Ericsson has agreed a €500 million (US$644 million) loan with the European Investment Bank to fund research and development work into next-generation radio and IP technology for mobile broadband. The funding will be specifically directed to Ericsson sites in Sweden and Finland. The Swedish giant claims it has around 22,000 staff engaged in R&D activities worldwide. (See Ericsson Agrees €500M R&D Loan and Euronews: Ericsson Pumps $4.9B Into R&D.)

Atomico Ventures , the investment firm headed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, is looking to raise €300 million ($386 million) in funding to back technology startups worldwide, reports Bloomberg.

Telenor has turned on 4G services in its native Norway, in 11 towns and cities. "This marks the start of a new mobile fairy tale which all Norwegians will become part of," said Berit Svendsen, CEO of Telenor Norway, though to be fair it might have sounded less silly in Norwegian. This is a busy time for the operator, which has forged a new mobile payments API partnership with Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF) and settled its differences with India's Uninor , transferring the Uninor joint venture mobile operator to a new entity controlled by Telenor. (See Telenor Norway Launches 4G, Telefónica, Telenor Team on APIs, Telenor Writes Down India Assets and India in Shock as 122 Licenses Canceled.)

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is to design and install an IP/MPLS network covering parts of the German region of Saxony for desaNet, a services provider working in the "smart grid" sphere. The new network, says AlcaLu, will enable desaNet to support several essential services on one system to reduce network costs. (See AlcaLu Deploys IP/MPLS for desaNet.)

ST-Ericsson has signed an agreement which will see its research and development activities in Linköping, Sweden, outsourced to Cybercom Group . As part of the plan, Cybercom, which already supplies ST-Ericsson, will develop testing software for the chip vendor from now until June 2013. The deal will also see the transfer of 27 employees from ST-Ericsson to Cybercom.

Telefónica has pledged €7.8 million ($10 million) to the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, a fund that the city fathers hope will turn Barcelona into a global center of development and innovation in mobile technology.

NetDev, a U.K.-based apps developer, has launched Drum, which it describes as a "disruptive, viral audio and web meeting service for mobile operators." An HTML5 application, Drum allows enterprise mobile users to create meetings, present documents, take notes and assign tasks. (See NetDev Bangs Its Mobile Meeting Drum.)

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) is trying to make hay out of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s screwing up of the iPhone's navigation software, reports Bloomberg. Nokia used its blog to say: "Unlike our competitors, which are financing their location assets with advertising or licensing mapping content from third parties, we completely own, build and distribute mapping content, platform and apps." (See Apple: Sorry About Our Map App.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading