Singapore Telecom

Joint Venture Will Build Cellular Phone Network: Singapore Telecom said it has formed a joint venture with a Chinese group to finance and build the network in the Suzhou region of Jiangsu province. Zhong Shan Group of China will hold a 51% stake in the venture, Suzhou Zhong Xing Telecommunication Engineering Development Co. Singapore Telecom will have the remaining 49%.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest phone company, has agreed to offer $9.9 billion for Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd. to gain a third of Australia's mobile phone market, bankers familiar with the plans said Sunday. Telecom Corp. of New Zealand also wanted to buy Australia's No. 2 phone company, while Britain's Vodafone Group quit the bidding Sunday, saying regulatory hurdles were too high.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. on Tuesday announced an agreement with several international telecommunications carriers to build a global network to streamline telephone service for multinational corporations. The alliance between AT&T, Singapore Telecom and Japan's Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. will spend more than $100 million over several years to set up a global network to manage voice and data traffic for business customers in the United States and the Pacific Rim.

Joint Venture Will Build Cellular Phone Network: Singapore Telecom said it has formed a joint venture with a Chinese group to finance and build the network in the Suzhou region of Jiangsu province. Zhong Shan Group of China will hold a 51% stake in the venture, Suzhou Zhong Xing Telecommunication Engineering Development Co. Singapore Telecom will have the remaining 49%.

Singapore's push to be Asia's hub on the information superhighway is led by a 40-year-old air force reserve brigadier-general who believes new technology and conservative Asian values can thrive together. George Yong-Boon Yeo, minister for information and the arts, says Singapore could become Asia's broadcast and program production center despite the city-state's tough censorship laws. "We want to be everyone's favorite oasis on the information superhighway," Yeo told Reuters in an interview.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest phone company, has agreed to offer $9.9 billion for Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd. to gain a third of Australia's mobile phone market, bankers familiar with the plans said Sunday. Telecom Corp. of New Zealand also wanted to buy Australia's No. 2 phone company, while Britain's Vodafone Group quit the bidding Sunday, saying regulatory hurdles were too high.

A Chinese satellite intended for use by many well-known broadcasters has been launched in defiance of international rules into an orbit where it will disrupt Japanese telecommunications, government officials here have charged.

Fast-moving Global Crossing is expected to announce today that it will buy the undersea cable services unit of Britain's Cable & Wireless in a deal worth an estimated $885 million, according to a source close to the companies. Hamilton, Bermuda-based Global Crossing, which has executive offices in Beverly Hills, is expected to buy Cable & Wireless' Global Marine business in a deal that includes cash and assumed debt, the source said.

For decades, only space scientists seemed interested in satellites. But this winter, after years of being hamstrung by regulatory and financial obstacles, some of the biggest names in communications will begin launching payloads into orbit to provide voice, data, paging and fax services for customers around the globe.

Singapore's push to be Asia's hub on the information superhighway is led by a 40-year-old air force reserve brigadier-general who believes new technology and conservative Asian values can thrive together. George Yong-Boon Yeo, minister for information and the arts, says Singapore could become Asia's broadcast and program production center despite the city-state's tough censorship laws. "We want to be everyone's favorite oasis on the information superhighway," Yeo told Reuters in an interview.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. on Tuesday announced an agreement with several international telecommunications carriers to build a global network to streamline telephone service for multinational corporations. The alliance between AT&T, Singapore Telecom and Japan's Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. will spend more than $100 million over several years to set up a global network to manage voice and data traffic for business customers in the United States and the Pacific Rim.

Stock markets worldwide are soaring to new highs, a strong indication that investors expect a significant economic rebound to emerge from the current malaise. But the boom in stock prices, from New York to Frankfurt to Singapore, also reflects a powerful trend likely to outlast shorter-term economic cycles, some experts say: the rapid spread of capitalism around the globe, which has produced an unprecedented fever for private enterprise and share ownership.

A brief item carried by China's official news agency recently marked a significant milestone in the international telecommunications industry. By the end of 1996, the New China News Agency reported, more than 40 million mainland Chinese will be using pagers, surpassing the United States as the biggest users of the devices in the world. For those who live in China--where pagers have taken on the "Chinglish" slang name of call-ji--this came as no particular surprise.