Eurobites: Kyivstar helps Ukrainian businesses migrate to cloud

Kyivstar, VEON's Ukrainian subsidiary, is teaming up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help Ukrainian businesses migrate their applications, computing and data storage to the cloud. The tie-up, which sees Kyivstar become an official AWS Partner, should also enable Kyivstar to provide its customers with greater protection against cyber threats – which is probably handy when your country is at war with Russia. (See How Kyivstar is keeping wartime Ukraine connected.)

The European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) has restated its desire for a harmonized "telecom Single Market" which would replace what it calls the "currently fragmented" approaches at national level caused by the differing approaches of the various national communications regulators. "From spectrum policy to data, from security to the implementation of telecom rules, we need an extraordinary effort to finally create a telecom Single Market that benefits both users on the demand side as well as small and big businesses in the connectivity value-chain," says ETNO in its statement. (See EU bigwigs gibber about M&A and fume about Huawei.)

Spotify, the Swedish music streaming service which pays artists a zillionth of a groat per play, roughly speaking, has announced it's cutting 17% of its workforce – or almost 1,600 jobs – as it grapples with rising costs. As the Guardian reports, it's the third round of redundancies Spotify has implemented this year and follows cuts announced at Amazon's rival music service last month.

Figures from the UK government have revealed that nearly 3 million smart meters installed in British homes don't work properly. As the BBC reports, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero found that 2.7 million out of around 33 million meters were not in "smart mode," meaning that they were not automatically sending readings to the electricity supplier. In such cases, customers are sent estimated bills by their supplier, which are often wildly inaccurate.

British law firm Pinsent Masons says that a third of Big Tech companies covered by the UK's digital services tax – which was introduced in 2020 and imposes a 2% levy on sales for such businesses – have been subjected to compliance checks by the tax authorities to make sure they are paying all the digital services tax they owe.