Eurobites: Telia, Telenor ready to roll on Danish 5G

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson gets TDC 5G-ready; MTN Ghana fights market dominance ruling; A1 Austria in wholesale TV deal.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

September 7, 2020

3 Min Read
Eurobites: Telia, Telenor ready to roll on Danish 5G

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson gets TDC 5G-ready; MTN Ghana fights market dominance ruling; A1 Austria in wholesale TV deal.

  • Telia and Telenor are to begin rolling out their shared 5G network later this month after a network upgrade and a number of pilots. The first cities lined up for 5G services are Copenhagen and Aalborg, where existing 5G test sites will be opened up to the public. Aarhus and Odense will follow later.

    • Still in Denmark, incumbent operator TDC is going live with its 5G network across a large part of the country today, following a network overhaul by Ericsson. The Swedish vendor began the upgrade in October 2019, since when it has sprinkled 5G fairy dust on nearly 3,000 basestation sites. The initial launch, on the 3.5GHz spectrum band, includes the major Danish cities of Copenhagen, Odense, Aarhus and Helsingør. "Close-to nationwide" coverage is expected by the end of 2020.

    • Also feeling the Ericsson 5G love is Orange Spain, which has used the vendor's radio access network and core products to launch 5G services in Madrid and Barcelona on 3.6GHz spectrum, with subsequent locations to follow under the terms of a four-year deal.

    • MTN Ghana is petitioning the country's highest court in a bid to force a reversal of a decision by the National Communications Authority that it is a "significant market power," according to Bloomberg (paywall applies). The operator believes that such a designation would bring stricter regulation and ultimately limit its growth and performance potential, says the report.

    • A1 Telekom Austria Group has landed what it says is its first wholesale broadcasting deal in the US through a partnership with Boss TV, a streaming platform that will offer more than 100 channels in Spanish, English in Italian. A1 will deliver European TV channels to the Boss TV platform from its Aflenz Teleport in Europe.

    • Industry lobby groups ETNO and GSMA have authored a joint response to the European Commission's public consultation on its proposed Digital Services Act (DSA) in which they declare their support for the creation of a DSA to achieve fairer tech markets. In the paper, they argue that "on the one hand, we must address the balance between ensuring fundamental freedoms and preventing illegal and socially toxic activity online. On the other hand, we should tackle the effects of excessive market power in the digital space, taking a European perspective on practices that might unfairly disadvantage European companies and innovation." They also recommend the powers-that-be focus their attention on "those hosting services that play an 'active' role in the dissemination of content online or share such content with a broad audience or have the technical means to swiftly identify and remove users' specific content on a piece-by-piece basis." To download the full paper, click here.

    • KebNi, an antennas company based in Stockholm, has appointed Ronald van der Breggen as special advisor to its CEO, Carsten Drachmann, as it looks to penetrate the US market. Van der Breggen brings more than 25 years of telecom and satellite experience to the role, the last five years of which has been spent with low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operators, such as LeoSat.

    • Openreach, BT's semi-autonomous network access division, has brought its (up to) 1Gbit/s fiber broadband network to the Welsh rural mouthful of Llanymawddwy. Openreach engineers had to erect 36 new poles to carry more than 15 miles of fiber cable from the nearest telephone exchange to make it happen. The link-up is a product of Openreach's Community Fibre Partnership (CFP) program, which allows remote communities to co-fund otherwise commercially non-viable installations.

      — 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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