News In Brief: BT, Motorola, MS, Vodafone, Sistema Shyam

BT is taking advantage of an Ofcom ruling it says allows it to compete on an equal footing in fixed-line broadband, by offering monthly subscriptions from £7.49 (€8.26). 

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha was paid $3.8 million (€2.7 million) in 2009 – a sum which includes a contractually guaranteed $1.2 million bonus. Jha attracted a sign-on bonus of over $100 million in 2008.
 
Microsoft plans to offer free, web-based versions of its Office suite of desktop publishing applications. Microsoft Office Live has reportedly already entered the beta stage. The move is a response to the growing popularity of free alternatives such as OpenOffice and the online-only Google Docs.
 
Vodafone plans to close navigation company Wayfinder Systems, having decided it is no longer viable to continue to operate and develop its own navigation products. Vodafone paid 239 million kronor (€24.6 million) to acquire Wayfinder in 2008. 
 
Vladimir Putin has pledged state financial aid for beleaguered Indian operator Sistema Shyam Teleservices, a JV between Russian conglomerate Sistema and India's Shyam Group.
 
The internet is in the mix to win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, says Wired, which has campaigned for the award.
 
Mobile roaming firm Roamware says its updated service delivery platform allows carriers to more quickly deploy services and applications. The new platform, the SDS 7, is hardware agnostic, and includes an applications testing suite the firm says cuts testing times from months to weeks. Over 400 carriers already use previous versions of SDS.
 
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has downgraded Deutsche Telekom from neutral to underperform and dropped its price target for the firm’s stocks from €9.70 to €8.90, citing concerns over the firm’s US mobile and domestic fixed-line businesses, Reuters reports.
 
Greek telco Cosmoline has picked Canada-based DragonWave to supply 4G backhaul equipment for a nationwide Wimax deployment. The equipment supplier will deliver up to 1,000 Ethernet connections, Marketwire reports.