Euronews: FT Commits to LTE Rollout

Orange (NYSE: FTE), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Telecom Italia (TIM) strut their stuff in today's totter down the catwalk of EMEA telecom headlines.

France Telecom is clearly looking to get on the right side of Neelie Kroes, the European Commission 's vice president for the Digital Agenda. Stéphane Richard, the operator's chairman and CEO, has offered the Steely One ten "commitments" which it hopes will prove its full engagement with this Digital Agenda lark. A rollout of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in all Orange European Union markets by 2015, and availability of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) to 15 million households and 80 percent of businesses by 2020 in France are just two of the targets that Richard has signed up to. (See France Telecom Pledges Support for EC Policy, IDC: HP No. 1 in External Storage, Steely Neelie's FTTX Face Off, Europe's Broadband Challenge, Euronews: FT Goes Full-Tilt on FTTH and Euronews: French Rivals Do Deal on FTTH.)

Apple is facing off against smartphone rivals Motorola Mobility LLC , BlackBerry and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) over proposed specifications for new miniature SIM cards, called nano-SIMs, at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) , reports the Financial Times (subscription required). Reportedly, Apple has the support of most European operators for its proposal and it has applied to increase the number of votes that it has in the standards-making body.

Peter Cochrane, the influential former CTO of BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA), has warned that the U.K. risks being "frozen out of the next industrial revolution" if the government does not get its act together on broadband, reports The Guardian. Cochrane was speaking at a House of Lords inquiry into national broadband strategy. (See Great Britain? I Don't Think So, ISPs Shamed by UK Broadband Speed Tests and Former BT CTO Fears for Telcos.)

Telecom Italia Chairman Franco Bernabe envisages €9 billion (US$11.9 billion) being invested domestically by the operator between 2012 and 2014, reports Reuters. (See Euronews: Telecom Italia Boss Thinks Positive.)

An amusing hatchet-job on truly awful Brussels-speak in the telecom sphere is to be found on the Berlaymonster site. It focuses on a call for tender within the European Commission's department for telecoms policies, the title of which is: "Multiple Framework Contracts for the provision of support services facilitating Strategic Decision Processes and Future Vision and Mission Statements." Successful applicant, explain that one to your proud grandmother.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading