Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Telenor Group (Nasdaq: TELN), ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) are the big beasts stalking the dusty savannah of today's Euro telecom news.

The chairman of Nokia, Jorma Ollila, has confirmed that he will step down from his current role within the next 12 months, reports The Guardian. This follows numerous departures and reshuffles that have taken place since the arrival of Stephen Elop from Microsoft as the new-broom CEO. (See Nokia's History of Change, Nokia's 'Burning Platform' Memo and Nokia Dumps CEO, Hires Elop.)

Nordic powerhouse Telenor has clearly forgiven ZTE its past indiscretions, as the operator has awarded the Chinese vendor a contract to supply applications servers to support voicemail, SMS, MMS, location-based services and WAP services. Telenor barred ZTE from being a supplier in late 2008 for a breach of the carrier's code of conduct related to tenders, but clearly everyone's playing by the rules these days. (See Telenor Does VAS With ZTE and Telenor Bans ZTE From New Deals.)

Encouraging first-quarter results from Liberty Global Inc. (Nasdaq: LBTY) subsidiary UPC Broadband , which added 128,000 RGUs in the period, a year-on-year rise of 22 percent. Broadband was the fastest-growing element of the cable operator's triple-play offer, delivering 5 percent revenue growth year-on-year. (See UPC Reports Q1 and UPC Reports 2010.)

The French government plans to begin the auction of 4G spectrum in late May, Reuters reports. As requested by Orange (NYSE: FTE)'s rivals, a cap will be placed on the amount of spectrum any single operator can buy. (See Euronews: April 8.)

Two more wins for AlcaLu: French FTTP (fiber-to-the-premises) operator Completel S.A.S. (Paris: CPT) has chosen the vendor's 100G offering for a major network upgrade; and German cable operator Tele Columbus AG will use AlcaLu to host and develop a new broadband TV service that is being delivered via NDS set-top box software. (See Completel Upgrades With AlcaLu, Tele Columbus Offers HbbTV With AlcaLu, NDS and AlcaLu's Rise to Normalcy.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading