Irish communications minister Pat Rabbitte has announced a new national broadband plan, under which up to EUR175 million (USD219 million) of state funding will be spent to extend next generation high speed network access to the 30% of the population deemed non viable for commercial operators to serve.
The Cook Islands must decide by the end of this year whether to connect to a newly announced submarine cable being planned by New Zealand-based Hawaiki Cable, or to stick to its satellite-based broadband connectivity plans, reports Cook Island News. Hawaiki aims to link the US to Auckland and Sydney via numerous Pacific islands in a project envisaged to be completed in late 2014, having gone public with its proposal due to the recent collapse of rival venture Pacific Cable, but its schedule is contingent on participant nations confirming their commitment by the end of 2012. Hawaiki claims to be offering a cheaper and more reliable option than broadband satellite service O3b, which Telecom Cook Islands is proposing to connect to early next year.
According to Reuters, European Union (EU) competition regulators have extended the deadline to decide whether to clear a EUR1.4 billion (USD1.87 billion) bid by Hutchison 3G Austria (H3G) for France Telecom-Orange's Austrian mobile unit by three days to 30 November. A person familiar with the matter said that respondents to a European Commission (EC) request for feedback from third parties had asked the EU regulator for more time due to public holidays.*Earlier this month Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa and EU regulators reportedly agreed the basic principles of a competition concession that would allow Hutchison’s Austrian mobile unit H3G to take over its larger rival Orange Austria. H3G proposed opening up its mobile network to third parties as a way of encouraging new players to enter the market if it succeeds in its approach to buy Orange, which would cut the number of wireless operators in Austria from four to three.*In related news, Telecompaper reports that T-Mobile Austria has criticised the European regulators for not demanding conditions relating to the re-distribution of spectrum and antenna sites as part of its assessment of the projected merger
Kansas-based mobile giant Sprint Nextel has announced that it has expanded its in-deployment Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to cover Baltimore (Maryland), Gainesville (Georgia), Manhattan/Junction City (Kansas) and Sedalia (Missouri). Additionally, Sprint has confirmed that customers in Baltimore, Boston and Washington DC, are poised to receive the benefits of Sprint’s revamped 3G service, which it said will deliver ‘an exceptionally clear signal, better in-building coverage and fewer dropped/blocked calls’. *As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Sprint, the United States’ third largest mobile operator by subscribers, inaugurated its commercial LTE network on 15 July 2012 as per its previously announced schedule, with a total of 15 cities initially receiving coverage.
The BT Group has announced that it is set to expand its reach into Russia through a new network interconnection agreement with Rostelecom, Russia’s national telecoms operator. The agreement will significantly improve BT’s ability to serve its corporate customers across all regions of Russia with its BT Connect portfolio of intelligent network services
Slovenian incumbent Telekom Slovenije reported that its consolidated net income in the first six months of 2012 grew by 5% year-on-year to EUR26.5 million (USD33 million), despite revenues falling 3% in the period to EUR391 million. In a filing to the Ljubljana Stock Exchange, the fixed line, mobile and broadband group attributed the increase in profitability to cost cutting.
Ting, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) arm of webhosting company Tucows, has become the first reseller in the United States to offer its subscribers access to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, GigaOm reports.
