Vodafone

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-South African investment company VenFin has committed itself to purchasing the remainder of what U.K. cellular company Vodafone does not buy of Hosken Consolidated Investments’ (HCI) 5-percent stake in mobile company Vodacom. A spokesman for VenFin said the …

OSLO, Norway-Despite growing speculation that owner France T

TOKYO-Japanese operator J-Phone’s news that it has signed 1 million picture service users was overshadowed by a raid on its headquarters by the country’s Fair Trade Commission. The raid was reported to be due to J-Phone’s alleged violation of anti-monopoly …

OXFORD, United Kingdom-Having launched its revamped data services in an expensive blaze of publicity, Vodafone is now coming under the spotlight of City of London financial analysts as to the likelihood of meeting the target of 20 percent of the …

MANCHESTER, United Kingdom-Among the key issues worrying investors and wireless protagonists surrounding European third-generation (3G) in Germany and France includes the question of how many operators the markets can support. Skeptics are coming out of the wireless woodwork to question …

LONDON-Vivendi Universal is still convinced that Vodafone Group plc will come back with an improved offer for its stake in French operator Cegetel, after Vivendi rejected Vodafone’s initial $6.6 billion cash offer, even though there are no indications that a …

PARIS-Alcatel said that Vodafone Telecel extended its contract for Alcatel’s local multipoint distribution services (LMDS) for its customer base in Portugal. The 26 GHz network covers Lisbon, and the center and south of Portugal is already operational.

OXFORD, United Kingdom-As many mobile operators around the world install and trial their multimedia message service (MMS) infrastructure, those that have launched services have already commenced a pricing war. Two of Europe’s biggest operators, Orange and MmO2, which launched their …

HELSINKI, Finland and OSLO, Norway-Hutchison Whampoa and Investor-backed Hi3G, which will operate under the brand name “3,” will join Swedish third-generation (3G) license holders seeking rollout extensions. Hi3G has confirmed its intention to ask Swedish telecom authority PTS for an …

LONDON-As part of its plan to unify all of its international interests under one brand name, Vodafone Group plc is expected to rebrand J-Phone Corp. in Japan by the end of next year, according to a report in the Financial …

DUBLIN, Ireland-Vodafone has unveiled the latest stage in its data strategy. Vodafone Live is a menu of services accessible from camera phones, which will allow customers to receive and send picture messages, downloads games and ring tones, and send and …

DUBLIN, Ireland-It appears that an agreement on site sharing between the three Irish third-generation (3G) license holders might have been reached only days after the first meeting of a working group established by the Irish industry regulator ODTR to develop …

TOKYO-KDDI and J-Phone continue to expand their subscriber bases of next-generation services. KDDI, the second-largest mobile operator in Japan, announced that the number of subscribers for the carrier’s third-generation (3G) services based on cdma2000 1x technology exceeded 3 million. KDDI …

STOCKHOLM, Sweden-PTS, the Swedish telecom regulatory authority, has hinted it is prepared to organize a roundtable discussion with third-generation (3G) license holders that feel they are unable to meet agreed network rollout deadlines. The issue of sticking to deadlines has …

OXFORD, United Kingdom-In an attempt to reduce its crippling debt mountain of 70 billion euro (US$67.9 billion), France T

LONDON-Attempting to continue its acquisition path, Vodafone Group plc announced an agreement to acquire British Telecommunications plc’s and SBC Communications Inc.’s stakes in French company Cegetel for about $6.2 billion in cash. Cegetel owns 80 percent of French mobile operator …

OXFORD, United Kingdom-In an effort to drive General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) traffic, Vodafone has struck a deal with Fujitsu Siemens that will see the cell-phone operator offer a laptop, GPRS PCMCIA card and subscriber identity module (SIM) as a …

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-Data optimization company Bytemobile scored another major customer win with its new deal with Orange UK, which will use the company’s Macara optimization service node platform to enhance its GPRS services. “At Orange, we are seeking the best …

PARIS-Vodafone Spain and Nortel Networks presented details of the rollout program for Vodafone’s UMTS network in Spain. A Vodafone executive said network coverage has been deployed in 23 cities and 98 municipalities during the first half of this year. The …

HELSINKI, Finland-Nokia Corp. and Vodafone Omnitel have jointly completed what they describe as the world’s first voice-over-Internet Protocol call using Nokia’s mobile switching center server and media gateway. “IT is a key element in the new core-network architecture that flexibly …

OSLO, Norway-Europolitan Vodafone filed a formal request with PTS, the Swedish national telecom regulator, asking for an extra two years to meet its third-generation (3G) license conditions. The application coincided with a press conference where PTS turned down Orange’s appeal …

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas, United States-The law firm of Cauley Geller Bowman & Coates filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of Vodafone Group publicly traded securities, charging …

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.-The law firm of Cauley Geller Bowman & Coates L.L.P. filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of Vodafone Group plc publicly traded …

OXFORD, United Kingdom-In an effort to break the stranglehold of the likes of Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson, Vodafone is preparing to launch a huge marketing campaign that will prominently feature handsets labelled with the company’s brand name, and not …

HELSINKI, Finland-Nokia said Vodafone Ireland has selected it as the sole supplier for its W-CDMA network. Nokia said deliveries will begin in October. The value of the agreement was not disclosed.