Telkom gets unbundling extension

The private equity buyout of Alltel, and the joint venture set up by Intel and STMicroelectronics, dominated the international ICT market last week. At home, the pronouncements by government regarding various telecommunications issues stole most of the local ICT headline space.

* Goldman Sacks and Texas Pacific Group bought out US wireless carrier Alltel for $27.5 billion.

* Very good year-end figures from African Cellular Towers, with revenue up over 50% and profit up nearly 50%.
* A positive trading update from Stella Vista.
* The J&J Group's investment in Faritec increased to 30%.
* The appointments of Jimi Matthews as head of Telkom's proposed 24-hour news service, Telkom Media; Benjamin Mophatlane as CEO of Business Connexion; and James Theledi as CEO of the Universal Services and Access Agency of SA.
* The retirement of Peter Watt, CEO of Business Connexion.
* Telkom received a four-year local loop unbundling extension.

* Satisfactory Q1 figures from Orascom Telecom, with revenue up over 20% but profit only up 7%.
* Good Q1 numbers from Telecom Egypt, with revenue up 9% but profit up 22%.

Several private equity companies and Rohm are interested in a deal to buy out Sanyo's chip unit for up to $1.2 billion.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Intel and STMicroelectronics (45.1%/48.6%) have created a joint venture that will house the flash memory chip operations of both companies. Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, will hold the remaining shareholding. The new company will be based in Switzerland, with Carlo Bozotti (STMicro President and CEO) as its chairman and Brain Harrison (GM of Intel's flash-memory group) as its CEO.
* Cisco acquired BroadWare Technologies, a provider of software for Web-based monitoring, management, recording and storage of video and audio.
* BenQ will sell its digital camera unit to Ability Enterprise, a Taiwanese digital camera producer.
* A job loss announcement from Swisscom.

* Several private equity companies and Rohm are interested in a deal to buy out Sanyo's chip unit for up to $1.2 billion.
* South Korea's largest Internet company, NHN, may be bought out.

* According to SEMI, worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings rose 4% to $10.75 billion in Q107.
* Gartner and IDC research shows the worldwide server market grew 4.5% and 4.9% respectively in Q107, with both firms disagreeing as to whether HP or IBM is number one.
* Shipments of Windows Mobile PDAs grew 64% in Q107, and worldwide PDA shipments in Q107 grew 39.7% to 5.1 million units, reported Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.7%
* Nasdaq: No measurable change
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (-8.3%), Cape Empowerment Trust (+10.6%), Faritec (+14.3%), Infowave (-10.1%), Sekunjalo (+14.9%), Stella Vista (+15.4%) and Vestor (-8.8%)
* Top international share movements: Aruba Networks (+27.5%), Forgent Networks (-22.5%), Geoworks (-25%), Glowpoint (+24.5%), Isonics (+22%), RadView Software (-27.3%), SEMX (+66.7%) and Vimicro International (+26.3%)

BusinessWeek published its report on the world's 25 most innovative companies. From a technology perspective, the organisations in the list included Apple at number one; Google at number two; Microsoft at five; IBM at nine; Sony at 10; Nokia at 13; Samsung Electronics at 17; Intel at 19; Dell at 22 and Cisco at 25.