Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: IoT and VoIP bolster postal services; ETSI bitsy teeny weeny name change; exec changes at Virgin Media; Swisscom cuts roaming charges.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

March 30, 2017

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Telenor, Huawei Claim E-band Breakthrough

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: IoT and VoIP bolster postal services; ETSI bitsy teeny weeny name change; new appointments at Virgin Media; Swisscom cuts roaming charges.

  • Telenor Group (Nasdaq: TELN) and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. have completed what they say is the first 5G-based E-band multi-user MIMO demo in Norway, reaching speeds of 70 Gbit/s. Huawei claims that this equates to speeds of 20 Gbit/s for a single user. E-band relates to a frequency band of 71-76GHz/81-86GHz. It has nothing at all to do with these bandana-bothering bad dudes.

    • Belgium-based BICS has signed a partnership deal with London's Hanhaa, an Internet of Things specialist, to provide connectivity for Hanhaa's new parcel-tracking service. BICS will enable Hanhaa's own mobile network to receive data from the ParceLive tracking devices, which are returned by the parcel's recipient to be recalibrated and reused.

    • And, in a similar vein, Telecom Italia (TIM) 's TIM has teamed up with Italtel SpA to design and deploy a voice-over-IP (VoIP) infrastructure for Poste Italiene, Italy's largest logistics company, covering 13,000 post offices across the country.

    • The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) 's Mobile Edge Computing Industry Specification Group has been renamed and been given a new leadership team. Henceforth it shall be known as the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) Industry Specification Group. Alex Reznik from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has been elected new chairman, while Pekka Kuure and Sami Kekki, from Nokia and Huawei respectively, were elected new vice chairs. Adrian Neal, from Vodafone, was re-elected as vice chair. ETSI hopes that the new moniker will "better reflect non-cellular operators' requirements." Light Reading broke news of the planned name change in September. (See ETSI Drops 'Mobile' From MEC.)

    • Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED), which has been in the news this week for shenanigans related to its Project Lightning, has made a few changes to its top table, among them: Dana Strong, currently senior vice president and chief transformation officer for Liberty Global, comes in as president and chief operating officer, while Jeff Dodds re-joins the company from TalkTalk as managing director. (See Eurobites: Clouds Descend on Project Lightning.)

    • Swisscom AG (NYSE: SCM) is cutting international roaming charges by as much as 60% for its data packages in time for the summer holiday season, claiming in the process to be undercutting the prices of many EU providers' equivalent offerings.

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Paul Rainford

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.

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