Europe
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The UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) has invested in subsea High-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable manufacturer XLCC.
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IQM, a quantum computing developer, has been awarded a contract to deliver the Czech Republic’s first quantum computer, which will be installed at the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre in Ostrava.
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The European Commission has launched a €65 million scheme to invest in research projects investigating quantum semiconductors.
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New research from Vodafone UK reveals that the nationwide deployment of 5G Standalone (SA) technology could transform road and rail travel, saving regular road users £2 billion a year on fuel and boosting the UK economy by £1 billion through increased productivity on trains.
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Quadrivium Digital, a provider of carrier-neutral interconnection data centres, has secured significant financing from Arrow Global to support its expansion into Italy with the launch of a new subsea cable landing and interconnection platform in Genoa.
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Google Cloud has filed a competition complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, claiming the hyperscaler rival’s licensing terms “restrict” customers from moving to competitors.
Forthcoming events
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GlobalNet, a leading backbone internet service provider, has completed the deployment of a fully protected, ring-based Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network across Central Europe.
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Nebius has launched a new GPU cluster in Paris as part of its plan to invest more than $1 billion to expand AI infrastructure in Europe by mid-2025.
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A legal and commercial dispute between Deutsche Telekom and Meta has escalated, with both companies trading shots over the future of their data traffic arrangements in Germany.
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Salesforce has joined more than 100 companies including Amazon, Google and Microsoft to have signed up for the EU AI Pact — a voluntary commitment to apply the principles of the AI Act ahead of its enforcement.
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Ciena has unveiled a coherent pluggable designed to help data centre and cloud operators transmit increasing data traffic amid increased demand for AI and machine learning workloads.
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A startup designing glass-based photonic chips has secured $8.5 million in seed funding to reimagine future computing infrastructure.
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Ribbon Communications and Telia Lithuania partnered to upgrade the network infrastructure for LTG Group, the Lithuanian railway company.
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The European Commission has approved Swisscom's €8 billion acquisition of Vodafone's Italian business, clearing another regulatory hurdle to bring the transaction closer to closing.
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The FTTH Council Europe has welcomed a key recommendation from the Draghi Report on Europe’s future competitiveness, which calls for the prioritisation of shutting down legacy copper networks.
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Ericsson has joined Spotify, Meta, and SAP in calling out the EU AI Act, warning the “fragmented” regulation would hinder AI opportunities on the continent.
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In a move to revolutionise home broadband performance, the Broadband Forum has kicked off a project aimed at integrating Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable Throughput (L4S) technology into home networks.
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Embattled British telco TalkTalk has secured 100% of its Revolving Credit Facility (RCF) debt through ongoing refinancing efforts.
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RETN has activated a new route between Milan and Zurich, boosting its presence in Italy.
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Nokia has been selected by CoreWeave to deploy its IP routing and optical transport portfolios globally.
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Exa Infrastructure (Exa) has agreed a deal to acquire Global Communications Net AD (GCN), a Bulgarian telecoms company offering services on its owned national fibre-optic network of over 2,500km.
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Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim has raised his BT stake to 4.3% for around £150 million.
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GlobalNet/DATAIX has established a new point-of-presence (PoP) in Zurich, marking the company’s first entry into Switzerland.
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Italy’s Aruba S.p.A (Aruba) has implemented liquid cooling within the data centre campus in Ponte San Pietro (BG), near Milan.
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Grid Telecom and Dawiyat Integrated will collaborate to build a new high-capacity system that will connect Greece with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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In an interview with Capacity at the Digital with Purpose event in Cascais, Portugal Rafael González, CMO at MedUX outlines the integral nature of its 2024 benchmark report on 5G performance across 10 European capitals to both operators and regulators.
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Aire Networks has chosen Nokia mobile core solutions to modernise the operator’s network in Spain.
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IQM Quantum Computers has opened its first quantum data centre in Munich, Germany.
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Peter Zanatta, managing director at Attanz assesses Norway’s importance as a growing data market
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Norway-based Telenor is establishing a new cybersecurity company focused on the Nordic region.
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Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has taken a 3.2% stake in BT Group, worth around £400 million.
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Veon plans to increase its investment to Ukraine’s digital infrastructure to US$1 billion from 2023-2027.
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KKR has secured EU antitrust approval for its acquisition of Telecom Italia’s (TIM) fixed-line network worth around US$24 billion.
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Orange has completed the merger between Orange Romania SA (ORA) and Orange Romania Communications (OROC) by integrating OROC into ORA.
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The story of how a tragedy in an ammunition storage depot indirectly led to the creation of a sustainable, naturally cooled data centre in a completely different city 60 years later.
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Pan-European carrier RETN has made three significant enhancements to its network infrastructure in Poland, which it hopes will improve internet connectivity across Central and Eastern Europe.
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GlobalNet has confirmed another expansion into Central Europe with the launch of a new point-of-presence (PoP) in Warsaw.
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Grid Telecom and Quadrivium are teaming up to create a new cable landing station (CLS) in Chania, on the northern coast of Crete.
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Samsung and O2 Telefónica have launched their first virtualised RAN (vRAN) and Open RAN commercial site in Germany.
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For the next Data Centre of the Month, Capacity looks at Datacenter Mutualisé Lorrain (DCML), a shared data centre built for a hospital, a university, and a regional government – and a successful example of ‘micro-colocation’.
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Nokia and Vodafone have successfully completed an end-to end Open RAN trial on Vodafone Italy’s live 5G standalone (SA) network.
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Future investments into Ukrainian telecoms infrastructure are expected to be both “heavy” and “indispensable” for the country, given the essential nature of Kyivstar’s services, a spokesperson for the company told Capacity.
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Telecom Italia (TIM) CEO Pietro Labriola is nearing a second term at the operator after a shareholder vote that is set to be held today.
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Turkey’s national regulator, the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) is reportedly planning to implement bandwidth restrictions on Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter).
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Telecom Italia would be left with US$7 billion in cash after repaying its debts if it sold its Brazilian unit and its domestic consumer business according to activity investor Merlyn Partners.
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Data centre specialist LCL will invest €30 million in a fifth data centre in Diegem, Belgium.
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The GSMA and leading European mobile operators confirm the launch of ‘Connecting Europe to 2030: A Mobile Industry Manifesto for Europe’.
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Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has been awarded the contract to implement the new Anel CAM subsea project in Portugal.
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For the second Data Centre of the Month, we head north to Iceland – and north again from Reykjavik to Akureyri, where atNorth opened its 12MW ICE03 facility in 2023.
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Phoenix Tower International (PTI) and Cellnex Telecom have reached an agreement by which PTI will acquire 100% of Cellnex’s business in Ireland for €971 million.
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AtlasEdge has completed the acquisition of a new data centre facility in Vienna, marking its entry into the Austrian market.
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French operator Bouygues Telecom has signed an exclusive agreement with La Poste group for 100% of its subsidiary La Poste Telecom, the largest mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the French market.
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Vodafone Turkey and Edgenex Datacentres by DAMAC are collaborating to establish a new data centre facility in Izmir Turkey.
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Microsoft is set to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in Spain, with an investment of US$2.1 billion over the next two years.
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Vodafone confirms plans to build new Open Radio Access Network (RAN) sites in 20 cities across Romania.
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Comarch has been awarded one of the first permits to use dedicated 4 to 4.1GHz radio frequencies for private 5G networks in Poland.
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Veon and its subsidiary Kyivstar confirm the implementation of its US$600 million investment in rebuilding Ukraine, as first announced in June 2023.
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Exa Infrastructure has announced significant investments into its networks connecting Sicily to mainland Italy, including upgrades to the Janna cable system and the addition of a submarine route connecting Palermo to Genoa.
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The never-ending story of TIM selling its fixed network to KKR took yet another twist yesterday, as the Italian Government made a bid for 100% of TIM’s infrastructure and connectivity business, Sparkle.
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Historic England, the executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been asked to list a 70-year-old structure and equipment in Greenwich that enabled the first-ever transatlantic telephone calls.
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KKR’s massive bid to acquire Telecom Italia’s (TIM) fixed line network for as much as €22 billion has been cleared by the Italian Government, but unhappy shareholder Vivendi could still hold up proceedings.
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Orange has signed an agreement with the Romanian government to form a single, combined mobile operator.
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Romanian media outlet Ziarul Financiar, has reported that a merger between Orange and the former state controlled telecom company Telekom Romania has been given the green light by the Romanian Government.
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The Spanish government is set to take a 10% stake in Telefónica to counteract the large investment of stc in the company.
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The iliad Group has submitted a proposal to Vodafone Group for the merger of iliad’s and Vodafone’s Italian businesses with the creation of a new entity (NewCo).
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Veon subsidiary Kyivstar has started restoring voice services on its mobile network following a widespread cyber-attack on Tuesday.
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atNorth has confirmed plans to further expand its network footprint into Finland with a new mega site planned on a 21-hectare plot, in Kouvola.
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Union says that by 2026 Telefonica will reduce its workforce in Spain by 5100
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Bloomberg sources have said Spanish operators Orange and MasMovil will sell assets to Romanian operator Digi to push through their €18.7 billion merger.
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Telecom Italia’s (TIM) CEO Pietro Labriola is to propose to directors to seek further improvements of multi-billion-dollar bids for the company’s landline grid, source from Reuters say.
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RETN confirms the launch of its latest network connectivity route from Padua to Vienna in northern Italy.
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Telefonica is launching a bid to buy 28.19% of Telefonica Deutschland in a bid worth around €2 billion or €2.35 per share.
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As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, Oleksandr Komarov, CEO of Kyivstar met with Capacity earlier this year to discuss the network rebuild and the battle to keep the country connected.
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Samuel Buttarelli, vice president sales and business development for EMEA and APAC at CommScope tells Capacity how increased connectivity is revolutionising live sports
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Blackstone backed Phoenix Tower International (PTI) has signed a deal with Novec BV, the largest independent telecommunications infrastructure provider in the Netherlands, to acquire its German subsidiary, Novec Gmbh.
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Veon has completed its exit from Russian market with the sale of its business in the country to senior members of the Vimpelcom management team led by CEO Aleksander Torbakhov.
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Vertiv has established a new legal entity in Norway and has strengthens its partnership with colocation provider Green Mountain as it looks to scale across Northern Europe.
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The Netherlands has delayed its 5G spectrum auction yet again, much to the frustration of local telecoms firms.
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Yolanda Diaz, Spains labour minister and second deputy prime minister has spoken out against the sale of a 9.9% stake in Spanish multi-national operator Telefonica.
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A Ukrainian official has slammed Elon Musk after claims emerged that the SpaceX owner ordered engineers to switch off Starlink satellites near Crimea to prevent a Ukrainian offensive on Russia.
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Ericsson has teamed with Danish infrastructure provider TDC NET to switch on the country’s first 5G standalone (SA) network.
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Starlink services were cut off by Musk during a planned drone strike, sparking fury from Ukrainian generals
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French police should be able to spy on suspects by activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed on Wednesday, July 5.
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Capacity caught up with Oleksandr Komarov, CEO of Kyivstar for an update on its operations in Ukraine.
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Veon has announced plans to invest the equivalent of US$600 million in the recovery of Ukraine over the next three years, all through its subsidiary Kyivstar.
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Exa Infrastructure has acquired Univerzalne Telekomunikacije d.o.o (Unitel), a Croatian infrastructure services provider.
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The latest DE-CIX internet exchange (IX) is now ready for service in Helsinki, Finland.
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Nokia has successfully trialled its Cloud RAN solution on A1 Group’s (A1) commercial 5G network in Bulgaria.
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Turning around results in Germany should Vodafone’s leading priority, but there is also much work to do to arrest perennial struggles in Spain and Italy, according to Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight.
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KIO Networks has unveiled a new Tier IV data centre, located in the Valencian Community, an autonomous community of Spain.
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BT has secured a contract worth up to £350 million over the next six years to become the sole provider to deliver public sector connectivity across Scotland.
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SES has signed multi-year capacity agreements totalling more than €75 million in backlog with several German private and public broadcasters.
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Paris-based Iliad has bought a majority stake in iTrust, a French specialist in cyber security.
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Poland now has a unified company planning to build an open access 5Gbps fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network, serving Play Group and other operators.
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Green Mountain will establish a new 54MW data centre site in Mainz, 30km outside of Frankfurt.
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Ericsson is claiming a European record for 5G download speeds of almost 6Gbps, with uploads of 1.6Gbps.
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Telecom Italia is bracing itself for an improved bid from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) for its fixed-line unit.
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Telia Company has started the search for a new CFO after Per Christian Mørland handed in his notice.
