Open source software developer Canonical has established a Carrier Advisory Group for its Ubuntu smartphone OS. The group is to be led by David Wood, a former Psion engineer and one of the founder members of the original Symbian collaboration.
French mobile operator Orange on Wednesday became the first in the country to launch Joyn rich communications services. The announcement marks France as the ninth country to introduce Joyn, while 14 operators in total have pledged their support to the GSMA-backed initiative.
The head of Telstra Global has claimed today (June 18th) at the CommunicAsia event in Singapore that many so-called telco truths such as the concept of ‘dumb pipes’ are actually myths which are diverting Asian communications service providers from understanding the true path to success.
Norwegian regional service provider Enivest has ordered fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) solutions from Swedish firm Tilgin to simplify the deployment and maintenance of FTTH connections for its subscribers.
Sprint has filed a lawsuit in a bid to block the acquisition of 49.8 per cent of Clearwire by Dish Networks. The suit, which alleges that Dish’s tender offer for Clearwire is unactionable, is the latest twist in the story of Sprint’s evolution and Dish’s desire for US spectrum assets.
The Croatian subsidiary of operator group Telekom Austria, Vipnet, has tapped up cloud services provider Neostratus to provide a fully customisable, white-labelled public cloud platform for the operator to provision and manage a range of messaging, communication and collaboration solutions.
B/OSS specialist Openet on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Irish policy management firm Forkstream, for an undisclosed sum.
The board of directors of Orange has issued a statement in which it publicly asserts “full confidence” in CEO and chairman Stéphane Richard, who has been arrested in connection with a corruption investigation in France dating back to 2008.
Neelie Kroes has expanded on her plans to create a single telecoms market within the EU and has confirmed that she does not want to get rid of national regulators.
Google is embarking on an ambitious project to provide wireless internet connectivity to hard to reach or extremely rural areas using hot air balloons. The firm said the project is aimed to get bring fast and affordable internet to those for whom it is out of reach.
European mobile operator group TeliaSonera has announced the appointment of CEO of South African operator Vodacom International Johan Dennelind as its next president and CEO.
Chinese kit vendor Huawei has taken on the field and civil maintenance and management of Vodafone’s xDSL and mobile networks in Spain. The five year contract sees Huawei taking on 103 Vodafone employees who will be put on the vendor’s payroll.
Despite all households in the European Union now having access to basic internet connectivity, significant challenges remain before the same can be said of high-speed services, not least of which is the high cost of wiring up rural areas, according to UK research firm Point Topic.
Telkom Kenya, which operates fixed and mobile services under the Orange brand in the country, on Friday signed a 15 year outsourcing deal with Eaton Towers for the management of its passive network infrastructure.
The board of directors at US wimax (and proposed LTE) operator Clearwire has unanimously voted to recommend an offer from US satellite provider Dish Network, rather than mobile operator Sprint. Dish Network has offered to acquire all outstanding common shares of Clearwire at a price of $4.40 per share while Sprint offered just $3.40 per share.
UK operator Telefónica O2 has hit back at the Communication Workers Union’s (CWU) criticisms of its plans to make 1,000 employees redundant and transfer around 2,500 staff to outsourcing firm Capita.
The UK arm of Spanish operator group Telefonica will make a further 400 staff redundant, bringing the total number of redundancies to 1,000 ahead of outsourcing plans with Capita. The move has sparked fury from the UK’s Communications Workers Union (CWU), which said that this is “not how a decent, responsible employer should behave”.
South African operator Telkom has written down the value of its assets by R12bn ($1.2bn) following a review by its board. The operator said the decision to revalue it’s assets is important in enabling it to become competitive and efficient.
Chinese vendor Huawei has introduced a business initiative designed to explore the application scenarios for SDN in carrier networks, to help operators better understand the technology’s commercial value.
The willingness to pay a premium for 4G services is generally lower in mature markets than in emerging markets, a recent survey suggests. Accenture polled 31,000 consumers in 26 countries on their attitudes to telecoms services.
Lean and MeanWith summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.
Cross-border opportunities are there, but Telenor has work to do in BulgariaPan-European operater group Telenor is making another move into Eastern Europe, this time buying Bulgaria’s Globul. The move makes sense for several reasons, but success won’t come easy in a country with high mobile penetration and a sluggish economy.
Telecoms.com speaks with Ali Agan, who has risen through the ranks of TeliaSonera Group to become CEO of KCell in Kazakhstan. With a young population Agan is keen to deploy LTE and exploit nascent demand for data services.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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Calls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.