Telecom Italia (TIM)'s revenues for the first nine months were 3.9% down year-on-year, to €14.9 billion ($15.9 billion), and EBITDA also slipped, by 4.8% discounting one-off charges. In the results statement, CEO Marco Patuano was keen to point to an improved performance in mobile in the third quarter, revenues from which increased 1.5% year-on-year. Investors weren't that impressed, with Telecom Italia's share price dropping by more than 3% in Friday morning trading in Frankfurt.

The

European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO)has appointed Lise Fuhr as its new director-general, effective January 2016. Fuhr, a Dane, is currently COO of DK Hostmaster and DIFO, the company managing the .dk domain name. The organization is also welcoming BT Group plc(NYSE: BT; London: BTA) into the fold -- which sort of makes you wonder why it wasn't a member already.

UK broadband provider

TalkTalkhas been uncovering more detailsabout the hack of its website on October 21, and it seems the number of customers whose personal details were accessed is not as great as was first thought. TalkTalk has around 4 million customers, but the number of customers whose details were stolen is just over 156,000, and, of these, 15,656 had their bank account numbers and sort codes accessed. (See TalkTalk Plummets on Security Woes.)Liberty Global Inc.(Nasdaq: LBTY) 's third-quarter performance in western Europe was led by its German operation, which delivered 7% rebased revenue growth, its best growth in six quarters. In the UK, Virgin Media Inc.(Nasdaq: VMED), now owned by Liberty, achieved 5% rebased revenue growth, driven primarily by improvement in ARPU (average revenue per user).

Cattle rustlers beware:

Deutsche Telekom AG(NYSE: DT) is dragging the world of agriculture into the era of "Farm 2.0," which involves "intelligent fences," remote farm surveillance in real time and mobile control of agricultural machinery, amongst other things. The carrier will be displaying its wares in the agricultural, er, field next week at the Agritechnica Trade Fair in Hanover. Figure 1: Farm 1.0 (Image by SoCal)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe,

Light Reading