Mobile messaging and data management systems vendor Acision has bagged an additional US$100 million in new funding from its existing investors to "build on its position in the mobile data market, while continuing to provide innovative solutions which enable mobile operators to control, optimise and monetise mobile data traffic." The UK-based company, which has just launched its mobile video optimization platform, says it has scored a number of "strategic wins" with operators in Canada, India, Pakistan, and Eastern Europe in recent months. (See Acision Lands $100M Backing and Acision Unveils Media Optimiser.)
Three years after buying a 70 percent chunk of SB Telecom, which owns Belarusian mobile operator Velcom (formerly MDC), Telekom Austria has snapped up the remaining 30 percent for €335 million ($462 million). Velcom, which has about 4.2 million customers, is the number two player in Belarus, a land-locked East European country that borders Russia. The mobile market leader in Belarus is regional giant Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS) (NYSE: MBT). (See Telekom Austria Completes Velcom Buy.)
According to The Financial Times, board meetings of the new mobile superpower created by the merger of VimpelCom Ltd. (NYSE: VIP), Orascom Telecom , and Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA could be very lively affairs indeed, as neither VimpelCom's Mikhail Fridman nor Orascom's Naguib Sawiris are averse to a spot of legal argy-bargy, should the mood take them. (See VimpelCom Gets Wind.)
Hadopi, the government agency set up to lead the fight against illegal downloading in France, has sent out its first batch of warning emails, to possibly naughty subscribers of Bouygues Telecom and Numericable-SFR , reports The Connexion.
How low can you go? In the case of UK mobile operator Three UK , you can now go as low as £2.00 ($3.20) a day -- for mobile broadband that is. Its new Pay Per Day deal offers 500 Mbytes of data, equating, says 3, to five hours of Internet browsing or 500 emails. Not so much "all you can eat" as "all you can fit in a small lunchbox."
— Paul Rainford, freelance editor, special to Light Reading