Huawei's European footprint just got a little larger with the announcement that it is to play a major role in the US$1.3 billion 4G rollout planned by Italian operator Wind. The five-year deal also includes the services of Italian network engineering and deployment specialist Sirti, reports Reuters. (See Huawei Expects Relentless Growth.)
MTS has turned to the local arm of NEC Corp. to help it launch femtocell services in the far-flung Ural region of Russia. The system is intended to provide MTS's enterprise customers with stable 3G coverage in buildings where thick walls and steel beams may otherwise obstruct the signals coming from base stations.
South Korea's KT Corp. has got cold feet over bidding for Vivendi's 53 percent stake in Morocco's Maroc Telecom, reports Reuters. KT was apparently concerned about the "discrepancy between KT's own valuation and that of the market and sell-side," it said in an email to its advisers.
The U.K.'s National Audit Office is launching an investigation into why the country's 4G spectrum raised so much less than anticipated, reports The Guardian. The government had been hoping for a £3.5 billion ($5.3 billion) windfall, but "just" £2.3 billion ($3.5 billion) was bid in total. (See UK 4G Auction Falls Short.)
Google's offer to settle an antitrust investigation by the European Union into how its search results are presented is highly unlikely to placate those who made the complaints about Google's methods in the first place, reports Bloomberg. The search giant has offered to make the distinction between its own services and others' clearer in its results, but this "clearer labeling" approach has been dismissed as a "non-starter" by a lawyer working for the disgruntled group, which includes Microsoft Corp. and others.