UK-based chip design company Arm, which is now part of the SoftBank empire, notched up record shipments in the fourth quarter of 2019, shifting 6.4 billion chips, 4.2 billion of which were Cortex-M processors found widely IoT applications. To date, Arm and its partners have shipped more than 160 billion based chips based on Arm's technology.

French operators Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, Orange and SFR have all put in bids for France's new 5G spectrum, seeking one of the four blocks of 50MHz in the 3.4-3.8GHz band for use in metropolitan areas. Communications regulator Arcep will now examine the bids, then draw up the list of qualified candidates for the first stage of the process. Licenses are expected to be awarded in June 2020 at the latest.

Tests carried out by Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, have found that radiation levels at 5G basestations are at "tiny fractions" of what are considered safe limits, according to a BBC report. The highest result found by the tests, which covered 16 locations in ten cities across the UK, was 0.039% of the recommended radiation exposure limit.

South African operator Rain is cooperating with Huawei on the building of a 5G transport network using the Chinese vendor's optical cross-connect (OXC) and 200G offering. The OXC system uses optical backplane technologies to merge the independent boards originally found in ROADM sites, reducing footprint by 80%, according to Huawei.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has launched a new group, ETSI ISG F5G, dedicated to specifying the fifth generation of fixed networks. The group will address, among other things, aspects relating to new optical distribution network (ODN) technologies, XG(S)-PON and Wi-Fi 6 enhancements, control plane and user plane separation, smart energy efficiency and end-to-end full-stack slicing. Members of the group include, Altice Portugal, Bouygyes Telecom, Rostelecom and Huawei.

Exponential-e, the UK-based unified communications specialist, has struck a deal with At-visions, a provider of technology for the hospitality industry, which is intended to beef up At-visions' offerings in the mobile app, digital signage and in-room entertainment fields.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading