And in related news, WindTre has acquired 70% of RAD, an Italian cybersecurity company. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

OneWeb, the satellite connectivity company that is co-owned by the UK government and India's Bharti Global, has signed a distribution deal with ISat Africa to deliver high-speed broadband throughout currently underserved areas of Central, Western and Eastern Africa.

The cost of energy has become a massive issue for operators, so Nokia's latest launch is timely: an expanded range of energy-efficient "site solutions" for its AirScale lineup of baseband equipment that, the vendor says, can reduce total energy consumption at outdoor sites by up to 30%, using 99% less cooling energy due to natural outdoor temperatures removing the need for air conditioning.

Ericsson is helping Japanese operator KDDI go underground with its 5G basestations installed into existing sub-surface "vaults," with fiber and power infrastructure connected to antennas at ground level. Such installations, says Ericsson, allow for a faster permit process and make no visual impact on the street environment.

Nordic operator Telia has helped Valmet, a supplier of services to the pulp, paper and energy industries, develop a private network for its production facilities. The capacity of the network, which uses a combination of 4G and 5G technologies and is based on the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud, can be shared between adjacent production sites using SD-WAN networking.

UK converged operator Virgin Media O2 says it has now delivered 4G connectivity across 50 sites as part of the Shared Rural Network program, which is a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) joint initiative between mobile network operators and the UK government to extend 4G connectivity to 95% of the UK's landmass by the end of 2025. Of the 50 rural sites that have been built or upgraded so far, 39 are in remote parts of Scotland while 11 are in eastern parts of England.

After a correction in the "data sample collection," Sweden's Tele2 has shot from 18th place to the top spot in a list that ranks 500 European companies on their performance when it comes to doing their bit to fight climate change. That's quite the correction. Two other telcos – Telia and Deutsche Telekom – took the second and third spots respectively in the list, which is compiled by the Financial Times and Statista.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading