David Legard

Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has reduced the license reserve price for its upcoming 3G (third-generation) mobile auction by S$50 million (US$28.5 million), IDA said Friday.

Spain is the next country in line to join Japan, Korea, Sweden and Finland as a pioneer of 3G (third-generation) telecommunications, according to Greg Tarr, chief investment officer of venture capital firm M-Werks Mobile Internet Fund.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) began operating in Taiwan Friday with the launch of a telecommunications service there call Sparq. The service will be run by New Century InfoComm Co. Ltd. (NCIC), in which SingTel is the second-largest shareholder with a 24.3 percent stake.

Australian smart card vendor ERG Ltd. has ended an alliance it formed three years ago with Motorola Inc. to cooperate on selling smart card products and services, ERG announced Monday in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released Wednesday the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2.0 as a W3C recommendation, paving the way for mathematical notation and content to be displayed on the Web.

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., a major contract chip manufacturer, will upgrade a planned wafer fabrication plant in Singapore to be capable of processing 300-millimetre (12-inch) wafers in 2002, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Seven companies have applied to bid in Australia's third-generation mobile (3G) spectrum auction, the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) announced Monday.

Australia's Telstra Corp. and Hong Kong-based Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. (PCCW) formally launched Thursday three joint-venture telecommunications companies that they agreed last year to form.