Telecom Corp of New Zealand Ltd has won anti-trust clearance to buy into the country’s biggest pay television company Sky Network Television despite strong objections from its smaller rival Clear Communications: the Commerce Commission cleared Telecom to buy 25% of Sky for an undisclosed sum from Baby Bells Ameritech Corp and Bell Atlantic Corp, which each own one-quarter of Telecom and which are selling their 49% holding in HKP Partnership which owns 51% of Sky; Clear this month ended a long-running battle over terms for an interconnection agreement with Telecom and already applied for a stay to prevent Telecom buying into Sky immediately said it would appeal the decision; it said it would have to look seriously at its plans to extend its phone network into residential services in the light of the Commission’s decision because an important part of the recent interconnection agreement between Telecom and Clear was that it allowed Clear to provide competing local services, but since domestic customers get free local calls from Telecom, pay television and associated services form an important part of the local telecommunications residential market; another Baby Bell, BellSouth Corp which runs a rival cellular network to Telecom, also said it would appeal against the decision, but the Commission concluded the proposal would not result in the acquisition or strengthening of dominance in the retail television broadcasting market.
America Online Ltd reports that it has completed its previously-announced acquisition of Israeli company Ubique Ltd, provider of real-time interaction and joint navigation for the Internet for $14.6m, $13.2m in the form of 216,214 new shares and the rest in cash: the company said it has also funded about $600,000 of shareholder debt owed by Ubique and its purchase of some of its technology for $1m.
The Swedish subsidiary of Anglo-French systems house Sema Group Plc announced Friday a five-year facilities management contract with Swedish insurance group Lansforsakringsbolagens AB worth $13m; under the contract, 30 staff from the insurer will transfer over to Sema Group AB, which will take charge of its AS/400, HP 9000 and VAX computer systems and their applications.
Even Digital Equipment Corp was surprised when Oracle Corp told us the business it did on DEC VAXes and Alphas was its number two revenue earner in the fourth quarter of its last financial year to May, behind its Hewlett-Packard Co revenue stream; it hasn’t calculated its first quarter breakdowns yet.
Tokyo-based Sanyo Electric Co Ltd said it has developed new technology to manufacture high-quality liquid crystal display panels at low cost, and will start sample shipments in mid-1996: the low-temperature process for manufacturing poly-silicon thin-film transistor colour panels enables it to make small panels as much as 40% more cheaply than with conventional technology; the company said electronics makers have been competing fiercely to develop low-cost manufacturing technology and Sanyo has made the breakthrough for production of 2.4 poly-silicon thin-filmtransistor liquid crystal displays.
Plymouth, Minnesota-based server design and manufacturing specialist Tricord Systems Inc has signed an OEM agreement with Novell Inc under which it will supply and support Novell’s NetWare operating system on its new PowerFrame Enterprise Server, designed for business-critical applications: Tricord will also serve as a development consultant to Novell on symmetric multi-processing applications and will provide customer sites for beta testing; through a technical support alliance with Novell, Tricord, which has technical support staff trained in Novell’s products, will also provide its channel partners with one single point of support.
NEC Corp says it has developed a mobile multimedia teleconferencing system which enables users to participate in teleconferences wherever they can be reached by mobile phone and hopes to launch a product based on the technology next year: the company said its sy
stem also offers users a portable computer terminal that enables them to conduct a conference call by plugging into a Personal Handy Phone system through NEC’s wireless server software; the system can also be linked to NEC’s OfficeMermaid groupware system, as well as desktop teleconferencing systems and other applications; NEC plans to unveil the technology at the Telecom 95 industry conference which begins in Geneva on October 3.
The telephone operations unit of GTE Corp, Irving, Texas said it will demonstrate video applications over its US-wide Asynchronous Transfer Mode network, which fully integrates video and high-speed data networking, in October: GTE said the video applications are made possible through an agreement with Vancouver-based MPR Teltech Ltd, which is providing its eight Technology Solution Centres with Wave, an Asynchronous Transfer-based video system that is typically used for telemedicine, business conferencing and distance learning, the company said; GTE’s network links its eight technology solution centres across the US and provides customers access to services and applications through the network.
Sound like anyone you know? Like a perpetually lost couple who can’t stop bickering about which way to go, writes the San Jose Mercury News of – Apple Computer Inc and IBM Corp arguing again over whether PowerPC would have its best shot on the desktop running Mac OS or OS/2 – to which analyst Seymour Merrin responds the question is, do you have babies to save the marriage?
