Digest/World

20th Anniversary of GSMA

The GSMA celebrates the 20th anniversary of its foundation and plans
to celebrate this historic landmark with a unique documentary film travelogue,
the Mobile World, commissioned to explore the diversity of mobile use and
innovation globally. Twenty years ago, on September 5, a historic agreement was
signed in Copenhagen by fifteen telecommunications operators from thirteen
countries that led to the development of the Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM).

ITU Opens Up Online Resource

ITU standards produced by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
are now available online without charge. The announcement follows a highly
successful trial conducted from January-October 2007, during which some two mn
ITU-T recommendations were downloaded throughout the world. Anyone will be able
to download any of over 3,000 ITU-T recommendations. These are used by equipment
manufacturers, telecommunication network operators, and service providers
throughout the world.

MediaTek to Acquire AD Ops

MediaTek has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire
the assets related to the Analog Devices (AD), Othello(R) radio and SoftFone(R)
base band chipset product lines, as well as certain cellular handset baseband
support operations, for approximately $350 mn in cash. These product lines
represented approximately $230 mn in revenue for ADI, based on fiscal year 2006
financial results. Through this acquisition, MediaTek's wireless handset
division gains new radio transceiver and base band chipset products.

Thailand-ITU Agreement

The Royal Thai government concluded an agreement with ITU to lead the
Business Management Training Program within the Apac Center of Excellence
Network. With this agreement, the CoE program has now successfully established
all five Nodes in the Apac region, as envisaged at a meeting in Bangkok last
October. The other functioning nodes in the region are located in Iran, Malaysia
(rural ICT development), Pakistan (policy and regulation) and South Korea
(technology awareness).

Door to Nokia's Internet Services

Nokia has introduced Ovi, the company's new Internet services brand
name. With the introduction of Ovi, Nokia is expanding from a focus on mobile
devices to offering a range of Internet services. Ovi, meaning 'door' in
Finnish, enables consumers to easily access their existing social network,
communities and content, as well as acting as a gateway to Nokia services. As
part of Ovi, Nokia announced the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage.

Motorola Joins MS Program

Motorola has announced that it has joined the Microsoft Mediaroom
Interoperability and Qualification Lab for digital video encoders, a program
which will enable the ongoing interoperability and compliance of encoders used
in deployments of the award-winning Microsoft Mediaroom multimedia and IPTV
software platform. Entry to the program involved rigorous tests of Motorola's
MPEG-4 encoding platform to deliver full compatibility with the Microsoft
Mediaroom platform.

Orascom in JV with Korek

Orascom Telecom has announced that it has entered into a binding agreement
to form a joint venture with Korek Telecom, the incumbent Kurdish operator,
which was granted one of the three long-term licenses in Iraq. Under the
agreement, OTH and Korek shall contribute the assets of Iraq and Korek
respectively into the JV where OTH shall hold an equity interest of 70% and
Korek shall hold the remaining 30%. Moreover, under the agreement, OTH shall not
be obliged to go below 51% of equity at any point in time.

SingTel Touching Lives Fund

SingTel has announced its commitment to raise at least $2.3 mn for SingTel
Touching Lives Fund in 2007. TLF is SingTel's philanthropy vehicle in
Singapore and the main thrust of the company's corporate social responsibility
program. The Fund raises donations for underprivileged children and young people
by engaging SingTel's associates, employees, and the general public.
Collectively, these charities reach out to about 30,000 children and youths.
Charity Golf raises more than $680,000.

Header-Field Trial by NSN

At this year's ECOC convened in Berlin between September 16-20,
Nokia Siemens Networks presented Carrier Ethernet transport with the new
connection-oriented standard "Provider Bridging Backbone—Traffic
Engineering" in a joint field trial with Deutsche Telekom. This field trial
shows that Carrier Ethernet transport in conjunction with an optical WDM network
is a cost-effective alternative to IP router-based implementations.

Aruba, Alcatel-Lucent to Team Up

Aruba Networks and Alcatel-Lucent have announced their intent to
establish a joint venture focused on developing next-generation wired and
wireless solutions for the enterprise. Together, the two companies will drive a
new phase of business-critical enterprise infrastructure for a new generation of
business users. The solution will be designed to identify, authenticate, and
manage users regardless of the means by which they access the network. The JV
will focus on the design and delivery of hardware and software modules.