Telecom Inventory

RRsat To Debut A New Content Management & Distribution Solution

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:59:46 +0930

The Israel-based, comprehensive digital content management and global distribution services to the television and radio broadcasting industry provider, RRsat Global Communications Network Ltd., will be launching a new solution that enables major international broadcasters to reach cable headends and direct-to-home (DTH) television broadcasting in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

To include a full range of services from content capture, production and management through distribution and extensive play-out services from the RRsat Emek HaEla teleport in Israel, RRsat’s new end-to-end solution for Russia and CIS also combines RRsat’s Ku-Band MCPC platform on the new Yamal-300K satellite, which covers western, central and eastern regions of Russia and the CIS, reaching 98% of the population, and utilizes frequencies that are ideal for DTH television broadcasting and for TV contribution to cable headends.

RRsat Chief Commercial Officer, Lior Rival, said, “RRsat’s new solution for Russia and the CIS demonstrates our commitment to helping our clients cost-effectively expand their broadcasts to reach viewers throughout the world. We are thrilled to offer a new solution that, combined with the optimal coverage provided by the Yamal -300K satellite, enables our customers to reach almost every household in Russia and the CIS, a population exceeding 275 million people.”

U.K.'s Computer Experts Security Group Refused To Endorse BlackBerry's Flagship Phones

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:56:41 +1030

The British government experts ruled BlackBerry’s just released flagship smartphones, Z10 and Q10 to be ‘not secured enough.’

Despite BlackBerry’s reputation of producing phones that are highly secured and reliable, even preferred devices for government workers, the United Kingdom’s Computer Experts Security Group (CESG) has refused to endorse its latest smartphone innovation.

And though the company has partnered with Secusmart to create a security feature in BlackBerry 10 called Balance, BlackBerry failed to pass the U.S. standards as well, that’s why government has already switched to using Apple and Android phones.

The Canadian company has been sorting this issue with CESG but not giving a specified date to when such vulnerability might be fixed. However, Z10’s sales in the U.K. has been slowing down since January.

Orion Express eyes Hotbird satellite hotspot for Russia

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:31:36 +1030

Orion Express recently expressed its intent to set up a Hotbird-style satellite hotspot at the 85 degrees east orbital slot.

The Company is a pay-TV operator based in Russia. It is also the anchor tenant at the aforementioned orbital slot, which currently contains the Intelsat-15 and Horizon 2 satellites.

Orion plans to use the spare capacity of the Intelsat and Horizon satellites to form the core of a broader media platform at the 85 degrees east orbital slot. The resulting hot spot will be able to complement two existing slots: The 80 degrees east slot, which is occupied by the new Express satellites, and the 90 degrees east position, which hosts the Yamal satellites operated by Gazprom.

According to Orion, it is ready to help third-party broadcasters expand regional coverage through the provision of uplink services and other means of technical support.

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Ford Opposes Embedding LTE Modems In Cars

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:22:01 +1030

The American multinational automaker, Ford, goes against the idea of embedding LTE modems into its cars. It was just days after General Motors, a competitor automaker, signed an agreement with AT&T Mobility to install such modems in the cars the company produces. Ford firmly restated that users should connect their cars to the network through their existing smartphones.

Ford’s Global Director of Connected Services Solutions, Doug VanDagens said, “The last thing we want to do is take this [smartphone] thing that updates every 12-18 months and bolt it into a car with a lifecycle of at least 10 years.”

On the other hand, AT&T’s President of Emerging Enterprises and Partnerships, Glenn Lurie believes this move will be successful. He also emphasized that requiring the users to pay for the data charges incurred by the software updates automakers push to their vehicles. ”That’s the one thing that worries me,” Lurie states.

Noting that General Motors’ agreement with AT&T will allow the carrier to provide both wholesale and retail wireless services in vehicles, he explained that the wholesale model will allow General Motors to sell services like infotainment to motorists, while the retail model will allow AT&T to sell connections to those same users.

If this new deal General Motors and AT&T entered will come to prosper, we will not be sure unless the actual figures are out.

One-Third of Global Phone Traffic Are Skype Calls

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:50:36 +1030

In a telecom market analysis firm, TeleGeography’s new research, they studied the worldwide usage of Skype and found out that calls through Skype is now equivalent to over one-third of all international phone traffic.

The study showed that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes and Cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.”

Certainly, telecommunications companies feel the loss as the number of consumers using Skype grows bigger and bigger.

