Eurobites: 5G leaves (some) Brits unimpressed

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Deutsche Telekom ups the fiber ante; BT gets digital with manufacturing; OneWeb spreads its wings in Bulgaria.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

December 2, 2022

3 Min Read
Eurobites: 5G leaves (some) Brits unimpressed

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Deutsche Telekom ups the fiber ante; BT gets digital with manufacturing; OneWeb spreads its wings in Bulgaria.

  • 5G is not all it's cracked up to be. That's the gist of a BBC report that collates the experiences of some 5G users in the UK, who complain of problems with social-media apps, mapping software and ordering stuff from Amazon, among other disappointments, while using the technology. And while in Glasgow city center, the BBC correspondent carried out a speed check and found the 5G speed almost half that of the available 4G. One analyst cited in the story, from OpenSignal, reckoned the promise of 5G nirvana was a case of mis-selling on the part of "over-enthusiastic marketeers." (See No 6G, please, we're British Telecom.) Figure 1: Up your game, indeed. (Source: Russell Hart/Alamy Stock Photo) Up your game, indeed.
    (Source: Russell Hart/Alamy Stock Photo)

    • Deutsche Telekom says it intends to "significantly" increase the pace of its fiber rollout in 2023, and is aiming for 2.5 to 3 million connections to be added during the year. The operator is on track to connect around 2 million FTTH connections households and businesses this year. To help speed things up, Deutsche wants to hire up to 1,000 new fiber installers. The plans were revealed by Telekom Germany CEO Srini Gopalan at the company's Network Day in Bonn. (See Germany eases rules to accelerate fiber, 5G build and Is German fiber finally gaining Fahrt?)

    • BT has invited startups Riiico, Sensorfact and Circularise to join its Green Tech Innovation Platform in the hope that they will come up with whizzy new digital solutions to the various problems faced by manufacturers. Riiico, for example, helps manufacturers create digital factory designs by using a combination of 3D scanning to shape so-called "digital twins" (digital replicas of physical environments).

    • Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has hooked up with US software giant Oracle for a partnership that will see STC making use of Oracle's secure cloud platform to migrate its business-support database workloads as part of the operator's move to a multicloud set-up.

    • Vivacom is to develop a new groundstation in Bulgaria for OneWeb, the satellite broadband company co-owned by the UK government and India's Bharti Global. The facility will increase access for EU territories to OneWeb's constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites, improving broadband coverage for regions stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia.

    • Ghana Technology University College has been granted university status and reinvented as the Ghana Communication Technology University (GCTU). The new-look institution hopes to create an entrepreneurial environment to support innovation and product development in the communications sector.

    • Dutch operator KPN has appointed Ben Noteboom to its supervisory board. Noteboom was previously CEO of recruitment company Randstad.

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author

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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