IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 5 October
05-10-2007
by Sylvia Leatham
BT may launch Wi-Fi service in Republic | Siemens fined EUR201m in bribery probe
The Irish Times reports that Global Voice has raised up to EUR32 million through the issue of convertible bonds. Read the full story on ENN.
The paper also reports that BT Ireland is looking at launching a community Wi-Fi service in the Republic after launching a comparable offering in the UK, as reported on ENN. A spokeswoman for BT Ireland said the company is "looking at opportunities to launch this into the Republic of Ireland". A spokesman for Fon said it "would be very interested in doing something similar in Ireland and have been in discussion with Irish broadband providers."
The same paper says that the Irish Software Association (ISA) has issued guidelines to help members tender for public sector contracts. "The feedback we got from the public sector buyers is that they would love to buy more from indigenous companies but very often they are not completing the tender documentation correctly," said Michele Quinn, director of the ISA. She said the guidelines were designed to make the tender process easier for member companies, and to demonstrate to the public sector that the software industry was taking the market seriously.
The paper also reports that property website Myhome.ie has blocked access to bloggers who have been compiling lists recording the steep falls in house prices over the past year. The website denied it was restricting information that might be of use to housebuyers and said it took the action last week to protect its good name and prevent breaches of the law. A number of websites track house price changes; until recently this was done manually and now the process has been automated through the use of web trawling software. Last week Myhome changed its format so that the names and prices of houses are now embedded in images, so they cannot be detected by web trawling software.
The same paper says additional premises are still being sought to store the 2,800 e-voting machines that will not fit in a new centralised premises in Gormanston, Co Meath. Some 3,000 of the 7,500 e-voting machines have now been moved from constituencies to Gormanston Aerodrome. However, it will only be able to accommodate 4,700 machines.
The same paper says that Jobfinder.ie has been relaunched by key members of its original management team. The recruitment website, which in April 2000 was sold to Norwegian group StepStone for STG7.9 million, was a pioneer of online recruitment in Ireland.
The Irish Independent says that shares in chip giant Intel fell by more than 2 percent in New York after a Morgan Stanley analyst said price cuts may drag down profit. Read more on this story as reported on ENN.
The Irish Examiner says that Ireland has gone from being one of the most expensive countries in the EU to one of the cheapest for making and receiving mobile calls abroad. Two months after the European Commission introduced a compulsory 'euro tariff', roaming charges have fallen drastically throughout the 27 Member States, as noted by ENN on Thursday. In Ireland prices have been slashed by more than 75 percent for calls home and by up to 90 percent for taking calls while abroad in another EU country.
According to the Financial Times, Alcatel-Lucent looks set to lose business with AT&T in a fresh blow to the troubled Franco-American telecoms equipment maker. AT&T, the world's largest telecoms company, awarded a USD2 billion contract in 2004 to Ericsson, Lucent and Siemens to supply 3G mobile infrastructure for its US wireless network. However, sources say Ericsson's share of the contract is to exceed 50 percent and AT&T has considered reducing its suppliers to two by dropping Alcatel-Lucent.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a German court has ordered Siemens to pay EUR201 million as prosecutors closed a part of Europe's largest bribery investigation. Europe's largest engineering company by sales said that the court-ordered penalty, which it won't appeal, is tied to alleged bribe payments at its telecoms equipment unit. A prosecutor in the case said the probe of that unit is now closed. Prosecutors also said that Reinhard Siekaczek, an ex-manager in the Siemens telecoms unit, was indicted last week in connection with the bribery probe.
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