Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Onatel (Burkina Faso) currently has 400k mobile customers. Orange (FT) currently has 3.5m broadband mobile customers, including 3G, HSDPA and EDGE. Thailand reports 39m mobile users, up 8.5m in 2006. BT (UK) should pass 10m broadband lines this week,...

Ericsson plans to cut 130 to 230 jobs in its unit of Kalmar (Sweden) and delocate related production to China. FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, has appointed Fred Campbell as Head of the agency’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and Catherine Seidel as...

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...