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Euronews: French Govt Eyes AlcaLu Subsea Unit

January 10, 2013 | Paul Rainford |
Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. are among the runners and riders in today's canter through the EMEA headlines.

  • France's sovereign wealth fund -- the government's cash coffers -- may be used to buy Alcatel-Lucent's subsea cable unit, according to a Reuters report that cites Agefi, a French business newspaper. In December it was reported that France Télécom - Orange was interested in buying the business. (See For Sail: Alcatel-Lucent's Subsea Business.)

  • Huawei is expanding its presence in Ireland with the opening of a new R&D center spread across two sites, one in Cork and the other in Dublin, that will double the company's workforce in the Republic. The center will employ around 50 people and focus on the vendor's Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) capabilities, specifically the customer experience management gobbet of the sector. Derek Ding, the splendidly named managing director of Huawei Ireland, confirmed that 12 positions had already been filled.

  • The lack of independent competitive mobile operators in some European countries is massively pushing up prices in those markets, according to a study by Rewheel, a Finnish advisory group. The Financial Times reports (subscription required) that the research revealed how mobile users in European Union countries lacking an alternative operator can pay up to ten times more than users in other EU states to use their smartphones.

  • Large parts of eastern Libya were without phone and Internet connections on Wednesday when a fishing boat's equipment cut through a subsea cable that connected Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, to the towns of Mesaad and Brega, reports Reuters. Benghazi airport also had to close as a result of the incident. That would be one unpopular fishing boat, then.

  • U.K. mobile operator Telefónica UK Ltd. (O2) has chosen MACH, which is based in Luxembourg, to handle its direct operator billing via the operator's Charge to Mobile platform.

  • Telenet, the Belgian cable operator, saw its 2012 revenues rise by 8.2 percent year-on-year to €1.489 billion ($1.94 billion), reports Reuters. Liberty Global Inc., which controls more than half of Telenet, is currently bidding to take full control of the operator.

    — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading



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