Stockholm - Mobile telephone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday reported a fourth-quarter loss and lower sales, describing the 2008 business year as "tumultuous" in the wake of the global economic downturn.

The group posted a pre-tax loss excluding restructuring costs of 133 million euros (174 million dollars) for the quarter, compared to a pre-tax profit of 501 million euros for the corresponding business period in 2007.

Restructuring costs in the quarter were 129 million euros.

A consultation paper on “Bandwidth required for ISPs for better connectivity and improved quality of service”, was released on Thursday by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

It is learnt that TRAI has issued this process to seek the views of the stakeholders so that it can develop a framework to fortify the existing regulations on quality of broadband service.

According to TRAI, there is a strong prerequisite to identify easily monitorable and enforceable QoS measures. This is mainly in regard to guarantee that a bare minimum (floor) bandwidth is on hand with service providers for provisioning of broadband and internet services with reasonable assured quality to its subscribers.

Angered by the telecos that did not responded to the directions for installing equipment identification registers or EIRs, the Government of India's Department of Telecom has issued stricter warnings and has extended the deadline to April 15.

Siemens India Ltd on Tuesday informed Bombay Stock Exchange that it has transferred all its stake in its IT arm--Siemens Information Systems (SISL) to a subsidiary of Siemens AG- Siemens Corporate Finance.

Siemens' Managing Director, Armin Bruck said that realignment of software business is done to separate low and high margin business. Siemens Information Systems get
70 per cent of its revenue from its parent company.

The Union Ministry of Communications & Information Technology has provided 4.4 MHz of Spectrum in 1800 MHz GSM band to Unitech Ltd for the West Bengal telecom circle. The company has announced that it would soon start telecom services in the West Bengal Service Area.

The company has already been allotted spectrum in 21 service areas. The telecom arm of real estate major Unitech Ltd, Unitech Wireless is also planning to launch 3G services in near future. State run MTNL has already launched 3G services in national Capital Region.

It was announced by India's top mobile operator, Bharti Airtel on Monday that mobile services in Sri Lanka has been launched by it and the company would also invest $200 million on the operation in the island.

Via its subsidiary Bharti Airtel Lanka, the company has launched the services on a third generation network. A suite of innovative services and redefined affordability by offering attractive call rates has also been launched by Airtel.