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Bouygues jumps on VoLTE bandwagon

In the latest of a rash of VoLTE announcements, French carrier Bouygues Telecom said it would start carrying the first voice and video calls over LTE later this year with a view to commercial launch of the service in 2015.

Tags; Bouygues, France, VoLTE, Ericsson, Europe, LTE, News & Analysis

3 Austria gets Android carrier billing

Hutchison Whampoa’s 3 group has successfully integrated Google Play direct carrier billing into the network of its Austrian subsidiary, 3 Austria. The company has already rolled out the system in Sweden, Ireland and Hong Kong, allowing apps and other digital goods such as books, music, games as well as the music streaming service Music All Access to be paid for via the mobile bill.

Tags; 3, Austria, carrier billing, Google Play, Hutchison Whampoa, net mobile, Three, Android, Billing, Content & Applications, Europe, News & Analysis

Bell Labs opens up Tel Aviv cloud research centre

Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D subsidiary Bell Labs said Tuesday it will soon open an office near Tel Aviv, Israel. The office will focus on researching cloud-based networking architectures as a growing number of operators look to virtualise components of their networks.

Tags; Alcatel-Lucent, Cloud, Danny Raz, NFV, News & Analysis

Singtel claims functionality first with VoLTE launch

In the latest of a spate of announcements relating to Voice over LTE, Singaporean incumbent Singtel has launched what it claims is the world’s first commercial and fully featured VoLTE service. The city state operator, which launched the service in partnership with Samsung and Ericsson, said that its 4G Clearvoice service is the only live VoLTE service offering features such as call waiting and call forwardingover an LTE network.

Tags; Ericsson, HD Voice, Samsung, SingTel, SRVCC, VoLTE, News & Analysis

Telstra partners with Fon

Australian incumbent Telstra is set to create one of the world’s largest wifi networks under a A$100m plus deal with global hotspot network Fon.

Tags; Australia, Fon, telstra, Wifi, Asia Pacific, Networks, News & Analysis, Operator

Vodafone profits surge on Verizon exit but challenges remain

South Africa’s Vodacom to acquire fixed player Neotel

AT&T to acquire DirecTV for $48.5bn