“International providers have to rely on steady growth rates to maintain revenues. What we’ve seen is a slowdown in growth rates and some is due to economic trends,” said TeleGeography’s Analyst through Ars, Stephan Beckert.

“I think what’s interesting is that 2012 versus previous years is that Skype is no longer a small business—they’re no longer a startup. We would expect that the growth rate would be tailing off over time. The very high sustained growth rate is pretty remarkable,” Beckert added.

Mexican Company Named 2012's 2nd Fastest Growing Teleport Service Provider

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:43:00 +1030

A Mexican established leading international teleport service provider, Elara Comunicaciones was named second on the ranking of the Top Teleport Operators of 2012. World Teleport Association (WTA), an association which members are the operators of the most innovative teleports in the world, published their said annual ranking last December.

Elara Comunicaciones, S.A. de C.V., made it to the “Fastest Twenty-One,” ranking second on the account of its revenue in the most recent fiscal years.

Just behind United States’, Encompass Digital Media (117% growth rate), who ranked first, Elara garnered a total of 61% growth rate. Also, the Mexican company ranked 19th among the “Independent Top Twenty”, a ranking based on revenue from all company’s sources.

Being the only company from the Latin-America in WTA’s list, Elara proves the trust given by their clients which put them on the position as the leading teleport and telecommunications provider.

Situated in Mexico, Elara has VSATs installed and operating in private and public companies, as well as in government organizations. With Access to different satellites and operators, Elara is able to provide services throughout Mexico, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. Elara’s known for its flexibility, adaptability and fast response to their clients.

iPhone 5 operating system and software

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:38:11 +1030

The iPhone 5 uses iOS (previously “iPhone OS”), a mobile operating system (“mobile OS”) developed and distributed by Apple Inc. The user interface, the industrial design field of human-machine interaction–the space where interaction between humans and machine occurs–of iOS is based in the concept of direct manipulation; in computer science, is a human-computer interaction style which involves continuous representation of objects of interest and rapid, reversible, and incremental actions and feedback. It uses multi-touch gestures, or standardized motion used to interact with multitouch devices. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as “swipe,” “tap,” “pinch,” and “reverse pinch” all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface. Internal accelerometers, or devices that measure proper acceleration are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result of the undo command) or rotating it vertically (one common result is switching from portrait to landscape mode).

The iPhone 5 is shipped with iOS 6 (released in September 19, 2012). Many of the iPhone 5’ features that work specifically with the included new iOS 6.0 operating system, will only work in certain territories on release. Apple has said this is a rolling program, which will take longer to implement across more regions.

The phone can act as a hotspot, a site that offers Internet access over a wireless local area network through the use of a router connected to a link to an Internet service provider; sharing its internet connection over WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB. It also accesses the Apple App Store, a online/digital application distribution platform for iOS developed and maintained by Apple Inc.–”application software,” also known as an “application” or an “app,” is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks; while “digital distribution” (also called “content delivery,” online distribution,” or “electronic software distribution” (“ESD”), among others) describes the delivery of media content such as audio, video, software and video games, without the use of physical media usually over online delivery mediums, such as the Internet. The service allows users to browse and download mobile applications (“mobile apps”), or software applications designed run on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices, from the iTunes Store, originally the “iTunes Music Store,” a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc., that were developed by Xcode, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) containing a suite of software development tools developed by Apple for developing software for OS X and iOS; and the iOS SDK (“Software Development Kit”) (formerly “iPhone SDK”), a software development kit developed by Apple Inc, released in February 2008 to develop native applications for iOS.

The iPhone 5 can play music, movies , television shows, ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts (types of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio radio, video, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device) and can sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists (generally, lists of songs), genres (the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria), composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilation albums (music or spoken; featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources, such as studio albums, live albums, singles, demos and outtakes). Options are laways alphabetically, except in playlists, which retain their order from iTunes. Users can rotate their device horizontally to landscape mode to access Cover Flow, an animated, three dimensional graphical user interface that is integrated within the Macintosh Finder and other Apple Inc. products for visually flipping through snapshots of documents, website bookmarks, album artwork, or photographs. Like on iTunes, this feature shows the different album covers in a scroll-through photo library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen. Alternatively, headset controls can be used to pause, lay, sip, and repeat tracks. On the 5, the volume can be changed with the included Apple Earphones, and the Voice Control feature can be used to identify a track, play songs in a playlist or by a specific artist, or create a Genius playlist, which automatically generates a playlist of songs from the user’s library which are similar to the selected song, introduced in iTunes 8.

