Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Bulgaria's Mobiltel has extended its 3G services coverage to Varna and the resorts along the Northern Black Sea. SFR targets to cover 70% of of the French population by the end of 2007, while Orange targets the end of 2008. Tele2 has launched a GSM 1800...

The UMTS Forum estimates there are over 38m UMTS customers in Europe and 75m worldwide. MTN Congo had 222k mobile users as of 31 March 2006. Kyivstar' subscriber base rose 15% to 16m mobile subscribers in Ukraine as of July 1. Bangladeshi mobile operator...

Yahoo reports 2Q06 profit of $ 164m, down 360%, on sales of $ 1.6bn, up26%. Google posted strong results with 2Q earnings of $721m, up 110%, on sals of $2.5bn, up 77%. Microsoft announced a 24% drop in 2Q06 net income to $2.8bn, but its turnover grew...

Louis Gandois (ex-SNCF) replaces Noël Forgeard, and Christian Streiff replaces Gustav Humbert respectively as CEO of EADS and Airbus. Telemar (Brazil) said it has appointed Luiz Eduardo Falco Pires Correa as CEO, effective July 1. Telfort (NL) has named...

Broadband access survey Point Topic has released its 1Q06 World Broadband Statistics. The worldwide total of broadband lines grew to 229.0m lines during 1Q06, up 36%, adding some 60m lines in 12 months. APAC accounts for 40% of the world market, Europe...

GSM's 15th anniversary The first GSM network in the world became operational for commercial service on July 1st, 1991. The network was built by Ericsson and the operator was Mannesmann in Germany. So it is just 15 years that the GSM adventure has begun...

Can Nortel be bought yet? Many analysts think Nortel missed the train and that it will be hard to find a partner in the carrier market. Talks have been held in the past with Alcatel, Siemens, but none was successful. With a market capitalization of about...

VoIP Over Wi-Fi future The market is hardly taking off and the technology is not yet mature. Many analysts, however, think that the VoWiFi market future should be travellers abroad. The basic idea is to bypass the high mobile roaming fees while abroad,...

Mobile attitude A recent survey made by Juniper Research in Europe found that 32% of mobile subscribers are ready to pay for mobile multimedia content 79% are using SMS 28% are using MMS 30%+ take photos 8% watch videos

Sprint Nextel plans additional spectrum acquisitions in the 2.5 GHz band to give it a nationwide footprint. Sprint Nextel was required by the FCC as a condition of the merger between Sprint and Nextel, to begin offering services in the 2.5GHz band to...