Eurobites：Opus Broadband 质疑 TalkTalk 消费者业务被 BT 收购的命运

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(Source: SFL Travel/Alamy Stock Photo)

Opus Broadband, an Internet service provider based in the northwest of England, has written an open letter to the UK government criticizing its decision to allow BT to buy TalkTalk's consumer division. The letter, attributed to the company's chairman, Mike Ellwood, says that while Opus supports the government's decision to intervene to help preserve connectivity for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable customers, it posits that this objective could have been met without BT snaffling up both TalkTalk's PXC wholesale division and its consumer business. "An emergency intervention to protect vulnerable customers should not result in the permanent transfer to BT of 1.5 million retail customers when a credible independent purchaser was available," writes Ellwood.

The credible purchaser referred to here is Opus, which made the second of two rejected offers for TalkTalk's consumer business only last month. Opus now intends to make representations to the Competition and Markets Authority, asking, among other things, that TalkTalk's consumer business remains operationally and commercially separate from BT. (See Eurobites: TalkTalk close to sale – report.)

Vodafone and friends team up for 5G-based TV trial

Vodafone, Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom have teamed up with broadcaster RTL Deutschland to conduct a trial demonstrating how mobile networks can support live TV production workflows using 5G and APIs. The trial, carried out at a soccer match between HEBC Hamburg and Borussia Dortmund, transmitted key production signals over the operators' networks using 5G technologies. While network APIs enabled stable voice communications between the production control room, camera crews and reporters, network slicing secured sufficient bandwidth and a constant data rate for the reliable transmission of camera footage.

Arelion expands spectrum with Nokia

Also in testing mode is Sweden's Arelion, which has completed a live field trial on its 500km optical backbone route from Amsterdam to London using Nokia gear. Arelion says the trial demonstrated its technology's ability to expand usable optical spectrum by around 21% with Nokia's Super C and Super L band technology, increasing capacity over its existing fiber infrastructure.

Another day, another data center for Finland

France's Sesterce has announced plans to invest more than €10 billion (US$11.2 billion) in AI-supporting data centers on the site of a former paper mill in Jämsä, Finland. According to a YLE report, Sesterce has already signed a contract with the future client for the facility, though he declined to name the company, saying only that it was one of two leading AI laboratories. Sesterce's CEO, Youssef El Manssouri, reckons that the construction phase of the project will bring around 2,000 jobs to the town, though once the facility is completed that number will come down to approximately 300. Finland, not least because of its brass-monkeys climate, has become a popular choice for data center operators. Just last month, Google committed to investing €13 billion ($15 billion) in AI-related digital infrastructure in Finland over the next two years. (See Eurobites: Google tips €13B into Finnish data center plan.)

Three years ago today…

Deutsche Telekom announced that it had teamed up with AWS and VMware to demonstrate what the operator described as a "globally distributed enterprise network" that combined DT's connectivity services with third-party connectivity, compute and storage resources at campus locations in Prague, Bonn and Seattle.

About the Author

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.