Top executives are gathered in Barcelona for the annual Mobile
World Congress.
Following are Tuesday's top stories from the conference, which
concludes Thursday.
KT CORP. (KT) plans to make a final decision "within weeks" on
the purchase of a 20% stake in struggling South African operator
Telkom SA Ltd. (TKG.JO), a top KT official said.
KT is currently completing due diligence ahead of the deal, Pyo
Hyun-Myung, the president of KT's Mobile Business Group, told Dow
Jones Newswires.
The South Korean company announced talks to buy the stake in
October last year, but negotiations have dragged on since, as KT
seeks to expand in markets with growth potential, given the
saturated state of its home market. In South Africa, fixed-line
users account for 8.2% of the population, compared with 76% for
mobile users, according to data from World Wide Worx.
European Commissioner Neelie Kroes issued a stern rebuke to
Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) Tuesday after its chief executive Vittorio
Colao complained about regulated cuts to telephone rates.
In a statement that she called a "message to Vittorio and
Vodafone," Kroes, who is commissioner in charge of the digital
agenda, said she is calling the company's bluff and that she
doesn't "respond well to threats."
"I take the side of the Vodafone customer... If consumers lose
the fear of using their smartphones and tablets [because of lower
fees] when traveling across Europe, operators will benefit as
well," Kroes said.
TELECOM ITALIA SPA (TI) Chairman Franco Bernabe said the
subsidies mobile operators use to attract customers to phone
contracts are too high in Europe, and will likely come down in the
coming years.
"We are subsidizing our own competitors--that has to change,"
Bernabe said during a press briefing.
Like other operators, Telecom Italia has been hit by the
emergence of mobile apps such as WhatsApp and Skype, which allow
customers to send messages and make calls over the Internet for
free using their smartphones. The popularity of these services has
taken a bite out of operators' revenue.
TELIASONERA AB (TELN.SK) said it will start charging customers
for making calls over the Internet on mobile phones as the
technology threatens to erode the company's revenue.
As high-speed fourth generation mobile network technology gains
traction, Voice over Internet Protocol--a technology enabling
Web-based telephone calls--is likely to replace traditional phone
calls, TeliaSonera's Chief Executive Lars Nyberg said.
"Eventually, all voice calls will be made over IP," Nyberg told
Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.
BHARTI AIRTEL LTD. (532454.BY) Chairman Sunil Mittal said mobile
telephone operators need to make a sustained push into the market
of international money transfers in India.
India has fewer than 100,000 bank branches serving a population
of over 1 billion, while Bharti alone has over 1 million phone
stores, with another million owned by other mobile companies, the
chairman of the Indian telecoms giant said.
India was the world's biggest recipient of migrant worker
remittances last year, with $58 billion sent back to the country,
just ahead of China with $57 billion, according to World Bank data.
Worldwide, remittances in the developing world topped $350
billion.
"All of this needs to move through mobile networks," Mittal
said.
MASTERCARD INC.'s (MA) head of mobile product development said
the old-fashioned credit card is here to stay for a while, despite
mobile payment services starting to gain traction.
"There will be a period of co-existence for a long while," James
Anderson said.
The trouble is it requires a lot of different players to make
paying via a mobile phone a success, he added.
TELEFONICA SA's (TEF) German unit chief said smartphones could
cost as little as EUR50 in the foreseeable future.
Rene Schuster said he expects some smartphones to be available
for less than EUR100 in Germany by next year, adding that the time
will come when they cost as little as EUR50, although he didn't
refer to a specific country in the latter remark.
-By David Roman, Sven Grundberg and Archibald Preuschat, Dow
Jones Newswires