News In Brief: Bharti Airtel, Nokia, BT, OTE

Global shipments of dual-SIM handsets are forecast to hit 100 million by 2014, according to reports citing Strategy Analytics.
 
Bharti Airtel is negotiating a mid-term loan of $9-10 billion (€6.6-7.4 billion) with several banks to finance its purchase of Zain’s African businesses. Barclays and Standard Chartered are reportedly among the banks the Indian telco is talking to.
 
Nokia has admitted that its N97 handset has been a “tremendous disappointment” in terms of consumer QoE, but is certain that the teething issues have been resolved.
 
BT has launched a new pricing structure for its managed virtual contact centre service, introducing a per-minute charging option with prices starting from four pence (€0.045) per minute.
 
Greek telco OTE posted an unexpected fourth-quarter net loss of €30.5 million, missing analysts estimates of a €7.1 million profit.
 
More than a quarter of the TVs purchased in the US in January were internet-enabled, according to iSuppli. Over 27.5% of new sets were connected to the internet in some fashion, up from 24.3% in December.