Redstone Telecom has announced that it is in the market for an ISP, following its recent £40 million spend on data group Fastnet. The company said that an ISP would bring Internet skills to the company which it regards as essential for its planned DSL services. Graham Cove, the chief exec at Redstone said that it would not suffer the same fate as Thus, because it was more diversified.

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Japanese giant, Softbank, has halted the flotation of five subsidiaries after the collapse of its stock price this year. Since February, the share price has slipped and slithered from Y60,666 (£373.48) to its closing price yesterday of Y9,250 (£56.95). The decision is being described as a "set back" for the company' s president, Masayoshi Son, who once commented that Softbank was: "a bet on the Internet."

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Shares in ARM Holdings fell 5 per cent yesterday on fears that Net-based mobile phones like WAP were not as popular as had been predicted. ARM provides the chips for many of the world's mobile phones. Other sufferers included Carphone Warehouse and Nokia.

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AOL's worldwide expansion plans slipped a little yesterday when its Latin America subsidiary was forced to lower its IPO offer from $15-17 a share to $8-10. The float was seen as being over-ambitious since Latin America's Internet economy has yet to be proved.

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The auction for 3G mobile licences in Germany is proving even more interesting than the cash bonanza experienced in the UK. Obviously learning the lesson that the process causes companies to vastly overpay to win a licence, two bidders are being investigated for collusion. MobilCom and Debitel appear to have agreed to take each others' customers depending on who wins the bid. German authorities were not impressed but then also have no intention of kicking their money out of the process.

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