Euronews: Crunch Time for Nokia's Lumia

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), KPN Telecom NV (NYSE: KPN), Telefónica Deutschland GmbH and BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) are in the frame for today's snapshot of EMEA telecom headlines.

The jury still seems to be out on Nokia's Lumia 800 "make-or-break" Windows Phone handset, which has just gone on sale in Europe. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has been telling anyone who will listen that the reaction to the launch has been "remarkably positive," reports Bloomberg, but the Financial Times (subscription required) cites two "operator insiders" as saying that the Lumia 800 had far fewer pre-orders than Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iPhone 4S. Elop must hope his baby will turn out to be this year's cabbage patch kid doll and do the business this Christmas. We'll await the New Year post-mortem. (See Nokia Ships First Windows Phone to Europe .)

Eelco Blok, CEO of Dutch incumbent KPN, has been telling a Morgan Stanley conference that a merger between his company and Telefonica's O2 in Germany would make a lot of sense, reports Reuters. However, Telefonica's Chief Finance Officer Angel Vila said there was no intention of selling the German business. (See Euronews: KPN's Slide Continues and Euronews: Layoff Costs Tear Into Telefonica's Q3 .)

Is BT "throttling" three-quarters of its U.K. broadband connections? That is the claim made in a New York Times report, citing results generated by boffins at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. (See ISPs Shamed by UK Broadband Speed Tests and BBC Hits Out at BT.)

Geo Networks Ltd. , an operator of a fiber network project in Wales, has pulled out of BDUK, the "delivery vehicle" that was set up by the U.K. government to help speed next-generation broadband rollout in Britain, complaining that the current subsidy model favors BT. The Independent reported that Cable & Wireless Communications had also withdrawn from the process. (See Geo Quits UK Broadband Group and Openreach, Fujitsu Tout Progress on Pole Sharing.)

And in a less controversial bit of BT news, the U.K. incumbent has announced it has expanded its Ethernet Connect VPN service to an additional six countries, taking the total number covered to 28.

U.K. mobile operator Three UK isn't happy about the "mobile money" joint venture set up earlier this year by rivals Vodafone UK , Telefónica UK Ltd. (O2) and EE , telling the Daily Telegraph that the venture's true aim was to "eliminate the prospect of competition." (See UK Operators Form Mobile Money JV.) — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading