I do not have a crystal ball and will not made predictions, despite current ambiance. I just would like to highlight what seems to me areas that would expand in 2007 and further, after a launch or trials in 2006. 2006 : 2006 is at the end and it is quite...

A strong earthquake (mag 6.7) struck off the coast of Taiwan on Xmas Day, creating one of the region' s biggest telecom outages. Mainly, many crucial undersea cables were cut, disrupting service in most countries. Repairing will need several weeks (time...

Driven by VOIP takeoff and FMC ( Fixed-Mobile Convergence) demand, UMA has achieved strong success in 2006, both in handsets and UMA-based DMH services. Samsung, Motorola and Nokia have introduced UMA-enabled dual-mode handsets in 2006, enabling FMC services...

Reliance/ Flag Telecom (India) will invest $1.5bn over the next three years in a new 50,000km fiber cable Flag NGN. Reliance describes it as "the world's largest IP network over submarine cable systems". In fine, the network will span over 115,000km and...

Nokia has received a €320m order from Megafon (Russia) for network expansion and upgrades.

Pirelli (Italy) is mulling to reduce its stake in Telecom Italia, via its stake in Olimpia Holdings currently controlled at 80%.

In Colombia, the ministry of Communications (MinCom) has assigned 55 departemental WiMAX licenses in the 3.5GHz spectrum band.

Russian telecom regulator, Rossvyaz, announced tenders for 3 3G licenses. MTS and Vimpelcom are expected to bid and will not be barred to do in spite of back tax claims. But Svyazinest is not now considering its units bidding. Foreign operators are also...

SibirTelecom (Russia) reports 3m mobile users (+50%) at the end of Nov. China had 455m mobile users by the end of Nov. (+ ca 62m new users since 01-01-06). It also has 132m Internet users. Vietnam has added 10m new telephone subscribers in 2006 (+188%)....

Alcatel-Lucent plans t invest some $200m in India annually over the next three years. HP will purchase Bitfone to grow its mobile enterprise business. Bitfone develops mobile device management software, allowing to remotely update the software on users’...