Italy
The Italian government requested a communications ministry committee be formed to
oversee the auction of its planned fourth cellular license. The action marks the next step toward awarding that license,
the winner of which will join incumbent operators Telecom Italia Mobile, Omnitel and the Wind consortium. Expected
to bid on the license are consortia Picienne, Telon and Swisscom.
Korea
Dewell Elecom Inc. of Korea licensed
the FLEX paging protocol, announced Motorola Inc. The company intends to manufacture FLEX-based numeric and
alphanumeric pagers for the Korean market. Korea has named FLEX the national standard for paging.
United
Kingdom
P-Com Inc. announced it received network purchase orders valued in excess of $6 million from three
wireless carriers in the United Kingdom. The purchase orders are part of ongoing contracts covering a variety of
services to be supplied by P-Com, said the company.
Israel
ECI Telecom Ltd. and Tadiran Telecommunications
Ltd. announced an agreement under which Tadiran will merge into ECI Telecom in a stock-for-stock transaction.
According to the agreement, Tadiran’s shareholders will receive one share of ECI Telecom for every 1.79 shares of
Tadiran they own. ECI Telecom also will incur a one-time charge against after-tax earnings for research and
development and other merger-related costs, said the company. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end
of the first quarter 1999, subject to shareholder approval, receipt of the necessary Israeli taxes and other customary
court and regulatory approvals.
China
China spent about $19.35 billion on telecommunications infrastructure in
1998, a 28-percent increase from 1997. “The telecom market in China in 1999 is expected to continue to grow
steadily, due largely to increased government spending to pull the economy along,” said Hui Pan, chief
economist of Information Gatekeepers, Boston. During the first 10 months of 1998, China added about 23 million
telephone customers, of which 8.54 million were wireless, according to federal Ministry of Information Industry figures
supplied by Information Gatekeepers.
