Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Swisscom tests driverless cars; EE racks up complaints; Nokia gets the party started.
Jon Frederick Baksaas is to retire as CEO of Telenor Group (Nasdaq: TELN), the Norway-based operator that has expanded aggressively into Asia and elsewhere in recent years under his guidance. He will be replaced, as from August 17, by Sigve Brekke, currently the executive vice president and head of Telenor Group's Asia operations. Baksaas, 61, has been CEO of Telenor since 2002, which makes him one of the longest-serving bosses in the industry. He will continue as an advisor to Telenor's board of directors until the end of 2016 and will serve as chairman of the GSM Association (GSMA) . Telenor has a current market capitalization of $36.4 billion and claims 192 million customers across 13 international markets -- and that doesn't include its reach in Russia, where it holds a substantial stake in VimpelCom Ltd. (NYSE: VIP). (See Brekke to Replace Baksaas as Telenor CEO.)
As reports emerge of a number of accidents involving self-driving cars, Swisscom AG (NYSE: SCM) has revealed it is testing a driverless VW Passat on the streets of Zurich. The car is kitted out with sensors, computers and software from Autonomos Labs, and detects other cars by means of laser scanners, radar and video cameras. Zurich residents may be reassured to know that "specially trained drivers" will be present behind the steering wheel throughout, just in case…
Still in Switzerland, Sunrise Communications AG has announced a cloud partnership with Microsoft under the terms of which the Swiss firm will offer its enterprise customers Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s OneDrive cloud storage product in combination with mobile phone subscriptions.
UK regulator Ofcom has been totting up the complaints scores again, and this time it's EE 's turn to sit on the naughty step, as it generated the highest volume of complaints (during the period October to December 2014) in both fixed-line voice and fixed broadband. In mobile, however, Vodafone UK attracted the most complaints, while BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) is still upsetting more people than its rivals in the pay-TV sector.
Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) is 150 years old today, and the company is marking the fact with celebrations around the world. The Finnish giant started life as a paper pulp mill and has arrived at its current networking gear incarnation via cables, rubber boots, TVs and, of course, mobile phones. The culmination of the festivities in Espoo will be the emergence of former CEO Stephen Elop from a giant cake. Actually we made that last bit up. (See Eurobites: Elop's Golden Parachute Inflates.)
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
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