Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telefónica digitizes winemaking; Wessex Internet deploys Nokia's XGS-PON; EE's fancy new store.
Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telefónica digitizes winemaking; Wessex Internet deploys Nokia's XGS-PON; EE's fancy new store.
The UK's Communications Consumer Panel, a statutory body that styles itself as a "critical friend" to communications regulator Ofcom, says that the so-called digital divide has only widened since the height of the pandemic and that much more needs to be done to connect rural parts of the country. In its report, the panel described the experience of communications services of those living in rural areas as "at best, functional for the majority, and at worst very poor." Young people in particular, said the panel, "feel left behind because they are denied the same level of access to online education and entertainment as their peers." Among its recommendations, the panel suggested that Ofcom needs to ensure a mechanism is in place to protect communities that lose connectivity service due to their provider – often, in the case of such communities, an alternative network provider (altnet) – ceasing to trade as in the current economic climate "the risk of a smaller provider becoming insolvent and leaving an entire village without connectivity is too high."
Telefónica Tech is applying its "digitalization" armory – via its subsidiary Geprom – to the wine production and distribution processes of Bodegas Borsao, a Spanish producer with more than 2,100 hectares of vineyards. The project is intended to allow Bodegas Borsao to better manage its warehouse inventory, provide its product with end-to-end traceability and monitor quality throughout the process, with the ultimate aim of increasing productivity by more than 10%.
Wessex Internet, a UK Internet service provider based in southwest England, has turned to Nokia's XGS-PON technology and DWDM offering to upgrade the capacity of its core network and deliver speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s for residential and business customers. Wessex Internet believes the move will accelerate its rollout and reduce its power needs.
EE, the UK mobile operator owned by BT, is today opening what it trumpets as a "first-of-its-kind" Experience store in Cardiff, Wales. Visitors, it says here, will "explore four carefully curated experience zones" and be given the opportunity to, amongst other things, try out some new games and linger a while on "comfortable sofas" while quaffing complimentary coffee. The EE Experience store in Cardiff replaces the bog-standard EE store that was already there.
And, in related news, EE has also launched its new online Game Store with a new multi-million-pound advertising campaign created by blue-chip agencies Digitas and Saatchi & Saatchi. The operator is going big on gaming: recently it paid a top gamer to take her laptop halfway up a mountain to play to demonstrate the wondrousness of its mobile broadband coverage.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
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