Swisscom’s Fastweb sells FiberCop stake for €439m
News The deal is subject to the completion of KKR’s takeover of TIM’s fixed infrastructure business NetCo, which includes FiberCop Swisscom has announced that its Italian subsidiary FastWeb has sold its 4.5% share of FiberCop to KKR’s subsidiary Optics BidCo for €439 million. FiberCop is an infrastructure operator established in 2021 by Telecom Italia (TIM), KKR and Fastweb to manage TIM’s ‘last mile’ fibre network, the passive fibre-to-the-home infrastructure that links homes to the...
Trooli Changes UK Ownership Structure and Replacing FTTP Modems
Alternative UK broadband ISP Trooli, which is backed by Agnar UK Infrastructure (here) and has already extended their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 334,000 premises (RFS) across England and Scotland (here), has started informing customers about both an unusual change of home “telecom equipment” and of their ownership structure. Firstly, customers of the provider have informed ISPreview that Trooli recently sent out a new notice, which informed them about how they are “reorganising parts...
KDDI and Sharp to build Asia’s largest data centre
News The new data centre will be built on the site of a former LCD panel factory owned by Foxconn, Sharp’s parent company Japan’s KDDI and Sharp have begun discussions with Super Micro Computer Inc. and Datasection to build an AI datacentre in Japan, which they say will be the largest in Asia. According to the press release, the companies have entered into discussions and aim to “start operations as early as possible.” The data centre will be built on the Sharp Sakai Plant in Osaka, which...
General election over, India’s 5G auction facing further delays
News The process has been pushed back to the end of the month, now set to take place on June 25 Earlier this year and after considerable delay, India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced that it had finalised the details for the country’s latest 5G spectrum auction, setting a date of May 20. By April, however, it had become clear that the ongoing general election – the largest democratic vote ever to take place – could interfere with proceedings. As a result, the DoT delayed the...
Telecom Acquisitions UK Gobbles Eze Talk Home Broadband Users
The Horsham-based Telecom Acquisitions Group (TAL), which is a holding company for several familiar UK residential ISP brands (Home Telecom, No One and Eclipse Broadband etc.), has today acquired yet another broadband customer base, this time from little known ISP brand Eze Talk Residential. Just to be clear. Eze Talk is currently adopting more of a business focus, and TAL will acquire only Eze Talk Residential’s 2,750 strong base of residential customers. In the last 15 months to February...
BT CEO Calls for Improved Planning Laws to Boost UK Broadband
The new CEO of BT Group (inc. EE, Plusnet, Openreach), Allison Kirkby, has told this week’s Deloitte and Enders Media & Telecoms 2024 Conference in London that any future UK government should look to boosting full fibre broadband and 5G mobile by making further changes to existing planning laws. As it stands, EE’s latest 5G mobile network already covers 75% of the UK’s population (up from 72% in H1) and Openreach’s national gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network...
German government sells $2.7 billion stake in Deutsche Telekom
News The sale forms part of the government’s “responsible privatisation policy”, an approach to privatising state-owned enterprises whilst ensuring that public interest is maintained Germany has sold a €2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) stake in Deutsche Telekom through state-owned bank KfW, with the funds set to be reinvested in the country’s state-owned railway network. KfW said yesterday that it has sold 110 million shares at €22.13 each. The state has agreed not to sell any more shares for the...
ISP Sky Business Warns UK SMEs Underestimate Cost of Cyber Attacks
A new Censuswide survey of 353 UK decision makers at smaller (SME) businesses, which was conducted by broadband ISP Sky Business (Sky Broadband) during April 2024, has revealed that their SecurityEdge filters blocked over 73 million malware, phishing and bot attacks in the past year. But SMEs that have yet to experience a cyberattack still underestimate the potential financial impact. The results found that UK SMEs estimate they’d be forced to stop trading for an average of four days following...
MS3 Networks reaches 200,000 premises with full fibre
Press Release Full fibre network operator MS3 Networks has hit another milestone — its network build has passed 200,000 premises across the Hull and the Humber region of England. The company has been on a rapid network expansion for the last two years and is also connecting its 10,000th customer in Hull. The latest achievements mark MS3’s progress towards its goal to ultimately cover over 500,000 premises with its 10Gb fibre network. MS3 has now passed over 200,000 homes and businesses across...
News in Brief: Cable updates from Submarine Networks EMEA
News Day 2 of the event saw presenters provide updates on 10 exciting subsea cable projects across the EMEA region and beyond. Here are some of the highlights… Portugal becoming an interconnection hub There is no denying that Portugal sits in a privileged geographical position when it comes to submarine cable infrastructure. With access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the country is seeing a surge of new cable deployments connecting it to all four corners of the globe. “Portugal has...