Away from the corridors of power, BT has been testing Nokia's FP5 network processing silicon, including the Finnish vendor's 800G interfaces. FP5, says Nokia, allows service providers to efficiently scale up network capacity, enable new higher-speed IP services and provide increased protection against escalating network security threats.

You can barely move for 5G labs these days, and here comes another one, courtesy of Umlaut, the German (who'd have thought it?!) unit of uber-consultancy Accenture. The 5G Campus Lab, in Aachen, Germany, is described as a private 5G standalone open RAN network that enables companies from various industries to design, test and implement ultra-high-speed and low-latency connectivity offerings without having to go to the trouble and expense of building their own network.

Vodafone and Ericsson have teamed up to test a 5G private network at the Port of Aveiro in Portugal. The network, which as you might expect is principally concerned with improving the handling of cargo, began to be implemented in May in one of the port's warehouses. Ericsson's approach is based on technologies tested as part of the Corealis ports automation project, which falls within the scope of the European Horizon 2020 program.

France-based Ekinops has bagged another optical transport customer in the shape of Everstream, a fiber connectivity provider to the enterprise market in the north-central and eastern regions of the US. Ekinops is supplying its PM 200FRS02 FlexRate module along with a flexgrid ROADM-based optical line system.

Telecom Italia (TIM) is notching up some more eco-brownie points with the news that its environmental targets have been validated by boffins at the Science Based Targets initiative. Among other measures, TIM has committed to purchasing renewable energy only by 2025, as well as vowing to cut emissions from its production activity by 2030.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading