European businesses need to get their act together when it comes to the cloud, according to a new report produced by Deloitte and commissioned by Vodafone. The Progress Towards the EU's Digital Decade Ambition finds that only 26% of all EU companies are currently using cloud computing services, which is well short of the EU's 75% target set for 2030. A lack of ICT specialists is identified as one of the main reasons for the apparent slow progress – their number stands at 8.43 million across the EU now but needs to more than double in the next seven years, says the report.

Nokia and Rakuten have jointly demonstrated what they claim is the first live 1Tbit/s per channel transmission over the operator's commercial DWDM network, which is a speed hike of 500% on Rakuten's existing network rate. The terabit-tastic figures were achieved using coherent transmission powered by Nokia's Photonic Service Engine (PSE) supporting 1Tbit/s capacity over a 150GHz optical spectrum.

Shareholders representing at least one tenth of all the shares in Ericsson voted against discharging the company's board of directors and president from liability at Tuesday's general meeting. Ericsson has been embroiled in scandal involving alleged payments to Isis in Iraq. Speaking after the Ericsson's CEO, Börje Ekholm, said: "I understand the concerns raised by our shareholders and these are important matters." (See Eurobites: Shareholders put the heat back on Ericsson execs over Iran scandal and Ericsson Iraq crisis worsens as risk of US penalties grows.)

Deutsche Telekom is hoping to alleviate the plight of Ukrainian refugees by offering them technology jobs in its various European units, and to this end it has set up a dedicated hotline (+49 800 2830 0560) and email address ([email protected]).

Sweden's Tele2 says it has achieved its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions four years ahead of schedule. This was done by using 100% renewable electricity throughout 2021 as well as carbon removals using a combination of forestry projects and carbon-capture and storage technologies.

New figures from Kenya's communications regulator show that mobile subscriptions rose by just 0.3% in the October-December 2021 quarter, to reach 65.08 million. Of the mobile phones connected, 67.9% were feature phones and 54.5% were smartphones. Broadband subscriptions rose by 5.4%, to 29.14 million.

Swisscom's shareholders have approved the board's proposed dividend of CHF22 gross per share for the 2021 financial year. This matches the dividend of the previous year.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading