The Irish government has announced the second phase of SIRO's gigabit broadband rollout, which is expected to nearly double the network's reach to around 770,000 homes and businesses. SIRO is a joint venture between Vodafone and energy company ESB, and its backers say it is Ireland's only 100% fiber network. To fund the second phase, €620 million (US$718 million) has been secured through the European Investment Bank and a syndicate of Irish and international lenders, which will be invested in expanding the availability of SIRO's services, as well as upgrading all its existing infrastructure to 2Gbit/s capacity. The additional funding brings SIRO's total investment in its gigabit network to more than €1 billion ($1.15 billion). (See Connecting Regional Ireland.)

The mobile phone eco-rating scheme launched in May by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, Telia and Vodafone is set to roll out globally after the five founding operators agreed to encourage operators worldwide to participate. The scheme was initially launched in 24 European countries, and has since been rolled out to South Africa (with Vodacom) and Brazil (by Telefónica under the Vivo brand). It is now expected to launch in other countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. As regards manufacturers, Fairphone, Realme and Vivo are the latest to join the fun, alongside the likes of Doro, Samsung, Huawei and HMD Global. The rating is judged on five criteria, namely durability, repairability, recyclability, climate efficiency (relating to the emissions of the device during its lifecycle) and resource efficiency (relating to the impact caused by the amount of scarce raw materials required by the device).

AtlasEdge, a pan-European edge data center provider, has acquired 12 data centers from Colt DCS, with Colt Technology Services committing to becoming an anchor tenant across several facilities. With this acquisition, the AtlasEdge portfolio now comprises more than 100 data centers across 11 countries in Europe, supporting more than 700 customers and providing connectivity to more than 50 different on-net carriers.

Telefónica Deutschland is upgrading its FY21 outlook on what it describes as "sustained operational and financial momentum" in the third quarter. Revenue grew 5.1% year-on-year to €1.96 billion ($2.27 billion), while operating income rose 3% to €613 million ($710 million). The operator used its results statement to announce it was expanding its wholesale partnerships with international-calls provider Lebara.

Nokia has made a couple of additions to its Wavence microwave transport range. The entirely new gizmo, the MSS-XE, is described as "a scalable, compact indoor Split Mount solution that addresses high-capacity coverage requirements." Nokia is also introducing an improved version of the UBT-T XP dual-carrier radio with a new dual-band option for the 6GHz and 11GHz spectrum bands.

Google News, the search giant's news aggregation service, looks set to make a return to Spain after the country's government decided to adopt an EU copyright directive which allows third-party online news platforms to negotiate directly with content providers over what they get paid for said content. As Reuters reports, Google closed its News operation in Spain in 2014 in response to legislation that forced it to pay a collectively agreed licensing fee to republish news stories.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading