With copious cellular capacity in the UK now that there are four digital and two analogue networks, there is little point in building more, even if a licence could be won (there are nominally three going begging, because five original Personal Communications Network licencees collapsed by merger or pull-out into just two, but there is little pressure for them to be let) – but AT&T Corp says it is interested in entering the cellular market here and elsewhere in Europe: the answer looks to be to follow the MCI Communications Corp route in the US and create a strong AT&T brand as an air-time reseller, doing deals with all the networks for capacity, ordering up phones to the appropriate standards and create a seamless virtual network.
And just as Mercury Communications Ltd has been saying it will get round the cost of cabling homes to bypass the likes of British Telecommunications Plc by going to wireless, AT&T Corp yesterday announced a new totally wireless system for telecommunications companies to deliver services to homes and businesses: the new AT&T AirLoop digital wireless local loop is a compact, fixed wireless local loop system that provides the same basic and speech and data features as wired networks, from next April.
PictureTel Corp, Danvers, Massachusetts is seeking to drive its inventions harder, and will begin licensing its video, audio and other technologies to third-party product developers: products available for licensing include the core technologies developed for its group and desktop videoconferencing systems, and it has formed an alliance with DSP Software Engineering of Bedford, Massachusetts to bring its technology to market quickly.
Vebacom GmbH, the telecommunications joint venture of Veba AG and Cable & Wireless Plc, says it has been assured that it will be granted a licence to build a broadband fibre optic network linking Germany’s 40 largest cities: although the network will be initially used only to link television stations in those 40 cities, it will be usable for telephony upon liberalisation.
Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc has increased its stake in its Diebold HMA Pte Ltd Indian joint venture with HMA Data Pte Ltd, which makes automatic teller machines, to 50% from 24%; terms were not disclosed.
A management consultant who once advised companies how to downsize their workforces has concluded that there is a better way and has written a book, Corporate Executions about it, Reuter reports: Alan Downs started having doubts about three years ago, and when his sister was a victim, he began to collect data for what his publisher calls The Ugly Truth About Layoffs – How Corporate Greed Is Shattering Lives, Companies, and Communities; he found that chief executives who fire hundreds or thousands of loyal workers for no real purpose are paid more than those that don’t – he cites IBM Corp, AT&T Corp, General Motors Corp, Boeing Co, Xerox Corp, General Electric Co and Ford Motor Co, and describes those that survive as putting in 12-hour days in offices that are toxic cesspool(s) of bad attitudes and blame, flocking to doctors when they succumb to stress; he gives as an example Eastman Kodak Co, which after cutting 12,000 jobs since 1985 and having spent $2,100m, has wound up, with halved profit margins, a less than desirable stock price, and total revenues that aren’t much larger than before they fell into the restructuring black hole; by contrast, Hewlett-Packard Co (that name crops up yet again), 3M Co, and Dow Chemical, Downs writes, mapped alternate plans to avoid mass lay-offs in hard times, such as a hiring freeze, reduced work hours and voluntary redundancies.
The wires went silent as the jury lined up to give its verdict: AT&T Corp reports that telephone traffic between 10.05 and 10.10 Pacific Daylight Time Tuesday morning was 58% down on the same five minute period on Tuesday last week, as everyone tuned in to hear the verdict in the O J Simpson trial.
Apple Computer Inc sought to put paid to all the speculation by s
aying its directors reaffirmed full support for president and chief executive Michael Spindler and that the one on the way out was chief financial officer Joseph Graziano, who has resigned because of differences of opinion with Spindler.
NEC Electronics Inc, NEC Corp’s US arm based in Mountain View, California says it plans hire 200 engineers for a new US design team to develop products for NEC’s existing business units: until now, the firm has been mostly dependent on support from its parent company, NEC.
A senior vice-president of Intel Corp forecasts that annual world shipments of personal computers should top 100m units in 1997, exceeding those of television sets, Kyodo news agency reported: he said that while many projections of 1995 world personal computer shipments came to more than 50m units, Intel estimated 66m and projected for them to soar to 130m units by 2000; demand is expected to grow mainly for home use, which will account for 30% to 40% of all shipments as early as the late 1990s, he said.
Spokane, Washington-based software retailer Egghead Software Inc which lost $0.06 per share in the second quarter last year said it expects to report a loss of about $0.21 per share in the second quarter ended September 30, citing softer than planned sales and margins at its corporate direct sales business: during the first two months of the quarter sales were down 20% from a year ago, although the company said sales of products linked to Windows95 have been better than expected; analysts had expected Egghead to earn about $0.03 per share in the second quarter of the year.
Geotek Communications Inc said it will begin beta-testing a digital wireless communications network for mobile professionals in the Washington-Baltimore area in the autumn having begun its first commercial network in Philadelphia in June: the services are delivered on Geotek’s mobile workstation which integrates telephone, dispatch, data and business software and the company’s target market is the 25m US professionals that spend most of their time on the road; to reach it Geotek plans to build and operate networks in 36 US markets by 1997.
Bharti Cellular Pte Ltd, a consortium of Indian and foreign firms, has launched the first cellular mobile phone service in the Indian capital New Delhi and will offer the service free of charge until October 23 to familiarise users with the service: the Bharti brand name Airtel will introduce several packages on airtime use, reducing the cost per minute to substantially less than the price prescribed by the Department of Telecommunications, which has fixed the equivalent of $0.26 per minute as the maximum a licensee can charge; Bharti has so far booked 11,000 customers and the service now has a capacity to serve 50,000 subscribers; by December 1996 it expects to enroll almost 200,000 subscribers and can break even with a customer base of 37,000 it said; the company is investing some $63m in 100 cellular sites in New Delhi and its suburbs; Bharti Cellular is a consortium of companies comprising Bharti Telecom Pvt Ltd, Compagnie Generale Des Eaux SA of France, Emtel Ltd, Mauritius and Mobile Systems International Ltd of the UK.
