A
HOUSE of Commons committee has fuelled the fire over third generation
(3G) mobile phone licences by warning that the £22.5bn fee paid
by the industry to the government could stunt growth in the sector.
In
a report, the Public Accounts Committee warned that: "There is
a risk that the amount raised - the biggest single transfer of funds
from the private to the public sector from any initiative - could slow
the industry and limit the extent of competition."
Third
generation mobile phones, set to be launched in the UK later this year,
allow users high speed internet access over their mobile handsets .
The five UK 3G mobile licence holders - mm02, Vodafone, T-Mobile , Hutchison
3G and Orange - paid a total of £22.5bn in a five month-long auction
concluded in April 2000. Operators
have since struggled as telecoms equities have fallen against wider
losses in the TMT (technology, media and telecoms) markets.
Shares
in Vodafone, once Europe’s largest listed company, are threatening
to become a penny stock after the firm released figures showing that
just 1.3m new customers signed up worldwide in the first quarter. In
the same period in 2001, it signed up over four million new users. Last
week, shares in mm02, BT’s spin-off mobile arm, fell to a record
low of 44p as brokerage Collins Stewart described the stock as "worthless".
UK
fortunes are reflected in the global market, where a number of operators
have delayed launching 3G services. J-Phone, Vodafone’s Japanese
subsidiary, is delaying its launch until December, whilst SK Telecom,
South Korea’s leading operator, could delay until 2004. Services
launched already by DoCoMO in Japan have provided little cheer for the
industry either, with the firm taking 90,000 subscribers at the end
of March, against conservative forecasts of 150,000.
A
HOUSE of Commons committee has fuelled the fire over third generation
(3G) mobile phone licences by warning that the £22.5bn fee paid
by the industry to the government could stunt growth in the sector.
The
International Telecommunication Union has ratified the CDMA2000 1x EV-DO
standard for wireless telecommunication as a 3G ( third-generation ) technology
The
certificates were awarded to LGE’s GSM handsets (Model: LG-510W and
W7000) and GPRS color handset (Model: G7000) developed with LGE’s
own technologies.
Hong
Kong’s six local mobile operators jointly formed the Hong Kong m-Cert
Implementation Forum to develop and implement a single mobile digital
certificate (m-Cert) standard
The
service is already available in South Korea, Hong Kong, USA, Australia,
Canada and New Zealand. Preparations
are already underway to begin the same service in Brazil, Mexico and other
countries where companies offer services with the cdmaOne™ system.
Airborne
Entertainment’s addictive game offering is rounded out by Eternal
Hero, the wild role-playing adventure; the definitely “un-Casino”
grit and action of Backstreet Betting; as well as PhoneFoot and CrossCheck,
hard-hitting, head-to-head versions of soccer and hockey.
Chinese
mobile operator Zhejiang MCC and Nokia have signed agreements for the
expansion of Zhejiang's GSM network, as well as for trials of Nokia's
MMS and micro-payment capabilities.
NTT
DoCoMo, Inc. today announced a technical problem with its Mova R211i mobile
phone. Sales of this model have been suspended from today, April 26, 2002.
It’s
chic, it’s cool and it’s fast. The new Verizon Wireless VX1
by LG Mobile allows users to access Verizon Wireless’ high-speed
Express Network with one of the smallest and lightest tri-mode digital
phones on the market.
The
top mobile carrier in South Korea, one of the world's most enthusiastic
users of mobile Internet, has said it might delay its third-generation
(3G) mobile services by a year to 2004
Tribune
Interactive announced that five of its newspaper Web sites are providing
news headlines and full-length news stories to AT&T Wireless mMode(SM)
users via 2.5G wireless platform.
Starbase
Corporation , the leading provider of end-to-end collaborative products
for both the development and management of content and code for enterprise
and eBusiness applications
NTT
DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that it will begin licensing patents for
its proprietary W-CDMA technology, on which , the world's first third-generation
(3G) wireless service, is based.
Faster
than a speeding bullet, able to stream video in a single bound, the technology
known as 3G is supposed to be just super for cell phones and other wireless
devices.
