Nokia's R&D division, Nokia Bell Labs, has signed an agreement with Middle Eastern operator e& committing the two companies to explore how to use AI to advance industrial automation in a "sustainable" and responsible manner. Nokia Bell Labs presents itself as a champion of "responsible AI," pointing to six principles that it thinks should guide AI research in the future, namely fairness, reliability, privacy, transparency, sustainability and accountability.

Nokia is one of several European companies in the telecom sphere that has signed up to the AI Pact initiative, an agreement intended to help companies prepare for compliance with the EU's recently introduced AI Act. Other signatories to the initiative include Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Orange, Telefónica, Telecom Italia and Vodafone.

It seems Deutsche Telekom and Meta have been officially Unfriended, with the social media giant deciding to stop paying the German operator for direct peering and using a third-party data transit provider instead. In a public exchange of statements on Wednesday, Meta got in first with its view that Deutsche Telekom was "putting the open internet at risk and undermining net neutrality principles" and "using its market power to put its subscribers in Germany behind a de facto paywall" through its desire to demand "unprecedented and unacceptable fees." In response, Bonn's finest claimed that "Meta is now playing a gross foul" and "once again abusing its overwhelming bargaining power to discredit legitimate concerns of the European telecommunications industry and consumers in order to avoid fair payment." (See European telco 'fair share' case looks ready to collapse and Eurobites: European telecom sounds its 'fair share' foghorn once more.)

Ericsson has integrated Inform's RiskShield anti-money laundering software into its mobile financial services platform. The Ericsson platform supports more than 114 million active users in 24 countries, processing more than 36 billion transactions a year.

Nordic operator Telia has published its outlook for 2025, which sees like-for-like service revenue growth of around 2%, adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) growth of at least 5% and capex of below 14 billion Swedish kroner (US$1.38 billion) per year. It also says its full-year outlook for 2024 remains unchanged.

French operator Iliad has appointed Thomas Kienzi as its new group CFO, effective October 1. Kienzi's resume includes stints at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and, most recently, the Meilleurtaux group.

Public Wi-Fi systems at 19 UK railway stations were hacked yesterday (Wednesday), taking would-be users who logged on to a screen carrying content about terror attacks in Europe, the BBC reports. Telent, the company that provides Wi-Fi at the stations, said it was investigating the incident. It is understood that nobody's personal data was compromised in the attack.

Italy's SIAE Microelettronica, a provider of microwave radio and wireless network systems, has chosen EnSilica as its design partner for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for its next generation of telecom infrastructure products. It's a ten-year deal.

UK converged operator Virgin Media O2 has brought another 11,000 homes in the northern English city of Chester within reach of its Nexfibre-built network. If they're feeling flush the locals can now sign up to services offering download speeds of 2 Gbit/s.