Northern Telecom Ltd is pitching for at least a fifth of the worldwide cordless business telephones market, which it believes could be worth $30,000m a year by the end of the decade, a senior executive told Reuters: It’s an enormous business but we want between 20% and 40% of the business, depending on the number of competitors and how it’s split said Colin Buckingham, vice-president Personal Cordless Systems; its Companion system was launched worldwide in March and It’s going very well, we’ve sold about 500 systems to date in Europe and about 1,500 systems worldwide which is quite good after a six months launch, said Buckingham; the system is averaging out to around 15 to 20 users, he said, and a 15-user system costs $20,000 to $25,000; the Companion system operates on multiple cells with a handover, rather like a compact local mobile cellular network so that if you have an area that’s not being covered you can put a base station either side of the area to get it.
