Rene Obermann, the outgoing CEO of Deutsche Telekom, will next hang his hat at Dutch cable operator Ziggo, reports Reuters. Obermann will replace Bernard Dijkhuizen as CEO of Ziggo in January 2014, while Obermann in turn will be replaced at Deutsche Telekom by current CFO Timotheus Höttges. (See Deutsche Telekom: It's Over for Obermann.)

BT Group plc's fiber rollout is spawning 1,000 new engineer jobs at its Openreach access unit. Once these are recruited, BT says there will be 6,000 people working on the rollout. And in a new development, BT will be extending its fiber reach to the Scilly Isles (an archipelago located about 28 miles from the south-western tip of the U.K. mainland), using a currently redundant subsea cable. (See BT Creates New FTTx Jobs.)

The European Commission has fined Microsoft €561 million (US$731 million) for failing to provide Windows users with a clear choice of browsers, despite being ordered to do so in 2009. (See EC Fines Microsoft Over Browsers.)

Inmarsat plc, the U.K.-based satellite communications company, saw full-year pre-tax profits fall around 20 percent to $294 million as the knock-on effects of LightSquared's failure hit home. Looking ahead, Inmarsat predicts the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will hit its numbers, though it maintains that organic growth will compensate for this. (See Ides of March Looms for LightSquared and LightSquared Pays Inmarsat, Amends Agreement.)

Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) vendor Comarch has won a managed services deal with German mobile operator E-Plus, which is entrusting the hosting and running of a new network performance management system, sourced from Mycom, to the Polish firm. Comarch, which previously supplied network planning software to the operator, will host and run Mycom's NIMS-PrOptima Network Performance Management and Service Assurance platform from its own data center.

Nokia Siemens Networks has landed a 3G contract in the Balkans, providing the HSPA+ radio access network and related services for BH Telecom d.d Sarajevo, which operates across the northern and eastern parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Pan-European service provider Interoute has added Microsoft Corp.'s Lync unified communications package (voice, messaging, multimedia conferencing) to its growing list of hosted services that are offered on a monthly fee basis. — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading