David Noguer Bau, head of service provider marketing, EMEA, at US-based vendor Juniper Networks discusses current and future trends.

Eurocomms.com: Juniper released its Q4 and 2011 results last week showing a weak final quarter but increased full year revenues. Your president and CEO highlighted weak demand from service providers – do you see this changing?

David Noguer Bau: Well what I would say is that we are still seeing interest from service providers and from my perspective the buying cycle is still healthy. Obviously there is a problem with weak economies.

By François Eloy, EVP, Colt Communication Services

Network operators that were once primarily focused on delivering voice services in a single market are now forced to enter new markets and offer solutions that integrate new technologies to generate new revenue streams.

However, no operator is able to provide telecommunications and IT services in all regions nor is able to cover the full voice, data and managed IT services portfolio alone.

The European Commission put forward some comprehensive reform to data protection laws on Wednesday that could have profound implications for telcos.

The EC is recommending a wide range of proposals that will form a single set of rules valid for all 27 member states if approved.

There are perhaps three key ones for telcos. Accountability shifts to those who process personal data so that, for example, companies could be obliged to notify authorities of serious data breaches within 24 hours.

Ericsson reported strong 2011 sales but collapsing profits on Wednesday, as it warned that a weak fourth quarter and increasingly cautious operators mean a challenging 12 months lie ahead.

The Sweden-based vendor registered a 12 percent year-on-year rise in overall revenue to €25.7 billion.

However, a rise of just one percent in y-o-y Q4 sales, albeit a 15 percent rise on the previous quarter to €7.2 billion, disappointed Hans Vestberg, the company president and CEO.

Austrian mobile operator H3G has made two significant investments in new technology as it attempts to position itself for the expansion in wireless data.

The company has deployed HP’s home subscriber server to support its LTE network and Alcatel-Lucent’s 100G optical coherent technology to expand fibre optic network capacity.

H3G started offering LTE services in November 2011. The service, available to consumers via a modem, is running in Vienna.

KPN unveiled Q4 2011 and full year results on Wednesday that showed declining revenues and profits.

Group Q4 revenue fell 0.4 percent to €3.8 billion compared with the same period in 2010, but for the whole year decreased 1.8 percent to €13.2 billion.

In particular, operating profit took a battering; it fell 43 percent in Q4 to €436 million and 22 percent to €2.5 billion for 2011 as a whole.

Phil Sorsky from US-based infrastructure vendor Commscope discusses LTE developments, including new active antenna technology.

Eurocomms.com: With 4G auctions ongoing across Europe, what is your assessment of where the continent stands currently compared to the rest of the world?

Phil Sorsky: Other regions, the US in particular, have embraced LTE much more quickly than we have in Europe. Part of the reason is that Europe was so advanced in 3G – we had HSPA+, for example, which users have found acceptable whereas in the US data networks just weren’t fast enough.The US also has Apple, whose services and popularity accelerated the adoption of LTE.

By Russell Palmer, Industry Solutions Principal at BPM/CRM specialist Pegasystems.

A report last year on the IT priorities of European communications service providers by Oracle and PricewaterhouseCoopers made for interesting reading.

One of the headline assertions in the report – entitled "Rethinking IT Strategy … Can It Enable a Step Change in CSP Performance?" – was that that there would be a mass migration by telecom CIOs to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications during the following 12 months because they reduce costs and simplify operations.