Eurobites: Ofcom probes Virgin Media as customers struggle to jump ship

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, is to investigate Virgin Media following customer complaints about how hard the company makes it to cancel their contract. According to Ofcom, customers struggled to get through to a call handler and when they did they often found their call was dropped mid-way through or were just put on hold for long periods. Many customers said they had to make repeated requests to cancel as their initial instruction was not acted upon. Depending on what Ofcom finds, Virgin Media could be facing a fine, as well as thousands of disgruntled customers who just want out.

Two companies definitely facing a fine are Telecom Italia (TIM) and DAZN, the sports streamer. As Marketscreener reports, the Italian antitrust authority, AGCM, examined the deal they did over the broadcasting of Serie A soccer matches and came to the conclusion that the agreement the two companies cooked up could be detrimental to the "ongoing competitive dynamics" of the Italian pay-TV market. TIM was fined just over €760,000 (US$850,000) while DAZN was hit for a considerably heftier €7.2 million ($8 million).

UK altnet CityFibre has launched what it claims is the UK's first wholesale 2.5Gbit/s symmetrical broadband product, which will be made available to its ISP customers on a rolling basis via Nokia-supplied XGS-PON equipment. By the end of the year, CityFibre hopes to have deployed its XGS-PON equipment into more than 90% of its fiber exchanges, with the new 2.5Gbit/s product becoming available to around 20% of its "ready for service" footprint, which, says the company, currently stands at 2.5 million homes.

Sparkle, TIM's international services arm, has cut the ribbon on a new landing station and data center, the Panama Digital Gateway, which it hopes will become a digital hub for Central America, the Andean region and the Caribbean. Located in Panama City, the facility offers 5,500 square meters of space for up to 650 equivalent racks and 3.5 MW of scalable power. The gateway was funded through a joint venture with Trans Ocean Network.

Nokia has deployed its 400GE IP interconnection and peering technology for the Budapest Internet Exchange. The upgrade, says Nokia, will allow the exchange to support services at speeds of up to 400GE initially with the potential to increase capacity and scale up to 800GE "in a sustainable way."

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority appears to have given Microsoft and gaming giant Activision Blizzard some wriggle room in the two companies' attempts to merge, despite the CMA having seemingly closed the door on the deal just a few weeks ago following an investigation which raised fears – on the part of the CMA at least – that Microsoft could use the takeover to restrict access to some of Activision's most popular games. According to a City A.M. report, the CMA said in a statement: "While the merging parties do not have the opportunity to submit new solutions once a final report has been issued, they can choose to restructure the deal, which could lead to a new merger investigation. The CMA is prepared to engage with them on this basis." A US court earlier this week rejected the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to block the deal after concluding that the regulator had failed to show that the deal would substantially lessen competition in the gaming sector.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading