TIMELINE
A roundup of the major stories in telecoms in the past month, as reported in our daily news service
www.totaltele.com
BUSINESS
French-German partnership France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom said they will explore potential areas of co-operation including radio access network sharing in Europe, WiFi roaming and m2m standards.
Vodafone-China Mobile tie-up Vodafone and China Mobile signed an agreement to continue co-operating in areas including mobile roaming, green technology, R&D and converged LTE technology. Vodafone sold its 3.2% stake in China Mobile for £4.3 billion last September.
Data roaming shake-up Telekom Austria announced a mobile broadband service to provide roaming across operators’ networks in 53 countries at a flat rate of £0.59 per Megabyte. The service offers a choice of a SIM card priced at £19.90 or a USB dongle for £49.90.
Zain-Etisalat deal in doubt Zain rejected three bids, from Bahrain Telecom Co (Batelco) and two investment firms, for a 25% stake in its Saudi Arabia operations. The sale of the stake is needed for Etisalat to complete its purchase of 46% of Zain Group for US$12 billion.
Satellite consolidation EchoStar agreed to buy broadband satellite company Hughes Communications for about US$1.35 billion, while Dish Network will buy US satellite and terrestrial broadband provider DBSB for $1 billion.
March 2011
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Asia/Africa payment systems SK Telecom, KDDI and Softbank will trial a common NFC-based mobile payment system for South Korea and Japan. And Airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard launched a virtual card payment system in Africa that operates from a wallet on a mobile phone.
European payment ventures French operators Orange, Bouygues and SFR set up a joint venture with Atos Origin to provide online payment services in france. And Deutsche Telekom will launch a mobile NFC payment service called Mobile Wallet later this year.
Clearwire goes wholesale US WiMAX operator Clearwire gave up its retail strategy to focus on being a wholesale operator.
India merger back on India’s regulator has revived a proposal for the merger of state- run operators BSNL and MTNL.
n 3G n LTE
Nitel sale off again Nigeria cancelled a deal to sell national operator Nitel after the bidder defaulted on a US$750 million payment. The New Generation Telecommunications Consortium won a $2.5 billion bid last October to purchase Nitel.
Polkomtel sale TeliaSonera joined nine other bidders including Telefonica, Telenor and private equity companies in the race to buy Polish operator Polkomtel. Five will be shortlisted in March.
Verizon buys Terremark Verizon bought cloud data storage services provider Terremark for US$1.4 billion.
Ukraine privatisation Investment company Epic acquired a 93% stake in Ukraine operator Urktelecom for $1.3 billion after companies including Deutsche Telekom and Telenor were excluded from the privatisation tender.
3G historical subscribers vs. LTE projected subscribers 250
200 150 100 50 0
Source: TeleGeography
TeleGeography forecasts that growth of LTE services will mirror that of 3G adoption, with modest subscriber uptake in the first two years as a result of competition with WiMAX. But it says growth will rise quickly thereafter, with more than 50 million subscribers within four years and more than 200 million after six years, driven by the release of new LTE devices in the coming months.
Potential Twitter sale Reports suggest companies including Facebook and Google have been holding talks about buying micro-blogging site Twitter for up to US$10 billion (£7.4 billion).
New smartphone OS China Unicom announced a new Linux-based smartphone operating system, Wophone, to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. It said devices from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Dell will launch with the OS later this year.
NETWORKS
LTE network rollouts Telstra awarded a contract to Ericsson to roll out an LTE network in Australia using its 1800-MHz spectrum by the end of the year; Alcatel-Lucent signed a deal to build Etisalat’s LTE network in the UAE in the first quarter; and Nokia Siemens Networks signed a three-year contract to build LTE networks for Telefonica O2 Germany.
UK spectrum trading UK regulator Ofcom announced proposals for operators to trade spectrum in the 900-, 1800- and 2100-MHz bands. Ofcom also could auction unused wireless radio spectrum in the 2010MHz- 2025MHz band, suitable for mobile broadband, next year.
NZ next-generation fibre talks Telecom Corp and Vodafone held talks with the New Zealand government over jointly providing fibre and 3G
3
Subscribers (m)
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