TelecomLead top10 news 2011


The year 2011 has seen several breaking news.
The industry was busy analyzing those. Most of the main industry developments
shook the world by surprise. Many such developments have had ever lasting
responses.

1)      NSN to cut
17,000 jobs

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), announced plans
to cut 17,000 jobs before the end of 2013, the mobile broadband, and
services as a strategic priority, and within the global implementation of
large-scale restructuring.


The $975 million cash deal to buy Motorola Solutions’
Networks assets is one of the reasons for Nokia Siemens Networks to axe 17,000
jobs in the next two years. Also, the cash deal prompted Nokia Siemens Networks
to report substantial increase in research and development expenses.


NSN is planning to restructure the business,
focusing on mobile broadband (including optical communications), user
experience management, and service businesses. Services will further strengthen
the efficiency of the company’s global publishing system. Does not comply
with the new strategic business unit will be discarded or by other arrangements.
Quality and innovation will continue to be the company’s highest priority; NSN
will continue to invest in these two areas.


2)      AT&T
T-Mobile merger

Announced in March this year, The AT&T/T-Mobile
merger deal could have been a biggest corporate deal. After failing to convince
FCC-telecom regulatory authority of US and administration, AT&T scrapped
the deal in the month of December.


With the $39 billion scrapped merger deal, AT&T
wanted T-Mobile’s cellular spectrum to relieve its congested network and offer
faster service.


Had the merger been
approved, AT&T No 2 carrier with T-Mobile No 4 could have jumped ahead
of Verizon as the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. The deal also faced
hard criticism and opposition from Sprint and other small carriers, as it could
have paved way for duopoly, thus killing the competition.

3)      BlackBerry
outage

Millions of BlackBerry customers across the world
suffered from the 3 days outage of services in the month of October this
year.  BlackBerry customers had their Internet services and email
functionality interrupted. The company had initially attributed the downtime to
a switch failure within its network. But then the network suffered downtime
again due to tremendous amount of backlog of emails flowing through the system.


BlackBerry had suffered $54 million as the service
revenue loss in Q3 2011 because of the 48 hours outage in its services.


4)      Steve Jobs
death

Perhaps, Steve Jobs death was the biggest news of the
year. Apple’s founder Steve Jobs died on October 5th, 2011 after a long
struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was just 56 years old. At the time of his
deat, Jobs was surrounded by his wife Laurene and immediate family. Jobs had
four children from two relationships.


Jobs had struggled with health issues but said very
little about his battle with cancer since an operation in 2004. He stepped down
in August, handed over the CEO reins to long-time operations Chief Tim Cook.


5)      NTP 2011
announcement

The draft NTP 2011 was announced in October
by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal. As per Sibal,the new policy would be
ready after incorporating comments from all stakeholders by the end of this
year.


According to an official statement, the new policy is
likely to be approved by June 2012. It also said that the number of telephone
connections, both wireline and wireless put together, stands at 914.60 million
as on October 31, 2011, against a target of 600 million at the end of March
2012.


The NTP-2011 has talked about making available
secure, reliable and affordable voice telephony and high-speed broadband
services to every citizen in India with special focus on rural and remote
areas, to improve the broadband experience by enhancing the speed of delivery.


6)      3G roaming
pact issue

The telecom ministry recently issued notices to Airtel,
Vodafone and Idea Cellular to stop their inter-circle and intra-circle 3G
roaming agreements with immediate effect.


The ministry said that such roaming agreements are in
violation of licence norms and the operators cannot be allowed to offer
services like this. The DoT said in an internal note that the roaming
agreement among telecom companies for 3G services would cause considerable loss
of revenue to the government.


Leading operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea
had entered into agreement with one another to offer 3G mobile services in
circles in which they could not succeed in getting spectrum in the auction held
last year.


7)      Reliance LTE
plans

Reliance Industries is entering into the
telecommunications sector with its pan-India deployment of LTE services next
year. RIL has plans to invest around $5 billion in telecom over the next
two years, including $1 billion in rollout capex and around $2.75 billion in
BWA spectrum fees.

 

RIL with the market cap of Rs 249,166
crore is the only private company to have the license to roll out
services in all 22 circles, with the acquisition of Infotel Broadband, which
has won the pan-India license for BWA services. RIL bought 95 percent stake in
Infotel Broadband for Rs 13,000 crore.


8)      Microsoft-Nokia
tie up

In the start of this year, embattled mobile phone
firm Nokia has signed up to a “broad strategic partnership”
with Microsoft in an effort to rebuild its fortunes. Nokia inked the
partnership to use Windows Mobile 7 as its primary smartphone
platform.


Nokia also made clear that it will continue to make
phones running its Symbian operating system and MeeGo, Nokia’s Linux-based open
source mobile operating system.


Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 are the first Windows based
smartphones, which have been released and available for sale in the market.


9)      Google-Motorola
deal

Google’s announcement that it would pay $12.5 billion to
buy Motorola Mobility is one of the biggest corporate news this year.


Google is battling Apple and Microsoft, among others,
over patent issues, and its handset partners have been facing similar
challenges. So Google needs more than a toehold in this intellectual property
turf battle.


Google’s planned acquisition of Motorola
Mobility is being scrutinized by the European Commission. The Commission will
make a decision on the $12.5 billion deal by 10 January 2012.


10)  HP CEO sacked

Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker was removed by the
board of directors for his unsuccessful business decisions. Apotheker came to
HP at a turbulent time following the departure of its high-profile CEO, Mark
Hurd, after a scandal involving his relationship with an HP contractor. The
market did not react well to a number of announcements and moves Apotheker
made, including the planned purchase of infrastructure software vendor Autonomy
and talk of spinning off HP’s PC division. Meg Whitman, former eBay chief
executive officer (CEO) and one time candidate for the position of California
Governor has become the new CEO of HP.


Note: TelecomLead top10 news 2011 was selected by
TelecomLead.com editorial team


By Danish Khan
[email protected]