As reported in the media today, Orange the mobile network operator owned by France Telecom is to get the Apple iPhone, which until now was only available via O2 owned by Telefonica of Spain.

As reported in various parts of the UK media, Stephen Timms, a minister in the Gordon Brown government has proposed a 50 pence per month levy, or tax in the real world, on all fixed telephone lines, to help pay for “superfast broadband”. The tax would raise approximately £175 million each year. Working on that basis even people who do not have, perhaps never will have broadband will have to pay up! I thought that modern thinking was along the lines that any tax should be fair on those affected. Oh dear – sorry I forgot, they never ring fence money, so this is just more money to help prop up our severely ailing public finances.
Apologies for the rant!

Electricity may not meet demand.

Well, as the government have finally admitted to this I guess that all the energy industry specialists have managed to get the message across and that they are correct! Electricity generation, or rather the pending lack of it, is a really serious issue because we are closing 9 oil and coal-fired power plants and 4 nuclear plants by 2015. I understand that the new British Energy (part of EDF Energy) nuclear generation plants will not come on line until about 2017 to 2018. The electricity shortfall is predicted to occur around 2015 to 2017. This leaves no leeway for build time slippage, or if the estimated requirement is a bit on the low side.
This is happening because the government didn’t get their act together 10 or so years ago when they were apparently told about the problem. I think this is a classic case of governments not embarking on long term major infrastructure projects as they are unlikely to be in power when they can take the glory at the grand opening before the next election. Am I cynical? Yes – but I am sure I am right!
Anyone got any thoughts?

As reported today in various parts of the media, Avaya has apparently been selected to acquire the enterprise business of Nortel for $900 million with an extra $15 million set aside for staff retention. This bid is an increase from the initial one of $475 million. The acquisition will make a business to give Cisco a serious run for their money!
I hope Avaya can take full advantage of their purchase and leverage the Nortel channel partners and technology.

Avaya has bid $475m for their enterprise division. This stalking horse bid was designed to flush out further interest. Siemens is obviously interested through its complicated ownership set up. Private equity firm Gores Group (majority owner of Siemens Enterprise Communications and Enterasys Networks) has formed a joint venture with Siemens AG, called Enterprise Network Holdings. Canadian and US law allows “Qualified Bidders” to outbid Avaya. The result, as I understand will be announced in September.

It is interesting to note that both bidders are interested in Nortel’s customer base – not surprisingly as it is huge! Neither seem interested in their technology as they both have their own technology in bucket loads.

The mobile/wireless unit looks as though it may be sold to Nokia Siemens Networks for $650m. I wonder if this will help pave the way for the Siemens deal.