In Australia, however, Hutchison soldiers on. The company said it will open 20 retail stores on 15 April to launch its 3 brand of UMTS services. The stores will carry two models of handsets.

1 April

NTT DoCoMo formally launched its 4G network in a two-city-block area of downtown Tokyo today, saying that it expects to have 12M subscribers by the end of the calendar year and 35M users on board by the end of their fiscal year next March. The company said it was not deterred by the lack of terminals or end-user demand but expected that the planned 2.4Gbs bandwidth would prove very attractive to customers who need to read email while away from their desk. Vodafone subsidiary J-Phone said it was sticking to its original timetable and plans to launch 3.5G services, which it characterized as "4G compliant," early next year.

A Chinese developer announced that it will develop and deploy a new wireless LAN standard, dubbed 802.11y. The company, Bitang Communications, said that there are so many problems with existing WLAN technologies 802.11a, 802,11b and 802.11g that none are suitable for deployment in China. Bitang also said that Motorola has signed up as a partner in the venture. "While we've stayed out of the 802.11y space until now, we are excited to once again be partnering in standards development in China," said a spokesman for the company. "We hope that this will be another success like TD-SCDMA." Motorola will open a manufacturing plant in Guangdong province to build products based on the new standard.

The CTIA announced that it will again rename its recently renamed Wireless IT trade show. The organization announced last month that it would call the show "Wireless IT & Entertainment" which it said more accurately reflected "the market that the show represents and serves ¡ª the booming enterprise solutions market and the exploding m-tertainment phenomenon." Early today the association said it would now call the show "Wireless Adult Entertainment," which it says is more representative of both the fastest growing segment of the industry and also the venue of the show, currently scheduled for October in Las Vegas.

A Prime Bank in Africa said it plans to use UMTS to transfer ($ 126,000,000.00 USD) One hundred and twenty six million United States Dollars) to an honest person who will be capable and fit to receive this money. FRANK MOUDEBELU, the Auditor General of one of the prime banks in Nigeria, discovered unclaimed funds and has been unable to find the rightful heir to the fortune. In a related story, HENRY BOATENG, the son of JOSHUA BOATENG, the former deputy prime minister of finance under the executive civilian president of SEIRRA LEONE, Ahmed Tejan KAbbah, announced that he too is looking for a partner to form a "fruitfull business relationship" apparently involving "$ 30,000,000.00 millions US dolars." Cellular operators in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Abidjan said they would immediately petition their governments to accept spectrum license applications.

2 April

Cingular Wireless has sold its 40% stake in Cellemetry to its partner Numerex for approximately US$5M. Cellemetry, which uses cellular control channels to transmit small data packets, concentrates on the wireless telemetry market.

Auditors for radiomodem developer Novatel said that they doubt that the company will survive. In papers filed with securities regulators in the US on Monday KPMG said that Novatel is nearly out of cash and doesn't have enough orders from customers to meet its sales forecast. Novatel said it has arranged for US$3.3M in private funding that must be approved by shareholders on 30 April; the company warned that without shareholder approval it will likely have to cease operations.

Thai GSM operator AIS said it has chosen Siemens to provide GPRS infrastructure. The carrier has 11M subscribers and claims 55% of the Thai cellular market. Commercial details of its forthcoming GPRS service were not disclosed.

Nokia said it has been awarded a contract to build a TETRA network for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The company is working with a state-owned entity, Beijing Top Communications, to build and provision the network by 2006.

Telecom regulators in Malaysia said the two UMTS spectrum licensees will spend a total of US$1.97B over the next ten years to deploy services. Telekom Malaysia's network is scheduled to being pilot service in July, while Maxis' service is scheduled to become available in early 2004.

3 April

UK Mobitex operator Transcomm has signed a partnership agreement with IntegratedFM, who develops facilities management systems. Integrated FM will add Transcomm's wireless PDA, Grapevine, to its product mix and use the device as an interface to its FACTS facilities management software.

According to Swedish media UMTS spectrum licensees will have an extra 18 months to put their networks into service. All the licensees have petitioned regulators to modify the terms of their licenses to slow down deployment but the Swedish National Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) has declined to do so. However a new law, scheduled to go into effect in late July, means that enforcement for any violation is far off. "As a result of the new law, in practice the operators will have one and a half years extra before we or a court can fine them for failing to fulfil their terms," said the head of the PTS, Nils-Gunnar Billinger

Vodafone Ireland, which paid €114M for a UMTS spectrum license, has contacted regulators to request a delay in their rollout deadline. According to the terms of the license Vodafone is required to begin service early next year, but the company now says that there is insufficient demand for advanced services.

4 April

A California judge refused to grant RIM's request for injunction in one of its four lawsuits with Good Technology. RIM said it expects this particular suit to go to trial and said it will proceed in the three other suits.

RIM reported that its Q4 revenue rose 32% to US$87.5M compared to $66.1M a year ago, but its quarterly loss rose to $12.6M, fueled by a $6.9M provision for its patent infringement lawsuit with NTP. RIM has now set aside $39.5M as a hedge against damages it might have to pay NTP, and is also depositing $3-4M per quarter in escrow in case it must pay royalties to NTP. For the fiscal year RIM reported that revenue rose 4% from 2002 to $306.7M, but losses skyrocketed to $130M compared to $28.4M loss the company posted in 2002. RIM reported that it now has 534K BlackBerry subscribers.

The actual news for 1 April

US communications giant AT&T could owe NTT DoCoMo US$3.6B if AT&T Wireless Services, now a separate company, fails to launch WCDMA services in four US cities by the end of 2004. The debt would accrue to AT&T only if its former wireless unit was unable to pay it. AT&T Wireless said it expects to meet the deadline.

Motorola said it has been awarded a contract worth US$69M to supply a TETRA network to the Hong Kong Police. The company announced that deployment will begin in 2004 and will be complete by 2006.