Like the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 has Siri, an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator which works as an application for Apple’s iOS that allows the user to operate the iPhone by spoken commands. For example, “What is the weather going to be like?” will generate a spoken response like “The weather is to be cloudy and rainy and drop to 54 degrees today.” For usability reasons, third-party applications cannot currently respond to voice commands. The commands given do not have to be formulated using rigidly determined wording; natural language can be used–”natural language processing” (“NLP”) is a field of computers science, artificial intelligence, and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. Siri is accessed by holding down the home button rather than tapping it. The software was improved in iOS 6 to include the ability to make restaurant reservations, launch apps, dictate Facebook or Twitter updates, retrieve movie reviews and detailed sports statistics.

On the iPhone 5, texting, or “text messaging,” the act of typing and sending a brief, electronic message between two or more mobile phones or fixed or portable devices over a phone network, can be aided by the voice assistant, which converts speech to text. In addition to regular texting, messaging on the iPhone 5 supports iMessage, an instant messenger service developed by Apple Inc. for iOS and OS X Mountain Lion, a specialized instant messaging program and service that allows unlimited texting to other messages, integration with the device’s voice-controlled software assistant, and read acknowledgements for sent messages. Input to the device comes from a keyboard displayed on the multi-touch screen comes from a keyboard displayed on the multi-touch screen or by voice to text by speaking into the microphone. Entered text is supported by predictive and suggestion software; there is a multi-language spell-checker which recognizes many regional accents of different languages.

Apple’s built-in Maps app, a mapping service application developed by Apple Inc. for its iOS mobile operating system, which replaced the former Maps app powered by Google Maps, has been universally derided and lacks many features present in competing maps apps. It is also known to give inaccurate directions. It uses Apple’s new vector-based engine that eliminates lag, a common word meaning to fail to keep up or to fall behind, making for smoother zooming–”zooming user interface” or “zoomable user interface” (“ZUI,” pronounced zoo-ee), which in computing is a graphical environment where users can change the scale of the viewed area in order to see more detail or less, and browse through different documents. New to Maps is turn-by-turn navigation, a feature of some GPS navigation devices where directions for a selected route are continually presented to the user in the form of spoken and visual instructions, 3D views in some major cities and real-time traffic. Turn-by-turn navigation is only available for iPhone 4S, or later and iPad 2, the second generation iPad, a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., or later with cellular capability, while 3D views are only available for iPhone 4S or later, iPod touch (colloquially “iTouch”) 5th generation, a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and email-capable Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc., and iPad 2 or later.

iOS 6 is able to retrieve documents such as: boarding passes, or documents provided by an airline during check-in, giving a passenger permission to board the airplane for a particular flight; admission tickets, or vouchers that indicates that one has paid for admission to an event or establishment such as theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum stadium, concert, or another attraction, or permission to travel on a vehicle such as an airliner, trains, bus or boat, typically because one has paid the fare; coupons, which in marketing, are tickets or documents that can be exchanged for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product; and loyalty cards/programs, or structured marketing efforts that reward, and therefore encourage, loyal buying behavior–behavior which is potentially beneficial to the firm–through its new Passbook app, an application in iOS that allows users to store coupons, boarding passes, event tickets, store cards, ‘generic’ cards and other forms of mobile payment. An iOS device with Passbook can be scanned under a barcode reader/scanner, an electronic device for reading printed barcodes, to process a mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer, and mobile wallet, which generally regard to payment.services under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device, at locations that have compatible hardware. The app has context-aware features such as notifications for relevant coupons when in the immediate vicinity of a given store.

Facebook comes integrated through Apple’s native apps with iOS 6. Facebook features can be directly accessed from within native apps such as Calendar which can sync Facebook events, or use Facebook’s like button/option (“recommended button”), a feature on communication software such as social networking services, Internet forums, new websites and blogs where the user can express that he/she likes, enjoys or supports certain content, from within the Apple App Store.

