In the papers 12 February

12-02-2007

by Jonathan Farrelly

Vodafone wins battle for control of Hutchison Essar | 3GSM World Congress gets under way

The Irish Times reports that Cork firm Cubic Telecom has launched a service called allfreecalls.ie that enables phone calls to be made to 40 countries for the price of a local or national call. Read more on this story, as reported by ENN on 12 January.

The Irish Independent says that the Professional Insurance Brokers' Association (PIBA) is teaming up with Bestadvice.ie, an online broker price comparison tool. Under the deal, brokers will now be able to access price information on term insurance free of charge, and the offers also extends to members of other intermediary representative bodies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a group of major media companies has accused Google of benefiting from the sale of pirated movies and providing business support to two websites suspected of offering access to illegal film downloads, according to sources. The allegations are an embarrassment for Google, which assured the companies on Friday it would take measures to prevent a recurrence of the episode. At the core of the dispute is a claim that Google deliberately directed traffic to sites that were engaged in fostering piracy.

The Financial Times reports that Vodafone has won the fiercely contested battle for control of Hutchison Essar, in a deal valuing India's fourth largest mobile operator at almost USD19 billion. Vodafone has agreed to pay USD11.1 billion in cash for the 67 percent of Hutchison Essar owned by Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate. Vodafone is also assuming USD2 billion of net debt. The deal will be the single largest foreign investment in India's history.

The paper also says that social networking site MySpace has started a pilot programme aimed at detecting copyrighted video content by using the audio on videos to identify and track them. The move comes amid growing tension between traditional media companies and popular internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace about the widespread use of unauthorised copyrighted content. Using digital fingerprinting technology licensed from Audible Magic, MySpace said it would screen video uploaded by users and block any video matching a fingerprint in MySpace's database.

The Sunday Times reports that Tesco is to launch a 1,000 page supporting catalogue and 2,000 new product lines to its non-food website, Tesco Direct. The news comes after it was revealed that sales at Tesco.com, which includes the grocery site and Tesco Direct, rose by more than 30 percent to STG150 million in the six weeks to 6 January. The Tesco Direct site sells products ranging from car parts to equestrian gear and receives 1 million visits each week.

The paper also says that New York's Nasdaq technology bourse will keep its stake in the London Stock Exchange for another year but has been forced to give up its STG2.7 billion bid to take control of its British rival. Bob Greifeld, chief executive of the tech-heavy exchange, said he "felt down but not out" about the development.

The paper also reports that Irish engineering group Mercury is a shareholder in the Singapore company EU Networks, a firm that claims to own Europe's highest capacity fibre telecommunications network. Mercury is in the top 200 engineering contractors with more than EUR500 million in annual sales. Mercury holds its stake in EU Networks through Real Capital International, a company that owns 23 percent of EU Networks.

The Sunday Independent states that more than 90 percent of organisations expect to maintain or increase their IT staff numbers. The news comes from a study conducted by Amarach Consulting on behalf of the Irish Computer Society. The study also revealed that one in five companies reported difficulty in attracting applicants for their IT roles.

The Sunday Tribune says that EMI is reportedly in discussions to sell its digital music MP3 files without the copyright protection known as digital rights management software. It would mean that any digital music player could play any track purchased from any source and would revolutionise the digital music industry.

The Tribune also says that e-Net, the company that operates Ireland's Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), is aiming to double its turnover this year and reach profitibilty by the end of 2008. "Our revenue was EUR3.8 million last year. My ambition is to double that. We're trying to grow at about 5 percent to 10 percent per month," said Conal Henry, chief executive of e-Net.

The paper also states that the Communications Regulator has released a statement that said the lack of progress made by Eircom in opening its network is unacceptable after Magnet announced it is to pull back from the consumer broadband and telephone markets. Alternative operators such as Magnet, Smart and BT have previously been critical of the slow pace at which Eircom allows its customers move to competitors. The statement said "ComReg believes that to date the lack of sufficient progress [by Eircom] on local loop unbundling in ensuring both its robustness and its appeal to consumers is unacceptable."

The Sunday Business Post reveals that Dublin software firm MobileAware has raised EUR2 million in funding from investors. The company was founded in 1999 and makes software to put content on mobile phones and other devices. It's now raised EUR20 million in funding from investors including Nauta Capital, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners and Bank of America.

The paper also reports that Dublin technology firm Shenick Network Systems has released a new product to test movement of traffic through high-speed telecoms networks. The product mimics movement of traffic at 10 GB per second, allowing telecoms firms to prepare for the launch of services such as internet television.

The same paper also states that the founder of Dublin gaming software firm Havok is leading a new EUR2.5 million project to create a virtual map of Dublin called "Project Metropolis". Steven Collins is part of a research team at Trinity College Dublin that is working on the four-year initiative, which is being funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Collins said that the aim of Project Metropolis was to create the most realistic depiction to date of a virtual urban environment that will contain realistic street scenes, crowds, traffic and noise.

The paper also says that Cape Technologies, a Dublin telecoms software firm, has won deals for its revenue assurance software with telecoms operators in Asia, South America and Europe. When completed, the deals will see Cape's software manage transactions from 15 million phone subscribers.

Finally, the Sunday Business Post reports that more than 20 Irish software companies will be represented at this year's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Many of the companies will announce new products and contracts during the event, which starts on Monday. Jennifer Condon, head of software, services and emerging sectors at Enterprise Ireland, said that Ireland was considered "a centre of excellence" for mobile technologies.