What’s up with… Nokia, CityFibre, Amazon

• Nokia has a new CFO to go with its new CEO
• CityFibre offers employment hope to Brits
• Amazon halts use of its facial recognition tech by police

People changes at Nokia and job creation news from the UK lead the way in today’s race to the news finishing line.

• Nokia has a new CFO to go with its new CEO… Marco Wirén (above) will take over as CFO on 1 September: He is currently President of Wärtsilä Energy and Executive Vice President of Wärtsilä Group, a global leader in smart technologies and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. Wirén replaces Kristian Pullola, who has been CFO since January 2017: He will relinquish his post and place on the Group Leadership team, but stay on with Nokia until the end of the year to enable the transition. As announced in March, current Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri is stepping down in September, when Pekka Lundmark takes over. And last month, another member of the Nokia senior team, Kathrin Buvac, jumped ship, to be replaced as President of Nokia Enterprise by Raghav Sahgal.
• Still with the giant Finnish vendor… It has landed a deal with Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) to supply automation, analytics and machine learning software, including the Nokia Service Management Platform (SMP), to improve customer service accuracy and efficiency.
• Some positive job news for once: CityFibre says its UK fiber network rollout plans will create up to 10,000 jobs within its “growing pool of network construction partners delivering the up to £4bn rollout of full fibre infrastructure to over 100 towns and cities.” 
• Following IBM’s lead, Amazon noted in a blog that it was putting a one-year pause on letting the police use its facial recognition tool. It says it has worries that the technology may lead to unfair treatment of African Americans. In the past it said its tools were accurate but were improperly used by researchers. 
• Neutral infrastructure company Helios Towers will use $450 million in new funds to boost its presence across Africa, reports Bloomberg.
• As well as collaborating with Altiostar, Mavenir has also teamed up with systems integrator KGPCo to provide OpenRAN solutions to the US market.
• Strange bedfellows: Sometimes Sino-US trade interests can elide. Both countries, backed up by Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Thailand, have challenged India’s tariffs on mobile phones, cameras and other products at the World Trade Organisation. But the Indians are not yet budging and maintain the products in question were not seen as ‘IT’ under the WTO's Information Technology Agreement (ITA) signed in 1996. 

- The staff, TelecomTV