AUSTRALIA
Telstra will extend its CDMA network in Australia to include country locations currently covered by its GSM network but lacking in analog coverage, said the company.
Hutchison Telecoms in Australia announced it will adopt the brand name Orange, the global communications brand of the Hutchison Telecommunications group, as part of its strategy to raise its level of competition within the Australian market.
BANGLADESH
The Soros Economic Development fund, New York, is loaning non-profit Grameen Telecom Ltd. in Bangladesh US$10.6 million to help further capitalize the telecom venture, which works to extend cellular service to rural villages.
HONG KONG
Hong Kong Telecommunications has changed its name to Cable & Wireless HKT.
Japan
Cable & Wireless outbid NTT for control of Japan’s IDC, capturing 97.69 percent of IDC shares.
Lucent and Siemens have announced deals to supply NTT DoCoMo with W-CDMA technology for its UMTS trial. Nokia received a contract from DoCoMo for third-generation voice and video terminals. In addition, Ericsson is supplying Hong Kong’s SmarTone Mobile Communications with a test W-CDMA system.
Singapore
SingTel Paging now offers a special PageCall feature on public card phones allowing users to instantly page SingTel Paging subscribers, according to SingTel. Users just press the PageCall button and are prompted to dial the pager number. The pager holder knows the user is calling from a cardphone when he or she sees a seven-digit number with the suffix U99 on the pager. The paging subscriber then just needs to dial the seven-digit number from any phone to connect to the caller.
South Korea
The Korea Herald reported that South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication said it will introduce price-cap regulation to drive down call rates and that it will adopt this system for the mobile sector next year.
