Stuttgart, Germany-based Mannesmann AG said it expects its telecommunications business to grow between 20% and 50% over the next few years as the market is increasingly liberalised: Mannesmann Eurokom GmbH, the group’s holding company for telecommunications, had turnover of around $207m last year, excluding sales from the company’s cellular phone subsidiary, Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH; Mannesmann’s turnover from telecommunications totalled over $2,072m last year, it said.
Herndon, Virginia-based Network Imaging Corp and Lockheed Martin Corp’s Information Systems and Technologies unit have formed a business and marketing alliance to provide multimedia information management to a variety of businesses based on IBM Corp’s Lotus Notes: the system has already been implemented as a contracts imaging system for Swiss Reinsurance AG; it enables users to integrate and manage images, text, video and sound.
The privatisation of Venezuelan telephone company CANTV will start around the middle of this year, Venezuela’s Investment Fund president said: an agenda on the sale of the Venezuelan state’s remaining 49% percent stake in CANTV was presented by the government’s economic team on Friday and it expects to start offering shares on the local market at mid-year; the fund president refused to say how much money the state expected to get from the sale – up to $2,500m was suggested; the company was partially privatised in November 1991 when the government sold 40% to the VenWorld consortium, led by GTE Corp, and another 11% to employees.
Congress has voted the US Federal Communications Commission inadequate money to operate with under the temporary funding bill, and the agency may have to halt key operations, its chairman complained to Reuters: Reed Hundt said the $166m that Congress has appropriated for fiscal 1996 falls well short of the amount needed to police the airwaves, perform licensing operations and do other jobs, and also to implement the landmark telecommunications bill pending in Congress; he said an economic calamity could result if more funds are not given because its functions touch so many companies and parts of the economy; Hundt said without more money, the agency may have to stop granting licences to winners in the auction.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB reckons that it has a good chance to win part or all of a cellular telephone network order worth millions of dollars in Bosnia: the order is estimated to be worth around $500m Swedish daily Dagens Politik said.
Akron, Ohio-based Telxon Corp and AT&T Corp’s NCR Corp unit entered into an OEM relationship for joint development of a Customer Information Kiosk at which retail stores could verify pricing accuracy: NCR will provide packaging, scanning and display technology and Telxon will integrate the wireless networking components of the system, provided by its Aironet unit; the kiosk, which will feature a large, easy-to-read display and an omni-directional scanner, would be mounted on pillars and shelf fixtures throughout a store; customers would use the kiosk to verify the price and description of an item and match it with the price charged at the check-out; the companies expect to produce both wired and wireless versions of the kiosks, they said.
NEC Corp will form a joint venture to produce radio communications systems in China in February with a local partner: the new venture, Guilin NEC Radio Communications Ltd, will be capitalised at $45m, with NEC owning 60% and state-run Lijiang Radio Factory of China holding the remainder; it plans investment totalling $9m and will start making NEC’s advanced digital microwave systems at a rate of 2,000 systems a year in the first half of next fiscal year, starting in April; sales of $362m are planned by its third year of operation.
Danish former telephone monopoly Tele Danmark A/S has signed a co-operation deal with Korea Submarine Telecom on installation and maintenance of undersea telecommunications cables: the deal, worth between $9m and $18m annually, comprises l
easing of a cable-laying vessel for two years, assistance to Korea Submarine in its building up of a marine unit and technical co-operation; Tele Danmark said the pact provided it with a base in South East Asia with port facilities, warehouses and equipment for marine cable-laying off the South Korean coast, paving the way for further co-operation with Korea Submarine.
Belgian telecommunications group Telinfo SA has made a bid with France Telecom Mobile International SA for Luxembourg’s second digital cellular operator’s licence.
Chicago-based General Instrument Corp said emerging cable markets in China saw a demonstration of the Grand Alliance High-Definition TeleVision system at the International Symposium on Broadcasting Technology in Peking late last year: the General in 1993 joined six other companies in forming the digital Grand Alliance (CI No 2,288), a collaborative effort to produce a potential standard for the next generation of television technology; the company said the demonstration showed China Central Television that the DigiCipher compression system is compatible with HDTV.
US farmers tuning up for information highway, advises the Reuters headline – but c’mon, surely they can’t be planning to allow tractors onto the information superhighway?
