John Lewell

[London, ENGLAND] European high-speed Internet provider chello broadband nv announced Monday its expansion into Central Europe in a partnership with Hungarian broadband company UPC Magyarország. Both chello broadband and UPC Magyarország are subsidiaries of United Pan-Europe Communications. UPC Magyarország provides cable television services to 35 towns in Hungary. Roger Lynch, president and CEO of chello […]

[London, ENGLAND] Internet professional services firm Organic, Inc. announced Friday it will conduct a US $3 million online campaign to launch Priceline.co.uk. The campaign will start at the beginning of November and run to January 2001, introducing the “name your own price” Priceline concept to U.K. Internet users. The first products to be offered will […]

[London, ENGLAND] Barclaycard and investment bank Nomura International plc launched Friday their new U.K. shopping mall IndigoSquare and began a US $14 million advertising campaign to support the US $43 million venture. IndigoSquare is designed, some would say ambitiously, to compete with the largest high street and out-of-town shopping centers — most of which are […]

[London, ENGLAND] European e-commerce company lastminute.com has announced a series of partnership deals aimed at speeding up its introduction of interactive voice recognition. The deals are with BT e-business and communications unit Syncordia Solutions, speech interface technology specialist Nuance, and the Centre for Communication Interface Research (CCIR) at the University of Edinburgh. Syncordia will supply […]

[London, ENGLAND] European online auctioneer QXL.com announced Thursday it will launch in mid-November a dedicated travel auction site in conjunction with travel agent Thomas Cook. The co-branded site — which will be located at www.qxl.com/thomascook — will invite users to place bids on travel deals with prices starting as low as one pound sterling (US […]

[London, ENGLAND] Ireland’s IFS, a developer of Internet solutions for financial companies, announced Wednesday the US $21 million dollar acquisition of Dene International, a U.K. firm that develops automated Internet-based trading solutions for banks. The deal brings a key product to IFS, namely Dene’s Global Automated Trading Engine (GATE), reputedly one of the world’s leading […]

[London, ENGLAND] They are claiming it as a “world’s first” — an international, round-the-clock TV quiz show that lets everyone participate. Quizpeople.com, of Denmark, announced Wednesday it is hosting an interactive, Internet TV quiz show on all its sites. It has an online presence in 17 countries, with content in 12 different languages, and already […]

[London, ENGLAND] A new Internet worm discovered in France and Germany this week can update itself with new functionality, warns anti-virus software company Kaspersky Lab. The worm, named Sonic, consists of two parts — a loader and a main module. Arriving via e-email, the loader penetrates the PC’s operating system and automatically connects to a […]

[London, ENGLAND] At research company Forrester they’re calling it “Europe’s Portal Squeeze” — the phenomenon in which Web traffic is favoring the top few portals at the expense of all the others. There is nothing new in the idea of “winner takes all,” especially in the intense competition online for visitors. But Forrester says the […]

[London, ENGLAND] France’s Liberty Surf Group said Monday that its acquisition of Freesbee, a consumer and business ISP, would strengthen its position in the French marketplace as the No.2 Internet provider. Freesbee brings another 110,000 active subscribers to Liberty Surf, significantly adding to the larger ISP’s user base. A spokesperson for Liberty Surf said that […]

[London, ENGLAND] European healthcare e-marketplace Medexonline announced Monday the first phase of its attempt to shake up its market sector by launching what it calls Content and Community services for healthcare professionals. Based in the U.K., Medexonline invites registration from workers in the healthcare industry who will then have access to in-depth news coverage of […]

[London, ENGLAND] Nokia announced Friday a three-year agreement to supply full 3G network solutions to mobile operator Orange, now owned by France Telecom. As part of the deal, Nokia will supply 3G packet core elements and its 3G Mobile Switching Centres (3G MSC) as intermediate steps to an all-IP core network solution. Orange will also […]