It was the week that saw rampant speculation over Cisco job cuts, as DTAC dodged a foreign ownership lawsuit and the GSMA lobbied Taiwan to drop Wimax for LTE.

 

Reports emerged during the week that Cisco Systems may chop anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs as part of its overall plan to restructure the company, according to inside sources speaking to Bloomberg. Cisco has said it will trim its workforce as part of the restructure, but hasn't officially said how many or from which divisions.

 

It was also the week that saw Thai operator DTAC escape legal action over its foreign ownership structure – for now. The Business Development Department decided not to file a lawsuit against DTAC for allegedly breaching Thai law restricting foreign ownership of more than 49% of a telco. However, the department referred the case to the police to let them determine if DTAC violated the law.

 

Meanwhile, Etisalat – whose JV in India, Etisalat DB, is also facing allegations of breaching foreign investment rules – wasn’t so lucky this week. The Enforcement Directorate said it would fine Etisalat DB 70 billion rupees ($1.6 billion) for foreign direct investment violations. Etisalat has 30 days to respond.

 

In other news for the week, the GSM Association advised Taiwan to abandon its emphasis on Wimax manufacturing in favor of LTE and HSPA – and issued a report to make an economic case for that advice.

 

The report [PDF], prepared under commission by Analysys Mason, claims that global adoption of LTE will generate $934 million for Taiwan's economy by 2015, compared to just $100 million for Wimax.

 

The report was released a couple of days after ZTE announced it had completed the world's first TD-LTE to 2G/3G handover test, demonstrating interoperability between TD-LTE terminals and GSM, UMTS and CDMA EV-DO networks.