Euronews: NSN Linked to €1.2B Loan

Nokia Networks (NSN) and its parent Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) are making the biggest waves in today's regional news pool.

NSN has struck deals to borrow more than €1.2 billion (US$1.55 billion) from a consortium of 14 European and U.S. banks to help refinance existing debts, according to The Financial Times (subscription required). Separately, Reuters reports that NSN had been seeking to borrow €1.5 billion ($1.93 billion), but market conditions meant it had to settle for less. NSN is currently undergoing a major restructuring and cost-cutting process that will result in a headcount reduction of at least 17,000 jobs, but that process will cost a large but unspecified sum to complete. NSN received €1 billion ($1.29 billion) in fresh funding from its parents in the middle of 2011 but no further financial support is expected from either Nokia or Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE). (See NSN Could Lose More Than 17,000 Staff and NSN Gets $1.36B & New Leader.)

Nokia is believed to have sold about 1.3 million units of its Windows-based Lumia smartphone in the first couple of months since its launch, a figure that could restore confidence in the Finnish handset maker, reports Bloomberg. (See Nokia Illuminates Its Flagship Windows Phone, Euronews: Crunch Time for Nokia's Lumia, Nokia Starts Over With Mobile Music and Nokia Ships First Windows Phone to Europe .)

Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT)'s wholesale unit has signed an agreement with Latvia's Lattelecom Group committing the pair to the setting up of a so-called Baltic Telecommunications Highway, which would see a joint fiber infrastructure across the Baltic countries, Poland and Germany offering multiple potential 10Gbit/s links. (See DT, Lattelecom Build Baltic Highway.)

U.K. cable operator Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) has carried out a trial of small-cell-based 4G services -- probably of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) variety -- in central London, reports the Financial Times (subscription required). Earlier reports have suggested the operator may participate in the U.K. government's forthcoming auction of LTE spectrum. (See Euronews: Ofcom Slams Obstructive UK Operators and Euronews: Virgin Eyes 4G Femto Spectrum.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading