THE WRAP: Google's China play, India's shrinking 3G

Robert Clark | January 15, 2010

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This week Google called time on Chinese web censorship, while India considered trimming its 3G auction.

Google created a storm as it announced it would stop censoring its Chinese search site and was considering leaving the mainland market. The search firm said its servers had been under China-sourced attacks seeking to steal its IP and to gain access to personal accounts of human rights activists.

Rival Baidu went down for several hours following an attack on its DNS by Iranian hackers.

Indian officials considered cutting back the country’s much-delayed 3G auction to just three licenses per circle because of a lack of spectrum.

Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest operator, took a 70% stake in Bangladeshi telco Warid for $300 million and set up an offshore business arm focused on south Asia.

The New Zealand competition regulator warned Telecom NZ over its continued flouting of the fair trade law.

Telecoms Sans Frontieres deployed a team from Nicaragua to provide emergency communications after a powerful earthquake rocked Haiti. Intelsat provided two satellite links to support relief teams, and handset takeback firm ReCellular began collecting used phones for victims, while relief organizations said SMS-based donations had helped generate the biggest wave of giving since Hurricane Katrina.

Cisco revamped its Asian operation to give greater emphasis on China.

Alcatel-Lucent launched a campaign to improve network energy efficiency a thousand-fold.

Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim moved to combine his mobile group América Móvil, with his fixed-line business.

Australian telco NextGen Networks, Matrix Networks and Indonesia’ NAP Info Lintas weighed the building of a subsea cable

between Singapore and Perth.

China Unicom senior vice-president Zhao Xudong was arrested following a probe into the company. Unicom joined the 3G price war, offering mobile broadband for as little as 36 yuan ($5).

Ericsson beat out Huawei to win the role of lead core network vendor for TeliaSonera’s LTE rollout. Intel’s fourth quarter sales jumped 29% as it posted a tenfold rise in profit.

Microsoft and HP said they would spend $250 million on building out cloud services together.

The Chinese government called for faster integration of the country’s telecom, cable and internet services.

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser quit after 16 years, one day after COO John Giamatteo also gave notice.

And British deputy PM Harriet Harman was fined £350 ($571) for accidentally reversing into a parked car while talking on a mobile phone.

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Robert Clark