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Swisscom’s Italian broadband company, Fastweb, has promoted Walter Renna to be CEO from October.
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Telefonica has joined forces with Qwilt to offer content delivery services in Spain.
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Israeli satellite operator Spacecom is working with an Azerbaijani satellite company to extend services into Africa.
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FibreConnect has chosen Exa Infrastructure to build its backbone across Italy to connect key industrial locations and data centres.
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Italian tower company Inwit is expand coverage to 900 areas in the country’s mountainous regions.
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The Russian military has been attacking Ukraine’s digital infrastructure, as well as its people and buildings, since February 2022. Alan Burkitt-Gray talks to Vodafone Ukraine’s Vasyl Latsanych about how the company keeps connected
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Lumen has expanded its 400Gbps wavelength network across Europe, covering 50 markets.
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Deutsche Telekom is stirring up controversy by awarding a €64 million telecoms order for the German railway company to Huawei.
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A European authority is to investigate alleged state aid to the Iris subsea cable project in case it breached the rules.
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euNetworks Group is to expand its network through the acquisition of the dark fibre business branch of a Belgian utility company (the Business Branch).
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Vodafone is working with the University of Palermo in Italy to build a €4 million 5G campus.
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Germany is set to ban the use of Huawei and ZTE equipment in the country’s mobile networks, according to reports last night.
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IRIS, the new subsea cable system built by Farice ehf (Farice), the Icelandic telco, is now live and ready for service.
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Colt has expanded its On-Demand infrastructure to interconnect with Equinix Fabric in Spain, Italy and Sweden.
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AtlasEdge has completed its acquisition of Datacenter One, a deal that brings more than 140 customers for its four data centres.
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Equinix has increased its backing of renewable power projects with the addition of five new long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) in Spain totalling 225 megawatts.
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The government of the Netherlands has set its face against lobbying by giant telcos to charge for internet usage.
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Orange and Vodafone are looking for strategic vendors for a pioneering open RAN collaboration in Romania.
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Service provider RETN has expanded its existing Warsaw metro fibre network
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Nokia and Tele2 have inked a collaboration in Sweden that focuses on private wireless networks.
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TIM had “better-than-expected results” for 2022, the former Telecom Italia said last night.
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Orange has become the first operator in Spain to commercially launch, its 5G standalone (SA) mobile service, branded as 5G+.
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Veon is likely to complete sale of its Russian division to the management by 1 June, the company said this morning.
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Estonian company Greenergy Data Centers has deployed cloud-ready and AI-driven technology at its 31.5MW data centre.
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The industry’s aid charity, Télécoms Sans Frontières, is despatching a team to Turkey today to provide assistance following yesterday’s earthquake.
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Latvia-based carrier Avelacom has expanded its network to Hong Kong and appointed Timothy Wong to be VP of sales in the Asia Pacific
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French renewable energy company Engie has signed power purchase agreements with data centre operator Digital Realty and French telco Iliad.
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Neterra has increased the capacity of its new metro fibre network in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
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Orange is moving Jean-François Fallacher from running its operation in Spain to become CEO of Orange France from 3 April.
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BT has sold its fibre network in four German cities – Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart – to 1&1 Versatel.
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Orange Belgium and Belgian cable operator Telenet have sign two commercial wholesale agreements providing access to each other’s broadband networks.
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A Swedish group, Netmore, is to roll out a low-power network in France that will be used largely for the internet of things (IoT).
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Ericsson’s new head of Europe and Latin America is to be Jenny Lindqvist, widening of her current role, head of northern and central Europe.
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A quantum computing company co-founded by a winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for physics has raised €100 million in funding.
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The Italian Data Center Association has been newly formed by Microsoft, Equinix, Rai Way, Data4, STACK Infrastructure, Digital Realty, Vantage Data Centers and CBRE Data Centers.
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Nokia and Telefonica Spain have trialled 25G PON technology for the first time in the country.
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The CEO of Veon has issued a stark warning to lenders that it needs more time to pay back its notes, some of which are due in February and others in April.
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Serpil Timuray will add Spain to her European responsibilities in Vodafone in a significant reshuffle that sees Colman Deegan, CEO of Vodafone Spain, stepping down at the end of March.
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The investor that owns Bakcell in Azerbaijan and Vodafone Ukraine is setting up a new main office in Amsterdam as it plans a greater global presence.
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Canal+ has confirmed a deal with Orange to acquire its pay TV and film divisions.
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Around US$1.79 billion worth of damage has been done to Ukraine’s telecoms sector, a UN state agency said in a report published in December.
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Alibaba says it will invest US$1 billion in Turkey for a logistics hub at Istanbul’s airport and a data centre near the Turkish capital of Ankara.
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Vodafone has agreed terms to sell its business in Hungary operation to a local IT company and the Hungarian state.
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Lamda Hellix, a Digital Realty Company confirms plans to expand its presence in Athens, Greece, with the construction of two new data centres.
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atNorth has acquired two data centres in Finland from Advania and is looking to build a third as it looks to expand in the region.
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Norlys Fibernet has appointed Ole Andersen as its sales director for its fibre business.
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Intersec, the EU’s public warning system provider has announced the successful deployment of its public warning technology for O2 Telefonica in Germany.
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Around 21 new data centres are being planned outside of the Greater Dublin area due to constraints on the energy grid around Ireland’s capital.
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Alexander Straub, the founder of Truphone has submitted a bid of around UUS$250 million to buy back the company from Roman Abramovich and his Russian associates.
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Ericsson has given up on Russia, but has another year of grief from the American justice system following its illegal activities in Iraq.
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Irish mobile operators will pay more than €140 million each for spectrum bands to boost the roll out of 5G across Ireland.
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Telecom Egypt and Greece’s Grid Telecom have signed a collaboration agreement to build a subsea system connecting Egypt and Greece.
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Helsinki-based data centre operator Hyperco is to develop two new campuses, each with an initial capacity of 50MW.
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Exa Infrastructure is investing further into the Iberian Peninsula with a second new diverse terrestrial transport route between Spain and Lisbon.
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Norwegian operator Ice has signed an agreement with Griptel, a provider of mounting solutions for critical equipment such as 4G and 5G antennas for cellular networks.
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Infosys has announced the launch of a new 'proximity centre' in Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Aruba has raised €500 million in funding for the expansion of its Global Cloud Data Center (GCDC) campus.
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Data centre operator atNorth – formerly Advania – is building an IP network to enable its expansion in Iceland and other Nordic markets.
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Nokia plans to open a new 5G and 6G research and development centre in Amadora, Portugal.
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Veon is to sell its operations in Russia to the management for the equivalent of US$2.1 billion, more than twice the current market cap of the whole group.
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Liberty Global’s Virgin Media in Ireland is to try out a free Wifi network in the city of Dublin.
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Private equity investor Cube Infrastructure Managers has injected €14 million into Fibernet Finland in what it calls “the first phase”.
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Russian telco Tele2 has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Ericsson, citing a refusal to honour agreements to supply equipment.
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Eutelsat Communications has successfully launched its Eutelsat Hotbird 13G satellite by SpaceX.
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Neterra has launched a new fibre metro network in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, connecting all data centres in the city.
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Veon is packing up and moving out of Russia, where it owns the VimpelCom network that operates under the Beeline brand.
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T5 Data Centers’ facilities management unit is expanding its business into Denmark, the company has announced.
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Telefónica has hired Andreas Laukenmann from Vodafone to become chief consumer officer (CCO) of its O2 operations in Germany.
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Rostelecom, one of Russia’s largest providers of digital services has commissioned the construction of the first-ever data centre in Murmansk, a port city in the far northwest of Russia.
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TIM is wanting to stimulate innovative solutions for smart cities by running a competition to identify the best solutions for the cities of the future.
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Orange revenues rose 1% year-on-year in Q3 2022, spurred by solid performances in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
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Residents of Aarhus, Denmark’s second biggest city, are about to have their broadband provider switched, after the network ended its contract with Stofa after 44 years.
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Independent carrier RETN has expanded its backbone network with a new long-haul DWDM route, connecting Budapest, Belgrade and Sofia.
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Panellists at Capacity Europe’s ‘Is the development of the European fibre market being curtailed?’ fireside chat agreed that fibre consolidation is inevitable as costs increase.
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French fibre and equipment company Celeste has introduced a data-centre-in-a-box for businesses willing to host and protect their data on-site in a dedicated, sovereign and secure space.
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Islalink has announced its new wholesale subsea cable connecting Italy with Greece will be ready for service by the end of 2022.