Communications & Telecom

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young LLP Tuesday joined the ranks of IT and management consulting firms that are making cutbacks, announcing plans to lay off 2,700 of its 60,000 employees as part of a wider cost reduction effort being driven by a "marked slowdown" in new business.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young LLP today joined the ranks of IT and management consulting firms that are making cutbacks, announcing plans to lay off 2,700 of its 60,000 employees as part of a wider cost reduction effort being driven by a "marked slowdown" in new business.

Canada

British Telecommunications PLC (BT) has exited the Malaysian telecommunication business with the agreement in principle to sell its 33 per cent stake in Maxis Communications Bhd. BT is selling the stake for 350 million pounds (US$503 million) to local conglomerate Usaha Tegas Sdn. Bhd., already a significant Maxis shareholder, BT said in a statement Friday.

AOL Time Warner Inc. and U.K. cable company NTL Group Ltd. are discussing possible joint activities in Europe, NTL said Monday.

Vendors will turn up the heat on Latin America in the coming years because IT spending in the region will grow faster than anywhere in the world, a situation that puts Latin American IT managers in a difficult situation: having to make good purchasing decisions in light of a deluge of vendor overtures, according to a Gartner Group Inc. analyst.

Australian broadband communications technology company QPSX Ltd. has filed a patent infringement writ in Germany seeking 125 million marks (US$57.6 million) in compensation from Siemens AG and Deutsche Telekom AG over a technology called SAR (Segmentation and Reassembly).

Wired broadband solutions so tightly clutched to British Telecommunications PLC's breast might no longer be the future of home Internet access. One of Europe's leading research laboratories, the AT&T Corp. labs in Cambridge, England, has teamed up with Cambridge Broadband to test a pioneering broadband wireless network in the area.