Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Russia's MTS downgraded; Net Insight Q2 sales down by nearly a third year-on-year; Deutsche Telekom joins ONF.
Representatives from Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Proximus, Telenor and Orange crossed the Atlantic this week to meet up with US regulators, stakeholders and folk from AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and USTelecoms, and Donald Trump Jr.* in a fact-finding mission organized by the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) . During the two-day visit the delegates learned about the latest policy and regulatory developments affecting the telecom industry in the US, and discussed how policy can be used to promote innovation and investment.
The credit rating of Russia's Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS) (NYSE: MBT) has been downgraded by both Standard & Poor's and Fitch to the equivalent of "junk bond" status as a result of a downgrade in the credit ratings of Sistema PJSFC, the operator's major shareholder.
Second-quarter sales at Net Insight AB (Stockholm: NETI-B), the Swedish media delivery specialist, were down 29.3% year-on-year, at 93.5 million Swedish kronor (US$11.3 million), which translated into an operating loss of SEK21.5 million ($2.6 million). In a statement, CEO Fredrik Tumegård looked on the bright side, claiming "strong positioning ahead of future business opportunities."
A couple of tidbits relating to Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd 's European exploits: First, Ukrainian operator Lifecell has teamed up with Huawei to deploy the Easy Macro 2.0-based PoleStar site product in the city of Lviv to help boost network capacity; and, second, French chipmaker Sequans Communications has announced the availability of the first Huawei module based on Sequans' Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT platform.
Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) has become the first European operator to join the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the non-profit consortium that focuses on SDN, as a partner member. For more details, see this story on our sister site, telecoms.com.
The Swiss team behind Strong-Codes, a startup that makes tools to obscure code and therefore make it harder for rivals to copy, has been acquired by Snap Inc. , the US company behind the popular SnapChat messaging service. As Bloomberg reports, the Strong.Codes co-founders will remain working in Switzerland, though Strong.Codes as an entity has shup up shop.
*OK, we made up the Donald Trump Jr. bit. Call it clickbait. Or fake news. But he would have loved it.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
