Mobile operator strategies - 09/12/06

China Mobile plans to go abroad and is interested to acquite phone companies in emerging countries. Asia and Africa are the main targets.

Vodafone Egypt is considering buying a 3G licence in Egypt and launching there 3G services.

Movistar Argentina plans to invest $246m in 2007.

Nine Telstra rivals have formed the "Group of Nine" (G9) telco and internet consortium in order to consider building a national fiber optic network, responding to pending similar Telstra project.

Idea Cellular (India) has filed for an IPO, and plans to raise some $560m.

Shortfalls: Both Vodafone and Orange networks in the UK were hit by major outages. Vodafone network was hit after an upgrade to its SMSC software; the HLR was corrupted and the network down. Orange saw a major failure of its GPRS network fr about 24 hours.

SK Telecom (S. Korea) will trial TD-SCDMA technology in March 07.