Deutsche Telekom AG, Alcatel-Lucent, Technicolor SA and Vodafone Group plc lead the charge in today's assault on the EMEA headlines.

Deutsche Telekom has announced a collaboration with IBM in the "smart cities" sphere, combining their respective expertise in M2M (machine-to-machine) technology. The pair will be showing off their plans with a range of Smarter City demos at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. (See Deutsche Telekom, IBM Team on Smart Cities.)

Alcatel-Lucent has found its replacement for Ben Verwaayen as CEO in the shape of former Vodafone Head of Europe Michael Combes. (See Alcatel-Lucent Appoints New CEO and Alcatel-Lucent: Don't Blame Ben.)

A €38.6 million (US$51 million) EU antitrust fine helped send French set-top box maker Technicolor into the red to the tune of €22 million ($29 million) in 2012, despite full-year revenues being 3.8 percent up at €3.5 billion ($4.6 billion). (See Technicolor Reports 2012 Net Loss and Euronews: Investors Fight Over Technicolor.)

Vodafone has landed a significant corporate service contract with ThyssenKrupp that includes 60,000 voice and data connections across 30 countries for the German multinational's staff and 50,000 M2M connections to enable the remote management of the firm's industrial products. For more, see this press release.

Restructuring costs and a sizeable levy to the Moroccan government hit earnings at Maroc Telecom, reports Reuters. Full-year net profits dropped 17 percent to 6.7 billion dirhams ($794 million) at the Vivendi-owned operator.

T-Hrvatski Telekom, the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, is to deploy NEC's Cloud Service Broker, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform it is hoping will win enterprise customers in Eastern Europe. (See T-HT Croatia Gets Cloudy With NEC.) — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading