Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) in Saudi Arabia reported a Q3 loss, blaming a requirement introduced last year that customers had to register their fingerprint with SIM cards. The company’s net losses increased by 5 percent to 174.5 million riyals ($46.53 million) it said in a statement to the Saudi bourse. Revenue also dropped 4.3 percent to 2.8 billion riyals. Mobily said introducing the fingerprint registration rule led to an “erosion” of its customer base. The requirement was introduced last year by…

Cisco announced it will acquire publicly-held BroadSoft, Inc., the global communication software and service provider headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD. Cisco will pay $55 per share, in cash, or an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.9 billion net of cash, assuming fully diluted shares including conversion of debt. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company. "Together, Cisco and BroadSoft will deliver a robust suite of collaboration capabilities across every market segment," said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and…

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a settlement with Verizon for possible violations of the FCC’s competitive bidding rules for the E-rate program, which provides discounts to assist most schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable internet access.  Verizon agreed to pay $17.68 million to resolve parallel investigations by the FCC and U.S. Department of Justice, $17.325 million of which will be repaid to the Universal Service Fund (USF).  Verizon has further agreed to withdraw any…

Qualcomm announced that the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) has reached a decision in a TFTC investigation, stating in a press release that certain of the company’s business practices are in violation of Taiwanese competition law and imposing a fine of approximately $23.4 billion Taiwan dollars (approximately $773 million US dollars at current exchange rates). The TFTC claimed that “in spite of its monopoly in the baseband chip markets of cellular standards such as CDMA, WCDMA and LTE etc., [Qualcomm]…

Alphabet-owned Google announced a definitive agreement with HTC on Sept. 21 under which HTC employees – many of whom are already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones – will join Google. HTC will receive US$1.1 billion in cash from Google as part of the transaction. Separately, Google will receive a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and expected to close by early 2018. It represents a significant investment by Google in Taiwan…