WCA September 2010

Telecom news

infrastructure, giving the country communications networks which are worthy of such an indomitable nation.” According to the UN News Service the Barbados meeting wrapped up with participants pledging their support for a trust fund for Haiti to be set up within the ITU. Mr Touré probably can be relied upon to make sure that those pledges are honoured. Elsewhere in telecom . . . ✆ ✆ Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the United Arab Emirates confirmed on 3 rd July that both telecom operators in the country – Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat) and Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co (Du) – are technically ready to provide each other with access to their fixed telecommunications infrastructure. The two operators currently provide all fixed-line telephone and Internet services in the UAE. As reported by the Middle East business site AME Info , in line with a TRA policy of promoting competition in the telecom market, Etisalat The Telecommunications

and Du have been negotiating an agreement that allows them to offer services across each other’s copper and fibre networks to both sets of customers. England’s BT is teaming up with ✆ ✆ Cisco Systems to provide uni- fied-communications services in the US. The company will target economy-minded clients with desktop solutions for combined voice, mobile and data, along with cloud support. As reported by VON/xchange (1 st July), BT is hoping that the converged offering will enable it to stand out among the likes of Verizon Business, AT&T Inc and Microsoft Corp, and niche players like Alteva and PanTerra. Both BT and infrastructure partner Cisco Systems (San Jose, California) will sell the service via all channels. The medium-term prospects look good: Infonetics Research has forecast the unified communications market to return to strong double-digit annual growth once the world’s economies recover, with sales surpassing $1 billion by 2013.

by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is strongly resisting any tendency toward inertia. At the six-month mark, the ITU was in fact striving to accelerate the reconstruction of Haiti’s information and communication technology (ICT) system, destroyed in the 12 th January earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. At a 1 st July meeting convened by the ITU in Barbados and attended by representatives of its own member states, UN agencies, the World Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, civil society and the private sector, the ITU’s secretary-general Hamadoun Touré stated the agency’s vaulting aims for a greatly enhanced Haitian ICT future. He urged, “Let’s do everything we can to ensure that Haiti gets state-of-the-art twenty-first century infrastructure, instead of simply replacing outdated twentieth century equipment. Let’s build in resilient features which will help to reduce network vulnerability in the future. Let’s make sure that Haiti gets broadband

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2010