This week, Nokia ‘streamlined’ another 4,000 staff out of a job, operators across the globe revealed a mixed bag of earnings, the Metro Ethernet Forum detail implementation specs for Ethernet backhaul, and carriers collaborate on cloud standards.
Finnish vendor Nokia revealed that 4,000 jobs will go from smartphone production plants in Hungary, Mexico and Finland, as it seeks to cut time to market by switching production to its Asian facilities. The three sites will remain open, but focus instead on smartphone customization.
The redundancies add to the previous layoff of 3,500 staff in its location and services team, and some 2,300 Symbian development staff that transferred to Accenture in an outsourcing deal last year.
Nokia’s bid to cut costs may end up being contagious, with Norwegian telco Telenor seeing its annual profit halved in 2011 on the back of growing expenditure.
Full year profit fell 6.8 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.02 billion) to 7.9 billion Kroner, despite revenues growing 3.6 billion kroner year-on-year. A slide into the red in the fourth quarter added to Telenor’s woes.
In contrast, UK cable firm Virgin Media generated its first annual profit since its formation during 2011. The firm overturned a £141.1 million ($223.3 million) loss in 2010 with a £75.9 million profit in 2011, as cable and broadband subscribers rose.
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