Mobile operators join force on global apps platform
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An open international applications platform has been launched by a joint force of the world’s largest mobile operators. This marks the largest unified move to date by the operator community into the mobile apps space.
A combination of 24 of the world’s largest mobile carriers, the so called ‘Wholesale Applications Community’ includes America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom Austria, MTN Group, NTT Docomo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, VimpelCom and WIND.
Vodafone, China Mobile, SoftBank and Verizon Wireless in the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) mobile apps initiative are also included in the group. The move has been backed by GSMA, an industry association. The aim of the alliance is to create a wholesale platform for mobile apps providing a single point-of-entry for developers. Operators are also eyeing the revenue-generating potential of getting into the apps business.
The new operator-led initiative has also got the support from the handset vendors including LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
TeliaSonera stake in Ucell rises to 94% (Uzbekistan)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera’s stake in Uzbekistani mobile operator Ucell has been raised from 74 percent to 94 percent after the former acquired 20 percent of the shares in the jointly owned TeliaSonera Uzbek Telecom from Takilant Limited.
TeliaSonera paid SEK 1.550 billion (USD 220 million) for the acquisition.
TeliaSonera Uzbek Telecom is a Dutch holding company owning 100 percent of Ucell in Uzbekistan.
Telecom investments to be reduced by Alfa Group in Russia
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Alfa Group may have to sell off some of its telecoms assets as desired by Russia’s Competition Regulator, to reduce its dominance in the home market. 25% of Megafon and 44% of VimpelCom is owned by Alfa Group.
The two companies have planned to settle their long-standing shareholder disputes with overseas investors. However, their decision has been criticized as the merged entities have to be registered outside Russia.
Megafon and Sweden’s TeliaSonera agreement to merge their shareholdings in Turkcell into a single holding company has been opposed by the Russian government who would prefer to create a larger Russian telecoms operator spanning both landline and mobile services.
TeliaSonera delivered on its promise: SwissQual
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Against all the reports of the failure to deliver the promise of brilliant LTE network speed, TeliaSonera achieved downlink throughputs up to 47-Mbps, and TCP latency as low as 10 ms five times the performance typically seen in 3G HSPA+ networks.
The announcement was made by Swiss network quality measurement firm SwissQual, which used its own diversity optimizer solution, Samsung’s Kalmia LTE modem, and connected to the Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation’s server.
According to SwissQual product manager Magnus Hylen, TeliaSonera’s performance is really impressive and sets a new baseline for mobile high speed data services.
VimpelCom, Megafon deals opposed by Russian regulator
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Alfa Group’s efforts to combine two of Russia’s biggest mobile operators VimpelCom and Megafon with peers in Ukraine and Turkey have been blocked by Russia’s competition watchdog, Igor Artemev.
According to the head of Russia’s Federal Anti-monopoly Service, the deals simultaneously would be undesirable and even unacceptable. Most of the shares of VimpelCom and Ukraine’s Kyivstar are owned by Alfa and Norwegian co-investor Telenor. Plans to combine the two companies were announced last September.
Alfa along with its Nordic partner TeliaSonera joined the forces several week later to try and merge Russia’s third-largest mobile firm Megafon with Turkey’s largest mobile company Turkcell.
Megafon targeted by Russian state telco, Svyazinvest
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The state telecoms holding company Svyazinvest has shown its interest in buying mobile operator Megafon. Talks with Alisher Usmanov, owner of a 31.1 percent stake in Megafon are underway. The state is also interested in the blocking stake held by Alfa, part of Russian group Altimo.
Reorganization of Svyazinvest was approved by a government commission in May 2009. Since then, the purchase of a mobile operator to strengthen its operations is on the cards. Even AF Telecom Holding, managing Usmanov’s stake in Megafon, has expressed interest in cooperating with Svyazinvest. 31.1 percent stake in Megafon has been offered by the company in a joint venture created by Svyazinvest.
According to Russian minister of communications, Igor Shchegolev, the government would need to buy shares from Megafon’s other major shareholders, Altimo or TeliaSonera, but neither is willing to lower their stakes in Megafon. The Altimo and TeliaSonera deal needs approval by the Government Commission on Foreign Investments headed by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Ericsson and NSN picked by TeliaSonera for LTE roll-out
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: TeliaSonera has contracted Ericsson and Nokia Siemens to roll out its LTE networks in Sweden and Norway. Ericsson has been selected as the sole supplier of the common core network as well as providing LTE radio access and NSN is required to cover LTE radio equipment, LTE network management systems, and LTE multi-vendor integration and care services.
LTE services were started by TeliaSonera in the late 2009 in Oslo and Stockholm, covering the city centres to test the services.
Sweden’s 25 largest municipalities and recreation areas and Norway’s four largest municipalities will be covered under the network roll-out during 2010 and 2011. City network in Oslo will continued to be finalized by Huawei.
Huawei to deploy LTE network for Tele2 and Telenor Sweden
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: For the supply and deployment of network equipment and modems for the launch of so-called ’4G’ Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband services, Net4Mobility, a joint venture of Tele2 Sweden and the Swedish unit of Norway’s Telenor has contracted Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies.
The goal of the venture is to make LTE available to 99% of the Swedish population by the end of 2013. 30%-50% increase in 2G GSM voice traffic, with enhanced indoor and outdoor coverage across the country as a result is also the reason behind increasing the number of base stations.
Earlier, LTE data services were commercially launched in Stockholm by TeliaSonera Sweden.
Sweden to fly high on 4G service
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: When half of the world is still struggling to provide 3G services to its people, Sweden, is ready fly high on the 4G services. TeliaSonera, Sweden’s leading telecom operator, announced the launch of its commercial LTE services, a fourth generation mobile technology offering blazing fast Internet access to wireless devices.
LTE provides a data speed of 100Mbits/second which is 10 times faster than existing 3G services. Currently the service is available in Swiss capital Stockholm, Oslo, the Nordic capital and will expand to over 25 cities over the course of 2010. The targets of the service are the users of data extensive applications like live video streaming, video conferencing and online gaming.
Since most of the devices are not compatible with LTE, which is currently poorly supported in terms of hardware availability, the initial costumers will have to face the trouble. To deal with the problem, TeliaSonera, has decided to provide special 4G modems to the users in order to use their devices whilst they are under 4G coverage.
Currently, the service is accessible only through the aforementioned 4G modem.
