The decisions to lease, reengineer, or build a mobile backhaul network is the critical dilemma facing wireless carriers over the next four years. According to a study by iGR, a market research consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry, the wireless industry is at the point where 2G, 2.5G, 3G, HSPA+ and 4G LTE technologies, using macro, metro, and picocells, must be simultaneously supported in order to maintain financial performance and a high degree of subscriber satisfaction.

Shares at Sprint Nextel fell 4.5% on Monday after an analyst report said there is an increasing risk that the third largest U.S. mobile provider could end up filing for bankruptcy as the debt-laden company faces tough competition and steep costs due to factors such as its iPhone deal with Apple Inc.

Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook fulfilled a longstanding desire of investors by initiating a quarterly dividend and share buyback that will pay out $45 billion over three years.

The world's most valuable technology company will start paying its first dividends since 1995 - a regular quarterly payout of $2.65 a share - in July, and buy back up to $10 billion of its stock beginning in the next fiscal year.

The $10 billion annual dividend program, which Cook said will be reviewed periodically, ranks among the largest current U.S. corporate cash payouts.

Worldwide data networks are about to be buried beneath an avalanche of wireless data traffic. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecasts that by 2015, there will be 26 times as much mobile data traffic as there was in 2010 – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 92%. Cisco VNI also projects that, by 2015, there will be two network-connected devices for every man, woman, and child on the planet—with WiFi and mobile devices accounting for 54% of all IP traffic.  

Hedge fund manager Philip Falcone's LightSquared lost its main business partner, Sprint Nextel Corp, but gained $65 million from the breakup that may help its last-ditch effort to get regulatory approval to establish a high-speed wireless network.

Sprint (Overland Park, Kan., USA) said on Friday it would exercise its right to scuttle the $9 billion agreement that would have allowed LightSquared (Reston, Va., USA) to use a network Sprint is building to sell its own high-speed wireless services.

France-based Orange has launched "la nouvelle TV d'Orange," a next-generation subscription TV service which allows Orange to upgrade its IPTV service and prepare the infrastructure for Over-the-Top (OTT) video, multiple screens and unlimited content.

The new service has a new user interface, which includes VOD, CatchUp TV, content discovery and recommendations, EPG, PVR, self-developed applications and more, says Orange (Paris).

Telefonica SA, Spain's largest phone company, is investing in Boku to help the mobile payments start-up expand.

AppDirect, a provider of cloud service marketplace and management platforms, announced that it is providing its cloud service for Deutsche Telekom’s new Business Marketplace. With the Business Marketplace, Deutsche Telekom is able to deliver secure cloud applications and services to SMB customers.

Cisco Systems said on Thursday it will buy NDS, a developer of software for multi-channel television networks, for $5 billion.

Founded in Israel in 1988, NDS (London) is 51% owned by private equity fund Permira and 49% by News Corp. It maintains a large research and development center in Jerusalem.

The European competition watchdog is questioning five of Europe's biggest telecoms companies to see if a series of meetings they held since 2010 on strategy and technical co-operation constituted collusion.