Alcatel-Lucent has cut 7,500 jobs during the first half of 2013, CEO Michel Combes noted during the vendor's investor conference call Tuesday. In response to questions from financial analysts, Combes said that, including jobs associated with managed services deals that are no longer active, the company's headcount has decreased by 7,500. The company announced last year that about 5,500 jobs would go as part of the Performance Program, but Combes, who took over as CEO in early April, has since initiated his Shift Plan, which includes additional cost-cutting and a revamp of the business. (See AlcaLu Reports Q2 Loss of €885M, Alcatel-Lucent Unveils Shift Plan, Alcatel-Lucent Builds Future Around IP and AlcaLu Job Cuts to Hit 5,500.)

Dante (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe) has announced that the recent upgrade to its Géant network, which involved the replacement of legacy equipment with shiny new boxes, has given it network capacity of 2 Tbit/s and the ability to provision services to its research and education users within hours. (See Dante's SDH Inferno.)

Netsize says it has hooked up its carrier billing platform to all five of the U.K.'s mobile operators, enabling British smartphone users to pay for goods and services using their mobile bill.

Finnish Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) vendor Comptel has landed a €2.8 million (US$3.7 million) deal with a customer in Latin America. Comptel recently announced slightly improved first half results and noted that it still expects full year sales to grow year-on-year from 2012's €82.4 million ($109 million) and that it will generate an operating profit of up to 10% of revenues.

The 800MHz band in the U.K. has been cleared of legacy TV services and is now ready for 4G mobile broadband services, five months ahead of schedule, regulator Ofcom has announced. Everything Everywhere, Vodafone, Hutchison 3G UK (3) and Telefónica UK (O2) all won licenses to offer 4G services over 800 MHz spectrum earlier this year. (See UK 4G Auction Falls Short.)

Vodafone Group plc and Orange have struck a network-sharing agreement in Romania, according to this report from Economica.net (in Romanian).

German utility company Stadtwerke Emsdetten is building out a fiber broadband access network in the town of Emsdetten using multiservice access equipment from Keymile AG.

-- Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading