Euronews: Telefónica Secures $1B Credit

Telefónica SA, Ericsson AB, Virgin Media Inc. and VimpelCom Ltd. loom large in today's hack through the EMEA news thicket.

Vendor financing is back, big-time! Telefónica has secured a $1 billion credit facility to buy equipment from Ericsson, reports Reuters. The loan is backed by two Swedish export authorities, the Swedish National Export Guarantee Board (EKN) and the Swedish Export Credit Corporation (SEK).

The outgoing CEO of Virgin Media said the U.K cable operator plans to embrace more warmly over-the-top (OTT) Web services such as Netflix, reports Bloomberg. Neil Berkett, who announced he was leaving once the takeover of Virgin by Liberty Global Inc. had been confirmed, said: "Our approach is to get every content asset you possibly can on the platform." (See Euronews: Virgin CEO to Exit After Takeover.)

Competitive business services specialist Zen Internet is installing Ethernet access gear in 200 U.K. local exchanges and buying backhaul capacity from Cable & Wireless Worldwide (now part of Vodafone Group plc) as it ramps up its presence in the British business Ethernet services market. (See Zen Builds UK Ethernet Network.)

Russian giant VimpelCom made a profit of $801 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with a loss of $381 million in the same period a year earlier. Growth was particularly strong in the CIS and Africa & Asia business units, though the picture was less rosy in the Europe & North America unit, where revenues slipped 8 percent year-on-year.

Brits love the Internet -- and they get it cheap. Those are two of the findings of a new study by U.K. regulator Ofcom, which compared how British people interact with the Internet, and how much they pay for it, compared to the other countries in the so-called EU 5, namely France, Germany, Italy and Spain. If you like bar charts, you'll love this.

Telenor ASA, the Norway-based mobile operator, can continue its lucrative Grameenphone business in Bangladesh, despite a government commission there ruling that its license must be suspended immediately because of alleged flaws in its initial issuing process. Reuters quotes a Bangladeshi government official, who said that no action will be taken until the commission in question produces its final report.

These days, everyone has to have a dashboard -- and Deutsche Telekom AG is no exception. The carrier is launching its own security dashboard, to be found at the www.sicherheitstacho.eu portal, which boasts a digital map of the world showing the origin of cyber attacks recorded around the clock by more than 90 sensors. The portal is available free of charge to security experts and "interested parties." — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading