Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson and Telefonica's NFV coziness to continue; MTN profits rise on data growth; Deutsche Telekom to push Microsoft's Lumia.
Italy has long been languishing near the bottom of the European Union rankings in terms of high-speed broadband coverage -- and now the country's government is planning to do something about it. Reuters reports that ministers have approved a plan to spend €6 billion (US$6.7 billion) on upgrading its high-speed broadband network, and the intention is that this will be topped up by investment from telcos.
Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) and Telefónica have used the stage provided by Barcelona's Mobile World Congress to announce the extension of their NFV collaboration. Short-term plans include the setting up of a multivendor cloud environment to test Ericsson's virtualized network functions on top of a cloud infrastructure. (See Telefónica Unveils Aggressive NFV Plans.)
Africa's MTN Group Ltd. saw full-year profits rise 8.9% year on year, reports Bloomberg, as data revenues increased, not least through the rise of "mobile money" services.
Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) has formed a partnership with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) to help push Microsoft's Lumia smartphones and assorted online services in the 12 European countries in which the German giant has a presence. As part of the collaboration, Deutsche Telekom will be selling Microsoft's new Lumia 640, which was announced at Mobile World Congress this week.
Colt Technology Services Group Ltd and SIA have been jointly awarded the contract to connect KELER, the Hungarian central securities depository, to TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the new single European platform for the settlement of transactions in domestic and cross-border securities. According to forecasts from the European Central Bank, the TARGET2-Securities system will eventually be capable of handling more than 1 million securities transactions a day.
Pay-TV provider Sky Italia has chosen Vlocity Inc. 's cloud-based CRM offering to help meet its Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) needs. Sky Italia has around 4.7 million customers.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
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