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A Nokia sale of mobile, especially to the US, would be nuts
Nokia's hiring of Intel's Justin Hotard to be its new CEO has set tongues wagging again about a mobile exit, but it would look counterintuitive and inadvisable.
Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Etisalat, Vivendi reach agreement on Maroc Telecom stake sale; Telefónica's Czech unit back in local hands; Google jobs for Finland.
UK mobile joint venture EE is set to launch a trial of what it claims, somewhat dubiously, will be the world's fastest LTE-Advanced network, offering speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s in London's "Tech City." EE has teamed up with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. on the project, which, starting in December, will deliver next generation mobile broadband connections to fixed routers using Carrier Aggregation technology, which allows for more efficient use of spectrum resources across different frequency bands by bringing together 20MHz of 1800MHz spectrum and 20MHz of 2.6GHz spectrum. (See EE Claims 4G Record in London's Tech City and Q&A: EE Evolves Its 4G LTE Strategy.)
Etisalat has finally reached an agreement with Vivendi for the purchase of the French conglomerate's 53 percent stake in Morocco's Maroc Telecom . Assuming the deal goes through, Etisalat will pay €3.9 billion (US$5.2 billion) for the stake, though the terms have to be approved by the Moroccan government. (See Etisalat to Buy Vivendi's 53% Stake in Maroc Telecom and Euronews: Bidding War for Maroc Telecom Stake.)
Telefónica Czech Republic A.S. is back under local control after eight years of Spanish dominance, following the decision by the PPF Group to take a controlling stake in the operator for €2.5 billion ($3.4 billion), reports Bloomberg. PPF is owned by Petr Kellner, the Czech Republic's richest man with a net worth of $11.2 billion.
With the sale of its iconic Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) handsets industry imminent, Finland needs all the good news it can get on the jobs front, so here's some: Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is to invest a further €450 million ($607 million) in its Hamina datacenter, reports Finnish news website YLE.
In other Google news, the search giant has delayed its move to its yet-to-be-built UK headquarters in London, reports the Daily Telegraph. The big move, to the so-called "landscraper," was to have taken place in 2016, but it's now been put back a year as Google decided that its plans weren't ambitious enough.
Zut alors! SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM)'s little learning robot, Atti, is on its way to France. The South Korean operator, which came up with the educational aid that has a smartphone for a "brain," is supplying a thousand of the little fellers to be distributed to schools and nurseries. Just one thing: It had better speak the local lingo, or it will end up in le trash. (See SK Telecom Sends Smartphone Robot to France.) Figure 1: Oh it's all smiles now, but just wait till those French kids get hold of you...
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
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