Asia Pacific

BSNL is likely to award a US$673 million GSM expansion deal to a consortium of Alcatel-Lucent and ITI Ltd, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

The proposal by India’s Telecommunication Commission (TC) to only allow three mobile providers to operate 3G services has caused uproar among the wider mobile operator community. As reported by the Times of India, the TC intends to auction three licences with an initial allocation of 10MHz spectrum as against the more typical 5MHz spectrum.

Japanese mobile operator KDDI is reported to be planning to migrate to LTE by 2010 as the next-generation mobile standard moves towards worldwide acceptance.

Japanese mobile operators KDDI and Softbank have closed the gap on market leader NTT DoCoMo over the last 12 months, according to new figures.

Beijing-based Orsus Xelent Technologies, a handset supplier to the Asian market, says it will have a line of TD-SCDMA-enabled 3G phones ready in time for the launch of China Mobile's 3G network.

Australia's blogging community is awash with speculation that Apple is planning to launch a multi-carrier, contract-free 3G version of the iPhone in the country in June.

New data from EJL Wireless Research reveals that Chinese vendor ZTE won 34% of the 47 mobile basestation contract wins awarded in first quarter of the year.