FASTTAKES: Nokia Siemens, Jamba, ZTE

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Nokia Siemens has won a tender to expand the GSM network owned by state-owned Teletalk <‾xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = 'urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags' />Bangladesh. Nokia Siemens is expected to focus its deployment efforts on state capital Dhaka. The financial terms of the contract have not been disclosed.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications is to add another digit to its fixed line numbers this month in a bid to increase capacity. The new digit will prefix existing numbers, and will be assigned based to customers' carriers. Each carrier has been given a separate digit. Fixed line numbers in Vietnam are currently six to seven digits long.

News Corp has bought out the remaining shares in mobile content firm Jamba, developers of the Crazy Frog ringtones. News Corp paid stake owners Verisign $200 million for the minority holding. News Corp has now paid Verisign a total of $288 million for the firm.

ZTE is to build an $880 million R&D Centre in the Shaanxi province of China. The centre, which will be built in province capital Xian, will occupy an enormous 4.36 million square feet and take eight years to complete.