Analyst firm Berg Insight says HSPA and LTE mobile technology accounted for 20.6% of the total number of broadband connections on PCs and tablets in Europe at the end of 2010.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers grew by 33% year-on-year in 2010 to 33.9 million and is expected to keep growing to 96 million by 2016. In North America the figures were lower, with mobile broadband accounting for just 13.2% of the total number of connections.

Nortel Networks Limited has auctioned all Nortel's remaining patents and patent applications to a consortium of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony.

The consortium's bid was $4.5 billion; RIM has confirmed its portion of the deal is approximately $770 million.

New research from the Ericsson ConsumerLab team has found that found that an increasing number of consumers are using their smartphones to go online before getting out of bed.

35% of Android and iPhone users in the USA said they interacted with non-voice apps before getting up, with almost a fifth of social networking users connecting with Facebook friends while in bed.

The Wholesale Applications Community, which was created at last year’s Mobile World Congress, has announced the commercial launch of the organisation. There are now WAC-powered app stores as well as WAC-compliant handsets and web applications.

A number of major mobile operators and handset manufacturers are already working with the WAC platform.

Earlier this week we heard from Alcatel-Lucent and their lightRadio solution, which promised "the capability to make base stations and antennas virtually invisible".

Now comes what sounds - at least in part - like a similar product from Ericsson. They’re launching the Ericsson AIR (antenna integrated radio) solution at Mobile World Congress next week. AIR integrates the antenna into the radio unit, cutting both energy consumption and installation time.