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The following cell phone information is from
www.rcrnews.com
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Plug pulled on
future 3G operator
- OXFORD,
United Kingdom—Broadband Mobile, a third-generation (3G) joint venture between
Finland’s Sonera and Norway-based Enitel, has been closed down before it even
started operations. The company, which paid more than US$22 million to the
Norwegian government for its 3G license in October of last year, has now been
declared bankruptcy.
The collapse of Broadband Mobile is said to have been due to Sonera’s
withdrawal from the joint venture after it had failed in its ambitions to
acquire a 3G license in Sweden, making its planned pan-Scandinavian network
impossible. Sonera confirmed that it would be returning its 3G cell phone
license to the Norwegian government and planned to report a US$16 million
write-off for the failed venture. Analysts said that Sonera’s move was
hastened by its wish to refocus on its core operations as it attempts to cut
back on expensive projects and attract outside investors.
This came as the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), Yoshio Utsumi, said worldwide 3G services would now begin
considerably later than the previously anticipated start period of 2001. He
added that telecom operators in the United States and Europe had invested
large and perhaps excessive amounts of capital in securing spectrum rights,
and were now faced with uncertainty regarding the profitability of 3G
services.
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- China overtakes U.S. in number of mobile
phone subscribers
- BEIJING—In July, China became the world’s biggest mobile-phone market. The
country’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced the country had
120.6 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of July, about half a
million more than in the United States.
China added 3.8 million new mobile-phone subscribers in July, in addition
to 2.4 million fixed-line subscribers, which totaled 166.8 million. At the
current rate of increase, the number of mobile users will overtake the number
of fixed-line subscribers in 2004.
The penetration rate of mobile phones in China is around 10 percent, still
low compared with percentages of approximately 50 percent in Europe and 40
percent in the United States. Mobile-phone manufacturers still see China as a
promising market.
Jan Malm, president of Ericsson (China) told the China Daily, “The Chinese
market is a shining star in the cloud of global economic downturn.”
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BELLEVUE, Wash.-T-Mobile USA Inc. got a jump
on the holiday shopping season by rolling out a promotional rate plan that
includes 1,500 anytime calling minutes for $40 per month. Customers can add
unlimited night and weekend calling to the plan for an additional $10 per
month.
The plan provides between two and three times the anytime calling
minutes compared with similar pricing levels from T-Mobile USA's larger
competitors. It also undercuts T-Mobile's $40/1,000 minute calling plan the
carrier offered during the holidays last year. However, the larger carriers
continue to trump T-Mobile USA by offering unlimited in-network calling on
many plans that include more than twice the customer base as their smaller
rival.
LG today has
unveiled the world's first phone running the Linux and Java based SavaJe OS.
Like Motorola's new Linux and Java platform, SavaJe is not a smartphone, instead
it is a highly customizable and powerful feature phone OS. SavaJe is funded by
many big name operators looking for an alternative to manufacturer-controlled
OSes so they could present a unified interface across many devices, as Verizon
is now doing. The LG SavaJe phone features a 220x176 screen, 1.3 Megapixel
camera, Bluetooth, SD card slot and a media player. No model number or release
date has been revealed yet.
Yahoo, Nokia and Cingular to team up on new phone
In an interesting move for Yahoo, the company
announced that it will team up with Nokia and
SBC to produce a mobile phone
that will ship on Cingular's network. Unlike most
companies wanting to get into the mobile phone space,
Yahoo didn't go the MVNO route
but used its pre-existing relationship with
SBC (parent of Cingular) to
get a Cingular distribution deal.
The Nokia made phone with feature:
 | MP3 player
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| 1.3 mega pixel camera
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| Removable memory card. |
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