DOC loses right to communicate

There was a flood of quarterly results in the international ICT market last week, as well as a handful of small acquisitions. At home, the Department of Communications (DOC) was refused the right to appeal the High Court ruling regarding self-provisioning.

* Negative trading updates from Ansys and Vox Telecom.
* The Pretoria High Court refused communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri the right to appeal a judgement that found in favour of Altech last month. The case follows the ongoing battle between the department and the value-added network service providers.
* DVT Holdings acquired Cape-based Emerald Consulting, a provider of software and related services to the legal sector.
* TeleMasters bought One Communications, a division of African Paradigm Communications and a provider of least-cost routing assets.
* Ansys has entered a heads of agreement with AR Process Projects regarding the purchase of the company. The company provides project management services and engineering solutions to support the infrastructural projects of its customers.
* UK-based Probability will offer its cellphone gambling services in SA.
* Sentech has switched on its first digital transmitter for digital TV.
* Specialised Exhibitions will bring IP Expo Africa to this country in conjunction with Imago Communications, an event that will run in place of Computer Faire, starting in October 2009.
* RSA, a subsidiary of EMC, opened a local office, as did Norwegian video conferencing company, Tandberg.
* Rob Watson was appointed country manager of RSA South Africa.

* John Joseph, CEO of Africa Online (a subsidiary of Telkom SA), died.

Notebook shipments in the US exceeded desktop PCs in Q308 for the first time, reported IDC.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CenturyTel acquired another US-based telephone carrier, Embarq, for $5.8 billion. This is a significant step forward in the long-awaited consolidation of the US's regional phone service providers. It is a reverse take-over, as Embarq has over twice the revenue of CenturyTel ($6.3 billion versus $2.67 billion) and has a market capitalisation of $4.33 billion as opposed to $2.62 billion.
* Logitech International bought US-based SightSpeed, a provider of high-quality Internet video communications services, for $30 million.
* Open Text purchased Captaris, a provider of software products that automate document-centric business processes.
* Oracle acquired RuleBurst Holdings, the parent company of Haley, a provider of policy modelling and automation software.
* Telenor (Norway) bought Unitech Wireless (India), a fledgling mobile operator in a market growing by eight million new subscribers per month. The deal was worth $1.07 billion (a 60% stake).
* Vodafone made an additional investment in Polkomtel (Poland), a move that raises its shareholding to 24.4%.
* A new networking start-up, Arista Networks, will compete against Cisco and other companies in selling switching gear for data centres that manage Web services and other data-intensive operations. The founder is Andreas Bechtolsheim, a hardware designer and one of the founders of Sun Microsystems. He will assume the chairman's role, while Jayshree Ullal, a former executive at Cisco, will assume the CEO role.
* Motorola will delay its mobile phone spin-off.
* Very good quarterly figures from Bharti Airtel and Diebold.
* Good quarterly numbers from Comcast, Gartner (profit up 50%), Micros Systems and Software AG.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ACS, CA, France Telecom, NEC (back in the black), Patni Computer Systems (India), Plantronics, Symantec, TeliaSonera, Verizon Communications (although profit up over 30%) and Zain (Celtel).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Alcatel-Lucent (back in the black), BCE, BMC Software, Canon, Eastman Kodak (although profit up threefold), Embarq, Fujitsu, Garmin, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, McAfee, MicroStrategy, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Qwest Communications, SAP, Saudi Telecom, SES, Sharp, Softbank, Sony (profit down 72%), TomTom and Zebra Technologies.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Epicor (revenue up 30% but profit down 50%) and Fiserv (revenue up 17% but profit down 35%).
* Quarterly losses from Hitachi, Motorola, NEC Electronics, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba and Unisys.
* Hanif Lalani was appointed CEO of BT Group as Francois Barrault resigned after only 18 months in that position.

* Notebook shipments in the US exceeded desktop PCs in Q308 for the first time, reported IDC.
* Mobile phone shipments in Q308 rose only 3.2% from last year. Nokia and Samsung remained in the top two positions, with over 55% market share between them, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 13.7%
* Nasdaq: Up 10.9%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+20.4%), Ansys (-36%), Blue Label Telecoms (+23.1%), Faritec (+20%), ISA (+25%), Ideco (-21.1%), MICROmega (-35%), MTN (+47.3%), Mustek (+20%), Reunert (+24.5%) and Zaptronix (+33.3%)

Total Telecom magazine has published its annual Global 100 Telecommunications listing. There are no changes at the top. However, the following interesting changes should be noted: China Mobile has risen to number eight from number 11; Telmex (Mexico) has dropped to 26 from 17; MTN has risen to 28 from 43; and BSNL (India) has dropped to 39 from 29.