THE WRAP: BSNL terminates Huawei, Nokia shuts retail stores

Robert Clark | December 11, 2009

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This week BSNL dumped Huawei from a network tender, while Nokia closed down flagship stores in the UK and the US.

In a move that surprised and mystified the industry, BSNL dumped Huawei from a 20-million line GSM network tender, claiming the vendor had imposed unacceptable conditions on the sale.

Chinese OSS/BSS firms AsiaInfo and Linkage merged to create a new company with more than $400 in annual sales.

Nokia closed retail stores in London, New York and Chicago and spent $10 million on four Indian applications developers.

Nokia also hooked up with a Shanghai firm to launch its Ovi content and apps platform in China. BlackBerry-maker RIM will launch internet services in China next year, and meanwhile will jointly develop TD-SCDMA phones with China Mobile.

Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s e-commerce firm MOL acquired popular Asian social networking site Friendster.

Telecom New Zealand paid out fines and customer compensation of nearly NZ$9 million ($6,45m) over misleading broadband promotions. The Australian government funded a A$250 million ($228m) project to build new fiber backbones across remote parts of the country.

Google launched a real-time search feature, enabling users to search feeds from Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Skype released a beta version of its VoIP app for S60 phones.

Samsung unveiled its bada platform.

Ofta began a consultation on interconnection pricing rules for PCCW, asking operators if they will accept the lifting of the last ex ante regulations.

Pacnet said it was looking for partners for a $150 million from India to Singapore.

A European study of 60,000 brain tumor patients found no link to mobile phone use.

Ericsson cut 950 staff, in its home market of Sweden.

The TM Forum founded an industry body to drive standards and take-up of cloud services.

Defense research agency DARPA launched 10 red balloons across the US as a means of testing how information spreads over the net. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won a $40,000 prize for tracking the balloons.

And a Philadelphia teenager turned himself in after a photo of himself taken with a mobile phone he stole was sent automatically to the victim.

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Robert Clark