Headlines for: 9 Jan 2007

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Honduran state telecom operator Hondutel is rolling out 40,000 new fixed lines in the city of San Pedro Sula in 2007, according to BNamericas quoting reports from local newspaper La Prensa. The deployment is part of a nationwide expansion plan which will ...

Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has awarded two National Fixed Wireless Services (NFWS) licences to MTC-Vodafone Bahrain and Mena Telecom, following an auction which ended on 13 December 2006. MTC-Vodafone Bahrain paid around BHD...

Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks has announced that Telekom Serbia will deploy its broadband satellite hub. To meet its universal service obligation requirements, Telekom will deploy SkyEdge VSATs at remote community centres throughout Serbia to provid...

Slovenian start-up cellco Tus Mobile has introduced its first service, internet server hosting, and plans to launch internet access and mobile telephony services over its own network in the first half of 2007, the company said in a press release yesterday...

Sprint Nextel has announced disappointing fourth quarter subscriber figures. The firm says it added 742,000 net new customers over the three months to the end of December 2006. Gains were seen in its wholesale and affiliate operations, where a net 876,000...

US equipment vendor Motorola has won a contract to deploy a nationwide 3.5G HSDPA network for MTC Kuwait. The upgrade will deliver improved data transfer speeds for MTC’s corporate and high-end consumer customers. Barrak Al Sabeeh, general manager at MT...

The US cellular reseller Amp’d Mobile says it had signed up 100,000 customers by the end of 2006, including 70,000 in the fourth quarter alone. The firm is targeting 700,000 subscribers by end-2008, by which time it expects to have announced its first o...

Turkish cellcos Telsim-Vodafone and Avea have both announced tariff cuts in a bid to lure new users. Avea has introduced a marketing campaign which claims to offer the lowest cross-network call charges, according to a report from Turkish Daily News. Telsi...

France Télécom (FT) is being sued for EUR500 million (USD650.3 million) by ISP Free, a unit of the Iliad group, which claims the incumbent is not doing enough to open its fibre-optic networks to rivals. It is not understood whether the case is about all...

Singapore Telecom (SingTel) has announced the launch of a new integrated super highway communications service for residential users, dubbed Generation MIO (more-in-one). The new offering, which is provided over the operator’s IP backbone via a standard ...

Brazilian power distributor Eletropaulo plans to begin testing broadband internet services in São Paulo over its electric power network, writes BNamericas citing local newspaper Gazeta Mercantil. Eletropaulo has been testing power line communication (PLC...

From mid-January Vodafone will become the newest wireless network operator to enter the UK broadband market. Its GBP25 (USD48) per month Vodafone At Home deal will offer post-paid wireless customers up to 8Mbps unlimited broadband and inclusive landline c...

Switzerland’s largest cable network operator Cablecom has announced the launch of its ‘hispeed 10000’ service offering download/upload speeds of 10Mbps/1Mbps for CHF65 (USD52) per month. As the same time the company, a subsidiary of Liberty Globalâ€...

Sprint Nextel has revealed plans to launch its first mobile WiMAX networks in Chicago and Washington DC by the end of the year. The firm has earmarked almost USD3 billion for its nationwide WiMAX rollout, and is working with Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and I...

The Greek ministers of finance and transportation will meet with financial advisors on Thursday to discuss proposals for the further privatisation of former monopoly telco OTE. According to a senior official quoted by local press, the appointed advisors, ...

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez said yesterday that he will seek to re-nationalise incumbent telco CANTV as well as at least one other utility company that was sold in the 1990s. During a televised ceremony to swear in cabinet members, Chávez declared...

Portugal’s stock market regulator CMVM has still to approve Sonaecom’s prospectus of its takeover bid for larger rival Portugal Telecom (PT). The regulator says the initial version of the prospectus document was incomplete and has been waiting for fur...

13 companies have acquired the bidding rules for an auction to expand telecoms infrastructure in several Venezuelan states, reports BNamericas. The auction, held by telecoms regulator Conatel, is for contracts to deploy and maintain network infrastructure...

Rogers Communications today announced selected preliminary fourth quarter 2006 subscriber results. At the end of December, total wireless subscribers stood at 6.778 million, up by 244,500 quarter-on-quarter, whilst cable broadband subscribers increased by...