The boards of the world’s ten largest operators are dominated by executives with legal, financial and engineering backgrounds, resulting in a conservative culture that “struggles to drive and nurture innovation”, according to recruitment consultancy European Leaders.
Operator group France Telecom has tightened up its executive management and simplified its innovation department in a bid to better address operational and strategic challenges.
The industry’s big hitters have finished their doing their sums and counting their cash for another quarter and revealed just how they have performed over the quarter gone by. Apple, as per usual, posted a strong growth in profit, and was joined by America Movil, which did the same. Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo, had bad news to report.
In a move that goes against the grain of firms shrinking their headcount, France Telecom has said it will recruit 4,000 employees for permanent positions over the next three years. The operator group also plans to integrate 5,000 young people each year in France on work-study placements in order to meet their needs in terms of training and work experience.
Two of Europe’s biggest operators, Telefónica and France Telecom have announced their quarterly results, both seeing declines in net profit as they battle with market conditions and increased data usage. Spanish operator group Telefónica saw its net profit fall by 34.4 per cent year-on-year for the half-year, to reach 2.08bn, down from the 3.2bn the firm recorded in the same period a year ago. This is despite the operator’s consolidated first-half revenues totalling €30.98bn; a 0.3 per cent increase year-on-year.
France Telecom has announced that revenues dropped 0.5 per cent for the full year, to just €45.3bn ($60bn) in 2011from €45.5bn in 2010. In addition, net income after tax also fell 22 per cent to just €3.8bn from €4.9bn in 2010.
France Telecom has agreed to buy the majority of the personal stake owned by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris in Mobinil. Sawiris is executive chairman of Orascom Telecom, which maintains a stake in the mobile operator.
France Telecom has said that it will be withdrawing from some underperforming European markets as it warned that European and US debt issues were causing problems with economic growth.
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.
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.
France Telecom (FT) has announced a two-phased strategic and financial plan for 2011-2015 which the company is calling “adapt to conquer.” Announced at the telco’s Investor Day on Tuesday, the strategy, which is part of the group’s ongoing “Conquests” programme, will focus on investment and cost reduction to improve cash flow and growth at the company.
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.
A high capacity submarine cable system linking southern Africa with Europe landed at its final destination in Cape Town this morning. The West African Cable System (WACS), a 14,000km, 5.1Tbps system was brought ashore at Yzerfontein in the Western Cape and will both complement and compete with the 340Gbps Sat-3 system that went into service in the region in 2002.
Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom/Orange have put months of rumours to rest with an announcement that they will combine procurement activities in an effort to save €400-900m over the next three years. The non-binding agreement, which will form the basis for contracts to be signed in the coming weeks, is an extension of the “smart industry” partnership announced by the pair in February this year.
The Serbian government has given the sole bidder in its Telekom Srbjia sell-off 15 days to improve its offer. A fortnight ago, it emerged that Telekom Austria AG’s offer of €800-950m for the mostly-state-owned telco was the only bid received. The Serbian government, which owns 80 per cent of the telco, was hoping to attract offers in excess of €1.4bn for a 51 per cent stake in the company.
French telecoms regulator ARCEP has said that the country’s LTE spectrum auction will be launched before May this year. The terms of the sale, which is expected to raise €2bn, are expected to be finalised shortly and ARCEP has said that it wants to award the spectrum before the end of this year.
The Tunisian government has seized a 51 per cent stake in Orange Tunisia. Earlier this month, it was rumoured that a draft cabinet decree calling for the seizure of all assets held by former president Ben Ali and his family was imminent. The Mabrouk Group, owned by Marwan Mabrouk, the son-in-law of the former president, owned 51 per cent of Orange which, it was speculated, was about to be taken over by the new government. Following the publication of a government decree during the week of March 21st, the seizures have been made official.
France Telecom has finally confirmed rumours that have been circling since December, announcing plans to take a sizeable stake in Iraqi mobile operator Korek Telecom.
Less than a year after its launch, Orange Tunisia may be on the verge of gaining a new majority shareholder in the form of the country’s incoming government. According to a report from Reuters, the 51 per cent stake held by Investec could be seized following a rumoured draft cabinet decree to the effect that all assets of former president Ben Ali and his family be seized.
A consortium including Fipar-Holding (CDG group), FinanceCom and France Telecom have signed a memorandum of understanding with a view to France Telecom acquiring a 40 per cent share of Moroccan operator Medi Telecom for €640m. The closing of the agreement requires approval of the Moroccan regulatory body (ANRT), expected to take place by the end of 2010.
