Telefonica says no plans to take control of Telecom Italia

MILAN Thu Nov 14, 2013 6:19am EST

A man talks on a mobile phone as he walks past Spanish telecom group Telefonica's flagship store in central Madrid November 8, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Sergio Perez

MILAN (Reuters) - Telefonica (TEF.MC) will not exercise an option to increase to 100 percent its stake in Telco, the holding company that controls Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI), the chairman of the Spanish telecoms group told an Italian newspaper on Thursday.

In his first interview since Telefonica agreed on a deal to gradually take over its Italian rival by buying out co-shareholders in Telco, Cesar Alierta said he expected other Telco shareholders to keep some or all of their stakes until February 2015. That is when a shareholder agreement among investors in Telco expires.

"The structure of the new accords is very clear: Telefonica cannot own more than 49 percent of Telco," he told business daily Il Sole 24 Ore. "We have no intention of exercising the call (option)."

Alierta ruled out a merger between Telefonica and Telecom Italia.

"There is no need for a merger between Telefonica and Telecom, and this is not under consideration," he said.

He also said there were no plans to merge Telecom Italia's Brazilian unit TIM Participacoes (TIMP3.SA) with Telefonica's local unit Vivo (VIVT3.SA).

Telefonica reached a deal in September with its Italian partners in Telco - insurer Generali (GASI.MI) and banks Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI) and Mediobanca (MDBI.MI) - allowing it to take over the investment vehicle starting from 2014.

Telco controls Telecom Italia with a 22.4 percent stake and appoints a majority of board members at the phone group.

Following the Telco deal, Telecom Italia named Marco Patuano as new CEO and approved a new business plan. Minority investors accused the board of only looking after the interests of key shareholders.

The 4 billion-euro, three-year plan will cut Telecom Italia's debt to below 2.2 times core earnings while boosting investments in ultra broadband and 4G mobile networks. Alierta said the plan was "a good start".

He added it was important for Telecom Italia to develop its business through investment in high-speed networks.

On Thursday, Telecom Italia agreed to sell its entire stake in Telecom Argentina (TEC2.BA) to Fintech Group for $960 million.

(Reporting Danilo Masoni and Valentina Za)

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às 17:32

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Russia plans state-backed Web search engine named after Sputnik: report

A woman passes by an office of Russian telecoms firm Rostelecom in Moscow, November 21, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov

MOSCOW | Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:58am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - State-controlled telecoms group Rostelecom plans an internet search engine named after the Sputnik satellite, Vedomosti newspaper said on Friday, though analysts said the aim to muscle into the highly competitive Russian market was doomed.

The government has made moves to boost control over the Internet, but a state-backed search engine, to be called www.sputnik.ru, would face leading search engine company Yandex, with 62 percent of the market, U.S. giant Google and Mail.Ru.

"Search engines are a completely different area from the telecoms service business in which Rostelecom is involved," said VTB analyst Ivan Kim in a research note. "With its lack of expertise, the venture is unlikely to meet with success."

Rostelecom did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the project, to be named after the first man-made satellite, which was launched in October 1957.

The new search engine may have to be used by state institutions as a default tool, said Vedomosti, citing sources at Rostelecom and other Internet companies in its report. It said the project had cost $20 million so far.

Kim said the plan looked like it was imposed on Rostelecom by the state and would most likely be a cash drain.

Russia, with the largest internet audience in Europe, has increased state control over the Web, including launching a black list of sites distributing content such as child pornography, but which critics said could boost censorship.

Rostelecom is trying to hire developers from rivals to work on the search engine project, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2014, Vedomosti added. The project has so far indexed about half of the Russian Internet, it said.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts said in a note that developing high-quality search technology may require the best talent and long research and development and that the quality of search results may be well below that of leading firms.

"Even if the launch of Sputnik is well-executed, we do not expect it could significantly eat into the market shares of Yandex or Google," the Merrill Lynch analysts wrote.

(Reporting by Megan Davies and Maria Kiselyova, editing by Patrick Lannin)

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às 19:48

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AT&T limits new customers to data-share plans only

The AT&T logo is pictured by its store in Carlsbad, California, April 22, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

NEW YORK | Fri Oct 11, 2013 5:58pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New AT&T Inc customers will soon only be able to buy Mobile Share plans, which involve higher data fees, but allow subscribers to share data allowances among multiple devices.

The No. 2 U.S. mobile operator said on Friday the elimination of older plans for new customers would take effect on Oct 25. It said it was streamlining its offerings because the data-share plans are its most popular.

AT&T added that existing customers could keep their current plans, even when they are upgrading to a new device, unlike its biggest rival Verizon Wireless. Both companies introduced shared-data service plans in 2012.

Investors say these plans could help operators such as AT&T and Verizon retain customers at a time when competition is ramping up in the U.S. wireless industry.

In particular, AT&T is facing increasingly aggressive competition from No. 4 U.S. operator T-Mobile US Inc, which compares itself directly to AT&T in its marketing.

The idea of is that customers subscribing to shared-data plans might be less inclined to switch to another carrier if their cellular service for several devices, including smartphones and tablet computers, is attached a single plan.

