Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telecom Italia on Orange's hitlist; EC still rowing about roaming; Huawei completes Danish upgrade.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

June 3, 2015

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Telefónica, Samsung Team on IoT

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telecom Italia on Orange's hitlist; EC still rowing about roaming; Huawei completes Danish upgrade.

  • Telefónica is to collaborate with Samsung Corp. on Internet of Things (IoT) applications, with a particular focus on home automation. The two companies have already begun work on two IoT-related prototypes, the first of which builds on Telefónica's Lego-like "Thinking Things" modules, and the second a "physical button" that will be used to "simplify the application of IoT capabilities to different environments."

    • Is Telecom Italia (TIM) on Orange (NYSE: FTE) 's "to take over" list? That's the inference being drawn from remarks made on Tuesday by Gervais Pellissier, who heads up Orange's European operations, reports the Financial Times (subscription required). Dutch incumbent KPN and Belgacom could also be on the list, conceded Pellissier.

    • Late-night discussions at the European Commission failed to yield any agreement on a timescale for the long-promised removal of roaming charges within the European Union, reports Reuters. Member states resistant to the removal of roaming charges are apparently split into two camps: On the one hand there are the eastern European countries that are worried that the removal of the charges will force operators to push up prices at home to cover the cost of wholesale charges to another operator when their customers travel abroad; on the other hand there are the tourist-attracting countries such as Spain and Greece, where the operators have an incentive to keep wholesale charges high.

    • Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. says it has completed the upgrade of TDC A/S (Copenhagen: TDC) 's mobile network using its mobile broadband infrastructure technology and supporting managed services. The Danish operator initiated the contract 18 months ago.

    • Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) 's latest Mobility Report contains, amongst other things, the prediction that smartphone subscriptions in Europe will have increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% between 2014 and 2020, reaching 830 million in five years' time. Also, data traffic, it says, will have grown by 30% over the same period, reaching an average of 6.5GB per smartphone by 2020.

    • The existence of the license fee charged by the UK's BBC and other public broadcasters is under mortal threat from the services offered by the likes of Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), according to a new study from PwC Consulting , reports the Daily Telegraph. The study predicts that voluntary pay-TV subscription revenues are forecast to grow by 3.5% per year worldwide up to 2019, compared with only 0.7% for license fees.

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Paul Rainford

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.

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