New privacy settings are available to the user. In addition to the location services, the following have been added in iOS 6: photos (already partially restricted in iOS 5); contacts (address book); calendars; reminders; bluetooth sharing, a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short-wavelength radio transmissions in the ISm band from 2400-2480 MHz) from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs) with high level of security; Twitter, an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”; Facebook, a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc; and Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. iOs 6 also comes with a “limit ad tracking” user control in the general settings menu to allow users the option to prevent targeted advertising, a tupe fop advertising whereby advertisement are placed so as to reach consumers based on various traits such as demographics, psychographics, behavioral variables (such as product purchase history), and demographic variables … or other second-order activities which serve as a proxy for these consumer traits. Apple’s Advertising Identifier replaces the company’s existing Unique Device Identification (UDID) System, intended to assign a unique identifier to medical devices within the United States. Online “advertising networks” or “ad networks,” or companies that connect advertisers to web sites that want to host advertisements, which is not yet using Apple’ Advertising Identifier device identifier (“IDs”) standard, or in computer science, is a lexical token that names entities, would not be affected, although Apple will require the standard in the future.

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India’s telecom regulatory authority to start monitoring data services

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:29:04 +1030

With the steady rise of smartphone users, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is now working on ways to monitor the quality of data services being offered by mobile operators. According to the TRAI, mobile operators’ data services will be assessed based on data transmission downloads, successful uploads via a test server, download speeds, and the success rate of downloads along with drop rate.

The TRAI also said that operators would need to inform the regulatory authority with any changes to their data services plans that are indicated in their website. Data service providers will also be required to indicate clearly the locations where services and plans are applicable. The TRAI will be compiling data on the service quality quarterly.

The new plans from the organization will add to the current assessment of voice services delivered by mobile operators across wireless networks in India. According to the TRAI, improving the data quality services will encourage customers to take advantage of better 3G technology offered by the operators.

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India telecom regulator requires mobile operators to test data services

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:44:12 +1030

India telecom regulator requires mobile operators to test data services:

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India asked on Tuesday that mobile operators in the country test their data services to ensure quality. The TRAI required the operators to set-up a series of servers and test probes that would measure the quality of service of different data services in the coverage area.

Globe strengthens network coverage in Boracay through fibre

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:57:55 +1030

Globe Telecom announced that its has already completed the Globe Boracay Submarine Cable System, a 2 kilometer fibre optic cable system that will upgrade network coverage in the island haven of Boracay. The network modernization program is part of Globe’s nationwide program.

According to the company’s Chief Technical Adviser Robert Tan, the fibre optic cable system will allow existing cell sites to support 3G, HSPA, as well as LTE services in the long-run. The Boracay fibre optics will also upgrade bandwidth capacity in the popular island destination, improving voice call qualities, data transmission, and SMS delivery.

The network modernization program by Globe was made possible through a partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies, a leading global ICT provider. The cutting-edge network is also engineered for a future-proof Globe network.

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African government stifling continent’s telecom growth

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:58:53 +1030

African government stifling continent’s telecom growth:

Based on a study by the World Bank, economic growth in Africa is related to an increase in broadband penetration rates. Unfortunately, in many Sub-Saharan nations, governments do not know how to optimize the spectrum release, and fail to see how crucial mobile network improvement is.

NZ Telecom to sell Windows 8 smartphones

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:15:42 +1030

New Zealand mobile operator Telecom will be the first to sell smartphones running on the new Windows Phone 8 platform in the country, saying that the first devices will be available later in the week. Microsoft’s share of the global market of 2.7% is a far cry from Samsung and Apple’s, but both the company and experts are optimistic the new operating system will help the Redmond-based company regain some ground and possible present itself as serious competition in the smartphone market.

According to Telecom, the new Nokia Lumia 920 will already be available by Friday, followed by Chinese telecom operator, Huawei’s 8S phone coming on December 6. The new Lumia handset will cost around $999 while the 8S will be priced at $499. By February, Telecom will also start selling the latest handset from Samsung that will run on the Windows Phone 8 OS, the Samsung Ativ S, which costs $799. Microsoft is also planning to launch its own line of smartphone devices, after the release of its own tablet device, the Surface.

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TeleCommunication Systems opens new office in Johannesburg, South Africa

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:08:57 +1030

TeleCommunication Systems opens new office in Johannesburg, South Africa:

TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) recently expressed its intentions to focus on its African marketing and sales activities. To that end, the Annapolis, Maryland-based company made an announcement on November 2 that it hadopened a new sales office in Johannesburg, South Africa.

iPhone 5's OS and multimedia features

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:24:45 +1030

The iPhone 5 uses iOs (previously “iPhone OS”), a mobile operating system for smartphones, tablets, PDAs, and other digital mobile devices, distributed by Apple Inc.

The iOS’ user interface, which in the industrial design field of human-machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machine occurs, is based on the concept of direct manipulation; in computer science, a human-computer interaction style which involves continuous representation of objects of interest and rapid, reversible, and incremental actions and feedback. Therefore, it uses multi-touch gestures, or standardized motions used to interact with multitouch devices. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons.

The response to user input is immediate and provides a fluid interface. Interaction with the OIS includes gestures such as “swipe,” “tap,” “pinch,” and “reverse pinch,” all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command) or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching from portrait to landscape mode).

The 5 uses iOS 6, which will be released on September 19, 2012. It can act as a hotspot or a site that offers Internet access over a wireless local area network through the use of a router connected to a link to an Internet service provider, sharing its interconnection over WiFi, bluetooth, or USB. It also accesses the Apple App Store, a digital application distribution platform (also called “content delivery,” online distribution,” or “electronic software distribution” (“ESD”), among others)—describing the delivery of media content such as audio, video, software and videogames, without the use of physical media usually over online delivery mediums, such as the Internet—for iOS developed and maintained by Apple Inc. The service allows users to browse and download applications (“mobile apps”), a software application designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices; usually from the iTunes Store, a software-based online digital media store also operated by Apple Inc.

The iTunes Store was developed by Xcode, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) containing a suite of software development tools developed by Apple for developing software for OS X and iOS, and the “iOS SDK” (“Software Development Kit”) (formerly “iPhone SDK”), a software development kit developed by Apple Inc. and released in February 2008 to develop native applications for iOS, again, published by Apple.

Many of the iPhone 5’s features that work specifically with the included new iOS 6.0 operating system, will only work in certain territories on release. Apple has said this is a rolling program, which will take longer to implement across more regions.

The iPhone 5 can play music, movies, television shows, ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts, a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio, video, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. It can also sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists (in its most general form, simply a list of songs), genres (the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, aural, or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria), composers, podcasts and audiobooks, and compilations, an album (music or spoken-word) featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources (such as studio albums, live albums, singles, demos and outtakes).

Options are always presented alphabetically, except in playlists, which retain their order from iTunes. The iPhone uses a large font that allows users plenty of room to touch their selection. Users can rotate their device horizontally to landscape mode—“page orientation” is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing—to access Cover Flow, an animated, three dimensional graphical user interface integrated within iTunes, the Macintosh Finder, and other Apple Inc. products for visually flipping through snapshots of documents, website bookmarks, album artwork, or photographs. Like on iTunes, this feature shows the different album covers on a scroll-through photo library.

Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen. Alternatively, headset controls can be used to pause, play, skip and repeat tracks. On the 5, the volume can be changed with included Apple Earphones, and the Voice Control feature can be used to identify a track, play songs in a playlist or by a specific artist, or create a Genius playlist, introduced in iTunes 8, which automatically generates a playlist of songs from the user’s library which are similar to the selected song.

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Telecom operators struggle to restore service in Sandy’s aftermath

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:27:06 +1030

Dubbed as the “Perfect Storm 2’, Hurricane Sandy pummelled the North-Eastern coast of the US, destroying millions of homes, claiming over a hundred lives, and leaving millions of American without power and communications. Telecom operators are now struggling to restore wireless service after the super storm battered the northeast region early last week.

According to one of the largest telecom companies AT&T, 95.6% of cell stations in the affected areas are now working. Most of their engineers are now focused in the New York and New Jersey areas which suffered from a powerful storm surge which flooded the subway lines and tunnels.

The rest of the major wireless carriers are also offering free charging at their stores for customers still without electricity. T-Mobile has started providing charging and calling services in American Red Cross shelters in NJ. Verizon is also planning to re-focus efforts in NY and NJ as service is restored in less-severely affected parts of the Northeast.

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Telstra considering satellite broadband via NBN

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:32:33 +1030

Telstra Corporation Limited is looking at options of reselling fixed wireless and satellite broadband services by the NBN Co. According to David Thodey, Chief Executive of the Australian telecom operator, Telstra will be doing a trial on the fixed wireless NBN service. Thodey announced in a meeting with investors they plan to launch them by the middle of next year.

Aside from possible agreements with the NBN, Telstra also explained its plans for the acquisition of Adam Internet. The company is planning to launch a low-cost brand similar to Jet Star but the time is not yet right. The company’s Chief Financial officer, Andy Penn, explained that buying the brands was a low-cast alternative to starting a new one.

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Telecom industry readies for Hurricane Sandy

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:29:27 +1030

Just 14 months after Hurricane Irene threatened the Northeast coast of the US, a bigger tropical storm is roaring its way towards the seaboard prompting evacuations in major cities like Washington, D.C., New Jersey, and New York City. Mass public transportation systems are also being shut down as Hurricane Sandy threatens major infrastructure damage, storm surges, and coastal flooding.

