Colt Technology Services Group Ltd has appointed Rajiv Datta chief operating officer, upgrading him internally from chief technology officer. Datta will report directly to CEO Carl Grivner, who hopes that Datta will help drive forward Colt's transformation into "more agile" company at an "accelerated pace." No doubt Datta will also be part of Colt's push to grab a bigger slice of the UK's mobile backhaul market -- the company has recently been expressing its frustration with current rules that it believes prevent Colt from being able to compete with incumbent BT on a level playing field in this segment. (See UK Backhaul Regulation Will Hinder 5G, Say Telcos and Europe's Backhaul Black Hole Looms Above 5G.)

Telecom Italia (TIM) has felt the need to once again deny press rumors that it plans to spin off or sell its network. In a statement, it says sternly: "Network is a strategic asset for TIM and its industrial Plan: any speculation is therefore completely groundless." But it's a time of turbulence for the Italian incumbent: Only last week Italy's markets watchdog declared that French conglomerate Vivendi had taken de facto control of TIM. (See Eurobites: Vivendi Now Controls Telecom Italia, Says Watchdog and Cattaneo Quits as Telecom Italia CEO, Gets €25M.)

Fingerprint Cards, a Sweden-based maker of fingerprint sensors used to unlock smartphones, has warned that third-quarter revenue would be well below market estimates and sent its shares south by 22%, Reuters reports. The warning comes as larger clients switch to back-mounted sensors that carry a lower price tag than those of Fingerprint Cards, which are activated by touching the smartphone's "home" button.

Proposed changes to the positioning of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s price-comparison service have failed to appease rival shopping sites, the Daily Telegraph reports. The search giant has already been fined €2.4 billion (US$2.8 billion) by the European Commission for what was seen as unfair promotion of its own price-comparison service in its search listings. According to the newspaper's sources, Google has offered to include links to rival shopping services in its search results: they, however, ain't buying it. (See Eurobites: Google's Q2 Gouged by EU Mega-Fine and Eurobites: EU Fines Google $2.7B Over Shopping Shenanigans.)

It was bad day in Europe for Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Outlook/Hotmail email service on Monday, with a substantial number of users in various countries either unable to send emails or access their accounts at all, the BBC reports. Microsoft's service status page carried the message: "We've identified that a subset of infrastructure was unable to process requests as expected, which caused general service availability to drop unexpectedly."

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading