Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Verizon Business targets Middle East in opening an office in Dubai Internet City. T-Mobile USA has officially launched its first 3G network in New York City. Sprint Nextel is considering selling or spinning off its Nextel unit. Qwest has switched to Verizon...

China Mobile confirms it is interested in the African mobile market, but has not bid for MTN (S. Africa. China's SARFT will debut mobile TV trial on May 10, using CMMB-based standard. It plans to deploy CMMB networks in 37 cities in China before August....

Softbank (Japan) reports FY07 net profit of $1bn (+260%) on revenues of $26.6bn (+9%), with an operating profit of $3.1bn (+20%). Bell Canada (Canada) said its 1Q08 operating income fell by 34% to $ 470m, on revenues of $3.7bn, up 2%. Virgin Mobile USA...

Panama plans selling its 49% stake in C&W Panama SA. Bolivia has nationalized its telecom incumbent Entel, currently a Telecom Italia affiliate. Ecuador will renew the mobile license to America Movil, after this latter agrees to pay $480m. PTS (Swedish...

Dan Petri, from Verizon, retires. Alcatel Shanghai Bell appoints Olivia Qiu as president.

VZ reports a 10% rise in 1Q08 net income to $1.6bn, on revenues of $24bn (+5.5%). Mobile revenues amounted to $11.7bn (+13%) very close to rival ATT Mobile revenues ($11.8bn), and operating income grew 20% to $3.3bn. 2/3 of the revenue growth is owed...

ALU reported revenues of €3.9bn (+6.3% at constant rate, but flat at current rate) with services revenues (+8.3% to €627m) and Enterprise sector (+3% to €371m) offsetting decline in the Carrier segment (-5% to €2.8bn). ALU was impacted by adverse euro/dollar...

In 2007, the top 10 emerging mobile markets added a combined total of 320m new subscribers to reach a total subscriber base of 1.4bn users. China and India combined added more than half of this total with respectively 86m (+14%) and 84m (+56%) new users...

A few set of market information released this week: According to Infonetics, service providers spent $57bn on outsourced services in 2007. ATT Mobility unveils its iPhone subscribers spend more than $100 a month, the double of a regular 2G user. ABI Research...

China has 574m mobile users or a mobile penetration rate of 44%, and 361m fixed lines (loss of 4.4m lines in 1Q08). America Movil ended March with 159m subscribers (+5.7m in 1Q08). Vivo (Brazil) had 34.4m users (+18%) at the end of 1Q08. India added 10.2m...