Sofia  - The Bulgarian fuel retailer Petrol would become the Balkan country's fourth mobile phone operator this week, it said in a statement Monday.

B K Modi Group owned, Spice Televentures launched a new business venture, Mobisoc Technology Pvt Ltd. It would deliver internet enabled valued added services to the mobile users. The company would open IPO for listing the company after the recovery of normal market conditions.

The chairman of Spice Televentures, Mr Dilip Modi said that people prefer GPRS-enabled mobile phones and the new venture would offer assistance in value added services at economical rates. The company has set a target to capture 10 per cent market share by December 2009. It would also start a BPO operation by hiring 15000 people by the end of financial year.

With
the intention to support its service development platform (SDP), top
integrated telecom services provider Bharti Airtel has roped in about
100 companies such as Infosys, Indiagames, Mobile2Win, Versa,
Symbiotic, Pyro, Hungama and OnMobile amongst others.

Bharti along with IBM had invested around $100 million over the last
two years to build up this platform (SDP), which has now become fully
operational.

Bharti’s SDP is claimed to be the first-of-its-kind in India.

The main objective to come up with such a SDP is to allow these

Stockholm - Mobile telephone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday posted a loss for third quarter 2008, citing "challenging business conditions".

The group posted a pre-tax loss of 23 million euros (30 million dollars) for the quarter, compared to a pre-tax profit of 384 million euros for the corresponding business period in 2007.

Group turnover was 2.8 billion euros, down 10 per cent on third- quarter 2007, the joint venture between Japan's Sony and Sweden's Ericsson said.

Sony Ericsson said it sold 25.7 million handsets in the quarter, flat year on year, but slightly up compared to the 24.4 million handsets sold during the second quarter 2008.

Helsinki - Finnish-based Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said Thursday its operating profit dropped 21 per cent for third quarter 2008.

Operating profit for the quarter was 1.46 billion euros (1.98 billion dollars), compared to 1.86 billion euros for the corresponding business period 2007.

Net sales dropped 5 per cent in the quarter to 12.2 billion euros.

Nokia estimated that its share of the global handset market in third quarter 2008 was 38 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in the third quarter 2007 and 40 per cent in the second quarter 2008.

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has welcomed the proposal of department of telecommunication regarding separation of income from 2G and 3G services. 

The Director General of COAI, TV Ramachandran said that the proposal of DoT would speed up the 3 G technology rollout in the country. Thus, people of the country could avail broadband services at low price and in continuous manner. The body strongly advocated the segregation of GSM and WCDMA revenues.

Ramachandran said that UK has already separated the revenue from 3G and 2G services.