Austrian mobile operator Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH (H3G Austria) is to deploy AlcaLu's 100 Gbit/s coherent gear -- the vendor's 1830 Photonic Service Switch and 1626 Light Manager -- to boost the capacity of its backbone as mobile data volumes ramp up. H3G Austria, which announced a controversial LTE network deal with ZTE Corp. a year ago, has also announced it will use Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Home Subscriber Server (HSS) to implement its LTE subscriber data management plans. (See H3G Deploys AlcaLu's 100G, H3G Deploys HP's HSS for LTE and MWC 2011: 3G Austria Dumps NSN for ZTE.)
In the wake of its fourth-quarter performance -- which saw EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) slip 3.2 percent year on year -- Dutch incumbent KPN has lowered its profit outlook for 2012, reflecting its expectation that this will be a "transition year." Separately, KPN is selling services company Getronics International to industrial holdings firm Aurelius for an undisclosed sum. (See KPN Lowers 2012 Profit Outlook, KPN to Sell Getronics International IT Biz, KPN Focuses on FTTH and KPN Preps 500Mbit/s FTTH.)
The European Commission is proposing new rules that will give Internet users more control over data relating to them on social networks and the like, according to the Wall Street Journal. Details of the proposals -- being dubbed "the right to be forgotten" in some quarters -- were unveiled by Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich. The idea is make it easier for those who have been indiscreet or just plain daft in online view of the whole world to cover their tracks. Spoilsports.
Last week AlcaLu was touting its role in Bezeq's new "Jonah" subsea link between Europe and Israel, and now it's the turn of Interoute to let everyone know that it's been chosen to handle the European end of things. Interoute's landing station at Bari in Italy will extend the network into the heart of Europe. (See Bezeq Picks Interoute and Bezeq Lights Subsea Cable.)
French operator Bouygues Telecom has teamed up with Playcast Media Systems to launch Bbox games, a cloud gaming service that will, says the operator, allow triple-play subscribers to play console-quality video games on their TVs without additional hardware. (See Bouygues Launches Console-Quality IPTV Gaming.)
Good news for mobile users who wander around the various Gulf states: Operators there are set to slash their roaming charges by at least 50 percent, according to an Arabian Business report.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:
Single tags
These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.
<br> Defines a single line break
<hr> Defines a horizontal line
Matching tags
These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>
<a> Defines an anchor
<b> Defines bold text
<big> Defines big text
<blockquote> Defines a long quotation
<caption> Defines a table caption
<cite> Defines a citation
<code> Defines computer code text
<em> Defines emphasized text
<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form
<h1> This is heading 1
<h2> This is heading 2
<h3> This is heading 3
<h4> This is heading 4
<h5> This is heading 5
<h6> This is heading 6
<i> Defines italic text
<p> Defines a paragraph
<pre> Defines preformatted text
<q> Defines a short quotation
<samp> Defines sample computer code text
<small> Defines small text
<span> Defines a section in a document
<s> Defines strikethrough text
<strike> Defines strikethrough text
<strong> Defines strong text
<sub> Defines subscripted text
<sup> Defines superscripted text
<u> Defines underlined text
Network Computing encourages readers to engage
in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task.
However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site,
and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory,
offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM.
Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating
in said activities.
