Euronews: VOD Slips Back After Verizon Denial

Vodafone Group plc, Verizon Wireless, Google and Swisscom AG loom large in today's trawl of the EMEA headlines.

Shares in Vodafone have slipped back following a denial by Verizon Wireless that it was planning to bid for the U.K.-based mobile giant, reports the Daily Telegraph. A flurry of trading on Tuesday on speculation that such a deal was in the offing had bumped up the Vodafone share price, but it fell 5.4 pence to 186.7 pence first thing Wednesday morning after Verizon quashed the rumor. But it's not the first time that this rumor has done the rounds… (See Euronews: VOD Rises on Verizon Buyout Chat.)

Not one, not two, but six European data protection agencies are considering seeing the mighty Google in court over its perceived failure to address shortcomings in its privacy policy, reports the BBC. A report published last October said that the search behemoth had to be more transparent about what data it was holding on users, amongst other things. (See Euronews: France Grills Google and Marketers Slam Apple's Privacy Invasion.)

Bahrain's regulator has called a halt to its LTE spectrum auction, reports Reuters, following an appeal by wannabe bidder Mena Telecom against its exclusion from the process.

Swisscom is boasting that it has brought 159 locations into its LTE fold, five months after it first launched such services. The operator says that around 300,000 of its customers are making use of an LTE-compatible smartphone. — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading