Vodafone Group Plc has signed a partner network agreement in Cyprus with CYTA whose mobile division is branded Cytamobile. The deal follows the recent addition of a Luxembourg mobile operator to Vodafone’s global partner network scheme.

Under terms of the agreement, Cytamobile will completely rebrand to Cytamobile-Vodafone, and will market Vodafone’s international mobile services within Cyprus, using the existing Vodafone service names. The companies will also cooperate in developing services for international and domestic customers.

Vodafone’s services will now be available in 13 Partner Network countries: Austria, Bahrain, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Singapore.

In other news, PeopleSoft Inc confirmed that it has altered the terms of its executive compensation plan, making 50% of stock pay and other awards performance-related.

The move comes as part of its efforts to improve its corporate governance and forms an aspect of its eight-month fight against Oracle and its unwelcome takeover attempt.

PeopleSoft investor California Public Employees’ Retirement System had petitioned PeopleSoft to adopt performance-based award metrics and had submitted a proposal for the forthcoming AGM to vote on a requirement that would force PeopleSoft to make 75% of equity compensation performance-based. The proposal has now been withdrawn.

In another governance-related move, PeopleSoft recently promised not to increase cash compensation for any executive in 2004, and said it will give executives restricted shares rather than stock options in a bid to further align the long-term interests for its stockholders and executives. It also reduced the pool of stock options available for issuance to employees and executives.

And finally, the Chinese government has again clamped down on spam. According to reports, 656 spam servers have been identified and will be monitored by the Internet Society of China. Those continuing to send spam after March 20 to mainland users will be blocked. Just 63 of the sites are actually inside China itself, though, with six in Hong Kong and 65 in Taiwan. China announced last September it had blocked 127 e-mail servers at home and abroad from sending junk mail.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire