WCA September 2010

Telecom news

In other news of Cisco Systems, the company has initiated ✆ ✆ a programme to prepare potential customers before they commit to building a cloud computing system. Reporting on eweek.com (30 th June), Chris Preimesberger observed that, as Cisco reinvents itself partly as a cloud-computing infrastructure provider, it needs to add a set of services to wrap around all the hardware and software it wants to sell. That is what the company has done, launching a set of what it calls cloud enablement services to go with its growing data centre solutions portfolio. Cisco is providing a menu of cloud system components, including products of its own and from such partners as EMC, NetApp, VMware, Microsoft and BMC. On 25 ✆ ✆ th June the directors of Russia’s No 1 mobile operator MTS and of its Comstar fixed line unit recommended a merger between the two. MTS, which currently holds a 62% stake in Comstar, has offered to buy another 9% from minority shareholders in a $1 billion-plus transaction intended to cut costs and offer more services. The deal, which would create the largest integrated telecommunications provider in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), is expected to be completed by the middle of next year. Canada’s industry minister Tony Clement confirmed ✆ ✆ that Ottawa plans to move ahead on reforms of the rules governing foreign direct investment in the country’s telecommunications industry. Speaking 7 th June at a telecom conference in Toronto, Mr Clement said the government expected shortly to release a consultation document outlining options for such liberalisation. As reported in the Wall Street Journal , the minister said the options would centre around large incumbents and access to foreign direct investment, while considering as well various ways of meeting the capital needs of smaller companies. Representatives of the Canadian telecom industry were to be allowed a brief period for comment on the projected reforms. Cell phone makers in Japan are regrouping to meet the ✆ ✆ challenge of the popular Apple iPhone at home and to compete with the likes of Nokia and Samsung overseas. In the second Japanese cell phone merger within a month, Fujitsu and Toshiba said on 17 th June that they will merge their handset operations. Fujitsu is to own a majority stake in the venture, slated to launch in October. The new company would be Japan’s second-biggest mobile phone maker, after Sharp. NEC , Casio Computer and Hitachi merged their phone units earlier in June. In “the most successful product launch in Apple’s ✆ ✆ history,” according its chief executive Steve Jobs, Apple Inc said that it sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 phones through 26 th June, three days after store sales of the devices began. The company did not say whether the figure included pre-orders placed on the company’s website and in stores before the phone’s official 24 th June store launch. AT&T Inc is the exclusive US provider for the iPhone. Microsoft (Redmond, Washington) scrapped its Kin mobile ✆ ✆ phone just weeks after its May debut. According to the Wall Street Journal (30 th June), insiders said that the phone, which was marketed to young people, failed to attract significant demand.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2010