Compagnie des Machines Bull SA plans to cut 944 jobs in France this year from the 9,800 total in its home country, the company said yesterday: These job cuts, on the basis of voluntary redundancies, will save the company $35m in wages in a full year, the company said.
Belgium plans to liberalise its cable television market by July 1 next year, Telecommunications Minister Elio Di Rupo told La Libre Belgique, but it only means cable operators would be free to offer services such as home shopping, video on demand and interactive games – no mention of telephony.
Cable & Wireless Plc is expected to get some รบ295m for its 5% stake in Mannesmann AG’s D2 cellular unit – and it does plan to sell the stake to avoid possible conflict with its broadbrush alliances with Veba AG.
Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG is on schedule to turn a profit this fiscal year to September, chief executive Gerhard Schulmeyer told Sddeutsche Zeitung, adding that restructuring and efforts to raise productivity must continue – the company must expand its sales and technology base without adding to the workforce; the target is to raise productivity 10% a year over the next two to three years despite 10% price declines that are characteristic of the entire industry; Siemens Nixdorf aims to become top dog in Europe by focusing on core business, eliminating overlaps and unpromising lines, he said, conceding that in the long-term, it is likely to stop producing traditional high-end mainframe computers.
For what it’s worth, Windows NT and the rest of the Back Office is close to $100m of Microsoft Corp’s revenue, Scott McAdams, an analyst at Ragen MacKenzie Inc told the Wall Street Journal: By this time next year it could be at $200m to $250m, which doesn’t sound much when the company is on target for total sales of $5,800m this year.
Microsoft Corp is to continue its share buy-back programme for the coming fiscal year to June 30 1996.
Toronto-based Electrohome Ltd, manufacturer and marketer of display systems, has acquired Display Technologies Inc, a privately-held Elgin, Illinois manufacturer of high-resolution monochrome displays; the terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is expected to add an estimated $30m to Electrohome’s sales in the first year.
Alcatel SEL AG and Siemens AG each won large contracts for supplying digital telecommunications equipment to the Czech telephone monopoly SPT Telecom as: Alcatel SEL is to supply digital exchanges and transmission equipment for 264,000 new telephone connections for 14 new digital hubs throughout the country, and Siemens will provide similar equipment for 259,000 new connections through 17 new hubs.
Polish computer manufacturer Optimus SA is to become a licensed reseller of AT&T Corp’s Systimax cabling systems in a bid to strengthen its role as systems integrator, and looks for further collaboration with AT&T in other advanced telecommunications and information technology areas; Optimus also said that, buoyed by its move into networking and telecommunications, it plans to offer new shares to large foreign and domestic investors at a premium – last month, its Polskie Telmedia SA subsidiary won a licence to operate local telephone networks in four Polish provinces.
The European Commission is investigating the planned strategic alliance between Bertelsmann AG and the Canal Plus SA French television network: the alliance plans to set up pay television channels offering digital services throughout Europe.
The European Investment Bank signed a loan contract with Stet (Hellas) SA for about $35m to develop and expand its cellular telephone system in Greece: the loan will be used as part of Stet’s long-term plan to install over 400 transmitter and receiver sites nationwide, with capacity to meet the needs of some 400,000 subscribers by 2002.
British Telecommunications Plc shares rose fivepence to 394.5 pence in heavy trading yesterday on a report in the Financial Times that the Offic
e of Telecommunications planned to ease the regulatory structure around the company, allowing it to raise line rental charges without constraint, while protecting impecunious light users.
Power was restored on Sunday to the 203 mostly high-tech factories on Penang after the island lost half its power supply in that massive power cut, seriously affecting major US chip companies that package their parts in Penang: the national power company Tenaga Nasional Bhd says one of three cables damaged in the explosion has been repaired.
The Committee Against Microsoft in Washington, which has been lobbying US lawmakers to order Microsoft Corp to alter its Windows95 marketing on grounds that the thing won’t do much useful work on a 4Mb machine, has decided August 14 will be the beginning of what it hopes is going to be a worldwide boycott of the operating system, due for launch on August 24: the committee said on Monday in New York that it would drum up support by publicising its anti-Microsoft complaints over the Internet; it also said it would begin lobbying personal computer makers about what it sees as the prevelance of under-powered machines and has been asked to be made a party in the suit Microsoft launched against the Justice Department in New York (CI No 2,694).
Cellnet Mobile Communications Ltd is still the cellular laggard: it added 162,000 net connections in the second quarter of 1995, up 65% on the same period last time, but it still has only 1.896m all told.
Hutchison Telecommunications UK Ltd and its Orange Personal Communications Network have long been looked at askance in Hong Kong, where followers of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd viewed it as a distraction and a drain on the company’s resources – but now the network is in operation with 200,000 subscribers, sentiment is markedly changing, and analysts there told Reuters that they viewed the increase in the company’s stake to 68.42% as beneficial: Hutchison Telecom UK, which has two paging networks as well as Orange, is forecast to lose $5m this year, down from $11.6m last – but Orange should get to 320,000 to 350,000 subscribers next year and see a profit of $11.5m, although losses in other parts of the business will cut the UK profit to $5m.
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp plans to enter the cellular telephone business in China by operating two joint ventures there, but no, it won’t be involved in operations because Peking won’t allow that: it says it will formally sign agreements with Chinese partners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces today, aiming to form the ventures this autumn, and it will install and maintain the base stations for cellular phones in the provinces.
It’s no fun to reach this point and find nothing in the bank, but Jeff Hosier’s Handbook of IBM Terminology, published by Xephon Plc (cut your American Express card in half, but don’t leave home without the Handbook) is as reliable as WordStar 3 and CP/M in coming up with the goods: in IBMspeak, Structure means an architecture that isn’t quite finished – Hosier adds see SystemView, but then this is the 1991 edition we are looking at…
