Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Swiss cheesemakers kick up a 6G stink; BT extends Enjoy partnership; Deutsche Telekom tweaks climate-change targets.
Verizon Business has landed its first European private 5G network contract, at the Port of Southampton on England's south coast. Working in cahoots with Associated British Ports (ABP) and Nokia, Verizon intends to provide one of the UK's busiest ports with what its CEO, Tami Erwin, describes as "a completely dedicated edge compute infrastructure." According to Verizon, the project will make Southampton the first UK mainland port with a private 5G network. Verizon's private 5G platform is based on Nokia's Digital Automation Cloud, which provides high-bandwidth, low-latency, private wireless connectivity and local edge computing.
European operators may be forbidden from using the term "6G" as a marketing tool if a legal challenge mounted by a group of Swiss cheesemakers in the EU's highest court proves successful. In a move that echoes efforts by French winemakers in the 1980s to stop the word "champagne" from being used to to describe any old fizzy white wine, a cooperative of Gruyère cheesemakers based across six Swiss cantons, "Le SixG," argues that the strength of its brand will be diluted if phone companies start bandying around the term "6G" willy-nilly in the next year or two. Le SixG's chairman, Jacques Fondue, said: "We established the SixG brand about a decade ago to promote the wonderful taste of Gruyère cheese. Do these telecom guys not know how to do an Internet search?" In a statement, the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) dismissed the legal challenge as "seriously crackers."
6G meltdown ahead? Gruyère producers' legal challenge could spell hard cheese for European operators.
(Source: angela pham on Unsplash)
BT has extended its partnership with Enjoy Technology, a technology-powered platform that aims to bring the traditional retail experience to a customer's home, until 2025. The UK incumbent operator has also made an unspecified investment in the US-based company. Enjoy's partnership with BT began in 2018 and today it claims to cover nearly 80% of the UK population through its team of "experts."
Deutsche Telekom has tweaked its climate-change targets, announcing plans to reduce emissions generated (from its production stage to operation by the customer) to be reduced to net zero by 2040 – ten years earlier than originally planned.
UKCloud, a cloud services provider that targets the public sector, has unveiled the latest version of its Openshift cloud-native platform, which is powered by Red Hat. The platform is intended to help public sector organizations deliver secure solutions, extending its platform-as-a-service offering to independent software vendors.
Sky, the UK-based purveyor of pay-TV and more, has upgraded its high-end Sky Q box, making it easier to search for content from the integrated Disney+ streaming service through its voice remote.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
Eurobites will return on Tuesday, April 6, after a short Easter break.
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