It's this year's biggest technology acquisition and the largest outbound deal in Japan's history. But game-changing, it is not.

Softbank Corp's <9984.T> pricey $20 billion bid to buy control of No. 3 U.S. telecoms company Sprint Nextel Corp (Overland Park, USA) marks a bold move by billionaire CEO Masayoshi Son beyond his flagging home market. Some analysts say it hands the U.S. company much-needed firepower to buy peers and build out high-speed networks.

China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd said on Wednesday a U.S. congressional committee probe into whether its access to communications infrastructure poses a security risk is unlikely to affect its businesses in other overseas markets.

The House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee issued a report earlier this month urging U.S. companies to stop doing business with Huawei (Shenzhen, China) and ZTE Corp (Shenzhen, China), the world's No.2 and No.5 telecommunications equipment vendors respectively, over security concerns.

China's No.2 telecommunications equipment maker ZTE Corp, under fire in the United States over cyber security concerns, has sold a subsidiary which sells surveillance systems.

The decision to dispose of ZTE Special Equipment Co, also known as ZTEsec, was made on September 21, during a U.S. Congressional committee investigation into ZTE (Shenzhen, China) and its local rival Huawei Technologies Co Ltd (Shenzhen, China).

Itron and C3 Energy have announced a strategic alliance to market energy-management services to North American utilities.

The companies say their tie-up will enable utilities to provide better energy-management services to customers.

Under the arrangement, Itron (Liberty Lake, USA) will combine its smart-metering and data-management products with C3’s energy-management services. The end result, it is hoped, will be used by utilities to help consumers better understand and reduce their energy consumption.

Groupon Inc launched a point-of-sale service called Breadcrumb across the United States on Wednesday as the world's largest daily deal company tries to win more restaurants as clients.

Breadcrumb is a sales, order management and reporting system for restaurants, bars and cafes that runs on Apple Inc's iPad. It was designed a start-up founded by Seth Harris. Groupon (Chicago, USA) acquired the business in May.

PayPal is planning to cut as much as 3 percent of its workforce as the payments division of eBay Inc looks to streamline its operations under new President David Marcus, a person familiar with the situation said on Friday.

The reductions are expected to total between 300 and 400 and be focused in product development, technology and marketing, the person said on condition of anonymity because the plans are not public. PayPal (San Jose, USA) has almost 13,000 employees.

The job cuts will be PayPal's first major reductions since the financial crisis in 2008.

MTN Group on Monday confirmed that a U.S. court had put on hold the $4.2 billion lawsuit against it by Turkish rival Turkcell, pending a separate Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court had heard oral arguments in a high profile case against Royal Dutch Shell this month, a case which may determine whether foreign corporations can be sued in U.S. courts under an 18th century law.

NTT DoCoMo (Tokyo, Japan) and MasterCard (Purchase, USA) have teamed up on a service that will let the operator’s customers use their smartphones to pay for goods abroad.

The companies plan to expand DoCoMo’s mobile credit payment system to include MasterCard PayPass merchant locations. As of June, there were an estimated 500,000 such locations in 41 countries.

Collaboration with the payment card companies is necessary if operators are to break into the market for international payments, and the industry is likely to see more deals of this nature in the months ahead.

Verizon Wireless (New York, USA) said it is about two months ahead of schedule in its network upgrade as it will have high-speed wireless service in 400 markets by October 18, ahead of its year-end target for this milestone.

Since late 2010, Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc (Newbury, UK), has been upgrading its network with a high-speed wireless technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Private-equity group Inverness Graham Investments (Newtown Square, USA) has taken a majority stake in RACO Wireless (Cincinnati, USA) as the M2M specialist reveals its acquisition intentions and predicts a “significant surge” in the growth of the market.