China's north-south telecoms divide has become more pronounced with the news that China Netcom and China Telecom will not look for business opportunities in each other's 'territories.'

Phones-for-Health is a cutting-edge US$10 million public-private partnership bringing together mobile phone operators, handset manufacturers and technology companies.  

Financial analyst Deloitte has revealed the countries whose rates of taxation, direct or indirect, on mobile communications are the highest in the world. Heaviest tax is in Turkey, where the taxation rate as a cost of mobile ownership is over 2.5 times the global average. Deloitte's report, commissioned by the GSMA, is summarised in this critical review...

Financial analyst Deloitte has revealed the countries whose rates of taxation, direct or indirect, on mobile communications are the highest in the world. Heaviest tax is in Turkey, where the taxation rate as a cost of mobile ownership is over 2.5 times the global average. Deloitte's report, commissioned by the GSMA, is summarised in this critical review...

China Mobile's programme for attaining VoIP network migration in Shaanxi Province is now complete, thanks to softswitch solutions from Huawei. VoIP network migration has as its aim the optimisation of network structure, lower operating and maintenance costs, and an enriched end-user experience. The world's first-ever large-scale All-IP transformation is the result...

Rohde & Schwarz has been appointed RCT tester/developer for mobile WiMAX by the WiMAX Forum. The electronics company introduced its R&S TS8970 to a broad public for the first time at 3GSM Barcelona, after having previously presented it at various WiMAX conferences...

ASVT, which delivers voice, data and video services to government, consumer and corporate markets in the Russian Federation, will be deploying Comverse's MyCall Converged Telephony as well as its Converged IP Centrex. This will form part of ASVT's long-term strategy to deliver IP-based multi-purpose communication bundles to consumers and enterprises...

Ten million subscribers to Indonesian mobile operator PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk (XL) are now set to enjoy mobile video technology. Source of the technological empowerment is a partnership of IP Unity Glenayre, Dilithium, Polycom, locally based PT Asia Quattro Net and Inphosoft...

Russia's Vimpelcom Group, which includes cellular companies in both Russia and surrounding countries, has seen consumer demand for new SMS-based services grow dramatically over the last year. Reflecting this growth, Vimpelcom has selected LogicaCMG to support what is a rapid uptake of SMS-based applications under the LogicaCMG Beeline brand...

The SMS Forum has just announced it is to disband. The Forum believes it has successfully achieved its objective of introducing universal standards for SMS, and so further work from the Forum is no longer required.

China is a market which astounds observers with amazing regularity. On this occasion two sources of surprise are almost in competition. The first is that China has just completed a 4G trial in Shanghai and moved to full development - the surprise being that it has achieved this before rolling out 3G. The second surprise is that Chinese 3G has taken so long, as one of our own recent reports has noted...

Nokia has started offering the smart2go mapping and navigation platform as a free download, which will allow millions of people to use map coverage offered via their mobile devices...

Farming in the Huaral, a coastal valley in Peru, has always been a marginal operation, not least because the Huaral has a desert climate where it never rains. Any plan to improve the conditions of local farmers has to keep them informed of changing conditions. The Sistema de Información Agraria (SIA, Agrarian Information System), is a new decentralised structure create to collect and organise data using ICT technologies...

Telecom Serbia has selected the Comverse SMS Personal and SMS Router both to add SMS personalisations and to broaden SMS service options...

The incumbent international gateway monopoly business model is past its sell-by date; governments should liberalise this market immediately and all stakeholders will benefit. This forceful assertion is the conclusion of Tom Phillips, Chief Government & Regulatory Affairs Officer to the GSM Association.

Huawei's GSM-Railway end-to-end solutions are intended to comply with several highly respected standards in order to satisfy the demand for communications on high-speed railways. A recent inspection of Huawei's GSM-R laboratory in Shanghai revealed a test at speeds of 430 km/hour on the local Maglev rail system...

Should Auld acquaintance be forgot? Not according to the record numbers of SMS sent this New Year. Thousands of miles, different time zones and even the seas and oceans proved no barrier for friends, family and loved ones this most recent New Year...

The Sudanese telecoms market is increasingly becoming more competitive in both the fixed and cellular markets...

Aperto Networks, builder of WiMax-certified base stations and subscriber units, has announced that Arab Telecom is deploying a nationwide broadband wireless network in Kuwait using Aperto state-of-the-art broadband wireless PacketWave gear...

The Cellular Operators’ Association of India has selected fastmobile and Jataayu to implement the GSM Association’s first personal IM rollout...

Comptel, an Operational Support System software vendor for convergent mediation, charging, provisioning and network inventory, is supplying Macau’s CTM with provisioning and mediation solutions to support 3G services...