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The Irish Times reports that telecoms lobby group ALTO has recommended that the telecoms regulator should retain the existing price cap on retail telecoms services. ALTO (the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators in Ireland) represents the interests of new entrant operators in the Republic, including Esat BT, Budget Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Chorus, Colt and ESB Telecommunications. The group also said that the telecoms regulator should ignore Eircom's claims that the retail cap is hindering new entrants and preventing investment and should introduce a wholesale price cap. "To remove the price cap would give Eircom carte blanche to increase prices where they have a monopoly and squeeze competition out of the market by lowering the retail prices for other services," Iarla Flynn, chairman of ALTO, said.
The Irish Independent reports that travel Web site Lastminute.com has narrowed its losses and won more customers in the last quarter. Read the full story on ElectricNews.net.
The paper also says that Ireland Live Television News is to deliver live news content to O2's XDA handheld devices. Read the full story on ElectricNews.net.
According to the Financial Times, Asian phone company Singapore Telecommunications has reported a smaller-than-expected drop in first quarter profits, mostly due to a strong showing from its offshore ventures. Net profits fell 37 percent to SGD377 million (USD221.9m), or SGD0.021 a share, in the three months ended 30 June, from SGD601 million, or SGD0.039 share, in the year-earlier period. Sales almost doubled to SGD2.46 billion, largely due to the contribution from Optus, Australia's second-largest telecoms operator, which SingTel bought last year.
The same paper reports that AIT, the beleaguered UK financial services software group, has outlined the terms of a rescue rights issue and appointed a new executive team. The company, which in June revealed it was struggling under STG11.3 million in debt, announced a STG20.5 million refinancing plan, including a placing and rights issue which aims to raise STG12.5 million for the company before expenses. The board named Nicholas Randall, who has a series of turnaround successes at UK companies behind him, as chief executive and Matthew White, who has managed distressed businesses at Arthur Andersen, as chief financial officer.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Intel plans to provide a new level of detail about its employee stock-option programs to enable shareholders to make more informed decisions about approving them. Starting with a quarterly US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the semiconductor firm's Form 10Q report will include a table that highlights option grants over five years, the dilution caused by issuing the options, and the percentage of the options that went to the company's five highest-paid employees. However, the company is not adopting the new trend of accounting for options each quarter as regular business expenses.
The paper also says that RealNetworks is planning to cut around 90 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce, as it attempts to recover from a slump in demand for its multimedia-server software. The company said it will take a charge of between USD4 million and USD6 million for the staff reductions and related restructuring moves. The company, which said it plans to refocus its systems-software business around the recently announced Helix Community Platform and Helix Universal Server, made no changes to its third quarter financial guidance.
German newspaper Die Welt reports that Vodafone is to delay the rollout of its 3G UMTS services in Germany by six months. Juergen von Kuczkowski, the head of Vodafone's German business, D2, also said that revenue from 3G will make up less than 10 percent of Vodafone's total revenues until 2005. News of the delay follows an announcement from Orange earlier this week that it had asked Swedish regulators to allow the company an extra three years to build a new network.
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