Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Virgin Mobile USA finished 2006 with 4.6m mobile subscribers, up 600,000 in 8 months. The Dominican Republic reported a 17% increase in mobile subscribers in nine months to 4.3m. MetroPCS (USA) had 2.6m subscribers at the end of September 2006, up 50%....

Michael Hatfield (founder of Calix), Eric Clelland (founder of Caymas Systems), Steve West (from Turin Networks) and Rick Johnston (ex Calix founder) have founded a new telecom company called Cyan Optics. Vonage has named Timothy Smith president of Vonage...

Ma Bell is back! The FCC unanimously approved AT&T' s $86bn buyout of BellSouth, in a 4-0 score (no it is not a soccer result, it is more serious). Now ATT has successfully put several of its old pieces back together in what is the largest US telecom...

According to the UMTS Forum, there were 100m UMTS/WCDMA customers worldwide at the start of 2007, or 2/3 of all 3G cellular connections. The UMTS Forum Chairman forecasts that worldwide 3G subscriber numbers for all technologies will exceed 275m by the...

In Italy, a mobile user received a bill of $66,000 for the downloading of movies. He thought its subscription allowed unlimited downloading, and has used permitted bandwidth within few days with excess traffic billed at two cents per kilobyte (or $12,000...

A few set of market information released this week: According to ABI Research, China would have 32m mobile TV users in 2008. According to MDA, 88m picture messages were sent throughout the UK in 3Q06. The China Center for Information Industry Development...

Funny: KDDI is developing a combined “breathalyzer” and telephone that will let bus and taxi companies know if their drivers can take the wheel. The handset, called Alc-Mobile, transmits drivers' faces and details on their location using GPS. Alcatel-Lucent...

Airspan Networks will power a WiMAX network for Qatar Telecom to be used during the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar.

P&T (Luxemburg) has extended its its Teralink pan-European DWDM fibre network to 4,000 km, covering now 13 PoPs in six EU countries. Italy will start selling WiMAX licenses by June. Maroc Telecom (Morocco) will pay €220m to buy 51% of Onatel (Burkina...

The Phone House plans to become MVNO in Holland in 2Q07, using KPN network. Telkom SA (S. Africa) is in talks to take a stake in Ucom, the holding that controls Uganda Telecom. Ono (Spain) would start MVNO service in Spain, using the Telefonica netwo...