Google Cloud is floating across Europe, with strategic partnerships announced this week between the Alphabet unit and both Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems and Telecom Italia (TIM). T-Systems will use the partnership to provide consulting services, migration support and managed services to enterprise customers leveraging Google Cloud capabilities, while TIM and Google Cloud engineers will work together to create cloud offerings for the Italian market.

Tele2 and Elisa are to work together to help Nordic enterprises with their networking needs, rather than competing against each other. So, for example, a company with branches in Sweden and Finland and Denmark can go to either operator for help with their networking requirements, but both Elisa and Tele2 will actually do the work in the most appropriate location, so the enterprises don't have to strike multiple deals in multiple countries.

Sinch, a Swedish company specializing in cloud-based communications, has been chosen by Ericsson to support its worldwide 5G rollout with messaging technology. Sinch's SMSF (SMS Function), a cloud-native 3GPP-specified messaging product, will be incorporated into the Ericsson core network offering.

Telia has named the day that Allison Kirkby, formerly CEO of Tele2, takes the reins at Telia: it's May 4, 2020. Christian Luiga will remain as acting president and CEO until that date and then return to his role as EVP and CFO.

US-based Digital Realty is opening another data center in Ireland, at Clonshaugh, near Dublin. The new facility represents a €70 million ($78.3 million) investment, and follows a €200 million ($223.7 million) investment in its Profile Park campus last May. (See Digital Realty Defies Data Gravity.)

Batelco has teamed up with Aptilo Networks to deliver business Wi-Fi services across Bahrain. Batelco offers managed venue Wi-Fi services to enterprise customers, with the service deployed either on top of the customer's existing Wi-Fi equipment or as a fully managed service with the Wi-Fi infrastructure included.

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has turned to Mobileum's fraud and security platform to catch misbehavior on its 5G network. Apparently, Mobileum's Active Intelligence Platform "expands the universe of identifiable fraud use cases" by using a new approach for detecting SIP and SS7 fraud.

TIM and Disney have agreed a wholesale distribution deal for the US media giant's Disney+ video streaming service. Starting March 24, Disney+ will be offered to TIM's new and existing customers as part of a fiber-broadband bundle.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading