deals & deployments

BellSouth has completed the sale of its stake in Cellcom, a mobile carrier in Israel, to a subsidiary of Discount Investment Corp. The equity stake of roughly 35% sold for $625 million, and BellSouth will record an after-tax gain of about $230 million, or about 12¢ share. Discount Investment Corp. now owns 60% of Cellcom.

WiMAX chipset developer TeleCIS unveiled a demonstration of triple-play services last month in Santa Clara, Calif. The company deployed a base station on the roof of its office building and outfitted a van with VoIP phones, a video monitor and laptop PCs to test triple-play applications under nomadic conditions.

Former executives from DirectTV, McCaw Cellular and a major cruise ship line have teamed up to launch SeaMobile, a company that will provide wireless voice, data and Internet to cruise ships, yachts, ferries and other vessels. The firm boasts an air interface-agnostic IP/software solution that connects users with their home carriers.

Cingular Wireless and computer-maker Dell have teamed to embed network access technology from Cingular's UMTS/HSDPA network into Dell laptops that will be available in the first quarter of next year. Users of the notebooks and the embedded service will be able to take advantage of Cingular's global roaming agreements.

U-Turn, a company based in Prague, the Czech Republic, is offering a full-video local TV news service in Madison, Wis., designed specifically for viewing on mobile phones. “Wisconsin Mobile,” which offers free access to local news information and other content, takes advantage of U-Turn's proprietary VIZGO technology.

Wireless mesh vendor Firetide and partners Transnumeric and Xavier Dalloz Consulting have set up a Wi-Fi mesh network in Gordes, France. The deployment is part of the Delegation for Regional Planning and Action, an effort by the French government to provide Wi-Fi for villages that lack high-speed Internet access.