Imagine a meeting where the heads of Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telecom Italia all sat down in a Paris hotel to talk about...
And that's the mystery. Orange CEO Stephane Richard originally arranged the meeting to talk about developing a smartphone operating system with his rivals, although it's now speculated that network sharing, shared R&D and application production were all on the agenda of the four-hour discussion last Friday.
Mr Richard was joined by Rene Obermann of Deutsche Telekom, Vittorio Colao of Vodafone, Cesar Alierta of Telefonica and Franco Bernabe of Telecom Italia – each of whom apparently brought a collection of legal advisers. The five companies are responsible for over a billion consumers in total.
[Sources: lefigaro.fr; mobilebusinessbriefing.com; telecompaper.com]