction of frequencies in the first half of 2011.
ComCom has launched the public tender for mobile frequencies in the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz and 2600MHz ranges. Some frequencies are available for use immediately, while others are part of the existing GSM and UMTS licenses of Swisscom, Sunrise, Orange Switzerland and In&Phone, and will become free on 31 December 2013 and 31 December 2016, respectively.
According to ComCom, the frequencies will be auctioned, with interested parties having until 18 March 2011 to register their interest. Each registration is expected to include the maximum amount of spectrum an applicant wishes to purchase within the individual bands, as well as a bank guarantee in the amount of the minimum bid for the frequencies they are applying for.
Altogether there are 61 frequencies blocks in the auction, which if all sold will raise a minimum of US$597 million.
The new licenses will be valid until 2028 and will be awarded on a technology-neutral basis. The auction format is designed so that both the number of licenses and the available bandwidth are not predetermined by ComCom. The auction will be conducted using an electronic auction system which allows secure bidding over.
Sunrise looks up to France Telecom yet again
The head of Switzerland’s second largest telecoms operator Sunrise has reportedly stated that he could not rule out fresh merger talks with France Telecom.
Sunrise’s outgoing Danish owner, TDC group, had been planning to merge its subsidiary with France Telecom-owned Orange’s Swiss business but the plans were abandoned in June following a rejection by the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO).
According to Sunrise chairman Dominik Koechlin, he thinks the company could not rule out new talks on a merger between Orange and Sunrise.
TDC agreed in September to sell Sunrise to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. Mobile operator Orange is one of Sunrise’s biggest rivals in Switzerland.
COMCO had objected to a tie up on the grounds that a merged company would have taken a dominant position in the mobile telephone market alongside top Swisscom, leaving the country with just two networks.
Former Italian telecoms executives called up for legal proceedings
Silvio Scaglia, billionaire founder of Swisscom subsidiary Fastweb, and Stefano Mazzitelli, former chief executive of Telecom Italia Sparkle and Gennaro Mokbel, appeared in court on Tuesday for the first hearing for Italy’s major case of tax fraud and money laundering.
The tax avoidance scam allegedly involved the creation of paper companies and invoices for US$2.6 billion of fictitious operations. Only 30 defendants appeared in court on Tuesday. Some of the accused have entered plea bargains while others have opted for a separate judicial process. The defendants were not asked to enter their pleas at this point.
This was Mr Scaglia’s first public appearance since February, when he was arrested on his return to Italy to respond to the accusations against him. Since spending two months in Rome’s Rebibbia prison, Mr Scaglia has been under house arrest. He has been served a rare gag order by judges, allowing him to communicate only with his wife and lawyers.
Mr Scaglia and Mr Mazzitelli deny charges of criminal conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Both broadband companies deny any involvement in the alleged tax fraud scam and claim that they were also victims of fraud.
Judge Bruno Costantini scheduled the next hearing for November 23. He has also ordered that the case should be moved to another section of the Rome courts for procedural reasons.
On the request of several lawyers in the courtroom, the judge decided that nine accused who are currently held in prisons outside the region may be transferred to facilities close to Rome.
