Compaq Computer Corp is to integrate Cisco Systems Inc’s Cisco Internetwork Operating System into a future networking product and market it through its sales channels from the first half of next year: the deal is claimed to represent the first marriage of network router technology with standard personal computer architecture; Compaq is licensing the Internetworking Operating System, and the deal also calls for development of joint marketing, co-operative service and support programmes, and use by Compaq of Cisco’s IOS logo.
Erros Plc, Abingdon, Oxfordshire AS/400 rapid application development environment developer, which stepped up for a placing under the Stock Exchange Rule 4.2 in April (CI No 2,637), was trying to raise between ú800,000 and ú1.5m in a flotation on the new Alternative Investment Market, but pulled the offer on Friday blaming lack of institutional investor support; it will be meeting its advisor Williams de Broe this week to decide whether to come back with a different presentation of what it admits is a difficult-to-explain product (Erros stands for Expert Real-time Relational Open Systems) or simply go for a trade sale of the company.
Storage Technology Corp warns that its second quarter results may be hurt by customers’ delaying their buying of its Iceberg mainframe storage product line in expectation of Escon enhancements planned for next month, the start of its third quarter: as a result, it expects only modest profitability from second quarter operations, although it expects overall results for the year to remain on plan, but with profits likely to be weighted significantly towards the second half.
A telecommunications regulatory body made up of representatives of the German parliament and the country’s 16 regional states on Monday blocked the government’s plans to liberalise the market for cellular telephones before 1998, Reuters reports from Bonn: the vote means that suppliers of mobile telephone services such as Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH , Thyssen AG and Veba AG will continue to have to lease lines from Deutsche Telekom AG; the government warned that the council’s decision would not make it any easier to win the European Commission’s approval for the planned Atlas joint venture between Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom.
With China turning its back on foreign ownership and operation of telecommunications carriers, India looks set for a great leap forward in the region at China’s expense: AT&T Corp says that India is its biggest Asian opportunity as it ends its decades-old state monopoly to satisfy growing demand for phones: We see Asia-Pacific as the fastest growing market from the standpoint of the size, pace of growth of economies and pace of growth of telephony in general, John Legere, Asia-Pacific president of AT&T’s communications services group told Reuters, adding that China and India stood out, but AT&T found India the more attractive.
Australia’s state-run Telstra Corp says it expects to invest substantial amounts in India if it receives a licence to set up basic telephone service in the state of Tamil Nadu.
Operating difficulties in our print shop (oh, all right, a monumental foul-up) meant that yesterday’s issue of Computergram went out with pages three and four repeated where two and five should have been: the print shop had promised to mail a corrected front and back to all paper subscribers yesterday so you can throw the flawed one away.
Correction: our delayed reaction double take over the wide screen format Tulip Computers NV plans for future personal computer televisions (CI No 2,692) was held too long for us to correct the figure before the issue went out – wide screen format is of course 16 by nine, and many music videos are shot in it these days; the error has been corrected in the replacement outside pages mentioned in the item ab ove.
The Financial Times Lex column shares our scepticism that the regulatory in Europe, and more especially the US will allow the France Telecom-Deutsche Telekom
AG investment in Sprint Corp to go through until the French and German markets are as open to foreign investment as the British one is, but the partners remain super-optimists and say they expect their twin Atlas and Phoenix alliances to receive full regulatory approval and be cleared to start by the end of this year; the Phoenix international joint venture between the three will start with $500m of annual revenues and 2,000 employees – although Deutsche Telekom puts the figure at $450m; it will also have 1,200 sites or communications switching points around the world and 23 customer service centres; as to capital in the venture, Sprint will contribute solely assets to begin with, while the European partners will bring assets and $675m cash.
British Telecommunications Plc says that of the 2,500 homes in its BT Interactive TV trial in Colchester and Ipswich, which starts next month and runs for at least a year, 500 will be connected by optical fibre: under the initial price structure, feature films will cost between ú1.50 and ú4 to download – about the same as in a video rental store – while other services will require a monthly subscription fee starting at ú3, but the charges may be varied over the term of the trials to determine what level of pricing will maximise the revenue; despite widespread pessimism in the industry that the economics of video-on-demand can be made to make sense for the operator, investors and analysts were upbeat at the prospect of British Telecom building a major new revenue stream between now and 2001 if the trials do prove to be a runaway success.
IBM Corp shares broke out of their narrow trading range last week and ended it within a whisker of $100.
If anyone tells you they are getting 1m hits a week or a month at their World Wide Web site, just smile and say jolly good and move on to next business: a page can be made up of hundreds of files, each of which has just a small amount of content, points out the Wall Street Journal: Wired magazine’s HotWired says its on-line magazine gets 600,000 hits on a good day, but that number represents only about 6,000 people accessing the site.
Continental Europe has long been a bit of a black hole for Northern Telecom Ltd, and a few years back it did a deal with Matra SA to try to improve its position, but now it reckons conditions are right for it to begin to motor: it is targeting Germany and France, and feels they will provide booming business as monopoly barriers are beaten down.
