Euronews: AlcaLu Mulls Sub-Prime Patents Sale

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and Nokia Networks dominate proceedings in today's sprint through the EMEA headlines.

A week or so after it announced it was creating a new business unit dedicated to squeezing more revenue out of its patents portfolio, Bloomberg reports that Alcatel-Lucent is considering the sale of some "secondary" patents to help pull itself back into the black. (See Euronews: AlcaLu Looks to Profit from Patents and Euronews: AlcaLu Needs to Shed 10,000 More.)

But it's not just about patents: AlcaLu has struck gold in Africa, extending its contract with mobile operator Smile to cover 4G services in Uganda. A report issued this week by the GSM Association (GSMA) named sub-Saharan Africa as the "fastest-growing mobile market in the world," with an average annual growth rate of 44 percent since 2000. (See Smile Expands 4G With AlcaLu and Africa's Wireless Gold Rush.)

Success with LTE deployments has boosted Nokia Siemens Networks' standing in the global RAN (radio access network) market in the third quarter, according to a report from ABI Research. NSN saw its RAN market share grow by 4.2 percent quarter-on-quarter to reach 22.4 percent, outpacing its rivals and leaving it just behind Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), on 22.9 percent. By contrast, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. 's RAN revenues fell by 15.2 percent sequentially, though it remains top dog in overall RAN sales. (See Euronews: NSN Overhauls LTE Offer, Euronews: Russians Turn On LTE TDD With NSN and Euronews: NSN Has Huawei in Its Sights.)

In other NSN news, René Svendsen-Tune has returned to the Finnish fold as head of customer operations in Europe after a spell as president and CEO of Teleca, a supplier of software services to the mobile sector. It seems Svendsen-Tune's experience of working with private equity made him as irresistible as a Zlatan Ibrahimovic overhead bicycle-kick goal. (Any excuse.) (See NSN Appoints Head of Euro Customer Ops.)

The Irish government has raised €855 million ($1.08 billion) from its mobile spectrum auction, reports the Irish Times. Spectrum in the 800MHz, 900MHz and 1800MHz band went under the hammer, with Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF), Vodafone Ireland , 3 Ireland and eir all getting a slice of the action.

Break out the party poppers: Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) has announced that the number of mobile subscribers being billed or charged by its Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) systems has surpassed the 2 billion mark worldwide. According to the World Cellular Information Service (WCIS) database, this is equivalent to 31 percent of the world's mobile connections. (See Ericsson's SPIT Bills/Charges 2B Subs, Ericsson Buys More OSS Smarts and Ericsson Gets IT.)

In other EMEA news:

• Europe Suffers Shrinkage, Says ETNO

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading