Well, most eyes may be focused on Barcelona's Mobile World Congress 2011, which starts today (see our show site), but life goes on in the rest of the EMEA telecom universe, with Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) and Zain Group all making waves.

Friday's announcements on the future of handset giant Nokia may have reassured some but CEO Stephen Elop's words failed to warm the cockles of workers at Nokia's plant in Tampere, Finland, which is dedicated to the development of the now-sidelined Symbian operating system. Finnish website YLE reports that around 1,000 understandably worried employees there staged a walkout immediately after Elop's rousing call to arms.

Reuters reports (citing German daily Handelsblatt) that Guido Kerkhoff, Deutsche Telekom's head of European operations, is to leave the operator. DT declined to comment on the reasons for the move.

A third offer has been put on the table for the Saudi Arabian assets of Middle East/Africa giant Zain, reports Reuters. This one's from an investment consortium led by Al Riyadh Group, and follows bids from Saudi investment firm Kingdom Holding and Bahrain Telecommunications Co. (Batelco) .

Nokia Networks has announced that Dr Marco Schröter will be joining the network equipment vendor as CFO on March 14. Schröter was previously CFO at Infineon Technologies AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: IFX) in Munich.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading