France Telecom’s CEO has said the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, was fully briefed before approving a “fraudulent” arbitration process that saw the tycoon Bernard Tapie awarded a huge payout in 2008.

The mobile giant EE has signed up 500,000 customers for its super-fast 4G service in seven months, raising the pressure on rivals including Vodafone, which has pushed back its 4G launch until late summer.

"4G is going to replace bad broadband," declared Olaf Swantee, the chief executive of the mobile giant EE, as he claimed that the signal from his new super-fast 4G phone network is so strong that customers are not bothering with wi-fi – even in the home.

Britain’s biggest mobile phone company today disappointed the City after it reported a slowdown in revenue growth — despite being the first UK carrier to launch a super-fast 4G mobile internet service last October.

Vodafone's chief executive, Vittorio Colao, will pull in a pay package totalling £14m for 2012, inevitably risking fresh criticisms over executive pay.

Richard Moat, the telecoms executive who won praise for turning around T-Mobile UK before its merger with Orange UK, has quit the Everything Everywhere venture that was formed by the combination of the two businesses.

Orange, the mobile phone operator which has offered deals on cinema tickets for the past eight years, has secured a partnership with Apple to offer customers the chance to rent movies online for free.

Tom Alexander, the head of the largest mobile phone group in the UK, shocked the market yesterday as he resigned without warning to spend more time with his family.

Everything Everywhere, the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile, is set to expand its presence on the UK high street with plans to launch 30 new stores this year.

A smartphone that requires the owner's fingerprint to be scanned before it will allow anyone to access the web, play games or even make a call is launched today.

Some 300 people gathered in Bordeaux yesterday to mark the suicide of a 57-year-old employee of France Telecom-Orange. The man, named only as Rémi L, set himself on fire early on Tuesday morning in the car park of the company's Bordeaux office, becoming the latest company employee to kill himself.

Orange is set to become the first operator in the UK to allow customers to pay for goods with a swipe of their mobile phone, after signing a strategic deal with Barclays.

AstraZeneca took a tumble yesterday after analysts forecast black clouds ahead for Britain's second-largest drug maker after it posted disappointing third-quarter numbers.