TOP NEWS
* Vivendi SA agreed to purchase the Bolloré Group's 60% majority stake in Havas Group for €9.25 per share. The transaction is subject to the approval of the relevant competition authorities.
* Vivendi is pushing through with plans to create a southern Europe media powerhouse with the launch of an Italian unit, Vivendi Italia SpA, in late June, Telecompaper reports, citing Il Sole 24 Ore. Vivendi CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine also said the French media conglomerate is considering a bid for broadcast rights to Italy's Serie A soccer league June 10.
* Social networks and internet services are not doing enough to remove offensive content and human intelligence and inside networks are far more effective than deleting Facebook profiles, a counterterrorism expert has warned. In fact, he added that weakened encryption may put more people at risk.
UK AND IRELAND
* Vodafone Group Plc announced that it updated its global rules to prevent its ads from appearing alongside hate speech and fake news content. The new rules will be implemented via a whitelist-based approach, which will use content controls implemented by Vodafone's global agency network, Alphabet Inc.-owned Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.
* Arqiva Ltd. is anticipating bids for the company's sale before August, Advanced Television reports, citing Infrastructural Journal & Project Finance. Bankers for the broadcast towers operator are expected to issue a prospectus soon.
* British Telecom unit EE Ltd. rolled out its 4G+ network upgrade in Cardiff and London, and plans to do the same for Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh within the year, according to a news release. The upgraded network is expected to provide speeds consistently above 50 Mbps with peak speeds of about 400 Mbs, using 4G+ supported handsets.
* Sky News will use technologies of video solutions provider LiveU Ltd. for the live coverage of the U.K. general election, Advanced Television reports. The Sky plc unit will broadcast feeds via YouTube Live.
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA
* ZDF (DE) unit ZDF Enterprises announced the acquisition of a 32.5% share in World Media rights, according to a news release. The investment coincides with a board restructure at the British production firm
* Huawei Technologies Deutschland GmbH and German IT consulting firm Allgeier Enterprise Services AG have entered a memorandum of understanding to find a collaborative end-to-end IT solutions for the retail industry. The solution will combine back-office tools based on SAP SE's applications with internet of things solutions for integration with the Open Telekom Cloud.
* IPI GmbH, a German specialist for intranet and collaboration solutions, has expanded its strategic services and relaunched its intranet solutions. According to a press release, the company aims to become a full-service intranet agency.
FRANCE
* Ubisoft may file an appeal over the Paris commercial court's decision to slap the French video game publisher with a €785,000 fine. The penalty is compensation for the group's early termination of contract with ad agency BETC, a subsidiary of Havas SA.
* Orange SA's Orange Business Services has launched "Flexible Engine," its new public cloud service in France, as well as a new application management and expertise services offering. The company noted it also hopes to make its Cloudwatt platform available as a public cloud service in France.
NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG
* Tele2 AB's Tele2 Netherlands adjusted its terms and conditions to allow tethering, after regulator ACM warned that the provider's terms were violating net neutrality rules, according to an ACM press release. Tele2 had earlier introduced restrictions on tethering, or the process of connecting mobile internet to other devices.
* Six out of the seven large telecom providers in the Netherlands will raise their prices for internet, telephony and television from July 1, with the average increase being €22 per year, reports Nu.nl. Deutsche Telekom AG unit T-Mobile Netherlands is the only provider maintaining its prices, while Online.nl will be charging its customers the highest increase, of maximum €5.50 per month.
NORDIC COUNTRIES
* Telia Co. AB has settled outstanding capital gains taxes connected to the sale of its Nepalese subsidiary Ncell in 2016, writes Dagens Industri. Nepal's national tax authority has received a final settlement payment amounting to 1.15 billion Swedish kronor.
* Telia Finland, DNA Oyj and Elisa Oyj have asked Finnish regulatory authority FICORA for a one year exclusion to the new EU roaming rules, reports Kauppalehti. The telcos fear that the new rules will reduce revenues and force them to introduce price increases for customers.
* Nokia Corp.'s Nokia Oyj has conducted successful tests on applications based on Multi-access Edge Computing, in cooperation with the University of Notre Dame, Nokia said. The MEC is designed to improve speed of access to data services in congested areas like football stadiums.
SOUTHERN EUROPE
* Vivendi plans to cap its voting rights in Mediaset SpA to comply with an earlier ruling by Italian telecom regulator AGCOM, Reuters reports, citing a source close to the matter. In April, AGCOM directed Vivendi to cut either its 29.9% of voting rights in Mediaset or its 24% stake in Telecom Italia SpA within one year.
* Symantec Corp. purchased Portugese tech company Watchful Software from Critical Software for an undisclosed sum, Telecompaper reports, citing news agency Lusa. Watchful will become part of Symantec's data loss prevention group following the deal.
EASTERN EUROPE
* NBCUniversal Media LLC's Universal Channel is leaving Poland by the end of August, 10 years after the channel debuted in the country in late 2007, Broadband TV News reports. The Comcast Corp. unit reportedly said the move seeks to rebalance the company's channel portfolio in Poland.
* Samsung Mobile Russia CEO Arkadiy Graf has left the company, Telecompaper reports, citing Vedomosti. Dmitriy Gostev will take over as acting CEO for the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unit.
* Slovakia's Office for Regulation of Electronic Communications and Postal Services, or RU, upheld the €100,000 fine it imposed on Skylink operator M7 Group SA for several offenses, Broadband TV News reports. Among the reasons for the fine was that M7 did not inform its customers about their right to withdraw from a contract, following a change to the contract's terms.
FEATURED NEWS
Apple bets on artificial intelligence, augmented reality: Analysts said Apple's June 5 product announcements held important insight into the direction the company will take as its legacy products mature.
FEATURED RESEARCH
Washington Watch: How 5G might shape future spectrum demand: Though the broadcast incentive auction only recently ended, promising to free up 70 MHz of low-band spectrum for mobile broadband, the hunt for more spectrum is far from over thanks to the transition to next-generation wireless technology 5G.
Anne Freier, Amanda Kelly, Charlotte van Hek and Gerard O'Dwyer contributed to this report. The Daily Dose has an editorial deadline of 7 a.m. London time. Some external links may require a subscription.