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A DB spokesperson told Reuters that under current IT security legislation it did not have to run network components by Germany's cybersecurity office, the BSI, unlike public telecoms network operators. A BSI spokesperson said it was not aware of any law that determined the DB IT systems as "critical components". A Huawei spokesperson said the firm would never harm any nation or individual. The December contract with Deutsche Telekom Business Solutions, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is for Huawei tech like switches and routers. A government source said it had detected some operators had already built in Huawei critical components without waiting for a BSI green light and could be required to replace those.

"But after years of dithering, the German 5G network is deeply dependent on Chinese suppliers. Huawei, ZTE and China's government reject these claims, saying that they are motivated by a protectionist desire to support non-Chinese rivals. GERMANY LAGGINGWhile several countries across Europe are still formulating telecom policies, only Britain and Sweden have so far banned Huawei and ZTE from supplying critical 5G network equipment. The German government was last month unable to answer a parliamentary request about how many Huawei components operators were using in their 5G networks, filed in part in response to the report. The deadline to remove all Huawei gear from Britain's 5G networks by the end of 2027 remains unchanged.

"But after years of dithering, the German 5G network is deeply dependent on Chinese suppliers. Huawei, ZTE and China's government reject these claims, saying that they are motivated by a protectionist desire to support non-Chinese rivals. The government would ban operators from using certain controlling elements from Huawei and ZTE in 5G networks. The German government was last month unable to answer a recent parliamentary request about how many Huawei components operators were using in their 5G networks. The deadline to remove all Huawei gear from Britain's 5G networks by the end of 2027 remains unchanged.

☆ Embattled Adani Group receives a vote of confidence from U.S. asset manager
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Seema Mody | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Chairperson of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, Gautam Adani, speaks at the World Congress of Accountants in Mumbai on November 19, 2022. Indranil Mukherjee | AFP | Getty ImagesIndia's embattled industrialist Gautam Adani received a much-needed vote of confidence from a well-respected U.S. asset manager ahead of a crucial bond roadshow that's underway. "Controversy is part of how you get better returns," Jain told CNBC in an exclusive interview. Jain's investment follows a massive decline in Adani's stock price amid criticism of the Indian firm's practices. Shares of Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports are up 66% and 23% over the past seven days, respectively.

☆ S.Africa's MultiChoice and Comcast to create Africa-wide streaming service
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

JOHANNESBURG, March 2 (Reuters) - Africa's biggest pay TV company, MultiChoice Group (MCGJ.J), said on Thursday it had entered into an agreement with U.S.-based media conglomerate Comcast (CMCSA.O) to create a pan-Africa video streaming platform. The new streaming service, which will be built on MultiChoice's streaming platform Showmax, will be 70% owned by the company, it said. While MultiChoice has the biggest market share in pay TV in Africa, it has been struggling to penetrate deeper with Showmax due to competition from Netflix (NFLX.O), Amazon's (AMZN.O) streaming service and Disney (DIS.N). With the streaming companies now training their guns on sports rights in Africa, MultiChoice is being threatened in a market in which it has been a leader. The new streaming service will combine MultiChoice's accelerating investment in local content with an extensive pipeline of international content licensed from NBCUniversal and Sky, the company said.

☆ S.Africa's Aspen set for deals to revive idled production lines
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Promit Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Aspen had a contract with Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) to produce 250 million doses a year of COVID vaccine from its South African plant. It expanded the capacity to 400 million annual doses last year to sell its own branded COVID vaccine Aspenovax anticipating a major flow of orders from African countries. That was a bit of a commercial disappointment," CEO Stephen Saad told Reuters in an interview after its interim earnings. But Saad said the partnerships it was pursuing meant production lines designed for COVID vaccine would start generating returns. The company anticipates a contribution of 2 billion rand ($110.22 million) in calendar year 2024, increasing to 4 billion rand by 2025 under these partnerships, Saad added.

Satellites can help secure telecom connections when normal networks are disrupted by wars or natural disasters. Veon and OneWeb declined to comment. Veon and Starlink are negotiating fees for the coming year, after governments and other entities paid for the service through spring 2023. SpaceX activated Starlink over Ukraine following the Russian invasion last year, providing internet access to millions of civilians and military personnel. The merged companies are racing to build a constellation of low-orbit satellites to challenge Starlink and Amazon's (AMZN.O) Project Kuiper.

BARCELONA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Ericsson's (ERICb.ST) CEO says the company is still in the market for more acquisitions, albeit smaller ones, after splurging over $7 billion to buy networking company Cradlepoint and communication platform Vonage. In contrast with Nokia, which announced a new strategy focused on enterprise, Ericsson expects to continue to focus on its business of selling to communications service providers (CSPs) or telecom operators along with adding to its enterprise offerings. While the global enterprise business, which revolves around private 5G and automating factories, has yet to grow significantly, it has been a melting pot of partnerships between equipment makers, mobile operators and big technology companies. “We will need to add to our enterprise offerings, so you will see smaller acquisitions,” CEO Borje Ekholm told Reuters on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Monday. "We have 90% plus of sales from CSPs... we need to build on that strength that is always central [to the business]."

☆ Cisco works with Mercedes-Benz to create mobile office
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] Cisco's Webex system is displayed on Mercedes-Benz E-Class dashboard, in this undated illustration picture obtained by Reuters. Cisco/Handout via REUTERS/IllustrationBARCELONA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Cisco (CSCO.O) is working with Mercedes Benz (MBGn.DE) to add its Webex conferencing tools to the dashboard of vehicles arriving in dealerships in the coming weeks, the company said on Monday, as it seeks to turn the car into a mobile office. Zoom has tied up with Tesla (TSLA.O) to equip its vehicles with conferencing tools and Cisco plans to announce other partnerships at the MWC telecoms conference in Barcelona this week. They include one with Samsung (005930.KS) for Webex integration in its flagship phones and another with Intel (INTC.O) for private 5G. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Barcelona; editing by Barbara LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Nokia changes iconic logo to signal strategy shift
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/3] A mockup of the new Nokia logo, is seen at an unknown location, in this undated handout picture received on February 25, 2023. The new logo comprises five different shapes forming the word NOKIA. The iconic blue color of the old logo has been dropped for a range of colours depending on the use. Major technology firms have been partnering with telecom gear makers such as Nokia to sell private 5G networks and gears for automated factories to customers, mostly in the manufacturing sector. Nokia plans to review the growth path of its different businesses and consider alternatives, including divestment.

BARCELONA, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Microsoft has unveiled previews of two AI-powered services designed to manage telecom networks, drawing on the same capabilities used to manage the tech giant's Azure cloud platform. Microsoft first entered the 5G arena after its acquisition of cloud networking companies Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch in 2020. “What we’re doing is taking our native cloud work and making it specific to this telecom operator network space. I think a really great example of that is all the AI ops work that we are introducing into the system," said Jason Zander, executive vice president of strategic missions and technologies at Microsoft. Monica Zethzon, a vice president at Ericsson, said the developments would allow operators to "transform their core networks while improving customer experiences".

BARCELONA, Feb 26 (Reuters) - A clash between Big Tech and European Union telecoms firms over who will underwrite network infrastructure is set to dominate discussion at the world's largest telecoms conference this week. More than 80,000 people, including tech executives, innovators, and regulators, are set to descend on this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Thursday launched a 12-week consultation on its "fair share" proposals, under which Big Tech platforms would bear more of the costs of the systems which give them access to consumers. By contrast, Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Orange (ORAN.PA), Telefonica (TEF.MC) and Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI) have been actively lobbying for Big Tech to pay the fees. "This discussion around 'fair share', or what we sometimes call the 'investment gap', is going to be a threshold question," said John Giusti, GSMA's chief regulatory officer.

☆ Nokia phone maker HMD to set up production in Europe
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BARCELONA (Reuters) - HMD Global Oy, licensee of Nokia-brand smartphones, said on Saturday it is developing capabilities and processes this year to bring 5G device production to Europe. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File PhotoEurope has no big smartphone manufacturing presence, as all the major companies, including Apple and Samsung, make their phones in Asia to cut costs. HMD in 2016 signed an exclusive 10-year licensing agreement with Nokia Oyj, once the world’s largest phone maker, to make Nokia-branded smartphones and tablets. HMD used Nokia’s remaining phone patents and manufacturing facilities of Taiwan’s Foxconn to build a new line of smartphones to compete with other budget Android phone makers. The company also unveiled three smartphones on Saturday - the Nokia G22, Nokia C32 and Nokia C22 - with three-day battery life and said it would begin repairing mobiles in collaboration with repair firm iFixit.

☆ Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees -memo
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

STOCKHOLM, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Telecom equipment maker Ericsson (ERICb.ST) will lay off 8,500 employees globally as part of its plan to cut costs, a memo sent to employees and seen by Reuters said. "The way headcount reductions will be managed will differ depending on local country practice," Chief Executive Borje Ekholm wrote in the memo. Many telecom companies had beefed up their inventories during the height of the pandemic which is now leading to slowing orders for telecom equipment makers. Verizon (VZ.N), one of the largest telecom companies, plans to spend between $18.25 billion and $19.25 billion this year, down from a capital expenditure budget of $23 billion last year. Nordic rival Nokia (NOKIA.HE) has not announced any plans to lay off employees.

☆ Italy pursues Facebook-owner Meta for $925 million in sales taxes
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Emilio Parodi | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

MILAN, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Facebook parent company Meta (META.O) faces a potential tax bill of around 870 million euros ($925 million) in Italy after prosecutors launched an investigation into the company, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. "We strongly disagree with the idea that providing access to online platforms to users should be charged with VAT," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters. News of an administrative tax audit into Meta was first published on Wednesday by Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. ROLE OF FREE ACCESSItaly's tax police and revenue agency calculated a model under which Meta would have had to pay around 220 million euros of sales tax in Italy in 2021, according to the sources. In recent years, the Milan Prosecutor's Office has opened several tax investigations against multinational tech companies such as Google and Apple.

Treasury said the government planned to take on 254 billion rand ($14 billion) of Eskom's 423 billion rand debt it said was at risk of default, to enable the utility to pay down the debt and interest obligations. South Africa has been struggling for years to overhaul Eskom, which is plagued by corruption and mismanagement and has received 263.4 billion rand in bailouts since 2008/09. Treasury said about 168 billion rand of Eskom’s debt relief will be in capital and 86 billion rand in interest payments over the next three years. Eskom's debt relief has strict conditions, Treasury said. A proposal to address the debt municipalities owe Eskom, at 56.3 billion rand as of end December 2022, was being finalised.

☆ Russia’s economy is hurting despite Putin’s bluster
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Julia Horowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Russia’s economy did weaken as a result. “The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s parliament Tuesday. The bloc, which dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian natural gas last year, officially banned most imports of Russian crude oil by sea in December. Russia’s oil problemIn fact, Russia’s export revenue from oil rose last year. On the declineThe International Monetary Fund still expects Russia’s economy to expand by 0.3% this year and 2.1% the next.

☆ Ericsson to cut 1,400 jobs in Sweden
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

STOCKHOLM, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Telecoms gear maker Ericsson (ERICb.ST) plans to cut about 1,400 jobs in Sweden as part of a broader plan to reduce costs globally, it said on Monday. The company had earlier announced plans to cut costs by 9 billion crowns ($880 million) by the end of 2023 as demand slows in some markets, including North America. Further job cuts, numbering several thousands in other countries, are likely to be announced in the coming days, said two sources close to the matter. Ericsson last made deep cuts in 2017 when it laid off thousands of employees and focused on research to pull the company out of losses. The company was negotiating with its employee union in Sweden for months on how to handle cost cuts.

The bloc's highly-anticipated AI Act is widely expected to be put to a vote at the European Parliament at the end of March, at which point individual nations will begin negotiating final terms of the legislation. Following a crunch five-hour meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, however, MEPs had yet to agree to a set of basic principles. One of the most controversial areas of debate is deciding which AI systems would be categorised as "high risk", such as those affecting a person's safety or infringing fundamental rights. “The obvious tension here is between the focus on fundamental rights, on the one hand, and those who say these necessarily conflict with innovation,” said Greens MEP Sergey Lagodinsky. A source at the European Parliament said negotiations were ongoing with a view to agreeing a strong text.

Northvolt's stock market debut would come in an IPO market that has gradually recovered from a major slump in 2022, which was driven by stock market volatility and fears of an economic slowdown. Northvolt has so far raised billions in debt to fund its factory investments, including a $1.1 billion raise last year in convertible notes. Northvolt has used the money from convertible bonds to increase liquidity and ramp up production at its gigafactory in Skelleftea, Sweden. Northvolt has raised about $8 billion in debt and equity to date from a wide range of investors, including Baillie Gifford and Folksam Group. (This story has been corrected to say that Northvolt 'has used the money from convertible bonds', not 'has refinanced its convertible bonds', in paragraph 7)Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York and Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Lincoln FeastOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ India's Amrutanjan Health Care sinks on whistleblower allegations
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BENGALURU, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Shares of India's Amrutanjan Health Care Ltd (AJAN.NS) plunged as much as nearly 10% on Wednesday, a day after it said an anonymous whistleblower complaint alleged some senior management of "undue enrichment" and "conflict of interest." Amrutanjan's shares closed 1.4% lower on Tuesday after the company disclosed the allegations, and were down 8.7% as of 12.14 p.m. IST on Wednesday. The complaint alleged "lapses by certain senior management employees including undue enrichment through marketing, advertising and procurement activities, ethical concerns and conflict of interest etc," Amrutanjan said on Tuesday. Amrutanjan did not immediately respond to a Reuters' email seeking further details on the complaint, including if the company has conducted its own probe or if the managers were still employed with the company. ($1 = 82.8600 Indian rupees)Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane VenkatramanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Indian tycoon Gautam Adani dismisses market volatility as 'temporary'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Sumathi Bala | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Art school teacher Sagar Kambli gives final touches to a painting of Indian businessman Gautam Adani (L) highlighting the ongoing crisis of the Adani group in Mumbai on February 3, 2023. Indranil Mukherjee | Afp | Getty ImagesIndian billionaire Gautam Adani has downplayed the recent market volatility of Adani Group's shares as "temporary." The Adani Group has denied those accusations, and said it was a "calculated attack on India." Adani flagship earningsOn Tuesday, Adani Enterprises reported a profit after tax of nearly $100 million for the October to December quarter. Shares of Adani Enterprises last traded about 3% higher Wednesday on National Stock Exchange of India.

☆ MTN commits to $1 bln Ghana investment after government scraps tax claim
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The investment comes on the heels of the Ghana Revenue Authority exempting the company's bill for back taxes earlier this month after the incident sparked a diplomatic reaction by the South African foreign minister. The tax claim was initially issued after the revenue authority audited the company for the years 2014 to 2018 and inferred that it under declared its revenue by about 30% during the period. MTN Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita said the company was committed to investing in Ghana despite short-term headwinds. That said we are focused on the medium and long term and we are seeing growth," he said in a statement. MTN intends to invest the amount in 5G technology which it believes would spur faster growth across sectors, he said.

☆ Nokia, Kyndryl extend partnership for private 5G factory networks
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

STOCKHOLM, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Nokia (NOKIA.HE) and Kyndryl (KD.N) have extended their partnership for three years after clocking up more than 100 customers for automating factories using 5G wireless networks, following their first tie-up a year earlier. "We grew the business significantly last year with the number of customers and number of networks," Chris Johnson, head of Nokia's enterprise business, told Reuters. The companies said some customers were now coming back to put private networks into more of their factories after the initial one. In Dow Chemical's petrochemical processing plant in Texas, the private wireless network increased worker safety, enabled remote audio and video collaboration, personnel tracking, and vehicle telematics, the companies said. The size of the global private 5G network market is expected to reach $41.02 billion by 2030 from 1.38 billion in 2021, according to a study by Grand View Research.

☆ NYU's 'Dean of Valuation' says Adani Group exploited 'weakest links' in Indian institutions
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Sumathi Bala | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The Adani Group didn't play a "con game" but has exploited the "weakest links" in India's institutions to its advantage, according to NYU's "Dean of Valuation" Aswath Damodaran. It's not healthy for a market," Damodaran, told CNBC's "Streets Sign Asia" on Thursday. "That's why I said Adani is not about the company … this is about the weakest links in the India story. Art school teacher Sagar Kambli gives final touches to a painting of Indian businessman Gautam Adani (L) highlighting the ongoing crisis of the Adani group in Mumbai on February 3, 2023. The Adani Group firmly denied the accusations, calling it a "calculated attack on India" and its institutions.

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