Alcatel Alenia Space won a contract with Turkish satellite operator Turksat for the construction and launch of a high-powered telecommunications satellite.

Telstra could be interested in buying 30% stake in Taiwan Mobile, but declined to comment. Sri Lanka' s Dialog Telekom plans to invest $150m in 2006 to expand its overall network. Telefonica announced investments of $325m in Argentina this year, 50% in...

Lacom, a JV between Orascom and Egypt Telecom in Algeria, had received an operating license in March 2005, and launches fixed operation in competition with Algerie Telecom. Telekom Austria plans commercial IPTV launch, offering around 40 TV channels and...

Bouygues Telecom (France) will launch on 1st of March a national unlimited 8-12 pm call plan towards fixed and mobile operators. Another plan target youth with unlimited free SMS and MMS after 8pm. Russia could join the Club of countries using Calling...

China said it passed 400m mobile subscribers in early February 2006. Orange UK targets SMEs in the UK with a new service called Orange Landline for Business. The target is of course to offer bundles of mobile and fixed services. Movistar Argentina, a...

Maxis (Malaysia) reports 2005 net profit of $450m, up 4.5%, and an EBITDA of $951m up 10%. MTC (Kuwait) announced record 2005 profits of $637m (+55%)on revenues of $2bn (+80%). Belgacom (Belgium) posted 4% growth rate in 2005 net earnings at €959m, while...

SFR (France) decreases the number of directors, shorten the decision making process, outs Pierre Bardon from the executive committee and gives him a new role in PR. Frank Esser, its CEO, re-organizes the company into three businesses and an executive...

Digital Music Forum 28/02-01/03 2006 New York www.digitalmusicforum.com WTDC-06. World Telecom development 1-15/03 2006 Doha Qatar www.itu.int CeBIT 2006 9-15/03 2006 Hannover Germany http://www.cebit.de/ Spring 2006 VON 14-17/03 2006 San Jose http://pulver.com/von...

Mobile infrastructure market A new report from Dell'Oro reveals that the worldwide mobile infrastructure equipment market grew 7% in 2005 to $40.1bn. In 4Q05, the market grew 8% driven by strong sales of WCDMA and GSM-based equipment. WCDMA sales amounted...

Optical transport market In the previous Telcoflash issue (N99), we presented Ovum-RHK forecast on this market. Today, Dell'Oro unveiled its own results: the worldwide Optical Transport market grew 22% in 2005 to $8.4bn. Alcatel, Nortel, Huawei and Lucent...