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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2008
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application platform to rival Apple’s iPhone. The handset
was expected to be available to consumers at the end
of October.
The phone has a somewhat chequered history. In November
2007 Google announced the formation of the Open Handset
Alliance to promote open standards for mobile devices.
The group of more than 30 hardware, software and telecom
companies includes Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola and
T-Mobile. Mr Claburn tracked progress beginning in August.
“After several rough spots, Android’s prospects brightened
considerably, thanks to US Federal Communications
Commission approval of the HTC Dream, Google’s delivery
of the Android 0.9 SDK beta, and T-Mobile’s confirmation of
its plan to ship an HTC Android-powered phone.”
Also in August, Google inaugurated the Android Market,
“an open content distribution system that will help end
users find, purchase, download, and install various types of
content on their Android-powered devices.”
A reader of Mr Claburn’s column addressed the question
of cellphone security with open standards: “[It] does not
mean anyone can put anything on your computer or device.
It means that the source code is freely available, so you
have a ton of pros looking over this all the time. It really
is safer.”
This respondent, Dual Boot, added: “You’ve seen ‘The
Matrix,’ right? Think of Microsoft as the alien that has you
hooked up to the machine. If you can break free, there’s a
beautiful world out there in Open Source Land.”
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
A new undersea cable linking Bermuda to the United
❖
❖
States, the first to be run by a Bermudian company, has
been landed. The 898-mile Challenger cable connects
an exchange of the Bermuda Telephone Company to the
Charleston terminal in Massachusetts. Its predecessors
are a year-old link run by British-based Cable and
Wireless and an 11 year-old link run by Brasil Telecom.
Cable Company, the local company that laid the new line,
is made up of KeyTech, North Rock Communications,
and Transact. (Royal Gazette, Hamilton, Bermuda
17
th
September)
The Canadian telecommunications equipment maker
❖
❖
Nortel Networks said 17
th
September that it would make
further cutbacks in already much reduced operations
and that it planned to sell a key operating unit. Cutbacks
in purchasing by both telephone companies and
corporate customers for communications systems
caused Ottawa-based Nortel to cut its third-quarter
revenue forecast from $2.66 billion to $2.3 billion.
If accurate, the forecast will represent a 14.8% decline
from the same period of 2007. To bolster cash reserves,
Nortel will try to sell its fast-growing Metro Ethernet
Networks operation, including a unit that makes
equipment for global fibre optic communications
networks.
Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor