Word: bt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Reverse the Charges Maybe mobile phones aren't such a bad business after all. Having bailed out of the crowded, pricey wireless sector in 2001, both BT and AT&T last week made it clear they want back in. Britain's largest residential telecom announced a deal with longtime rival Vodafone to offer the world's first fully converged handset that acts both as a mobile and as a fixed-line phone. BT's U.S. counterpart, AT&T, similarly announced an agreement with a big rival to offer AT&T-branded mobile services via the Sprint network. Why the rush...
...thing when it launched a service that carries phone calls via the Internet. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has long promised huge phone-bill savings, but has been delayed by poor quality. It's still "not quite as good" as standard land lines but "much better than mobiles," says BT executive Fergus Crockett. In the U.S., AT&T and Time Warner Cable said they would start VoIP in 2004. BT users can now plug in an €85 adapter that's free until April, pay a little over...
...around 6 cents per minute to 17 countries. They can even take the adapter abroad to make cheap calls. But there are limitations: they cannot call emergency numbers, as VoIP users lack the required numeric prefix linked to a geographical area, nor can they dial operators. BT says cable users can save €155 a year; decent but not up to VoIP's potential. Eventually, BT, AT&T et al. could market local service in foreign countries. For consumers, that's worth phoning home about. - By Mark Halper Southern France's Ray Of Hope Citizens in the southern French town...
...that Ball, whose contract expires in May, wants out for his own reasons. Possible noncompetition clauses permitting, Ball would be a prime candidate to run the soon-to-be-merged Telewest and ntl, the two cable-TV companies that have suffered the most from BSkyB's success. Telecom-giant BT might also take an interest in Ball as it moves into broadcasting through mobile-phone and broadband technologies. What's curious about the bouncing Ball story is that it appeared almost out of thin air. Several British papers - including Murdoch's own Times - reported the ouster last week as nearly...
...there are the "noncore" assets: a remaining 20% stake in the water utility it spun off last year, Veolia Environnement, and a shareholding in Elektrim, a Polish telecommunications company. For a while Fourtou seemed to be betting on telecom: last year, even with his mandate to divest, he acquired BT Group's 26% stake in Cegetel, thwarting an attempt by Britain's Vodafone to take control. And last week, Vivendi's board signed off on a plan to increase its stake in a Moroccan telecom firm. But if he wanted to focus principally on telecommunications, then Fourtou's most logical...