Euronews: S&P Downgrades Nokia Debt

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), Cable & Wireless Worldwide plc (London: CW), Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN) and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. get things moving in today's tour of the EMEA telecom headlines.

More ratings-agency woe for Nokia: Following on from last July's downgrading of its debt by Moody's Investors Service , Standard & Poor’s has now taken it another rung further down the credibility ladder, to "BBB-" from "BBB." This means it is just one level above "junk" status, in S&P's eyes. The Business Risk Assessment grading has also slipped to "fair" from "satisfactory." In a statement accompanying the judgement, S&P said: "...we are uncertain about the extent to which revenue growth from higher-priced Lumia smartphones can offset a potentially rapid decline in revenues from smartphones based on the Symbian operating system." (See Euronews: Nokia Nearly Junk, Nokia Ends 2011 on a Low and Nokia Ships First Windows Phone to Europe .)

It's cloudy in Germany today as Deutsche Telekom announced a host of cloud-related partnerships, services and technology developments to kick off this week's CeBIT trade fair in Hannover. The German operator launched the Business Marketplace service portal that will provide IT services for small to medium-sized businesses, one of which is a new, secure email service called De-Mail. The operator also said it has partnered with Premiere Global Services Inc. (PGi) to resell the Web-based videoconferencing service iMeet in Germany, and announced its support for the OpenStack cloud operating system. (See Deutsche Telekom Looks to the Cloud, Deutsche Telekom Backs OpenStack and DT's Cloudy Silver Lining.)

Cable & Wireless Worldwide (C&WW) is to deploy Infinera's high-capacity DTN-X platform on its leg of the soon-to-be-launched Europe Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) network. But could that deal lead to a back door route into Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD) for the optical vendor? To find out why, see Infinera's New Euro Scalp.

Etihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily) , the Saudi mobile operator, is deploying a service delivery platform (SDP) from Huawei, which should allow it to implement new multimedia services and set up its own app store, among other things. Huawei helped launch Mobily's LTE services in September 2011. (See Mobily Deploys Huawei's SDP and Mobily Preps LTE TDD Launch.)

A survey of U.K. broadband users by comparison website ISP Review has found that around three-quarters of them would be happy to pay more for "super-fast" speeds, which in this instance means downlink speeds of at least 25 Mbit/s. However, more than half of them cited a lack of availability as being the main obstacle to higher-speed nirvana. (See ISPs Shamed by UK Broadband Speed Tests.)

Swisscom AG (NYSE: SCM) is combining two subsidiaries, Axept AG and Webcall, into one company. Both of them operate in the unified communications/managed services area. (See Swisscom Combines Units.)

"Hello darling, it's me, I'm under the sea..." Such proclamations are surely on the way as the mobile signal reaches passengers traveling in the Channel Tunnel (that links France with the U.K.) for the first time in July, reports The Guardian. Eurotunnel, which operates the tunnel, has done a deal with four mobile operators, including Orange France and Iliad (Euronext: ILD)'s Free. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) provided the know-how behind the breakthrough.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading