Connected tugboats ahoy! Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson upgrades in Albania; Amdocs does the double in Spain; Liberty Global transfers staff to Infosys.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

February 5, 2020

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Proximus Floats Private 5G Network Concept at Port of Antwerp

Connected tugboats ahoy! Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson upgrades in Albania; Amdocs does the double in Spain; Liberty Global transfers staff to Infosys.

  • Belgian operator Proximus is to develop a private 5G network for the Port of Antwerp as part of "The Digital Schelde," a digital transformation project. A test license will allow Proximus to set up a six-month pilot during which various real-world applications of 5G in an industrial context -- connected tugboats, for example -- will be put through their paces.

    • Telekom Albania has chosen Ericsson to upgrade its network to "Gigabit LTE class" while also getting the network 5G ready using the Swedish vendor's Radio System gear.

    • Amdocs, the US-based purveyor of OSS software, has notched up a couple of contract wins in Spain. First up, Orange has chosen Amdocs to "drive new services and revenue in the digital economy," deploying the vendor's amdocsONE system on AWS's public cloud. Vodafone, meanwhile, says it will use the company's "digital engagement capabilities" to "unify its customer journeys across multiple online channels for quick and more personalized experiences."

    • Liberty Global, the US cable operator that has a presence in six European countries, is transferring up to 300 employees from its operations in the Netherlands, the UK and Poland to consultancy company Infosys. The move, according to Liberty Global, will help it deliver the IT and infrastructure platform support services promised as part of the Transitional Service Agreements (TSAs) struck with "third-party purchasers" such as Vodafone, which acquired Liberty Global operations and assets in multiple European territories last year. (See Vodafone Gets Blessing for €18.4B Liberty Takeover.)

    • Can something be unlimited and yet actually quite limited at the same time? Apparently not, according to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority, which has just banned three Vodafone ads that promoted its "Unlimited Lite" service -- offering an uncapped data allowance -- while failing to point out clearly enough that it was subject to a less than blazin' maximum download speed of 2 Mbit/s, even in its 5G incarnation. Predictably, the complaint had been raised by two of Vodafone's rivals, namely Three and Virgin Media.

    • Telecom Italia (which, confusingly, is also known as TIM) has appointed Federico Rigoni as its chief revenue officer. Rigoni joined TIM in April 2019 after a 15-year career in telecom, first at Nokia and then at Ericsson.

    • Deutsche Telekom's smart home system has received the thumbs-up from AV-TEST, an independent body that carries out checks on the security of such offerings. AV-TEST checked the system's individual devices in combination with the associated mobile application for Android and Apple.

      — 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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