French operator SFR may announce 1,100 redundancies later this week owing to the difficult operating conditions in France, according to a story in Les Echos newspaper that cited comments made by a labor union official.

The French mobile-phone operator is set to present a jobs-reduction scheme to unions on Wednesday, but is also expected to create 300 new jobs, according to Vanessa Jereb of the UNSA union.

Finland has kicked off the process of awarding spectrum in the 800MHz band, inviting bidders to register before December 17 for an auction scheduled to begin on January 24.

Finnish authorities are expecting to raise at least €100 million ($128 million) from the auction, having set a starting price of €16.67 million for each one of the six 2x5MHz blocks due to go under the hammer.

Each bidder can win a maximum of three spectrum blocks, which means Finland could feasibly end up with just two 800MHz operators after the auction has concluded.

Soaring demand for 4G services is expected to drive the number of global LTE subscriptions to 1.6 billion in 2018 from just 55 million this year, according to a new study published by Ericsson.

The network-equipment maker describes LTE as the fastest-developing system in the history of mobile communications in its latest mobility report, which examines the worldwide growth of mobile technologies and services.

In a challenge to 4G operator EE, Three, the UK’s smallest mobile network, has promised to provide "ultrafast" services to more than half the population by the end of the year and more than 80% by April 2013.

Owned by Hutchison Whampoa (Hong Kong), the company is investing in dual-carrier HSPA (DC-HSPA) technology, an advanced 3G standard it claims is “more than enough for data-hungry services like HD video streaming”.

France Telecom is reportedly considering a partial flotation of its stake in EE, its UK mobile-phone joint venture with Deutsche Telekom.

Speaking at an investor conference organized by Morgan Stanley earlier this week, Gervais Pellissier, the French operator’s chief financial officer, hinted of a possible IPO towards the end of 2013 while emphasizing that France Telecom (Paris, France) and Deutsche Telekom (Bonn, Germany) have no plans to give up control of the entity.

In a move that could see the US gain another mobile broadband provider, satellite operator Globalstar has sought permission from the Federal Communications Commission to provide terrestrial services over its satellite spectrum.

Filed with regulatory authorities this week, the operator’s petition describes a long-term plan to provide LTE services using all of its frequencies.

More immediately, the company wants permission to provide WiFi-like services using its 2.4GHz airwaves.

SingTel reported a 1.6% year-on-year fall in net profit for the September-ending quarter, to S$868 million ($710 million), with performance hit by price competition and unfavourable regulation in Australia’s mobile-phone market.

A rise in expenses and the impact of foreign exchange movements also weighed on the bottom line.

Overall revenues were just 0.8% lower than in the corresponding quarter of 2011, at S$4.572 billion, but revenues from Australia’s Optus fell by 3.6% to S$2.9 billion.

Ofcom has set a reserve price of £1.3 billion ($2.1 billion) for the spectrum it will sell in the UK’s forthcoming 4G auction, as well as announcing December 11 as the provisional date for the submission of license bids.

That date is to be confirmed over the next two weeks after new regulations regarding the auction process come into effect.

The UK regulator says 4G services could be launched as soon as May, with winning bidders announced sometime in February or March.

The European Commission is to release a swathe of radio spectrum to give mobile and internet companies more space for rolling out faster fourth-generation (4G) wireless services.

Monday's announcement means an extra 120 MHz of spectrum will be available for 4G from 2014 at the latest to try to accommodate a sharp rise in the use of such services on mobile devices.

KT Corp reported healthy gains in net income and revenues for the third quarter thanks to the strong performance of its non-telecoms interests.

The operator, which runs South Korea’s biggest fixed-line network and its second-largest mobile-phone operation, reported a 45.6% year-on-year increase in net income, to 372.3 billion won ($341 million), while revenues grew 30.6% to 6,519.4 billion won.