Euronews: BT Offloads SPIT SharesEuronews: BT Offloads SPIT Shares

In today's roundup: BT sells stake in service provider IT firm Tech Mahindra; the latest on NSN; TeliaSonera bypasses the set-top box; Ireland's broadband dream

August 30, 2012

2 Min Read
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BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA), Tech Mahindra Ltd. , Nokia Networks , Telia Company , Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC), the Republic of Ireland, SFR and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) have all made the cut in today's regional news roundup.

  • BT has started selling part of its holding in Indian Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) firm Tech Mahindra on the open stock market in India, reports The Economic Times. BT held a 23 percent stake in the IT services and network applications specialist at the end of June and is looking to raise about $100 million by selling a 5 percent stake in the Indian vendor, according to the report.

  • NSN is close to selling its BSS assets, according to a Bloomberg report. (See Is NSN Close to BSS Sale?)

  • TeliaSonera and Samsung are jointly developing a Smart TV solution for the carrier's IPTV service that negates the need for a set-top box. The service will be launched in Estonia before the end of this year and then in Sweden and Finland in 2013.

  • Ireland's government has announced a national broadband plan aimed at delivering a minimum 30Mbit/s connection to every home and business in the country, but with more than half the country's population having access to downstream speeds of between 70 Mbit/s and 100 Mbit/s by 2015. The government has pledged to invest €175 million (US$220 million) in the scheme. Showing the importance it places on the role of broadband connectivity to the country's economic future, the government stated that "bringing faster broadband to rural areas [is] as important as rural electrification."

  • Nokia has teamed up with audio entertainment systems specialist Harman to develop wireless audio products that can connect exclusively to the handset vendor's Lumia smartphones. (See Nokia, Harman Team on Audio Tech.)

  • A 1.2 percent slide in revenues at French operator SFR led Vivendi to report a dip in revenues and earnings for the first half of 2012, reports Reuters. Like the other incumbent French operators, SFR has been hit this year by Iliad (Euronext: ILD)'s entry into the mobile services market.

  • A national survey conducted for Telekom Austria AG (NYSE: TKA; Vienna: TKA) shows that a quarter of Austrians are still not online.

    — Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading

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