Carriers also see the plans as a way to encourage subscribers to add more devices and increase how much they spend on cellphone service.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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às 12:13

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Google unveils plans for user names, comments to appear in ads

A Google logo is seen at the entrance to the company's offices in Toronto September 5, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Chris Helgren

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:28pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc plans to launch new product-endorsement ads incorporating photos, comments and names of its users, in a move to match the "social" ads pioneered by rival Facebook Inc that is raising some privacy concerns.

The changes, which Google announced in a revised terms of service policy on Friday, set the stage for Google to introduce "shared endorsements" ads on its sites as well as millions of other websites that are part of Google's display advertising network.

The new types of ads would use personal information of the members of Google+, the social network launched by the company in 2011.

If a Google+ user has publicly endorsed a particular brand or product by clicking on the +1 button, that person's image might appear in an ad. Reviews and ratings of restaurants or music that Google+ users share on other Google services, such as in the Google Play online store, would also become fair game for advertisers.

The ads are similar to the social ads on Facebook, the world's No. 1 social network, which has 1.15 billion users.

Those ads are attractive to marketers, but they unfairly commercialize Internet users' images, said Marc Rotenberg, the director of online privacy group EPIC.

"It's a huge privacy problem," said Rotenberg. He said the U.S. Federal Trade Commission should review the policy change to determine whether it violates a 2011 consent order Google entered into which prohibits the company from retroactively changing users' privacy settings.

Users under 18 will be exempt from the ads and Google+ users will have the ability to opt out. But Rotenberg said users "shouldn't have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change."

Information Google+ users have previously shared with a limited "circle" of friends will remain viewable only to that group, as will any shared endorsement ads that incorporate the information, Google said in a posting on its website explaining the new terms of service.

Google, which makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, operates the world's most popular Web search engine as well as other online services such as maps, email and video website YouTube.

The revised terms of service are the latest policy change by Google to raise privacy concerns. Last month, French regulators said they would begin a process to sanction Google for a 2012 change to its policy that allowed the company to combine data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. Google has said its privacy policy respects European law and is intended to create better services for its users.

Google's latest terms of service change will go live on November 11.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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às 07:47

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Without grand plans for China, U.S., Sony set to lag in smartphones

Sony Corp's President and Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai speaks during the Sony Corporate Strategy Meeting at the company's headquarters in Tokyo May 22, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai

By Reiji Murai and Sophie Knight

TOKYO | Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:07am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - Kazuo Hirai's plan to restore Sony Corp to lasting profitability rests in large part on its smartphones leapfrogging rivals to become the world's third-biggest sellers after the Apple iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy series.

But that goal remains some way off. Sony's CEO, installed last year with a brief to turn the serial loss maker around, said on Friday that for now, Sony has no big plans for the world's two largest smartphone markets, China and the United States.

Instead, Hirai said Sony, which aims to rise to third position from its current ranking of seventh, will focus on Europe and its home market in Japan, which collectively account for 60 percent of its smartphone sales.

"Those two are the most important areas for us and we'll put substantial resources there. But not yet for the U.S. and China," Hirai told a gathering of journalists.

"It's not realistic to try to do everything at once. In the U.S. we'll start gradually."

In the U.S., only the fourth-largest carrier T-Mobile US Inc offers Sony smartphones. Meanwhile, Sony has been unable to compete in China with homegrown brands from ZTE to CoolPad despite contracts with the three largest carriers.

Sony is not among the top five smartphone brands in either of those markets, according to research firm IDC. Its global share of the smartphone market was a modest 2.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm Gartner, trailing the likes of LG Electronics Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd as well as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

Hirai has positioned mobile devices as one of the three pillars for a turnaround of the company's electronics unit, which relied on help from a weak yen to post a profit in the latest quarter - its first quarterly profit in two years.

The other two key divisions are games, where the PlayStation 4 console due for launch next month has drawn strong pre-orders, and digital imaging, where Sony dominates the production of image sensors for smartphone cameras.

Against that background, smartphones could end up the weakest link in the strategy.

NOT EXCEPTIONAL

"Their devices are OK but frankly not compelling. They're fine, but they're not exceptional," said Benedict Evans, an independent mobile and telecommunications analyst based in London.

"But the deeper problem is that when you're selling devices made on someone else's platform it's extremely difficult to differentiate."

Even in its home market, where Sony ranked No. 2 in the latest quarter behind Apple, the outlook has become tougher. Last month Japan's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo Inc, which in its summer campaign favored Sony's Xperia over other domestic brands, struck a deal with Apple to carry the latest iPhone.

Still, Hirai said the Xperia's established reputation in Japan should help to see off the threat from Apple. "We have strong brand recognition here for Xperia's hardware and services," Hirai said.

The company has set a target of selling 42 million smartphones worldwide in the financial year to next March, an increase of 27 percent from a year ago.

In 2012, Samsung shipped 218.2 million Galaxy phones while Apple sold 135.9 million iPhones, according to IDC.

(Reporting by Reiji Murai and Sophie Knight; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Kenneth Maxwell)

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às 23:35

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Starting October 25th, new AT&T customers have an option between shared data plans and...shared data

Starting October 25th, new AT&T customers have an option between shared data plans and...shared data plans. Existing users will be able to keep whatever plan they currently have; AT&T won't shunt you off. But anybody who's switching over now is going to have pick a share plan. No ifs ands or buts. [Engadget]

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às 08:41

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