Mobile operator strategies - 24/06/06

Sprint Nextel expands data roaming capabilities through two new agreements with Bell Canada and Iusacell (Mexico).

China Unicom and STK signed an exclusive strategic alliance to further develop CDMA services in China. STK will purchase $1bn in convertible bonds to be issued by Unicom. China Unicom and STK plan to jointly purchase 4m CDMA handsets.

SFR (France) is proposing a 3G handset (BenQ Siemens SXG75 3G) with a built-in GPS feature option (SFR Navigation).

Ukraine will sell one 3G licence by year-end.

Areeba Syria, Syria, announced the launch of 3G services.

T-Mobile UK will launch HSDPA service in early August.

Vodafone UK has launched last week its HSDPA service and won the race to be the first operator to offer HSDPA in the wildly competitive U.K. wireless market.

Telefonica Moviles targets to have 60% of all Spanish subscribers to be 3G by 2009. It will double its base station number to 13,000 by that date.

Romania will offer two new 3G licenses by Sept. 06.

SkyLink (Russia) has bought the 7.5% stake Qualcomm had in PeCom (Russia) and has now 100% of PeCom. It plans to consolidate PeCom with another mobile operator in Moscow it owns: Moscow Cellular Communications.