Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) and Telenor Group (Nasdaq: TELN) dominate proceedings in today's look at the EMEA telecom news headlines.

Deutsche Telekom is considering selling its T-Mobile (UK) half of the EE mobile joint venture, Bloomberg reports. Rumors to this effect first surfaced following the recent collapse of its sale of T-Mobile US Inc. to AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). (See Euronews: T-Mobile Sale Focus Switches to UK, Euronews: DT Preps T-Mobile Plan B and AT&T Drops Bid to Acquire T-Mobile.)

Ericsson has completed the sale of its stake in the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications handsets joint venture to Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE). Ericsson's gain on the transaction will be around 7.5 billion Swedish Kroner (US$1.1 billion). (See Ericsson Completes Handset Stake Sale, Euronews: Nokia, Sony Ericsson Under Pressure, Euronews: Sony Buys Ericsson Out of Handsets and Euronews: Ericsson Could Quit Handsets.)

The long-running Norse/Russian saga of Telenor and VimpelCom Ltd. (NYSE: VIP) has taken another twist, reports Reuters, with the Norwegian operator regaining control of the Russian group after buying 234 million shares in it from Weather Investments, thereby upping its voting share to 36.36 percent. VimpelCom had most recently been under the control of Alfa Group, owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. (See Telenor CEO Joins VimpelCom Board, Telenor Opposes VimpelCom Acquisition of Wind and Telenor, Altimo Make Peace.)

Orange France is taking Facebook to Africa, deploying something called USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), which apparently allows even the most basic non-Internet-connected mobile phone to access the social networking service via a text-based service. Orange launched a version of this service in Egypt (through its Mobinil arm) late last year. (See Orange Takes Facebook to Africa.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading