Eurobites: BT sells Irish business wholesale unit to Speed Fibre GroupEurobites: BT sells Irish business wholesale unit to Speed Fibre Group

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia extends RAN contract with Orange France, tests 50Gbit/s broadband with Openreach; BlueMed cable lands in Cyprus; Spotify goes into full-year profit for first time.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

February 5, 2025

3 Min Read
BT headquarters building with logo
(Source: BT)

BT has agreed to sell its Irish wholesale/enterprise unit, BTCIL, to Speed Fibre Group in a deal that values BTCIL at €22 million (US$23 million). The sale includes BT's domestic network infrastructure, more than 400 customers and associated teams supporting wholesale and business enterprises. It does not, however, include BTCIL's customer base of multinationals and large Irish organizations, the emergency call answering service or the recently divested data center business. The deal also features a long-term agreement between the two parties to source connectivity for their respective customers from each other. Speed Fiber Group is owned by Cordiant Digital Infrastructure, a global infrastructure investor. Bas Burger, the outgoing CEO of BT Business, described the deal as "another key milestone in focusing our international business on what it does best: providing secure multi-cloud connectivity to large organizations globally and in Ireland."

Four more years for Nokia and Orange France

Nokia has extended its 5G radio access network (RAN) contract with Orange France for another four years, covering Orange's network footprint in southeastern and western France. Nokia will supply baseband offerings from its AirScale range, massive MIMO Habrok radios and its Pandion FDD multiband remote radio heads, among other goodies. Orange will also trial Nokia's 5G cloud RAN technology.

Across the Channel, Nokia has been jointly testing what is claimed to be the UK's first live 50Gbit/s broadband connection in partnership with Openreach, BT's semi-autonomous network access unit. The field test was conducted from a residential property in the town of Ipswich, run over a section of Openreach's existing full-fiber network, with download speeds hitting 41.9 Gbit/s and uploads reaching 20.6 Gbit/s. Simultaneous tests of the service were carried out over a trial XGS-PON network.

Sparkle's BlueMed surfaces in Cyprus

Sparkle, Telecom Italia's international unit, has struck a deal with Cypriot operator Cyta to land Sparkle's BlueMed cable in Cyprus. BlueMed, which is part of the Blue & Raman subsea cable systems built in partnership with Google and others, connects Italy with France, Greece and several other countries bordering the Mediterranean. Under the terms of the agreement, Sparkle will create a branch of BlueMed to Cyta's landing station in Yeroskipos.

Hayo helps connect African diaspora

Hayo has agreed to provide wholesale voice minutes to calling-app provider Talk360 to help African diaspora around the world connect. Call credits can be purchased from Talk360 in a range of local currencies, and more than 200 payment methods are supported by its point-of-sale network in South Africa.

Proximus updates STPs

Belgium's Proximus has teamed up with BroadForward and Nomios to replace its legacy hardware-based signaling transfer points (STPs) with BroadForward's software-based STP offering. Despite the gradual phase-out of Proximus' 3G network, STPs remain important for supporting roaming, messaging, IoT applications, VoLTE signaling and emergency services, says Proximus.

Crnogorski Telekom's billing heads for the cloud

Montenegro's Crnogorski Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is to upgrade its billing systems with the help of Amdocs. The systems will be migrated to Amdocs' latest cloud-based version of its software.

More roaming for Mobily with iBasis

Saudi operator Mobily has renewed its roaming services partnership with Tier 1 IPX network iBasis. The two companies have been working together for more than a decade.

Sounding good for Spotify

Spotify, the Sweden-based audio-streaming giant, is celebrating its first full year of profitability, achieving an operating income in 2024 of €477 million ($497 million). Its number of paying (or "Premium") customers increased 11% year-over-year to 263 million, a figure the company expects to reach 265 milllion in Q1 2025.

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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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