For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – December 3, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Vodafone (VOD), NTT DoCoMo (DCM), AT&T (T), Deutsche Telekom (DT) and France Telecom (FTE).

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Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Indian 3G Auction Deferred Again

Still more bad news for telecom operators and 3G hopefuls hits India as the country’s long-awaited 3G spectrum (radio bandwidth) auction has been delayed again. The auction process for 3G WCDMA spectrum, which was scheduled for Jan 14, 2010, has now been postponed until mid-Feb

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Still more bad news for telecom operators and 3G hopefuls hits India as the country’s long-awaited 3G spectrum (radio bandwidth) auction has been delayed again. The auction process for 3G WCDMA spectrum, which was scheduled for Jan 14, 2010, has now been postponed until mid-Feb 2010, according to a government source. This is due to lack of available spectrum at this moment.   India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) needs more time to allocate the required frequencies to the telecom operators. The DoT is currently working with the country’s Ministry of Defense as India’s armed forces have to vacate specific 3G spectrum, a process which could take several weeks. So far, the armed forces have agreed to vacate 25 megahertz (MHz) 3G spectrum by Dec 7, 2009. The government cannot start the auction unless specific frequencies are vacated by the Ministry of Defense.   The impending 3G spectrum auction, ...

The Indian government opened the bid for the upcoming 3G spectrum (radio bandwidth) auction in the country. The floor price for the 3G auction is set at INR35 billion (US$716 million) per operator, which may yield more than INR 250 billion (US$5 billion) from the spectrum sale. Additionally, the government also set INR17.5 billion (US$360 million) as the bid for the WiMAX (a high-speed mobile technology) spectrum auction.   The impending spectrum auction, which was initially scheduled to take place in late 2008, was delayed due to disputes between the government and the telecom regulator regarding the spectrum pricing structure. In order to expedite the 3G license auction process, the country’s telecom department finally decided to increase the starting bid from the initially set price of INR20.2 billion (US$415 million).   India’s telecom department is planning to issue four 3G and three WiMAX spectrum slots nationwide. The auction process ...