When AT&T Corp had made it clear that it was uninterested in taking a stake in Compagnie des Machines Bull SA once it became clear at the turn of the year that the privileged access to the French telecommunications market it wanted as a quid pro quo would not be forthcoming, why did it string the authorities along and pull out of the talks only at the end of last week? The assumption has to be that it wanted to make its feeling about the closed market for telecommunications in France as emphatic as possible and collect all the ammunition it could with which to bombard regulatory authorities in the US that are considering issues such as France Telecom’s proposed investment in Sprint Corp – and the fact that France did nothing to accommodate AT&T over Bull seems to make it even more certain that the Euro-investment in Sprint will be blocked.
Logitech International SA’s says its factory in Cork that makes mice has negotiated a takeover deal with a foreign computer company it declined to name until the deal is signed to secure the future of the factory and its 200 jobs after Logitech decided to transfer operations to the Far East to cut costs; under the terms of the deal, which Reuters hears will be signed within the next month, the factory will come under new ownership but Logitech will retain some involvement.
Stet SpA, Tele Danmark A/S, Koninklijke PTT Nederland NV with the Swiss phone monopoly, Bell Atlantic Corp with France Telecom and Ameritech Corp with Deutsche Telekom AG were the five bidders for the 27% stake in Czech telephone monopoly SPT Telecom AS when bidding closed.
French officials told Dow Jones & Co that there are now four companies in the running for stakes of at least 10% in Compagnie des Machines Bull SA – NEC Corp, Motorola Inc, Sequent Computer Systems Inc and IPC Corp Ltd; other names that have been mentioned, such as IBM Corp, are considering stakes of some 5%.
The US Court of Appeals in Washington has decided that it will hear arguments on the Justice Department’s anti-trust settlement with Microsoft Corp on April 24: it asked for opening briefs by March 7, any opposing briefs by March 31 and then reply briefs by April 7.
There are now 25m US subscribers to cellular networks, 10% of the population, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association said.
AT&T Corp and Quadral SA say that despite the abandonment of their bid for 40% of Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, they will maintain relations, and envisage other forms of collaboration in the future.
The Group of Seven conference on the information society in Brussels over the weekend approved 11 pilot projects demonstrating the information superhighway at work: Global Inventory will be a multimedia inventory of big national and international projects and studies on the global information society; Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks will facilitate international links between nets; Cross-Cultural Training and Education will address language learning; Electronic Libraries will create a large reference collection available to the public via networks; Electronic Museums and Galleries will accelerate creation of digital multimedia collections; Environment & Natural Resources Management will link environmental databases; Global Emergency Management will encourage development of an information network to enhance management of responses to emergencies; Global Health Care Applications will show how computer networks can help fight disease; Government On-line will exchange experience on procedures for electronic business between governments, companies and citizens; Global Marketplace for Small and Medium Enterprises will contribute to the development of open and non-discriminatory information exchanges; and Maritime Information System will enhance environmental protection and competitiveness for maritime activities; each of the Seven – the US, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, is to take the lead on one or more of the projects.
Privately-held Cary, Nort
h Carolina-based SAS Institute Inc said 1994 turnover rose 15% to a record $481.95m with strong growth for its data warehousing systems, and business intelligence and desktop software leading the way; it generated 51% of the total in the US, 35% in Europe, 3% in Canada, and 11% from its Asia-Pacific international operations; mainframe software business increased 11%, Unix rose 54%, and personal computer business 41%.
Cray Computer Corp reckons that its Cray-4 supercomputer outprice-performs the new Cray Research Inc T90 all ends up, offering comparable performance with four times the memory at about a 40% lower price.
Just over one in 10 western Europeans have computers in their homes – and it’s even worse on the continent since the figure for the UK is one in seven (CI No 2,608), still far behind the near one in two Americans, although the UK is catching up fast: the European figure comes from Dieter Rath, spokesman for the Federation of German Industry, who blames excessive government regulation, inflexible state telecommunications monopolies, cultural resistance and simple economics for the backwardness of the continent – there are 2m teleworkers in the US, a few hundred thousand in the UK, and a few thousand in Germany, he said; the Associated Press highlights the weakness by recalling that when he was asked by a software manager in a television appearance what needed to be done to improve access to the data highway, Chancellor Helmut Kohl thought the question was about cars – We all know what it’s like to be stuck in traffic, said Kohl, who doesn’t use computers, let alone modems.
Calling all Irish wherever you are: the Irish government is posting the Framework Document for peace in Northern Ireland on the Internet so any of the 70m people of Irish descent around the world can read it.
IBM Corp’s Lucio Stanca was in Brussels for the Group of Seven meeting and told Reuters he was there to urge the governments to move faster to change competition and labour laws to promote the information society: development of information superhighways would not only create new opportunities for industry but also drastically change peoples’ lives, he declared.
Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates said he was disappointed by Apple Computer Inc’s lack of candour and honesty over the complaints that the company lodged against Microsoft with the Justice Department: he insists that he never threatened that Microsoft might stop developing applications for the Macintosh.
The US Federal Communications Commission had attracted more than $6,300m in its auctions of new wireless telephone licences at the end of last week, but bidding activity for licences in major markets is beginning to slow to a trickle.
Smoking electron guns, Batman! Daniel Bernstein, a PhD candidate at the University of California at Berkeley, is suing the US State Department, alleging infringement of his freedom of expression, the San Jose Mercury News reports: the government advised him 18 months ago that he would have to register as an arms dealer under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation if he wanted to publicise an encryption program he had developed.
