Openreach, BT’s wholesale arm, has declared full fibre broadband is now available to 10 million homes, businesses and public services across the UK. The milestone was reached with the plugging-in of a village called Kettonin the East Midlands to the Openreach fibre network. The £15 billion project ultimately is intended to hook up 25 million homes and businesses across the country by the end of 2026. Openreach says the rollout is ‘set to improve the quality of UK public services’, and that its fibre network is now available to over 9,000 medical facilities such as GP surgeries, hospitals and r ..read more

The Hungarian government has increased its holding in mobile operator Yettel as part of an ongoing strategy to tighten state control in the telecoms sector. It’s a complex share swap deal, but the key takeaway is that the Hungarian state has picked up a 25% indirect stake in the country’s second-biggest mobile operator in exchange for some of its holding in Vodafone Hungary. And that enables it to have a bigger presence in telecoms. “The transaction will further increase the Hungarian State’s assets and role in the strategically important telecommunications sector, and thanks to the share exch ..read more

Just months after announcing a huge round of layoffs, US hyperscaler Amazon is preparing to wield the axe once again. The company announced on Monday that another 9,000 staff will be shown the door. This time around the cuts will be made at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Advertising, and its Twitch streaming service. Further cuts are also being made to the People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) unit, which is essentially Amazon’s HR department. “As we’ve just concluded the second phase of our operating plan (‘OP2’) this past week, I’m writing to share that we intend to eliminate about 9,000 more ..read more

Despite ongoing global economic woes, more expensive phones – specifically ones that cost over $600 – represented 55% of overall handset revenue last year. It’s the first time the premium market revenue has represented ‘more than half’ of the global smartphone market, which fell by 12% overall in 2022 according to a report from Counterpoint Research. Premium phones also accounted for more than one-fifth of total global smartphone sales. In fact, handsets priced at $1,000 and above grew a barnstorming 38% last year. Counterpoint attributes this to ‘affluent consumers’ being more immune to the m ..read more

..read more

..read more

The European Commission has approved Orange’s proposed acquisition of VOO in Belgium following a lengthy competition investigation. Orange had to agree to provide rival Telenet access to its fixed infrastructure in the Walloon region and parts of Brussels to get the Commission onside, but we knew that was coming; the telco brokered such a deal with Telenet in January, subject to completion of the planned takeover. That network access deal proved sufficient to satisfy the Commission. “These commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission. The Commission therefore ..read more

The UK government will soon conduct a nationwide test of a system that will allow it to push messages to nearly all mobile phones. Sensibly named, the Emergency Alerts service was launched yesterday. We’re told it will only be used when there is an imminent risk to life, which it is assumed will be a very rare event. While it’s hard to imagine such an event, about which potentially affected people would have otherwise been ignorant, another channel for emergency communication seems like a good thing, on the surface. “We are strengthening our national resilience with a new emergency alerts syst ..read more

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) might be willing to splash the cash to boost its fibre footprint. The Liberty Global-owned UK cableco is exploring the possibility of acquiring altnet CityFibre, according to unnamed sources cited in a Telegraph report (paywall) on Saturday. As always, a generous pinch of salt is a recommended accompaniment to rumours like this. With that said, the newspaper asserts that initial talks have taken place between Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries and his CityFibre counterpart, Greg Mesch, and that a takeover bid could be worth up to £3 billion. It is hard to gauge the likelihood ..read more

BT Wholesale is working with AWS to trial a mobile cloud edge computing service for businesses and public services to facilitate mobile IoT applications over EE networks. The ‘5G-connected infrastructure as a service’ is underpinned by what they are calling an ‘AWS Wavelength Zone’ in Manchester – a 100km area (which covers Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Blackpool) within which eligible businesses and public sector organisations access to edge computing services through the EE network. In terms of the nuts and bolts of it, AWS Wavelength embeds compute and storage functions within the EE 5G a ..read more