Etisalat, the Middle East operator, plans to upgrade its mobile broadband offer with the help of Alcatel-Lucent's "honey, I shrunk the base station" lightRadio product family. The first product in the lightRadio portfolio will be a small-cell base station, which is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2012. (See Etisalat Joins AlcaLu lightRadio Program , AlcaLu's lightRadio Set for Early 2012 Debut, AlcaLu: We're Killing the Base Station and The Lowdown on lightRadio.)

Telekom Austria has outlined its broadband expansion plans, saying it will start its countrywide Long Term Evolution (LTE) rollout in 2012 and extend its "Gigaspeed" (up to 30 Mbit/s downstream) fixed broadband service to 2.1 million homes (about 50 percent of households) by the end of this year and 2.75 million homes (66 percent of total) by the end of 2015. With LTE, Telekom Austria plans to cover all provincial capitals and urban centers by 2015. (See Telekom Austria Unveils Broadband Plan and MWC 2011: Telekom Austria Jazzed About LTE.)

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Greek operator OTE from "BB-" to "B," reflecting the still-parlous state of Greece's economy, reports Reuters. OTE is 40 percent owned by Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT). (See Euronews: DT Ups Its Hellenic Holding and OTE Reports Q2.)

Telefónica UK Ltd. , which operates under the O2 brand, has agreed a deal with Chargemaster to provide machine-to-machine (M2M) technology for the latter's U.K. network of electric vehicle charging points. Telefónica's offering will see SIM cards embedded into each charging point, communicating with a central database via the mobile network, thereby allowing customers to authorise themselves when filling up on volts. (See O2 Powers Electric Car Network, Telefonica Restructures, Creates New Units, Telefonica, Masternaut Team on M2M and M2M Cranks Up a Notch.)

Italy may be strapped for cash, but that hasn't stopped the Calabria region from contributing €28 million (US$38.7 million) towards a broadband infrastructure project, reports Telecompaper (subscription required). (See Euronews: Italians Close to FTTH Deal.)

Make your minds up! On Friday we brought you news of a study that concluded British consumers are scaredy-cats when it comes to the concept of the NFC-enabled "mobile wallet." Today, reports Bloomberg, another survey has come along, this time from Barclays Corporate, predicting that Brits will spend £19.3 billion ($30.5 billion) by 2021 on purchases using their mobiles.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading