News From Telecom World

China Mobile is reportedly in talks with Norway’s Telenor concerning an acquisition of their Pakistani mobile network. Both companies are denying such development, yet sources told the local Dawn newspaper that negotiations were being held secretly at the group level.
According to some statistics, the combined customer base of China Mobile (NYSE: CHL)’s and Telenor’s Pakistani [...]

The implementation of a direct operator top-up strategy can bring double digit revenue gains and reduced costs, claims a study commissioned by electronic payments vendor, Vesta Corp. Given the size of the prepaid market in Western Europe, this can equate to hundreds of millions of Euros annually, adds the report. Direct operator top-up channels include [...]

Adobe Flash may still be excluded from the iPhone, but the software company is determined to provide a unifying standard for the rest of the smartphone world, and will launch its key handset product by year-end.
The company currently offers Flash Lite for phones, but Apple and others have complained that this is insufficiently powerful for [...]

The two epic cellular battles that have dominated headlines for months continue.
In the first instance, France Telecom says it won’t make a bigger offer to buy Osracom’s stake in ECMS, Egypt’s largest mobile operator, the Financial Times reports.
France Telecom and Orascom have been squabbling over the French operator’s attempts own ECMS (and its [...]

This year could well be make or break for small-cap telecommunications companies, many of which are vulnerable as larger rivals step into their traditional areas of trade in an attempt to increase market share in uncertain economic times, analysts say.
Amid the gloom, however, some companies have shown a resilience to the downturn by growing market [...]

Quality of Service on IPTV networks, for both operators and their customers worldwide, can now be greatly improved thanks to the efforts of a dedicated team of experts at the Broadband Forum.
The approval and release of “Splitter Testing” Technical Report 127 (TR-127) creates – for the first time – the opportunity for network operators and [...]

Indonesian market leader Telkomsel saw another excellent quarter for customer growth in Q1 09. In fact, its figure of 6.83m net additions was the second highest ever recorded behind its own Q3 08 boost of 8.06m. At the end of the quarter, it had 72.13m customers. Despite the strong quarterly performance, Telkomsel fell from 6th [...]

Egypt’s Orascom Telecom has reported a 66 percent drop in its first-quarter profits to US$72 million – largely due to local currency devaluations against the US Dollar. Revenues dropped by 4 percent to US$1.2 billion.
In US$, revenues for Mobilink decreased by 1% in local currency vs. a decrease of 23% in US$, revenues for Tunisiana [...]

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has reported that its fourth fiscal (1st calendar) quarter’s underlying net profit fell 0.9 percent to S$959 million (US$657 million) from a year ago impacted by the weak Australian dollar and major regional currencies.
For the full year, the Group’s operating revenue was stable at S$14.93 billion (US$10.2 billion). The strong Singapore dollar [...]

North Korea has begun limited Internet service for mobile phone users, a government Web site reported, months after launching an advanced network in cooperation with an Egyptian telecommunications company.
The service allows North Koreans to access a Web site through their phones to see news reports carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency as [...]