Euronews: Alcatel-Lucent Admits Faults

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS) (NYSE: MBT) top the bill in today's dose of EMEA telecom headline action.

It's hairshirt time for AlcaLu CEO Ben Verwaayen, who has been telling the Financial Times (subscription required) that the well-documented problems at his company are all of its own making. "I am not going to blame anything else than ourselves," says Verwaayen, though he makes it clear that he plans to stick around to make things better. Last week the company announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs and bail out of its less lucrative services deals. (See Alcatel-Lucent: Too Little, Too Late? and Pressure's On in Paris.)

Several directors at Nokia, CEO Stephen Elop among them, have been loading up on shares in the ailing company, reports Bloomberg. Elop and friends bagged more than US$1 million worth of the shares, which fell to €1.33, an 18-year low, earlier this month. (See Euronews: Nokia Loses $1.9B in Q2 and Euronews: Market Ponders Nokia's Future.)

Tell it like it is, Vasyl: MTS's vice president of marketing, Vasyl Latsanych, has been having a go at Apple over its iPhone control-freakery, reports Bloomberg. Describing the Californian company as being in "dictatorship mode," the Russian operator's bigwig said: "Being arrogant with your partners in big markets doesn't pay off." What can he mean? Oh...

EE , the joint venture between Orange UK and T-Mobile (UK) , has partnered with Atmovia to offer a platform for the operator's future MVNO customers. Atmovia's offering is based on Nokia Networks technology. (See Everything Everywhere Teams With Atmovia.)

Telefónica UK Ltd. and Level 3 Communications Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) have both won a slot on the U.K. government's Public Services Network (PSN) program, which effectively means they have a good chance of a slice of any forthcoming British public-sector contracts action. (See Level 3 Selected for UK Govnt Services.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading