Eurobites: TDC in need of TLC after Nuuday dents Q1

Nexans, the French manufacturer of fiber-optic cables, saw first-quarter revenues in its Telecom & Data division fall by 10% year on year to €114 million (US$123 million). Breaking things down further, telecom infrastructure sales were down by 19.1% in the first quarter as the COVID-19 outbreak took its toll on fiber rollouts in Europe, says Nexans, while subsea activity declined 3.2%. The company says it was quick to react to the emerging pandemic, setting a "premium" of €750 ($809) a month for frontline workers in some European plants and slashing the pay of top executives by 15-30%.

New research from Opensignal has found that 5G is faster than Wi-Fi in seven out of eight "leading 5G countries," the UK and Spain among them. According to Opensignal's figures, the average 5G download in speed in the UK clocked in at 138.1 Mbit/s, compared to 34.1 Mbit/s for Wi-Fi, while in Spain the equivalent figures were 146.8 Mbit/s and 47 Mbit/s respectively. The US was the only country in the selection to buck the trend: It's comparatively slow average 5G speed (52.3 Mbit/s) trailed its average Wi-Fi speed (59.8 Mbit/s). Figure 1: Source: Opensignal

Germany's ADVA has launched a new software upgrade and introduced additional hardware intended to help mobile network operators meet 5G synchronization requirements while supporting all existing mobile technologies. Specifically, ADVA's OSA 5420 edge device has been enhanced, while upgraded software and new expansion cards have been added to ADVA's core synchronization offerings, the OSA 5430 and 5440.

Today's the day when the trial of UK coronavirus contact-tracing app begins in earnest on the sleepy southern English outpost that is the Isle of Wight. The app, it transpires, has been developed for the UK's National Health Service by VMware Pivotal Labs, which is owned by US tech giant Dell. Nice to keep it local, eh lads? (See Eurobites: UK's NHS goes its own way on COVID-19 app.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading