THE WRAP: iPhone, Nokia and a subsea cable boom

21 Dec 2007
00:00

It was the year of the iPhone. What else‾

Apple's long-promised foray into handsets met all expectations as it launched exclusively with AT&T in June. AT&T went on to record its best ever quarter for customer adds.

The inevitable handset hack did not deter consumers or other carriers, as Apple followed up with operator-backed launches in Germany, France and the UK.

Asian consumers have yet to see the device. Apple says it will bring the iPhone to Asia in 2008, although China Mobile has rejected its high commissions.

Apple's wasn't the only challenge in the mobile device market. Motorola lost its no.2 spot to Samsung and CEO Ed Zander lost his job as the US phone-maker admitted its product portfolio had gone stale.

Nokia decided it was not enough to be the world's biggest handset maker. From January 1 it will reorganize into three divisions with the aim of becoming an internet and services firm. To get started it splashed $8 billion on navigation firm Navteq and offered a year's free tunes to customers who buy its new phones.

Google was another to target the handset space, but as a provider of platforms rather than hardware, pitching its Android OS to revive the stalled mobile Linux project.

The search firm's telecom initiatives didn't end there. It won concessions from the FCC on the rules of the coming 700MHz US wireless auction and it signalled its interest in acquiring its own subsea capacity as a means of guaranteeing bandwidth supply.

The industry saw a minor boom in capacity-building, with half a dozen trans-Pacific and intra-Asia systems promised. Of these, only one major network, the US-China TPE cable, is under construction now, and bandwidth leaders are divided over whether they are headed for glut or famine.

Their mobile counterparts decided it was glut, turning more and more to infrastructure sharing. Four of the five UK carriers and several Indian operators signed network sharing arrangements.

Skype went off the air for several days with a software bug. Parent company eBay admitted it had paid too much for the VoIP firm, taking a $1.43 billion million impairment charge. Founder Niklas Zennstrom left to work on his internet TV venture Joost.

Indonesia competition regulator KPPU slapped an anti-trust suit on Singapore government investment arm Temasek, insisting it divest itself of its stake in either Telkomsel or Indosat. Temasek denied any price collusion and has appealed the case.

Wimax was approved as a 3G standard, annoying China, which remains officially a 3G-free zone. Trial networks of the TD-SCDMA standard were built in ten cities, with service expected to start early in 2008. Despite this, and following years of government support, the chief TD vendor, Datang Telecom, turned to state-owned banks for a bailout.

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