Telcoflash: Telecom Market News

Teliasonera has made a bid of $1bn for buying 100% (it already owns 49%) of Latvia-based Lattlecom. ATT got FCC' s approval for buying spectrum in the 700MHz band from Aloha Partners (for $2.5bn). KPN, E-Plus, 3UK, Play and Base (respectively in NL, Germany,...

Nine telecom operators (including Bharti Airtel, FT, VSNL, Etisalat, STC, PTCL, Telecom Egypt, Ogero and TIS Sparkle) will build a high-capacity submarine cable, called I-ME-WE, between India and India. Telecom Argentina will debut IPTV services trial...

Orange (France) sold 20,000 iPhones in January, or 90,000 units in total since the launch. Sales are slowing (Xmas effect for sure), but Orange continues to gain new customers (50% of iPhone buyers). Orange targets 400k to 500k units sold in 2008. ATT...

Pakistan currently has 77m mobile subscribers, 2.1m WLL and 4.7m fixed-line user base. Singtel ' s regional mobile customer base reached 171.2m at the end of 2007. France had 55.4m mobile customers in Dec 2007, of which 5% from 15 MVNOs. PT Telkom (Indonesia)...

BT reports that 4Q07 profit fell 30% to £447m, on flat revenues of £5.1bn. Global services revenues grew by 6.3%, while retail increased by 1.8% and Openreach by 6.6%. Wholesale revenues fell by11%. New Wave revenues increased by7% to £2bn. EBITDA grew...

ATT hired Chris Schembri as its new marketing director. Motorola CEO Greg Brown will personally lead the ailing handset business, while investor Carl Icahn filed to nominate four board members to the company’s 13-member board. KPN would cut more jobs...

Vodafone reports strong quarterly results, driven by solid emerging markets, mobile data operations and due to the strength of the Euro. 4Q07 revenues were up almost 16% to €12.3bn, of which revenues in EMAPA region rose by 47% to €3.4bn. Voice revenues...

Verizon Comms. posted 4Q07 net income of $1.1bn (+4%) on revenues of $23.8bn, up 5.5%. Wireline revenues fell 1% to $12.5bn. Wireless revenues grew 13% to $11.4bn. ARPU was about $51, of which $11 in data. For the year, wireless revenues reached $44bn,...

Ericsson reports a 42% drop in 4Q07 net income to €593m, while revenues are flat at €5.8bn, but in line with analysts expectations. The operating margin was 14%, 7.5 points below last year. For the full year, sales were €19.9bn, up 4.4%. The operating...

The auction for what is called the 700 MHz spectrum (a range of 90 MHz band to be returned by broadcasters next year) in the US has already reached $18bn, well above the $15bn projected high. The second good news is meeting the $4.6bn reserve price for...