The French telecoms regulator ARCEP said it had asked prosecutors to investigate Microsoft Corp's Skype for failing to register as a telecom operator.

Skype (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg) has not complied with the regulator's repeated requests to register as an "electronic communications operator", ARCEP said in a statement on Tuesday.

The regulator said that since Skype let users make voice calls to fixed and mobile numbers in France and around the world, it had an obligation to allow emergency calls and permit legal interception of calls when required.

Deutsche Telekom has finally launched a joyn service in Germany just weeks after blaming technical difficulties for delays to its introduction of the technology.

The German incumbent becomes the latest operator to add joyn, the brand name for the Rich Communication Suite-enhanced (RCS-e) standard backed by the GSM Association (GSMA), to its portfolio of services.

Widely seen as an attempt by operators to fight over-the-top players on their own terms, joyn has been heavily criticised as too little and too late.

Shares of Leap Wireless International Inc fell 3 percent on Thursday after the company said it may be able to sell only half the iPhones it has committed to buying from Apple Inc, potentially setting it back by $450 million over three years.

Leap (San Diego, USA), a provider of wireless services to cost-conscious customers, did not sell as many iPhones as it had hoped in the fourth quarter. It said that overall customer additions were hurt by general softness in the prepaid sector and phone prices were higher than many consumers could pay.

Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox Internet browser, is preparing to challenge Google and Apple's grip on smartphone software.

A new Firefox operating system for mobile devices is set for a July release after winning the backing of 13 wireless service providers around the globe, including Spain's Telefonica (Madrid, Spain), China Unicom (Beijing, China) and America Movil (Mexico City, Mexico).

Rostelecom hopes mobile broadband will offset declines in its core fixed-line calls business as it seeks a greater share of Russia's increasingly competitive telecoms market, CEO Alexander Provotorov told Reuters.

The state-controlled former long-distance call monopoly was beefed up in 2011 through a merger with several regional operators to challenge private players in more lucrative market segments such as mobile, broadband and pay TV.

VimpelCom has struck a deal with Microsoft and Nokia that will allow its customers to buy digital content from the Windows Phone store via their mobile accounts.

The operator says the cost of any application, game or music will either be deducted from a customer’s prepaid card or added to the monthly bill.

Nadir Mohammed, the chief executive of Canada’s Rogers Communications, has announced he will retire in January 2014.

Mohammed will continue to lead the operator in 2013 and be involved in the search for a suitable replacement by its board of directors.

“The company’s in great shape and it’s time to start the transition to the next generation of leadership,” said Mohammed in a statement. “Over the next year I look forward to delivering strong results and to ensuring a seamless transition.”

The mobile telecoms industry is facing a $9.2 billion shortfall in backhaul investments as operators continue to make access-network improvements while neglecting the other crucial part of their infrastructure.

Such is the finding of Strategy Analytics in a new report commissioned by Tellabs, which sells backhaul equipment to operators.

The market-research company says that operators will face a new “mobile capacity crunch” by 2017 as a result of growing internet traffic.

Mobile telecoms firm Telenor expects to accelerate investments in data and digital services this year as customers flock to its higher margin products, it said on Wednesday.

Telenor (Fornebu, Norway), which has around 150 million customers in Europe and Asia, will continue to roll out its third generation (3G) service in Thailand and fibre network in Norway to take advantage of "exploding" demand, and could also invest in 3G services elsewhere in Asia and in Denmark.

A Spanish mobile application that pays users up to 25 euros ($34) a month to send messages to friends if they accept advertising may erode telephone operators' revenue as customers switch to free messaging services.

Barcelona-based Chad2Win has attracted close to 100,000 users, who receive one cent for every advertisement they see, and three cents for every ad they click on, since its launch last month, director Fernando Troyano told Reuters.