In yet another German scandal and a further blow to beleaguered Siemens, Greek incumbent OTE, said it may sue the company for damages for allegedly overcharging.
Deutsche Telekom is in negotiations with the Greek government to share control of the operator.
Alcatel-Lucent's shareholders aren't happy either. They voted to make it easier to fire CEO Patricia Russo, whose 18 month term at the helm has seen stock plunge by half. At the meeting, Russo was criticised for her demeanour, elegance, lack of French and, above all, salary.
There was gloom in Italy too as Telecom Italia announced it will cut 5,000 jobs between now and 2010, in a move to make savings of €300 million annually.
It's also bad news for anyone making mobile calls to Europe: new research from Informa shows that European operators have raised the price of roaming calls into the EU by as much as 163% since the introduction of the Eurotariff last year. Regulators are preparing to fight back.
It was a mixed week for Vodafone. The company is still pursuing full ownership of South African operator Vodacom (which is part owns already), but it was panned in its home market, the UK, for terrible service via its dongle
An Infonetics quarterly report shows worldwide IP core and edge router revenue was up 23% for 2007 and is up 35% year-on-year from 1Q in 2007 to 1Q this year.
Nokia Siemens Networks claimed it has replaced 18,000 of its rival base stations for 22 operators in 15 countries since it started operations in April 2007. The company said the replacements were made because its base stations are cheaper to run.
In the US, Verizon Wireless revealed it is in talks to buy Alltel Communications, the country's fifth-largest wireless carrier by subscribers, for US$27 billion (€17.32 billion). Alltel's customers are underwhelmed.
As ever, warnings from the EU put a bit of a dampener on proceedings. Firstly it warned that European URLs will have to get longer because we are running out of addresses and then said that printers and copiers could be the weak link in many corporate cyber defences.