WCA May 2007

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Telecom News
27 Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2007
Mobile phone operator StarHub,
of Singapore, has selected Huawei
Technologies to provide and
support future upgrades of its
3G mobile network, including the
forthcoming high-speed downlink
packet access (HSDPA) service.
As reported by TeleGeography
(9th February), StarHub said it
picked the Chinese vendor on
the strength of its progressive 3G
technology roadmap. StarHub
hopes that the Huawei technology
will deliver the full capabilities
of HSDPA in 2007, including an
upgrade to 14.4Mbps by year-end.
StarHub launched its 3G service in
2005, and at the end of September
2006 had 128,000 3G customers.
The president of Venezuela, Hugo
Chávez, announced a state takeover
of the telephone company CA
Nacional de Teléfonos, and said
he did not intend to pay CANTV
shareholders the market value.
Speaking during a 21st January radio
broadcast, Mr Chávez said the price
for CANTV would take into account
a ‘technological debt’ to the
state, as well as debts to workers,
pensions, and other obligations.
Verizon Communications, the New
York-based international telecom,
holds a minority stake and is the
controlling shareholder in CANTV,
which provides all fixed telecom
services within Venezuela.
América Móvil and its sister
company Teléfonos de México,
or Telmex, have agreed to scrap
their joint plan to buy a $677 million
(28.5%) stake in Venezuelan fixed-
line operator CANTV from US-
based Verizon Communications.
This leaves Verizon on its own
to negotiate with the Venezuelan
government in the wake of President
Hugo Chávez’s declaration of
intention to nationalise CANTV.
In April 2006, América Móvil agreed
to buy Verizon’s telecom interests
in Venezuela, the Dominican
Republic, and Puerto Rico for a
total $3.7 billion. It has completed
the acquisition of Verizon’s 100%
stake in Verizon Dominicana
for $2.062 billion and expects
clearance soon from the US Federal
Communications Commission
to purchase a 52% interest in
Telecomunicaciones de Puerto
Rico for $939 million.
The announcement by the US
government that it will no longer
require applicants for an amateur
radio licence to demonstrate
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proficiency in Morse Code has
shaken the tight community of
660,000 operators who have long
provided a communications lifeline
in emergencies. The lingua franca of
amateur radio is an apparent victim
of the popularity of other modes of
communicating over so-called ham
radio – voice, teletype, even video.
While the December decision
had been expected, some Morse
Coders fear that the very survival
of the code is in question. “It’s part
of the dumbing-down of America,”
Nancy Kott, editor of World
Radio magazine, told the New York
Times (27 th December). “We live in a
society today that wants something
for nothing.”
Motorola Inc, of the US, said it
plans to cut 5% of its 70,000-strong
work force, some 3,500 jobs, in an
effort to improve operating costs
after a disappointing fourth quarter
last year. Operating earnings from
the mobile devices division, the
company’s largest business, fell
49%, to $341 million, in the quarter
despite a 19% increase in sales, to
$7.8 billion. The company shipped
a record 65.7 million handsets in
the quarter, up 47% from a year
earlier. Motorola, which trails Nokia
Corp, of Finland, among cellphone
makers, said on 19 th January that
its world market share grew nearly
1%, to 23.3%, in the final quarter of
2006. The job cuts are to be spread
across the company globally and
completed in the first half of the
year. Motorola said that the cuts
would save about $400 million over
two years.
North America’s biggest maker
of telephone equipment – Nortel
Networks Corp, of Canada – will
slash 2,900 jobs, or 8.5% of its
workforce, over the next two years
and shift another 1,000 employees
to lower-cost locations like China,
India, and Mexico. This is the latest
round of job cuts for the Toronto-
based company, which once
employed about 90,000 people
and currently employs about
34,000. Nortel said on 8th February
that this year it will also reduce by
500,000 square feet its global real
estate portfolio of about 11 million
square feet. The company said
the two moves would save about
$400 million a year.
Helio LLC – a joint venture of
EarthLink Inc , of the US, and
SK Telecom Co, of South Korea,
said on 6 th February that its youth-
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oriented cell phone service would
reach 100,000 subscribers in April
and that it was generating monthly
revenue at an annual rate in excess
of $100 million. Helio, which began
marketing in May 2006, said its
users send and receive more than
400 text messages per month,
a level it said was nearly seven
times the industry average. Chief
executive Sky Dayton said the New
York-based company finished 2006
with about 70,000 customers and
that subscriber growth has been
accelerating, although he declined
to estimate how long or how many
subscribers it would take to reach
profitability.
Shares in the Swedish cellular
equipmentmaker Ericsson dropped
appreciably on 2nd February, even
after chief executive Carl-Henric
Svanberg said that Ericsson saw
‘continued opportunities to outpace
the market.’ As noted by Parmy
Olson on Forbes.com, investors
and analysts were more interested
in the company’s smaller-than-
expected growth in profit for
fourth-quarter 2006, as well as the
fact it had lowered its forecasts
for 2007. Ericsson said it expected
growth of between 4% and 6% for
its GSM/WCDMA mobile phone
technologies unit, compared to the
5% to 9% it had previously forecast.
GSM/WCDMA technology is used
in about 80% of mobile networks.
In a joint effort to reduce phone
development time and costs, a
group of mobile phone operators
and handset vendors is developing
a 3G (third-generation) mobile
phone platform that combines
many standard hardware and soft-
ware components. NTT DoCoMo,
Renesas Technology, Fujitsu,
Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp,
and Sony Ericsson Mobile
Communications will jointly
develop a platform to support
HSDPA (high-speed downlink
packet access) and W-CDMA
(wideband code division multiple
access) as well as GSM (global
system for mobile communications),
GPRS (general packet radio
service), and EDGE (enhanced data
rates for GSM evolution).
As reported by Nancy Gohring of
IDG News Service, phones that use
the new platform could become
available worldwide and at a lower
cost than other 3G handsets. The
companies expect to complete
development of the platform in
second-quarter 2008.
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