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Technology Stocks : IBM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chris who wrote (2653)	3/18/1998 7:33:00 AM
From: MR. PANAMA (I am a PLAYER)	Respond to of 8218

IBM's GERSTENER STARTS OFF CeBIT FAIR With Chancellor H KOHL.... Wednesday March 18, 2:19 am Eastern Time Firms get down to Internet business at CeBIT fair By William Boston HANOVER, March 18 (Reuters) - From the titans of technology to hundreds of mid-size firms hoping to ride the Internet wave, business leaders on Wednesday will use the CeBIT trade fair as a venue to promote cyberspace commerce. International Business Machines Corp (IBM - news) chief executive Lou Gerstner will kick off the annual information technology show as a keynote speaker at the official opening ceremony in the evening, sharing the stage with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Gerstner's speech is expected to focus on ''e-commerce,'' as IBM calls trading goods and services online, and seek to convince European enterprises, wary of doing business on the Internet, to waste no time entering the new frontier. Around 600,000 visitors are expected to attend the fair and 10,000 journalists will be on hand as nearly 7,300 companies display mobile phones, computers, and networking equipment from March 19-25 at the world's largest information technology fair. Deutsche Telekom (DTEG.F), Europe's biggest telecommunications group, gave an inkling of what could be expected at its news conference on Tuesday, when it announced plans for a broad launch later this year of Internet telephony services. Several of Telekom's main rivals will take the stage on Wednesday. Viag Interkom, a joint venture of German utility Viag AG (VIAG.F), British Telecom Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BT.L) and Norway's Telenor, are expected to announce the launch date for their new mobile phone network in eight German cities. Jozef Cornu, a senior executive at Alcatel Alsthom (NYSE:ALA - news; CGEP.PA), the French industrial giant, will outline the company's strategy for the broadband networks needed for multimedia services. German media conglomerate Bertelsmann will discuss the fast-growing online service market and its European joint venture with America Online (AOL - news), the world's biggest online service. There is also room for a few political surprises to emerge from beneath the din of multimedia presentations. Kohl will make his first public appearance with his Social Democrat rival Gerhard Schroeder, as Lower Saxony state premier host of the CeBIT fair, during a tour of the fair grounds on Thursday morning. Later in the day, Kohl will meet Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for talks that the Bonn government press office said will range from Asia's financial crisis to Malaysia's efforts to attract high-tech investment. Finnish telecommunications group Nokia (NOKSa.HE) announced on Tuesday that it had applied to join Malaysia's high-technology Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) zone. The MSC, a 15-by-50 km (nine-by-30 mile) zone south of Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, is being proposed as a testbed for developing multimedia products and services. Malaysia hopes the corridor will become an Asian Silicon Valley. Companies with MSC status are provided benefits including unfettered foreign worker hiring, intellectual property protection and tax breaks. Malaysia will be promoting the project at the CeBIT trade fair. -------