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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (499)	9/16/2005 2:51:00 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217656

More beauty: To make itself attractive (too late) to investors is cutting 1.000 workers. Colombia ETB to Cut Quarter of Jobs by End of 2006 (Update2) Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota, the main telephone company in Colombia's capital, plans to cut 1,000 employees to reduce costs and make business more attractive to foreign partners such as Telefonica SA. The job reduction -- amounting to a quarter of the workforce -- will be completed by the end of next year and are part of a 90-billion peso ($40 million) cost-cutting plan to help the Bogota-based company become more efficient, ETB Chief Executive Rafael Orduz said in an interview. ``ETB has a very aggressive strategy to reduce costs,'' Orduz said in an interview at the company's headquarters. The company, 87 percent owned by the city of Bogota, is reducing staff as it holds talks with Madrid-based Telefonica for a possible venture or sale. ETB, 1.9 million fixed telephone lines, also is in merger talks with Colombian utility Empresas Publicas de Medellin, Orduz said. Telefonica also is in a battle with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim for control of the nation's biggest telephone company, Colombia Telecomunicaciones. Slim Agreement Slim's agreement last month to buy control of Colombia Telecomunicaciones for $350 million plus debt was delayed after the nation's comptroller general questioned the legality of the accord. The government postponed signing the agreement until the comptroller general makes recommendations on the sale as early as this week, including whether Telecom should be sold through a public auction. Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta on Sept. 2 met Orduz, officials from Empresas Publicas de Medellin and the mayors of Bogota and Medellin. ``Alierta was very frank and said they want to participate in the fight for Telecom but if that doesn't work out, they want to form part of the capital structure of EPM and ETB,'' said Orduz, who added that he speaks daily with Telefonica officials. ``It's preferable they don't have control, but we are looking at possibilities, and one is to have other strategic partnerships,'' Orduz said. ``All I'm saying is that the only possibilities are not only the Mexicans or only the Spanish,'' he said. Shares of ETB fell 5 pesos or 1 percent to 529 pesos yesterday. Its shares have fallen 5.2 percent so far this year. To contact the reporter on this story: Helen Murphy in Bogota Ext. hmurphy1@bloomberg.net

To: TobagoJack who wrote (499)	9/16/2005 5:54:02 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217656

<<<skype>> ... it is a beautiful thing, along with gold and, when combined with Wimax, will put QCOM out of a good chunk of its business as well ;0)> TJ, you are obviously confused. You are absolutely correct that Skype is a beautiful thing and I have ranted so for 18 months. You are completely wrong that WiMax will put QCOM out of a good chunk of business when combined with Skype. QUALCOMM benefits from highly useful mobile applications and Skype is a very highly useful and very cheap [free being as cheap as it gets] application. WiMax is not a technology intended for mobility, with great handoff which is required for voice in a car/train/bus. QUALCOMM bought Flarion, which invented the best wide area network mobile OFDM system [which QUALCOMM should have invented but Andrew Viterbi had to go to Flarion to get it done]. That gives QUALCOMM all the technology they need to beat any competition on air interface performance. Skype will run on Pocket PC on CMDA/OFDM networks enabling subscribers to perform great tricks at low prices, anywhere they like, which is exactly what they want. If there was no Skype, the mobile devices would be less useful to subscribers so they would spend less on mobile devices and maybe not even buy one, or upgrade less often. Meanwhile, I have received cash from Skype, albeit indirectly, from Tarken-san who works for Livedoor in Japan, who got the agency for Skype Japan, which brings them in some cash. I love Skype. QUALCOMM and Skype are synergistic, not competitive. QUALCOMM is an air interface. Skype is something which needs a fast, efficient, cheap, air interface to work. I'm sure you can see how they might like each other. Mqurice