Asian telecoms this month

Telecom Asia, July, 2004

SYDNEY:

Telstra pledges to return $A1.5b ($1.03b) to shareholders annually for the next three financial years, and raise dividends by a third in a move it hopes will appease shareholders unhappy with its recent acquisitions and record overseas.

Telstra signs a license agreement with NTT DoCoMo to offer i-mode service in Australia.

AAPT and Telstra reach an agreement on wholesale DSL prices, four months after the incumbent carrier dropped retail prices without warning. David Havyatt, AAPT's head of regulatory affairs, says he is happy with the deal but is wary that Telstra could relapse to anti-competitive behavior again.

WELLINGTON:

Telecom Corp of New Zealand will spend $NZ40m ($25m) upgrading its cdma2000 network to EV-DO. The company contracts Lucent Technologies to upgrade its network and plans to roll out its 'T3G' EV-DO service to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, as well as key holiday destinations such as Queenstown, by Christmas, beating rival Vodafone New Zealand, which plans to offer W-CDMA3G service from mid-2005.

TCNZ will spend NZ$58m ($37m) on rural telecoms networks in the financial year from July 2004.

SINGAPORE:

M1 awards Nokia a contract under the existing frame agreement to supply equipment and services for the third phase of its W-CDMA3G network rollout.

SingTel partners with Phee! Phoo! to introduce high-quality music and video streaming for its mobile customers.