Yet another week with the Yahoo-Microsoft battle rumbling on. The software giant now says it does want to acquire the whole lot, just the search engine and associated business. Google is also trying to cosy up to Yahoo, while shareholders demand access to lawsuit data. And on we go.
One of the industry's biggest events took place in Nice, France this week - the TeleManagement forum's Management World. The Forum announced an inititiave to extend the application of its work and standards into the realms of high end users, whose ICT buying fire is equivalent of many service providers.
Avaya remains beleagured and announced it is cutting 400 more jobs, while struggling Motorola was thrown a life-line by India's BNSL, in the form of a €57 million to build GSM infrastructure in the southern part of the country.
It's been a busy week for Orange, which launched LiveRadio in the UK and satellite pay-TV in France, where it will be available to 98.3% of the population. It also announced an exclusive iPhone deal with Apple in Begium and Romania (Deutsche Telekom announced it had sold more than 100,000 of the devices so far) and a new voice and roaming deal in time for the holiday season.
Meanwhile parent France Telecom is being investigated by EU authorities to see if the injection of state cash it received to help it meet pension obligations was illegal.
Vodafone is branching out in all directions, eyeing Huawei's handset division and buying Danish mobile social networking company ZYB.
Finally, it was a mixed week for cyber terrorism. The head of the ITU announced the threat was growing and better international cooperation was needed. At the same time, various governments demonstrated they were on the case: suspected hackers were arrested in Spain, while alleged phishers were rounded up in Romania, the US, Canada, Portugal and Pakistan. Cisco found itself in a row over its alleged role in repressing the banned religion, Falun Gong, in China.