Orange Business Services inks 5 year deal with JTI (France, Japan)
Orange Business Services has signed a five-year outsourcing contract with JTI (Japan Tobacco International), the international business of Japan Tobacco Inc., worth over $100 million. Orange Business Services helps JTI with managed services such as LAN, data and voice traffic, security and call centers among others.
As per reports, Diego De Coen, JTI CIO, said that their 17-year relationship with Orange Business Services is built on trust and mutual success. Such a long-term relationship is nearly unheard of these days and this contract renewal was not a given. Instead, Orange Business Services proved again that its competitive strength, unmatched global reach and comprehensive portfolio made it the best choice for JTI as they continue to evolve their global telecom infrastructure and services.
Helmut Reisinger, Senior Vice President Europe, Orange Business Services, said that over the years, they have developed a very strong partnership with JTI. They are grateful and proud that they have been entrusted with this contract for another five years. This is certainly mainly due to the quality of services they have been providing to JTI, even during the days of 2011 turbulences in times of the Japan earthquake or the ‘Egyptian spring’ where their business continuity plans proved to be beneficial to a lot of multinationals such as JTI. Building on the success, they look forward to collaborating with JTI on innovative solutions over the next several years.
TI Sparkle chosen by Virgin mobile to provide international voice traffic
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A new voice outsourcing agreement has been signed by Telecom Italia Sparkle and Omer Telecom that will make TI Sparkle the provider of Virgin Mobile France’s international voice traffic. Omer Telecom is the joint venture between the Virgin Group and Carphone Warehouse, marketing the Virgin Mobile brand in France.
TI Sparkle will provide Virgin Mobile France with state-of-the-art business and technology expertise gained through the management of over 20 billion minutes of international voice traffic exchanged via a global set of fixed and mobile terminations, over 1,300 specific breakouts and more than 500 direct interconnections.
According to Geoffroy Roux de Bezieux CEO of Virgin Mobile France, due to this agreement, Virgin Mobile France will significantly reduce its cost base, improve overall profitability and increase efficiency while at the same time maintaining full control of its international voice business
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.
Google acquires Gizmo5 to take on Skype. Deal valued at US$ 30 Million.
Google has been on the prowl acquiring some strategic companies in what could be termed as the next frontier. After acquring Admob, Techcrunch has reported that it is to acquire VOIP Start-up Gizmo5 for about USD 30 Million.
The deal comes after Skype successfully negotiated a deal with its former owners Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, to maintain full possession of the technology it requires to operate.
Gizmo5, operated by Michael Robertson (of mp3.com fame), was reportedly in discussions with Skype about a potential acquisition should the company lose its legal battle with its former founders. But since that dela has gone through now, Skype no longer requires Gizmo5 as a potential back-up plan.
Google will now set itself up as a VOIP provider to rival Skype, which holds the vast majority of the market and accounts for 8% of all international voice traffic.
While Google already offers a feature for users to speak over the internet via Google Talk/Voice, it does not have the ability to make incoming or outbound calls to “real” telephones – a service Gizmo5 has already established. Interestingly, Gizmo5 has already been integrated with Google Voice, a service that replaces a user’s telephone numbers with a single number for all devices.
Irish mobile retail revenues grow 4 percent
There are 4.37 million 2G and 3G mobile subscribers in Ireland, according to figures from the Irish regulator ComReg. The mobile penetration rate stands at 103 percent. The proportion of prepaid customers is stable at 76 percent, with the remaining 24 percent being postpaid subscribers.
Mobile retail revenue for the quarter was EUR 477 million, a 4 percent increase on the previous quarter based on revised revenue calculations for the market. Market share by revenues is led by Vodafone with 48 percent, O2 has 41.2 percent of the market and Meteor has 10.8 percent of the market. Some 71,500 people used mobile number portability in the quarter and a total of 614,500 switched providers retaining their number since MNP was launched in 2003. Mobile ARPU in Ireland is estimated at EUR 47.06 per month in Q2, having fallen slightly for the second consecutive quarter.
Mobile voice traffic totalled in excess of 1.7 billion minutes in the quarter, a 10 percent increase in the quarter, and a 23 percent increase in voice volumes year-on-year. SMS messaging in the quarter continued to grow in popularity, with almost 1.5 billion messages sent, which is an average of 114 SMS messages per subscription per month.
Source- http://www.telecompaper.com
Technorati : 2G, 3G, Ireland, Mobile, O2, SMS, Vodafone
Ice Rocket : 2G, 3G, Ireland, Mobile, O2, SMS, Vodafone
