If there is one broad theme that sums up this year’s Mobile World Congress for me it is the idea of ‘the network as asset’, and the perception that CSPs could and should be doing a great deal more to leverage this their prime asset.

Customer experience also figured highly in the briefings and presentations I attended, but by contrast with last year’s heavy CEM-software product focus, this year customer experience was discussed just as much in the context of network performance and the need to make more effective use of network intelligence.

The Chilean arm of operator group Telefónica has selected infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks to build its LTE network, The vendor will also help Movistar Chile to expand its 3G network.

Infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has seen its operating profit for 4Q12 increase a staggering 275 per cent year on year. The €251m generated in the quarter dwarfed the €67m recorded in 4Q11, but the performance could not prevent the firm from seeing its annual loss slide to more than two and a half times as deep as 2011; from -€300m in 2011 to -€799m in 2012.

OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod! Kate Middleton is having a baby!! It might be a boy!! Or a girl!!

Right, that’s that out of the way, let’s get on with the real news. Christmas will soon be upon us and what better time than this to de-clutter. So says Nokia Siemens Networks, anyhow, as it continues to jettison non-core assets.

Telecoms equipment vendor Nokia Siemens Networks continues to streamline its operation, on Monday announcing plans to offload its optical networks business to an investment firm.

As is usual on the morning of the launch of an iPhone, there were queues outside Apple retail stores so long that even the Parisian paparazzi struggled to capture the scenes with their hi-tech lenses. But although the majority of those sleeping rough for several nights to be among the first to own the slightly thinner, slightly taller and slightly faster version of last year’s phone were hardcore Apple fans, an increasing proportion were opportunists, lining up to be caught on camera in their promotional t-shirts or selling their space in line for four figure sums.