Headlines for: 21 May 2007

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According to local newspaper La Segunda, cited by BNamericas, VoIP long distance operator RedVoiss - whose legal name is Voissnet - is expanding its coverage to six new cities and towns to take its coverage to 80% of the country. The company has 16,000 su...

The world’s largest fixed line telco by lines in service, China Telecom, has revealed it had 224.08 million local access lines in service at the end of April 2007, up from 223.78 million one month previously. Of the total, 62.29 million were wireless lo...

Iran’s ICT Ministry says all villages will have access to telecoms services by the end of this year. At present, around 53,000 of the country’s 68,000 villages are connected to phone networks. News agency ILNA says the Ministry is putting rural networ...

Paraguay’s state-run monopoly fixed line operator Copaco says it plans to spend a total of USD48 million on the expansion of its networks and services in 2007. BNamericas quotes a report from local newspaper ABC Color which says Copaco has already insta...

Mexican mobile group América Móvil (AM) has relaunched its newly acquired Puerto Rican mobile unit under its regional brand name of Claro, and has announced that it will invest USD53 million in an initial phase of CDMA network expansion and upgrading th...

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe says it will launch 3G mobile network trials for a selected group of around 2,000 users, in order to fine-tune the service before it is offered on a wider commercial basis. According to the company, construction of a 3G network ha...

Idea Cellular, India’s fifth largest cellco by subscribers, has signed a USD500 million GSM network expansion contract with Nokia Siemens Networks. The two-year contract will see Nokia Siemens expand Idea Cellular's GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks to cover popul...

French mobile network operators are bracing themselves for the introduction of new mobile number portability (MNP) rules which come into effect today. Under a new simplified system, French consumers wishing to port their number to a new provider – excep...

According to a report from Kantipur Online, Nepal’s telecoms regulator, Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), has objected strongly to Nepal Telecom (NT) setting a new subscription fee for 3G mobile services without its permission. A spokesperson fo...

Orange Romania says it has successfully completed a trial of HSUPA equipment on its network. The 3.5G technology offers peak uplink speeds of 1.9Mbps. Tests have been carried out using equipment supplied by Huawei Technologies of China. Orange says HSUPA ...

Russia’s largest cellular operator, MTS, has awarded the country’s first 3G equipment contract to Nokia Siemens Networks. The deal includes the supply of a W-CDMA network covering the Moscow region, with deployments due to start within the next few mo...

Mobile users now account for more than a quarter of all high speed internet subscriptions in Portugal. Figures released by the regulator Anacom show that 573,000 of the country’s 2.08 million broadband internet connections were via 3G mobile phones at t...

Brazilian telecoms operator Brasil Telecom Participações (BrT) plans to launch a mobile WiMAX service to business customers in the southeastern cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Curitiba, according to reports in loca...

The international tender for the sale of a minority stake in Telekom Slovenije is expected to be launched by the end of August, Slovenia’s Finance Ministry has announced. The Slovenia Press Agency reports that CA IB Corporate Finance has been selected a...

Mexico’s second largest cableco by subscribers, Cablemás, has posted a year-on-year 17% rise in revenue to MXN640 million (USD60 million) for the first quarter of 2007. Net income more than doubled to MXN134 million. ‘We continue to expand the market...

According to industry sources, Pakistan’s third largest cellco by subscribers, Warid Telecom, is in talks with several foreign firms, including SingTel, to sell a minority stake. ‘Warid has been approached by several international telecom companies ov...

Singapore-based telecoms provider Pacific Internet (PacNet) says it has received a takeover offer from Connect Holdings offering USD10 per share, valuing the company at around USD138 million. PacNet considers the offer a fair one, but not exceptional and ...

The Setdco Group has announced its intention to buy back the company’s original stake in Indonesian mobile operator Telkomsel, says the Jakarta Post. The group’s chief executive Setiawan Djody says he has the support of major international financial f...

The US cellular operator Alltel has been bought by private equity groups TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (GSCP) for a total of USD27.5 billion. The pair will acquire all outstanding common stock of Alltel at USD71.50 per share, representing...

Portugal’s Sonaecom has made a EUR30 million (USD40.5 million) bid to acquire a stake in the fixed line business of rival operator Oni Telecom. Local newspaper Jornal de Negocios reports that the company is hoping to buy Oni’s residential wireline bus...

According to BNamericas, Subtel has revealed that it expects to launch three universal access projects in the coming months drawing on a subsidy budget of CLP8.94 billion (USD17.2 million). The head of the telecoms regulator, Pablo Bello, told press that ...

French incumbent telecoms operator France Telecom (FT) has filed a complaint with the EU Commission alleging anti-competitive practises in the domestic pay-TV market by Canal Plus. Thomson Financial writes that FT has complained that its mobile arm Orange...