France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom Sign R&D Pact

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are to join forces in selected areas of innovation and R&D. The cooperation will focus mainly on the following five areas: next-generation networks, cross-network customer access, service delivery platforms, terminal devices of the future, and home gateways. http://www.francetelecom.comhttp://www.telekom.de

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Marconi Sees Sales Slightly Better than Expected at £339 million

Marconi reported that sales from continuing operations wer slightly better than expected at £339 million for the fiscal quarter ended 30 June 2004. Despite seasonally lower spending by a number of major customers, the company noted that market stability had been confirmed by modest sales growth of 4% at constant currency compared to that same period last year. http://www.marconi.com

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PMC-Sierra's Q2 Revenues Grow 42% Year-over-Year

PMC-Sierra reported Q2 net revenues of $85.7 million compared with $78.7 million for the first quarter of 2004 and $60.4 million for the same period a year ago. This represented an increase in revenues of 9 percent sequentially and 42 percent on a year-over-year basis. GAAP net income in the second quarter of 2004 was $15.4 million (GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.08). This compares to GAAP net income of $16.8 million in the first quarter of 2004 (GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.09).



"PMC-Sierra's revenue increased in the second quarter as business trends in the service provider sector continued to improve," said Bob Bailey, president and CEO of PMC-Sierra. http://www.pmc-sierra.com

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Hyatt Selects Telstra for MPLS-based Services

Hyatt International awarded a multi-year, global service contract valued at US$8.4 million to Telstra for advanced MPLS-based services. Under the deal, Telstra is providing a scalable, managed services platform linking Hyatt International's headquarters in Chicago with hotels throughout Europe, South America and the Asia Pacific region. The MPLS network enables Hyatt's mission critical customer reservation system applications to retain a guaranteed percentage of the bandwidth. http://www.telstra-usa.com

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Sony Ericsson Sees Growing Shipments of Mobile Devices

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications shipped a total of 10.4 million mobile devices in Q2, up from 8.8 million units in Q1 and 6.7million during Q2 2003. The company now estimates the worldwide market for mobile devices will top 600 million units for 2004, up from its previous forecast of 550 million units.



Sony Ericsson's sales for the quarter were EUR 1.504 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 34%. Income before taxes was EUR 113 million and net income was EUR 89 million.



Sony Ericsson's Average Selling Price (ASP) decreased sequentially in line with expectation due to an increase in GSM phones in the overall product mix.www.SonyEricsson.com

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Microsoft's Xbox Live Tops One Million Users

Microsoft's Xbox Live online video gaming service has topped the one million subscriber mark. The service was launched in November 2002. Microsoft noted that Xbox users are playing an average of 265,549 hours every day. There are an average of 10.5 million sessions per month. The top 15 cities worldwide with the most Xbox Live members are Tokyo; London; Houston; Chicago; Toronto; San Diego; New York City; Brooklyn; Los Angeles; Miami; Seattle; Calgary; San Antonio; Las Vegas; and Seoul. http://www.microsoft.com

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Carriers Form Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance

The Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance (FMCA) made its official debut with the support of founding members Brasil Telecom, British Telecom, Korea Telecom, NTT Com, Rogers Wireless and Swisscom. The alliance was formed to accelerate the development of Fixed-Mobile Convergence products.



British Telecom has assumed the role of initial Chair of the Alliance, which will rotate every 12 months. Rogers Wireless will take the role of Vice-Chair during this period.

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Sprint Offers IP 'Office in a Box' Key System

Sprint is expanding its OEM business communication system portfolio with a new pure IP key system aimed at offices with under 40 users. The Sprint i4 will be marketed through Sprint Authorized Dealers and Sprint North Supply as a Converged "Office in a Box". The key system does not require a pre-existing network and includes voicemail-to-email forwarding, E911 capabilities, in-building mobility, unified messaging, shared broadband Internet access and others features. http://www.sprint.com/

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Microsoft Office Live Communications Server to Link IM Users

Microsoft reached an agreement with America Online and Yahoo! that will enable Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 to interconnect with their respective instant messaging (IM) services.



Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 will enable organizations to more securely communicate in real time with other organizations that also have deployed Live Communications Server 2005 in the enterprise, thereby enabling them to IM and view presence information. The new agreement will extend this IM connectivity to a potential pool of 400 million global customers, partners and vendors using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger services.



Live Communications Server 2005 is currently in beta testing. http://www.microsoft.com

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Allstream and AT&T Extend Relationship Through 2006

Allstream (formerly AT&T Canada) extended its Master Services Agreement (MSA) with AT&T Corp. through December 2006. The MSA enables the two companies to offer customers seamless cross-border routing, an attractive capability for Contact Centres with locations in Canada and the United States. http://www.allstream.comhttp://www.att.com

• In June 2004, Manitoba Telecom Services completed its acquisition of Allstream (formerly AT&T Canada). Allstream operates a nationwide network spanning 18,000 km and is focused on the business market.

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FLAG Telecom Appoints CTO

FLAG Telecom appointed Mathew Oommen as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Previously, Oommen was Chief Operating Officer of Reliance Infocomm, where he was directly responsible for the Planning, Engineering and Operations of the Reliance next generation optical and integrated services network across India. Prior to joining Reliance, Mathew was Vice President of Network Architecture and Technology Integration for the Williams Communications Group/Wiltel. http://www.flagtelecom.com

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BT Launches VOIP - Yahoo! Messenger Service

BT and Yahoo! launched a residential service that allows consumers to manage all their home communications - phone calls, webcam, emails, texts and instant messaging - together in one place from a Web browser.



BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger is an integrated software package that combines voice services over the web with Yahoo!'s instant messaging. Users are able to make free calls when connecting from their PC to another PC or make calls to a landline or mobile from their computer at the same cost as a phone call on their "BT Together" fixed line phone package. Call records will appear on the standard BT telephone bill as ‘Clic2call' rather than ‘mobile' or ‘local number'.



BT customers traveling abroad can make international calls back to any UK number for the price of a domestic UK call. http://www.bt.com/btcommunicator

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Nokia Estimates Global Mobile Phone Market at 148 Million Units in Q2

Nokia reported that the global mobile device market continued to grow during the second quarter 2004 reaching 148 million units and is expected to surpass 600 million units for the full year 2004. Many markets, such as Brazil, India and Russia, are experiencing strong industry growth as mobile communications become affordable to new subscribers. Nokia's overall mobile device volume was 45.4 million for Q2, giving the company an estimated 31% share of the market.



However, while benefiting from positive developments in emerging markets, Nokia's sales for Q2 came under pressure in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. Nokia's overall mobile device net sales in EUR terms grew very strongly in Latin America and China, moderately in the rest of Asia, but declined significantly in the Europe/Africa market and to a lesser extent in North America. Some highlights:

• Overall, net sales of EUR 6.6 billion decreased 5% compared to second quarter 2003. At constant currency, group net sales would have increased 1% year on year.



• Nokia's Mobile Phones business group second-quarter net sales decreased 13% year on year to EUR 4.2 billion. This reflects the above regional developments and impacts from the pricing strategies.



• Nokia's Multimedia business group second-quarter net sales increased 24% year on year to EUR 739 million. The imaging devices continued to sell well while the other product segments did not perform according to our expectations.



• Nokia's Networks business group second-quarter net sales increased 6% year on year to EUR 1.6 billion as a result of continued growth in nearly all markets.



• Enterprise Solutions business group second-quarter net sales declined 2% year on year to EUR 189 million. This was due to increased competition in the security and mobile connectivity side of the business, which offset growth in the mobile device side.

http://www.nokia.com

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