Austrian mobile advertising firm Out There Media (OTM) is to build a "digital advertising super hub" for South Africa's MTN Group. The hub, which will serve MTN's customers in all of the 21 African countries in which the operator has a presence, will draw on OTM's Mobucks advertising platform. Mobucks seeks to enable brands to engage with consumers in a more targeted manner. The first mobile operator to launch digital advertising with OTM will be MTN South Africa, to be followed by Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda.

Huawei Chairman Ken Hu used the opening of a new cybersecurity center in Brussels to call for a common set of cybersecurity standards. As Reuters reports, Hu told reporters: "The fact is that both the public and private sectors lack a basic common understanding of this issue. As a result, different stakeholders have different expectations and there is no alignment of responsibilities." The Chinese giant has been under well documented pressure in Europe and elsewhere for what has been perceived as the security risk presented by the use of its equipment. (See Huawei Calls for GDPR-Like Security Regime, Denies Spying (Again), Eurobites: UK Considers Huawei Halfway House and Huawei Ban Risk Is a Profit Worry for Telcos, Says BICS VP.)

At the OFC optical show in San Diego, Germany's ADVA has announced what it says is a "world first" demo of SDN-controlled 600Gbit/s transport with automated line rate and modulation adjustment. In the demo, ADVA's TeraFlex terminal monitors the condition of the fiber link and then automatically adapts speed and modulation for increased efficiency.

New research from price comparison site cable.co.uk reveals that western Europe's cheapest mobile data is to be found in Finland, where the average monthly price for a gigabit of data is US$1.16. This compares to $1.73 in Italy, $2.99 in France, $3.79 in Spain, $6.66 in the UK and $6.96 in Germany. Those numbers, however, pale in comparison beside Zimbabwe, which weighed in with $75.20. For more discussion of the research findings, see this story on our sister site, Telecoms.com.

The death has been announced of Klaus Kinkel, a German civil servant who was also the founding chairman of the executive board the Deutsche Telekom Foundation. In a Twitter post, DT CEO Tim Hottges said: "I am deeply saddened by the loss of such a wonderful person. Klaus Kinkel was an important advisor to Deutsche Telekom and to me, but also a supporter and admonisher. He leaves a large gap."

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading