Facebook 's European headquarters in Dublin is on the receiving end of a class action from around 25,000 users that alleges that the social networking giant has violated European privacy laws, reports the BBC. The case, which is being led by Austrian campaigner Max Schrems, is being heard in a Vienna court. Compensation of approximately €500 ($539) per user is being sought by the complainants.

Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) has teamed up with Telefónica Deutschland GmbH and RWTH Aachen University to demonstrate LTE optimization for use with smart meters. According to the vendor, the trials showed that even under heavily loaded network conditions, the stream of messages from smart meters can be received within less than 100 milliseconds at the central utility IT systems over an Ericsson LTE basestation.

On a similar tack, Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) is collaborating with Australia's NetComm (ASX: NTC) and Cumulocity on M2M, and at next week's Hannover Messe NetComm will show how its NTC-6200 router can be used as the communication component of Deutsche Telekom's so-called Industry 4.0 M2M offering.

France's Thomson Video Networks has launched what it says is the industry's most compact live Ultra HD encoder, the ViBE 4K. The box offers live compression of UHD sources at up to 60 frames per second and in 10-bit color, allowing, among other things, more realistic rendering of sports action. (See Thomson Video Networks Introduces Compact Ultra HD Encoder.)

Finland's Elisa Corp. has been given the go-ahead by the country's competition authority to increase its stake in cable operator Anvia to 26.8%, from 25%, reports Reuters.