Eurobites: UK Considers Huawei Halfway House

Telefónica has hooked up with Hong Kong based CK Hutchison to offer fixed, mobile and other unspecified communications services to large enterprises and multinationals. As part of the deal, Hutchison's 3 Group Europe will join ten other operators in Telefónica's Partners Program, and the collaborative offerings will initially be deployed in Italy through Wind Tre, followed by the 3 Group's operations in Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. However, the two companies will not be teaming up in the UK, where they compete in the mobile market.

A new report from Dell'Oro reveals that since 2013 Ericsson and Nokia both saw their respective shares of the worldwide telecom equipment market fall by 1% annually by revenue until 2018, when both vendors stabilized their slice of their pie. By contrast, Huawei saw its revenue share gain about two percentage points annually in each of the past five years -- though the way things are looking for the Chinese vendor, that may well change…

BT has landed a "smart water" contract with UK utility company Northumbrian Water, which will see BT provide the LoRaWAN (low-power, long-range, wide-area network) and data intended to help the water company address issues such as leaks and water quality.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire is to present a draft law to cabinet this week that proposes to impose a 3% tax on the revenues of online giants such as Amazon and Google. As Reuters reports, Le Maire estimates such a tax could yield €500 million (US$566 million) for French government coffers.

The Vodafone Foundation is to take its app for those affected by domestic violence and abuse beyond the UK, launching it in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Romania. The app, Bright Sky, allows victims to log incidents of domestic abuse on their smartphones without any content being saved on the device itself. It also connects them to local support services. Reflecting its involvement in this area, Vodafone Group is also revising its human resources policy so that its employees worldwide suffering from domestic abuse can access support and specialist counselling, and take up to ten days' additional leave if required.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Additional material by Iain Morris.