Ghana’s Minister for Communication, Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, has confirmed that the government has not yet taken any investment decision concerning the full or partial privatisation of national fixed line operator Ghana Telecom (GT). Ghana has received several bids for the telco, all of which have been rejected, but says it is still in the hunt for a suitable strategic investor.

Omantel has signed a USD205 million financing facility with Mashreqbank. The money is expected to be used to pay for a 65% stake in Pakistan-based cableco and WiLL operator Worldcall Telecom. Omantel’s board approved the purchase in October 2007 and the price was finalised in February 2008.

Abu-Dhabi-based Warid Telecom International plans to contest the recent award of a mobile operating licence to Nigerian firm Globacom Nigeria through its Glo Mobile Ghana unit. On 20 June the Ghanaian telecoms regulator the National Communications Authority (NCA) confirmed that Glo had been successful in the bid for the country’s sixth mobile licence. However, Warid, the second firm short-listed for the concession, is now challenging the award, saying the process was not fully transparent. In a statement, Warid officials said they qualified to pay the minimum licence reserve of USD50 million, but were not given the opportunity by the NCA. Warid says it is looking to contest what it sees as an ‘unfair bidding process’. Globacom is looking to invest USD2 billion in Ghana in the next five years but the official opposition party has reportedly condemned the biding process and promised to question the whole procedure in parliament.

Celtel Malawi has announced that it has reduced the cost of its cheapest handset by 35%, from USD25 to USD16. The move follows the government’s eradication of a 25% customs and excise duty on imported handsets and cellular network equipment. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, the cellco is the country’s largest company by subscribers, claiming a 69% market share at the end of March 2008, with Telekom Networks Malawi accounting for the remainder.

For more information on the GlobalComms database, visit:
http://www.telegeography.com/products/global_comms/index.php

According to a report from Reuters, the French government plans to impose a sales tax of 0.9% on telecoms operators and 3% on the advertising revenues generated by privately run broadcasters to fund the country’s public television service. In a speech yesterday President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that public TV services would lose their own advertising revenue in progressive stages beginning 1 January 2009 and culminating in a total ban on advertising on public television by December 2011.

Citing local press reports, BNamericas states that Antel plans to launch a wireless device by the end of the year that will allow fixed telephony users to send and receive SMS. The new product, offered under the Aladino banner, will come with an LCD screen and caller-ID feature, and will be able to read SIM cards from mobile telephones. The company finished 2007 with approximately 970,000 fixed lines in service, down 2% year-on-year.

Indonesian mobile operator Excelcomindo (XL) has awarded Comverse Technology a contract to supply it with products to fulfil its current text messaging requirements and future SMS needs. No financial details were disclosed. XL, backed by TM International and Emirates Telecommunications Corporation’s Etisalat International Indonesia unit, had 18.4 million subscribers at 31 March, a market share of 18.7%.

Multilinks has signed a three-year frame contract with Nortel to expand and upgrade its CDMA2000 1x WiLL network with EV-DO Rev A. Initially the deployment will take place in Lagos. ‘Multilinks has begun an aggressive rollout programme to increase network capacity with plans to provide [mobile] broadband coverage for 80% of the Nigerian population by 2011 and 100% of the population by 2013,’ said CEO Justin Ramayia. The executive also revealed that since the company’s acquisition by Telkom South Africa last year, it has grown its subscriber base from 200,000 to more than one million.

Being a visually handicapped person can certainly make one's life difficult when compared to a healthy human being. If you consider the scene around the world then the facilities are pretty grim when seen from the viewpoint of handicapped people.

But it looks that the scenario is expected to change in Europe where authorities are looking towards improving the facilities for visually handicapped people. Keeping this vision in mind Swiss public transport agency is coming up with an RFID based system which would enable visually challenged people to check transit information at stops and destination of passing buses so that they don't board the wrong bus.

The system is named as Personal Assistant for Visually Impaired People or PAVIP and pilots are being conducted on seventy buses equipped with active UHF RFID modules for receiving and transmitting data. The system deploys Bones Milestone which is a small handheld device comprising of UHF RFID transceiver, HF RFID reader, digital voice recorder and audio player and can play MP3 and other digital formats. All a person needs to do is wave the device in front of a sign printed with timetable of the bus and it would read aloud the relevant information for your benefit.

This RFID system would surely make the lives of visually challenged people a lot easier and save them from any kind of botheration while using the public transport system. This is just the start and the future looks pretty good as of now.

Will WiMax impact your business this year? : While WiMax appears to be set for commercial deployment in some U.S. markets by year-end, the technology itself has been plagued by various fits and starts. One of its biggest problems has been at the carrier level, where only Sprint-Nextel has adopted it as its 4G technology of choice. While Sprint had initially billed itself as “the 800-pound gorilla in WiMax,” the carrier has gone through a period of turmoil over the past year and is still working on turning itself around. Things seemed to be going in the right direction last su

Nokia 4G research team transfers to German startup: MimoOn GmbH (Duisberg, Germany), a developer of software-defined radio technology, has recruited research team from Nokia Research in Bochum, Germany and Helsinki, Finland. The team includes members with backgrounds and focus in software defined radio, baseband design, software architectures, and UMTS/LTE PHY and protocol layer implementation for wireless handsets and basestations. MimoOn, founded in 2006, did not state how many engineers it had recruited from Nokia.

Who’s Ahead in the 4G Race?: The allure of betting on a longshot in a tight race — and seeing it play out — never wanes for sports fans. In the race to 4G that’s heating up between two competing wireless networking standards, it would be foolish to dismiss the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard as the longshot against its better-known rival, WiMAX. While WiMAX (define), or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is seen by industry experts as a few strides ahead of LTE, the LTE standard could cross the finish line as the end-all mobile network that users are eagerly awaiting.

Where does Wi-Fi fit in a 4G world?: Several wireless technologies are contending to become the next-generation transport system for mobile video and collaborative business applications and services. The frontrunners in the WAN are WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Qualcomm’s Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) technology is a distant third, despite its aspirations to run at more than 200Mbps, more than twice the eventual intended speeds of LTE and WiMAX (Compare WiMAX products). In a report late last year, ABI Research cited UMB’s lack of a robust partner ecosystem, which LTE and WiMAX have both established, as one reason for describing UMB’s prospects as “dim.”

Femto forum gets big ideas : The Femto Forum has hooked up with the Next Generation Mobile Network alliance to push femtocells into network planning for 4G deployments, potentially cutting costs and allowing a more phased roll-out. The two bodies have agreed to work together developing the necessary standards to allow network operators, whether using WiMAX or LTE, to deploy femtocells as part of their network plan rather than just patch things up afterwards.

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