Nokia was very busy 1 year ago this week, with the vendor closing on the sale of its Here mapping unit, while shareholders approved its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.
Nokia closes $3 billion sale of Here mapping unit
Telecom solutions powerhouse Nokia completed the sale of its Here mapping and services unit to a group of German automakers comprised of Audi, BMW and Daimler-Benz for more than $3 billion. According to the company, “Nokia received net proceeds from the transaction of approximately [$2.79 million], which is consistent with Nokia’s earlier estimated net proceeds. …The sale of Here is the latest stage of Nokia’s transformation ahead of its planned combination with Alcatel-Lucent, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016.” … Read More
Nokia shareholders OK $16.5B acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent
Shareholders of Finnish telecom equipment manufacturer Nokia approved the proposed $16.5 billion acquisition of French-based supplier Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia has obtained all the regulatory approvals required to proceed with the proposed transaction. In April 2015, the two vendors agreed to close a deal whereby Nokia would make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent through a public exchange offer in France and in the U.S. The $16.5 billion transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. … Read More
BlackBerry leaving Pakistan after data monitoring spat
Canadian company BlackBerry plans on leaving the Pakistan market following a disagreement with the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority regarding access to information stored on BlackBerry Enterprise Services servers. BlackBerry COO Marty Beard laid out the situation in a post on the company’s blog. Beard said the issue started in July when the PTA “notified the country’s mobile phone operators that BlackBerry’s BES servers would no longer be allowed to operate in the country starting in December ‘for security reasons.’” … Read More
AT&T prepaid brand Cricket Wireless taps Dwyer as president
AT&T Mobility named John Dwyer president of its Cricket Wireless prepaid division, replacing Jennifer Van Buskirk, who had been named to a new position within AT&T. Dwyer is set to oversee Cricket Wireless’ “premium” no-contract brand, including day-to-day operations and long-term planning, strategy and execution. Dwyer previously worked in customer experience positions at AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions division, with former positions in leadership roles at Cingular Wireless and Pacific Bell Mobile Services. … Read More
Qualcomm strikes deal with Xiaomi
Qualcomm will license cellular patents to Chinese smartphone juggernaut Xiaomi, the rising star that has quintupled its worldwide market share during the last three years. The San Diego chipmaker’s agreement with Xiaomi follows patent licensing agreements with three other Chinese smartphone makers: Huawei, ZTE and TCL Communication Technologies. Lenovo, which recently purchased Motorola Mobility’s mobile device business, is now China’s only major manufacturer of smartphones that has not yet struck a deal with Qualcomm. Earlier this year, the Chinese government set new rules to govern the way Qualcomm can license its cellular patents in the world’s largest market. Following that agreement, Qualcomm hoped to strike licensing deals with all the top smartphone makers in China, but last month the company said it was taking longer than expected. … Read More
Samsung shakes up leadership
As part of its annual year-end evaluation, Samsung has chosen a new leader of its handset division. Koh Dong Jin, who had been in charge of Samsung’s research and development division will take over for long-time Samsung Mobile head JK Shin. Recently, Jin has overseen projects that included Tizen, an open-source software platform; Knox, a business and personal security suite; and Samsung Pay. … Read More
Bluegrass completes build on Verizon rural LTE program
Regional wireless operator Bluegrass Cellular said it completed the build out of its LTE network, which now covers its entire operating footprint. The deployment is part of a partnership with Verizon Wireless under the larger carrier’s LTE in Rural America program. Kentucky-based Bluegrass said the five-year deployment included the launch of 115 new LTE sites providing coverage to 732,000 potential customers in a 10,300 square mile radius. As part of the Verizon Wireless LTE partnership, Bluegrass customers will have roaming access to a nationwide LTE network, with Verizon Wireless customers in turn having roaming access to the network built by Bluegrass. … Read More
HPE and Microsoft partner on hybrid cloud platform
Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced a deal with Microsoft to use the software giant’s Azure platform as the preferred public cloud partner for HPE customers, and in turn having HPE serve as the preferred infrastructure and services provider for Microsoft’s hybrid cloud offerings. The deal calls for both companies to work “across engineering and services to integrate innovative compute platforms that help customers optimize their IT environment, leverage new consumption models and accelerate their business further, faster.” The collaboration is set to include the introduction of a “hyper-converged” system integrating hybrid cloud capabilities under the HPE Hyper-Converged 250 for Microsoft Cloud Platform System Standard. … Read More
AT&T pushing internet of things, connected car
U.S.-based carrier AT&T is one of the leading global service providers when it comes to embracing the transformative and business opportunities associated with the Internet of Things. Mike Troiano, VP of Industrial IOT, called the company’s investment around the Internet of Things “one of the most important initiatives within the company right now, and it’s not only a domestic play, it’s actually a more international play,” according to a report in The Street. “The trajectory that we’re seeing right now is incredibly impressive,” he said. … Read More
ON.Lab releases ONOS Emu SDN platform
The Open Network Lab’s Open Network Operating System project this week unveiled its latest open source software-defined networking operating system under the Emu name. The launch is the fifth platform from ONOS this year. ON.Lab said the Emu release has improvements over the Drake release from September, including improvements to the platform such as IP multicast and SDN-IP, key use cases including central office re-architected as a data center, packet/optical, service function chaining, and support for the Open Platform for NFV Project and OpenStack. … Read More
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