TeliaSonera loses chief in wake of corruption allegations
The chief executive of Swedish carrier TeliaSonera, Lars Nyberg, stepped down on Friday in the wake of a scandal over allegations of corruption involving operations in Uzbekistan.
Telecom Italia has become the fourth European operator to join the Global M2M Association, a collaborative programme founded by Deutsche Telekom and Orange (then France Telecom) in February 2011. TeliaSonera joined in July 2011.
Swedish operator group TeliaSonera will retain its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo as it has not received a suitable offer for the business from prospective buyers, the firm has said.
The chief executive of Swedish carrier TeliaSonera, Lars Nyberg, stepped down on Friday in the wake of a scandal over allegations of corruption involving operations in Uzbekistan.
Russian operator MegFon began trading today on the London Stock Exchange ahead of its listing on December 3, 2012. The firm raised £1.1bn ($1.7bn) in its IPO, the largest new capital raised by a telecommunications company in London since Orange in 2001, according to the London Stock Exchange.
Norwegian incumbent Telenor has announced the launch of its LTE network in 11 towns and cities in the country. Telenor said it would continue rollout across the country “at a rapid pace”, pledging to have one third of the Norwegian population covered by its LTE network by the end of the year. The firm aims to have 90 per cent population coverage by 2015, said CEO Berit Svendsen in a statement.
International operator TeliaSonera has announced that it is to acquire Alem Communications, a WiMAX operator in Kazakhstan, for $170m. Stockholm-headquartered TeliaSonera, which has an extensive footprint in Eastern Europe, already holds the leading position in the Kazakh cellular market through its local subsidiary Kcell (GSM Kzakhstan).
Mobile operators worldwide should be preparing for an impending surge in traffic over the next several years, with mobile users in 2016 consuming an average of 6.5 times as much video, over eight times as much music and social media, and nearly ten times as much games than in 2011.
Nordic carrier group TeliaSonera’s wholesale division and backbone operator, TeliaSonera International Carrier, has announced that it is building a pan-European managed optical network for Facebook. To provide the social network with connectivity between internet exchange points in multiple European cities and its newest datacentre in Sweden.
Nordic operator TeliaSonera has announced that it is to increase its ownership in GSM Kazakhstan, which operates under the brand Kcell, and lead an IPO for the carrier in 2012. Kcell is the clear leader in the central Asian market, with 10.1 million customers at the end of 3Q11, according to Informa’s WCIS Plus service.
TeliaSonera gained headlines in 2009 for being one of the first to deploy LTE in its home regions of Sweden and Norway. Ahead of the LTE North America 2011 conference, taking place on the 8-9 November 2011 at the Fairmont Dallas Hotel in Dallas, Texas, USA, we see what advice Tommy Ljunggren, SVP and head of system development, mobility services at TeliaSonera has for his US counterparts – and also get his views of how important Apple is to the LTE industry.
Nordic and Baltic carrier TeliaSonera has joined the collaborative M2M programme announced by Orange and Deutsche Telekom in February 2011. The project was put in place to create seamless international M2M services across the portfolios of the German and French incumbents. At launch the agreement covered France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, with the Netherlands and the UK joining subsequently. The addition of TeliaSonera adds Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Lituania into the mix.
Poland’s second largest carrier, Polkomtel, has been sold to media mogul and Forbes rich-list regular Zygmunt Solorz-Zak for a reported €4.5bn. The sale brings an end to what’s been a fairly lengthy saga; the telco’s multiple shareholders have been looking to sell the company for several years but opportunities for a clean sale were regularly marred by in-fighting and disagreement over how the sale should proceed.
Eastern Europe is to gain another LTE player with the news that Mobitel, a Slovenian mobile network operator has deployed a test network based on the next generation mobile technology.
TeliaSonera has revealed that it is planning to invest over SEK 8bn (USD 1.25bn) in its fixed fibre networks in the Nordic and Baltic countries by 2014
The $6bn Polkomtel sale saga looks set to take an interesting turn this week with reports that last-minute squabbling between shareholders could derail the whole process. When news of the impending sale was first announced, many observers pointed to the fragmented nature of the telco’s ownership as a potential roadblock to achieving a smooth sale. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that sources close to the deal are saying the involvement of state-owned shareholderrs with differing views on how the transaction should go ahead are putting the whole venture at risk.
In a major shift in operator preferences for LTE spectrum, three of Europe’s most influential carriers have joined together to encourage vendor support for LTE devices operating in the 1800MHz spectrum. Making their announcement at the LTE World Summit in Amsterdam, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and TeliaSonera earmarked the soon-to-be-re-farmed 1800MHz spectrum as their preferred choice for rolling out LTE networks.
Europe’s third-largest operator in subscriber terms, Turkcell, has announced its intention to expand into the European market, starting with Germany in April this year. As part of the newly formed subsidiary Turkcell Europe, the German venture will involve the launch of 1200 retail locations and will initially target Turkish citizens living and travelling in Germany with pre-and-postpaid offerings.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has tapped up TeliaSonera subsidiary NetCom as its supplier of voce and mobile broadband services, demonstrating some of the application potential for LTE.
Sweden’s Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) has announced that it raised $323.7m through its latest spectrum auction. Following five days and 31 rounds of online bidding, TeliaSonera, HI3G Access, and Net4Mobility (a joint venture between Tele2 and Telenor) all secured licenses in the 800MHz “digital dividend” band.
With summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.