The Financial Times report came on the back of comments made by Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, at the launch of the company’s flagship Ascend P6 smartphone yesterday.

“We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded,” Yu said.

However, the Chinese network equipment and smartphone maker’s VP for external affairs, Bill Plummer, later denied that Nokia is part of Huawei’s future plans, when speaking to Reuters.

Nokia has previously been linked with a takeover by Microsoft and there are question marks over the fate of the once-great Finnish vendor.

The vendor will focus its future investment on those markets with the most potential for growth, while reducing spending on legacy technologies. That means growth areas such as LTE as well as fixed fibre, said Combes. Another area of focus will be IP networking.

These areas will represent 85 per cent of the vendor’s R&D investment in 2015.

As well as looking at fewer, high-growth markets, the new strategy also involves €1 billion in cost savings in 2013-15, as well as asset sales of more than €1 billion over the same period.

This latest strategy for a three-year turnaround is dubbed The Shift Plan by the company.

Other financial targets include €2 billion in debt refinancing by 2015, followed by future debt reduction of €2 billion. The latter could include the issuing of new shares or further asset sales.

“With The Shift Plan, which is designed to be self-funding, we are aligning realistic and deliverable ambitions with our core competencies,” said Combes, who was appointed CEO earlier this year.

The company wants to grow its revenue from networking by more than 15 per cent from €6.1 billion in 2012 to over €7 billion in 2015. It also wants to lift operating margins in this area from 2.4 per cent in 2012 to more than 12.5 per cent in 2015.

Over the same period, Alcatel-Lucent expects to deliver positive operating cashflow of more than €250 million in 2015 from its wireless and fixed access businesses.

Sprint said it would accept a revised offer from Dish by 18 June, but Dish said it was “impracticable” to submit another offer after Sprint ended the due diligence process regarding its $25.5 billion merger proposal.

Dish tabled its bid for Sprint in April with a vision to create the only company to offer “a fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services”. The offer represented a 13 per cent premium on SoftBank’s offer made in October.

However, a revised offer from SoftBank was approved by Sprint’s special committee and board of directors last week. The Japanese operator increased its offer to $21.6 billion for a 78 per cent stake compared to the original $20.5 billion for a 70 per cent stake.

Analysts criticised the new offer, however, as it values Sprint as a whole at $27.75 billion compared with $28.88 billion with the original offer.

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chief executive, said in a statement that the offer is of significant value to Sprint stockholders and provides “the opportunity to realise that value in just a few weeks, without the risks associated with any other potential transaction”.

Despite continuing to see strategic value in a merger with Sprint, Dish said it will now focus on its tender offer for US wholesale operator Clearwire — which Sprint is also attempting to win control of.

Clearwire’s board unanimously recommended Dish’s improved offer for a 49.7 per cent stake, which represents a 29 per cent premium on the Sprint offer. Dish said it is confident its offer will be upheld despite Sprint’s offer having been favoured previously.

Sprint yesterday sued Dish for its attempt to purchase Clearwire, saying Dish repeatedly tried to “fool” Clearwire shareholders into believing its proposal to acquire the spectrum of the US wholesaler was actionable.

A Dish statement in response said the lawsuit was “a transparent attempt to divert attention from its failure to deal fairly with Clearwire’s shareholders, as well as to exploit its majority position to block Clearwire’s shareholders from receiving a fair price for their shares”.

Noting the threat posed by so-called “over-the-top” (OTT) players, Sidhu said: “The question is very much how you deal with this new competition, which comes from a number of people you don’t really know, with product cycles that are so different from a traditional competitor.”

“We think it’s probably time, and inevitible, that operators need to partner with OTT companies. Never mind the endless discussions around net neutrality, I think that’s a bigger-picture regulatory question that will eventually get answered, but customers have an affinity to these brands,” he said

In addition to the challenges of working with online service providers, the executive also said that there is something “fundementally different” about the way people pay for data services when compared to voice.

“The behaviour that tends to be common is ‘I’ll buy the best I need, without going overboard.’ We’ve got to face the challenge that the traditional revenue stream of “one communication, one cent” if you will, is gone, and if you don’t find ways to bundle some services or provide some innovation, then you aren’t going to be anything more than a bit pipe,” Sidhu cautioned.

“Which, by the way, is a perfectly fine strategy. You just need to understand that it’s your strategy,” he continued.

Sidhu also said that while LTE will be an important technology in serving the most demanding customers, “it’s not always easy to have the same technology everywhere, the same technology cannot always deliver what people want.”

“What we are probably going to see is blended delivery, whether that is served by one operator or multiple operators, around occasions and locations where people do things,” he noted.

The question this poses for operators is whether they want to position themselves as the primary provider of all connectivy, whether they opt to partner for certain aspects, or “do we just ignore certain things” – for example with WiFi provided by third party retailers.

And Sidhu also said that operators should not neglect the existing voice business in their efforts to address the evolving communications landscape.

“If you don’t have a focus on voice, you’re also going to find that unfortunately you are unable to fund yourself in some of these transformational things you do,” he warned.

The executive (pictured) noted that on one hand, telcos are seeing their revenue and business models challenged by the emergence of online service providers, leading them to explore new ways to expand their businesses.

And on the other, broadcasters are also seeing the emergence of new content delivery technologies which could pose a threat to their operations, providing them with an incentive to work with additional partners to bolster their businesses.

Kim said that telcos have two key qualities which make them attractive partners for broadcast companies: they own infrastructure with which to deliver content to end users, and they have deep pockets with which to drive further investment.

Ian Chin, COO of Shanghai Media Group’s Bes TV, also noted that telecoms operators’ experience of delivering robust services to subscribers is something media companies can benefit from, in what should be a relationship that benefits both partners.

“A telco has to offer a service that is 7/24. We start to realise that having a little bit of the telco gene is good, because now you respect the users,” he said.

“And for the telco, they start to realise that offering broadband is not enough. If you want the user to buy more, something has to be injected into that, which is content or video, to sell more bandwidth,” he continued.

Ahmad Izham Omar, CEO of Television Networks and Primeworks Studios for Media Prima, also said that telcos need to understand the value that broadcasters bring to a partnership. For example, the relationships and experience that the media players have with content creators can deliver significant value.

“Once they understand that, there will be the basis of a wonderful collaboration, rather than being disruptive in the market,” he said.

“Anybody who normally talks about big data, about big data analytics, my humble piece advice is don’t buy their platform. Buy a use case. Find the use case of what you want to do, and that will catalyse which technology companies you need to use” he advised.

“Otherwise, you can spend a lot of money with companies like HP — and we’ll take it — but it will not meet the business objectives you have. You start with the use case, and then there are technologies to address the issues,” Carrero warned.

“You need to collect the data, you need to crunch the data, to make it meaningful information, and you need to do something about it,” he said.

The executive noted that operators can use the data at their disposal to boost their businesses by offering consumers personalised offerings and to support new business models, in the latter case by working with ecosystem partners to enhance the services on offer to customers.

This can be used to addressed issues facing telecoms operators related to profitability, which have dogged the industry for many years — and which continue to do so.

“The mindshare of the end customer is moving away from the telecommunications service provider. And with that mind share, the profit is moving as well. A lot of economic growth is being generated in this ecosystem, and the telco is part of it, but that profit is moving away from the telecoms industry in some form or fashion”, he said.

“There is nothing more in demand than the telecommunication connection…the goods that these companies are selling is in high demand, but the profit is going down,” he continued.

As has been a theme at the event, privacy issues related to the use of consumer data was deemed the “big issue”, although Carrero noted that this can be overcome if there are clear benefits to consumers.

“Privacy can be addressed. I guarantee that. There are three or four ways you can do it. You can shield completely the identity of the user, you can gather the information of several people by segments, you can do opt-in/opt-out, there are different technical ways to address privacy”, he noted.

“But if I recieve the right offer at the right price at the right time, I’m happy.”

“It’s not the technolgy, it’s not the new platforms, it’s even not the new social networks that are driving the change, it’s the people,” he said.

Driving the change is the fact that new users — including 500 million in emerging markets expected to join the mobile internet over the next two years — come without “all of the desktop-based habits we all have here.”

“People coming to the internet now, and accessing for the first time from mobile devices, will demand a different internet to what we are seeing now. They will demand that we rebuild the internet from an entirely different foundation,” he said.

“In 2012, India’s entire mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic. Desktop is just not going to matter in India, just the way that fax doesn’t matter to us anymore,” Temsamani said.

In markets such as South Korea and Japan, the majority of YouTube views already come from mobile devices. “Back in 2011 — two years ago — Google Maps globally got more visits on mobile devices than on desktops. That’s a rebuilding of the internet,” he said.

Noting that much of the growth in user numbers for mobile internet services will come from Asia, he noted: “As far as the internet is concerned, this is Asia’s defining moment.”

In a recent video interview with Mobile World Live , Markus Breitbach, VP of global sales and marketing at Deutsche Telekom’s M2M Competence Center, said the German operator was looking to leverage its European M2M assets and expertise to expand its North American presence and then make more inroads into Asia.

“M2M is already a huge multi-billion Euro business,” said Breitbach, pointing out the current strong demand from the European automotive sector. The health sector in the US, too, is showing keen interest.

Breitabac emphasised, however, that M2M customers were not only looking to operators to provide cellular connectivity. Watch the interview to find out more, as well as hear Breitbach’s views on Deutsche Telekom’s M2M alliance with other European operators.

The new charge was announced by the country’s Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka (pictured) as part of its 2013/14 budget.

The tax will be imposed on mobile operators who, it is expected, will pass on the charges to their subscribers.

There are 8.9 million subscribers who use four mobile money services in Uganda -  MTN’s Mobile Money, Uganda Telecom’s M-Sente, Warid’s Airtel Money/Warid Pesa and Orange’s Orange Money – according to the Daily Monitor.

The government hopes to raise UGX32 billion ($12 million) annually through the new tax.

In addition, it is proposing another tax on incoming international phone calls which it hopes will raise $16.5 million annually, according to the BBC.

The charges are part of an attempt by the country’s government to fill a hole in its budget after its aid budget cut was cut by foreign donors over allegations of corruption.

There are signs of a trend with Uganda’s new mobile money tax, which follows the introduction of a similar charge in Kenya at the start of this year.

In February, dominant operator Safaricom passed on a ten per cent tax imposed by the Kenya government to its 16 million M-Pesa subscribers. The operator introduced the fee for transactions above $1.1. Transactions of a lower value avoided the charge.

“Although [Huawei is] a relatively new player within this marketplace, the product is absolutely competing at really the top level,” he told the audience at the Ascend P6 launch in London.

And with Huawei’s background in building networks and its own chips, Dunstone said there’s “a massive depth of knowledge and understanding behind the product”.

Dunstone added that through his work with Huawei as chairman of broadband provider TalkTalk, he has seen that the company is “the most extraordinary engineering organisation”.

“I’ve seen people come and I’ve seen people go and we’re taking this incredibly seriously. Because if you look at the resources they have, if you look at the determination of the organisation and you look at the quality of the products that are being delivered, I think Huawei are going to be a very, very big player in the smartphone marketplace for many years to come,” Dunstone said.