Japanese carrier Softbank’s bid to acquire a 70 per cent stake in US operator Sprint is an audacious deal that could transform or hobble the companies depending on how it plays out. For Softbank it is a huge bet that it’s better to invest $20bn in the third-largest US mobile operator rather than its home market of Japan where it is the third-largest mobile operator behind NTT DoCoMo and KDDI.
Japanese carrier Softbank has announced its intention to acquire a 70 per cent stake in US operator Sprint. Softbank will invest $20.1bn into Sprint; $12.1bn of which will be paid to its shareholders and $8bn will be used as new capital.
A US start-up is aiming to disrupt the wireless broadband market with its commitment to deliver free 4G services to its users. FreedomPop has launched the beta version of its service and will be offering 500MB of free data usage to each of its customers using US wholesale operator Clearwire’s WiMAX network.
US telco Vermont Telephone has selected a range of solutions from Alcatel-Lucent as it prepares to increase the availability of super-fast broadband and deliver IP video services in its service territory in Southern Vermont
Chinese network vendor Huawei has been refused permission by the US government to bid for a contract to work on the nationwide emergency network. A government spokesperson said that permission was refused due to national security concerns. The firm as now asked the government to elaborate on its reasons.
US President Barack Obama has received a letter from 15 lawmakers calling for his administration to approve the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. The letter, put forward by member of congress Heath Shuler and 14 other Democrats, said that the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA would help solve America’s jobs crisis by reducing unemployment, encourage private investment and promote new and innovative technologies that will drive job creation.
The US department of Justice has filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in a bid to block AT&T’s proposed $39bn acquisition of T-Mobile’s US operation, claiming that the deal would “substantially lessen competition” in the US wireless sector. If successful, said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, the move would result in higher prices and lower quality for consumers.
Verizon’s buy of innovative startup CloudSwitch is a nasty surprise to those who deny the growing power of telcos in the cloud.
Spotify has finally got its prize. News of a US launch today brings to a close a two-year affair, blighted with delays, speculation and a healthy dollop of the now infamous “ongoing negotiations with labels”.
US carrier Verizon is the latest to jump on the mobile payments bandwagon, announcing on Tuesday a partnership with mobile transaction firm Payfone to bring carrier billing to Verizon Wireless users.
US lawmakers have given AT&T and T-Mobile executives a hard time at a competition hearing, as they debate whether to allow the $39bn merger of the two telcos to go ahead.
Rene Obermann has pulled off one of the most spectacular bluffs in recent history by engineering the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s US subsidiary to AT&T, a move predicted by few, but one that will dramatically alter the structure of the US mobile industry if approved.
The US Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule that reclassifies certain software and hardware products used with medical devices as Class I or low-risk products. Until now, these devices were considered to be either Class III (high-risk) devices requiring pre-market approval or accessories to an existing medical device.
Sanjiv Ahuja, the chief of forthcoming US wholesale carrier Lightsquared, has sent a letter to the country’s communications authority addressing concerns that the LTE and satellite-based network may interfere with GPS services. Ahuja is seeking to assure the FCC that “there will be no interference,” in order to keep its rollout plans on track.
There was no great surprise to Tuesday’s announcement that US CDMA operator Verizon Wireless has finally managed to secure a CDMA version of the Apple iPhone 4. The news is a boon for the Verizon network, which is widely perceived as offering the best quality in the country. iPhone pioneer AT&T meanwhile, could lose subscribers to its closest rival.
Internet telephony player Skype has agreed to acquire Qik, a US-based mobile video sharing platform, which will give the VoIP firm greater capabilities in the mobile telephony market.
Verizon has launched its Machine to Machine Management Center, giving enterprise customers near real-time access to monitor M2M wireless devices. Customers can access the platform directly through Verizon’s MyBusiness or the Verizon Enterprise Center, or through customers’ business-specific applications, developed using nPhase’s unified web services SDK. The solution is a product of nPhase – the joint venture between Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless.
T-Mobile USA is to make wifi calling available on a wide selection of its Android-powered smartphones including the recently announced T-Mobile myTouch and Motorola Defy. Customers wifi access points are powered by Kineto’s Smart Wi-Fi Application. T-Mobile said it hosts approximately 40 million wifi calls per month.
US carrier Verizon has unveiled plans to launch commercial LTE services in 38 major metropolitan areas, providing coverage for around 110 million Americans by the end of the year. The 4G technology will also be deployed in 60 or so airports nationwide by other key cities.
US regulator the FCC has taken the first steps to opening up the vacant airwaves between TV channels, so called ‘white spaces’. This is the first significant block of spectrum made available for unlicensed use in more than 20 years. The Second Memorandum Opinion and Order adopted this week resolves numerous legal and technical issues, eliminating the requirement that TV bands devices that incorporate geo-location and database access must also include sensing technology to detect the signals of TV stations and low-power auxiliary service stations.
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.