Cable & Wireless Plc faced a barrage of criticism at its extraordinary shareholders meeting called to approve a resolution allowing it to appoint a non-Briton as its new chief executive, Reuter reports: the resolution was carried but not before the company had to reveal that it had wanted to be free to appoint a foreign chairman too, but had been denied permission by the UK government, which used to own it; it also formally abandoned its concept of a federation of linked world telecommunications alliances.
NEC Corp and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd are to unify specifications for synchronous 16M-bit memory chips.
Middlebury, Connecticut-based General DataComm Industries Inc warns that it expects a loss for the first quarter to December 31 of some $3m, compared with the mean estimate by analysts of a $2m loss.
Cabletron Systems Inc has now completed acquisition of the Enterprise Networks Switching Group of Standard Microsystems Corp for $75.9m in cash and the assumption of some liabilities of the unit; Standard Micro will use the cash to secure increased foundry capacity.
Nortech Systems Inc has decided not to buy the machining centre of Cray Research Inc; no reason was given.
Santa Clara-based Quality Semiconductor Inc has definitive agreement to acquire some assets of the AWA Microelectronics Pty Ltd subsidiary of AWA Pty Ltd in Sydney: the assets to be acquired by a new subsidiary, Quality Semiconductor Australia Pty Ltd include a fully operational wafer foundry business and product design centre; Quality also signed a strategic alliance agreement with AWA for joint development of new products and technologies; the 6 wafer fab is currently operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will continue to service its existing foundry customers while providing Quality with additional flexibility – the company plans to acquire additional capital equipment through leasing and other financing arrangements, to migrate the existing facility over to deep submicron process technologies.
Societa Finanziaria Telefonica per Azioni and IBM Corp responded to Italian news reports that talks had stalled over legal issues with a statement saying that the negotiations towards the finalisation of the agreement announced last August are proceeding satisfactorily.
EMC Corp gloats that its 1995 open systems disk array business exceeded its goal of $200m, adding that it has raised its 1996 revenue expectations for the open systems market by 50% and now sees $600m; the Hopkinton, Massachusetts company also consolidated its product development, product marketing, sales, operations and customer services efforts into singular functional organisations whose responsibilities cross all of company’s target markets, but insists any resulting job losses will be minimal.
VLSI Technology Inc licensed Dolby Laboratories Inc’s AC-3 audio decoding technology for use in chips for the digital television set-top box and Digital Video Disk markets.
International Verifact Inc, based in Toronto, Ontario with a base in Boulder, Colorado has introduced a new card-reading module called the Flying Head, capable of reading both Smart Cards and traditional magnetic stripe cards: the Flying Head design reads both Smart Card chip and magnetic stripes simultaneously, so card issuers can incorporate both the embedded chip and magnetic stripe into one card.
Irvine, California-based Kofax Image Products Inc completed acquisition of Tyngsboro, Massachusetts-based LaserData Inc, picking up OS/N high-volume storage management software for Windows NT and NetWare for incorporation into the Kofax Ascent family of production-level component imaging applications; the financial terms were not disclosed.
Johannesburg-based Datatec Pty Ltd’s 76%-held Pipex SA subsidiary is to buy Internet Africa (Pty) Ltd for $4.8m in cash and shares; the other 24% is held by UUNet Technologies Inc’s Unipalm Plc; Pipex says that by acquiring Internet Africa, one of its principal competitors, i
t positions itself as the business with the best opportunity of maximising anticipated industry growth in the southern African region; Pipex will be renamed Pipex Internet Africa and will have 10,000 dial-up subscribers, 100 on leased lines.
Acer Group Ltd, Taipei, which includes computer maker Acer Inc, plans to move its global telecommunications headquarters off the island to Hong Kong or Hawaii: it says cost and service quality concerns were driving the move, complaining that Taiwan’s telecommunications liberalisation was too slow.
London Rugby Union Football Club Harlequins is selling its soul for a mess of sponsorship: it has won a reported ú1.5m from NEC Corp, but the dire price it has to pay is to change its name to NEC Harlequins.
The US Postal Service has paid $50m to the inventor of a computerised kiosk to settle a breach of contract claim, the Washington Post reported: the $1,300m claim was filed by the inventor’s company 19 months ago after the Postal Service killed its request for 10,000 machines; Sidney Goodman’s San Diego company, Postal Buddy Corp, developed a talking, red-and-blue kiosk that would have beamed new addresses to post offices across the US and sold stamps and address labels.
El Segundo, California-based Computer Sciences Corp has been awarded $79.4m by the Federal Emergency Management Agency: the contract is to manage the collection of data required by the independent government agency to assess damage to homes after disasters are officially declared by the President.
AT&T Canada Inc, Bank of Nova Scotia, Toronto Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada have agreed to buy troubled Canadian long-distance carrier Unitel Communications Inc for $250m after previous owners Canadian Pacific Ltd and Rogers Communications Inc turned their backs on Unitel last year: AT&T says it will invest $125m to increase its stake in Unitel to 33% from 22.5% with the remaining $125m to be invested by the banks with Bank of Nova Scotia holding 28%, Toronto Dominion, 23% and Royal Bank, 16%; rival company Call-Net Enterprises Inc is fighting the deal and has filed complaints with the Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission watchdog, claiming that the agreement may violate federal laws that prohibit foreign control of Canadian telecommunications companies.
Anyone that wants to become the strategic partner of Telecom Eireann must commit to investing the equivalent of $350m to restructure and strengthen the company to meet open market competition, the government said on Friday; a stake of up to 35% is on offer, and is expected to generate up to $720m although some of that may be in technology transfer; bidders are expected to include British Telecommunications Plc, Bell Atlantic Corp, Singapore Telecom Ltd, US West Inc and Koninklijke PTT Nederland NV with Telia AB; Cable & Wireless Plc already pulled out (CI No 2,756).
Morgan Stanley & Co has a hunch that part of the reason for Silicon Graphics Inc’s pre-announced revenue shortfall is that it has been pre-selling R10000-based systems to compete with Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co; meantime with Silicon Graphics and Tandem Computers Inc having played the pre-announcement shortfall card, the US investment bank’s technology group suggests that Auspex Systems Inc, Data General Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Stratus Computer Inc, Unisys Corp and Xerox Corp are most likely to come in ahead of earnings expectations, with IBM Corp and Sun close to consensus.
Newbridge Networks Corp will not unveil a development pact with a telecommunications equipment company in the foreseeable future, although it is talking to several major players about product development tie ups, the company told Reuter on Friday, responding to a Wall Street Journal report that it is looking at an alliance with a major equipment company on upgrades of voice networks of telephone companies to handle computer and other traffic; It’s a well-known fact that we work closely with AT&T Corp, GTE Corp, Al
catel NV and Siemens AG, the firm pointed out.
The president of Italy’s state-controlled telecommunications holding company Stet SpA is to meet the Russian communications minister thsi week, the head of ministry protocol told Reuter: he would be pursuing Stet’s problematic bid for 25% of the Russian telecommunications holding group AO Svyazinvest.
Liberalisation of the Philippines’ telecommunications industry is entering a new phase as dominant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co starts offering interconnection agreements with new, mostly cellular, telephone companies: Philippine Long Distance controls about 90% of telephone subscribers with the rest serviced by regional operators; initial deregulation saw a proliferation of cellular competitors from nil in the early 1990s to nine companies by the end of last year; a new measure allows new companies to install land lines in their respective franchise areas.