Many telecom companies are readying the arrival of the storm dubbed “Frankenstorm” which is expected to cause extensive damage even outside the storm’s centre. The threats to their networks could cost the companies millions without adequate preparation. Already, resource and personnel are being sent to critical parts of the network to help respond to any emergencies.

Strong winds, rain, and even possible snowfall may threaten telephone lines and even wireless networks across the Eastern seaboard. Telecom operators said generators are already being fueled, and emergency systems are being tested to help manage and maintain network traffic during the storm.

T-Mobile USA, have set up regional Command Centres to respond to any crisis situation Hurricane Sandy will cause. AT&T, on the other hand, has readied disaster response equipment, and its personnel are working closely with regional emergency operations centers to help maintain service and provide temporary repairs on telecom networks. Sprint Nextel is also working with various organizations and agencies requiring communications assistance.

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Canada law on telecom ownership changes; Orascom to take advantage

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:09:22 +1030

Egyptian communications giant Orascom is planning to take advantage of Canada’s telecom ownership laws by converting its non-voting shares in Globalive Investment Holding Corp, to common shares. If approved, Orascom’s rights will increase times two, from 32% to 65.1%.

The Canadian government has eased its laws on foreign-ownership of telecom operators. Foreign investors can now own up to 100 percent of local operators as long as they have less than 10% of the market share according to the revenue. Just last year, Orascom had a successful merger with a Russian operator, VimpelCom Ltd. (VIP).

Last Sunday, Orascom said it plans to rename itself as Global Telecom Holding by the end of 2012 after a successful meeting among the board of directors. The plans will be presented to shareholders in an assembly on November.

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Taiwanese legislators worried over the China’s telecom industry

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:55:13 +1030

Taiwanese legislators expressed their worries over the Chinese telecom sector after last week’s release of a US congressional report saying two of China’s largest telecom operators, Huawei and ZTE, posed security threats to America through the use of “backdoor” systems in the equipment being sold.

Hsu Chung-hsin, from the Taiwan Solidarity Union, opposed plans by the national government allowing China to continue investing in the island-nation’s telecom industry. The Taiwanese government is working on the details of opening Type 1 Telecommunications enterprises to Chinese investors.

Hsu cited the recent US intelligence report that Chinese telecom operators were using the equipment they sold to business and government agencies for espionage purposes. The year-long investigation on Huawei and ZTE by the US House of Representatives recommended that both telecom operators be barred from any business activities like mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers in the US Market.

Critiques of the report point out to the timing of its release, as Huawei mulls over an IPO in the States.

According to Hsu, confidential information being held by the Taiwanese government may be compromised in Chinese investment was allowed. He further recommended that the government pass an economic espionage act to protect local businesses from the possible Type 1 investment plans.

Huawei has long penetrated the Taiwanese market. Majority of the island’s 3G wireless network cards are manufactured by the Chinese telecom giant. It has also secured millions of dollars in wireless equipment contracts from Taiwanese telecom operators.

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Middle East telcos plan to challenge Facebook

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:16:20 +1030

Middle East telcos are looking into an ambitious plan to challenge the social networking giant Facebook as well as other Western-based Internet titans, by creating an online-platform to tap and serve the Arab region. Gulf operators, along with affiliate companies are proposing the social media project, to diversify sources for revenue.

Middle Eastern telecommunications firms spend on the construction of expensive communications networks to meet increased data traffic brought by the proliferation of mobile applications, only to earn from what they charge in the access of these networks. All the while, Internet platforms like Facebook take up the largest shares in the revenue from traffic. This frustration is seen by analysts as the compelling force behind the plans to enter into the online platform industry.

However, the plan faces huge challenges - both technically and financially. Many online ventures by telecom firms in other parts of the globe had been unsuccessful. Google, Facebook, even Apple and Twitter are established companies with the technological-know-how. Challenging them appears to be a daunting task. Still, backers of the project believe that telcos in the Arab states can take advantage of the region’s common language, spoken by a staggering 350 million people.

The online platform will offer not only a new social media avenue but also an online space for shopping, and the purchasing of digital content. Other analysts are skeptical operators can make the transition to digital media and Internet services. Internet behemoths are already meeting the demand. Based on statistics from social media reports, almost 45.2 million users in the Middle East are already on Facebook.

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