Reliance Jio Infocomm has signed an agreement with Bharti Airtel to rent capacity on the i2i submarine network that runs from India to Singapore, without disclosing the financial terms of the deal.

Reliance Jio (Mumbai, India) says the arrangement will allow it to connect directly with the world’s major business hubs and internet service providers, allowing it to provide ultra-fast services to its customers.

Britain's telecoms regulator is proposing to change the way it will allocate the next batch of airwaves to be made available to mobile operators facing burgeoning demand for mobile data.

Telecoms operators have previously paid billions of pounds to secure long leases on the best chunks of airwaves, known as the real estate of the mobile industry, most recently in the 4G auction.

Saudi Telecom has reported a 38.5% fall in first-quarter net income, to SAR1.55 billion ($413 million), due largely to a SAR500 million impairment charge against its investment in Indian operator Aircel.

Despite the bottom-line setback, the state-backed incumbent reported a 3.7% increase in revenues, to SAR11.47 billion, and said efficiency improvements had helped to bolster gross profits by 2.6%, to SAR6.49 billion.

A succession of retail investors criticized Telecom Italia at a meeting on Wednesday, but any bigger shareholders unhappy at its performance avoided the kind of open challenge that could rattle management.

The debt-laden company's share price has tumbled close to an all-time low as Chairman Franco Bernabe tries to resolve a deadlock over its future plans and tension caused by an ownership structure that gives core investors holding less than a quarter of the stock effective control.

Dish Network Corp, the No.2 U.S. satellite TV provider, on Monday offered to buy wireless service provider Sprint Nextel Corp for $25.5 billion in cash and stock, a move that could inspire other telecoms or video companies to consider their own prospects of combining.

Dish's offer could trump a proposal in October by Japanese wireless operator SoftBank Corp (Tokyo, Japan) to buy 70 percent of Sprint (Overland Park, KS, USA) for $20.1 billion.

Take-up of superfast technologies provided a significant spur to growth in the global broadband market in the final quarter of 2012, according to figures compiled by market-research firm Point Topic on behalf of the Broadband Forum.

The overall number of broadband connections rose by 8.6%, to nearly 644 million, compared with the fourth quarter of 2011, but connections served by fiber-based technologies – including VDSL and VDSL2 – grew by 27.5%, to more than 114 million.

Turk Telekom has reported a fall in profitability for the first quarter of 2013, with rising interconnection and personnel expenses eating into its revenues.

The Turkish incumbent reported a 12.9% fall in operating profit, to TRY1.15 billion ($643 million), compared with the same period last year, and a 31.8% drop in net profit, to TRY526 million, which it blamed on foreign-exchange losses.

The bottom-line setback came despite a 6.2% increase in revenues, to TRY3.14 billion, thanks to the continued growth of the operator’s mobile and broadband businesses.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to intervene in a dispute between a Sprint Nextel Corp subsidiary and the utilities regulator in Iowa.

Sprint Communications Co (Overland Park, KS, USA) declined to pay access charges for calls carried by Iowa Telecom - now Windstream Iowa Communications (Newton, IA, USA) - that were transmitted over the Internet rather than the traditional phone network.

The Iowa Utilities Board, which regulates telecommunications in the state, said Sprint was required to pay.

Clearwire Corp is "actively considering" defaulting on a $255 million interest payment due June 1 on about $4.5 billion of outstanding debt, according to a proxy filing on Friday, as a shareholder vote approaches on Sprint-Nextel Corp's takeover offer.

The company, which urged investors to vote in favor of Sprint's buyout offer, warned that failure to close a deal may force it to contemplate a financial restructuring, which in turn could entail filing for bankruptcy.

Google Inc said on Tuesday it plans to bring its ultra high-speed Internet and television service to Austin, Texas, next year, prompting AT&T Inc to reveal its own plans to follow suit - if it gets the same terms from local authorities.

AT&T (Dallas, TX, USA) appeared to be making a political point to highlight the heavy regulations that encumber traditional phone companies, analysts said.