For the record 19 September
Thursday, September 19 2002
by Sylvia Leatham

The telecommunications Regulator, Etain Doyle, warned on Thursday that despite the developments made in the Irish communications industry, growing costs could erode national competitiveness if left unchecked. She made her comments at a conference organised by the ODTR entitled "Regulatory Challenges & Opportunities for the ICT Sector - New EU Framework, New Market Perspectives." Doyle said that that the nation need to develop its use of information technology and "ensure that its full potential is realised in order to ensure that our business sector can thrive and prosper not only in the current fragile market but into the future".

WorldCom is preparing another revision to its financial results that could add around USD2 billion to the USD7 billion in accounting problems it has already disclosed, according to the Wall Street Journal Online. WorldCom officials are expected to present the company's new findings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. People familiar with the situation cautioned that the USD2 billion figure may be preliminary in a "fluid" situation as WorldCom representatives conduct a forensic review of the company's accounts.

Hutchison 3G has announced agreements with five companies to deliver the digital mapping technology and location-based services that will be offered to consumers under the 3 brand later this year. As noted by ElectricNews.neton Wednesday, Ordnance Survey will provide Hutchison with detailed and intelligent digital mapping data for over 400 million features in Britain. Tele Atlas will provide mapping data for the UK and Europe, supplying detailed street plans for over 30,000 cities. In addition, whereonearth, IONIC Software and TCS will deliver a technology platform to support the location-based services.

Shares in IBM fell 6.2 percent on Thursday after analysts reduced stock price and profit estimates in the wake of EDS's slashing of its profit forecast, as reported by ElectricNews.net. Lehman Brothers cut its share-price forecast for IBM by 11 percent to USD80 a share, and JP Morgan Chase said the stock may drop to as low as USD60. In addition, Credit Suisse First Boston said IBM "may be challenged" to exceed USD10 billion in third quarter service bookings.

AIB customers with on-line business current accounts can now opt to receive interest on credit balances over EUR1. AIB says it is the first bank in Ireland to pay interest on business current accounts. Last week, the bank wrote to over 100,000 business customers informing them of the new service, which is available only to customers who use the on-line banking service.

BT is spending STG1 million a day on an intensive TV advertising campaign that aims to boost the uptake of broadband in the UK. A total of STG10 million will be spent in 10 days between 22 September and 2 October on the broadband campaign, named "possibilities". BT is hoping to have 1 million ADSL broadband connections by summer 2003 and to increase its average weekly sign-up to the service from 12,000 to 24,000.

BTexact Technologies, BT's advanced research and technology business, says that its patented telecommunications technology could help speed the development of new drugs. At the Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships symposium for the pharmaceutical industry, BTexact described how technology developed in its intelligent systems laboratory could streamline the process of developing marketable drugs. BTexact recommended the drugs industry adopt its iPAF (Intelligent Personal Assistant Framework), a framework that makes the search and retrieval of information more efficient. The company also said that its expertise in the area of "evolutionary computation" could be used to rapidly synthesise and test a large number of drug compound combinations.

Channel 4 is preparing to launch a new 24-hour iTV (interactive television) service through the Sky Digital platform. The new channel, 4Active, will join C4's other pay-TV services, E4 and FilmFour, and will act as a programme guide. It is thought that 4Active may be used to fill C4's available segment on the free-to-air DTT Freeview platform.

Sony has announced the shipment of its 40 millionth PlayStation2 games console. The new sales figure was reached just four-and-a-half months after PS2 sales hit the 30 million mark. The growth rate suggests that Sony has suffered little from the launch of Microsoft's Xbox.

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, the joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, has said that top-of-the-line P800 mobile phone and PDA will not hit the market until late in the fourth quarter. Originally, the company said it would launch the unit by the end of this month. The struggling company, which has seen market share wither over the last year, said the tri-band, colour camera-phone will be in shops before Christmas.

Walt Disney Corporation, along with mobile operators AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS Group, said on Thursday that they had signed a number of mobile content deals in the US for subscribers to the telecoms' high-speed networks. Both telecoms will also sell various Disney ringtones and logos to subscribers.

Zetafax has installed a 600-user licence for its departmental fax-server software at Kingspan Group, a manufacturer of insulation products and building components. The software, which is already installed in over 700 organisations throughout Ireland and in 50,000 worldwide, allows employees to send and receive faxes directly from their desktop.

Although Hewlett-Packard dominated the computer data storage market in Q2, the newly merged company's sales slipped, according to a report by technology research firm IDC. The new H-P had a 25 percent share of the market in second quarter sales of external disk storage systems, IBM held 16 percent of the market, while EMC had a 14 percent market share. Nonetheless, H-P was the only vendor in the top five to lose market share compared with the first quarter, IDC said, with sales falling 6 percent to USD1.17 billion.

In other news of EMC, the storage software company has enhanced its "ControlCenter" family of intelligent supervision software. The enhanced software, which makes it easier for disparate machines to communicate, is part of EMC's AutoIS strategy for managing storage networks, where the key elements include allowing IT managers to monitor infrastructure made up of multiple vendors. The new products include end-to-end automated storage provisioning software.