Eurobites: BT's Allera has another nibble at net neutrality

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia plans new R&D campus in Oulu; Virgin Media suffers ten-hour TV outage; ETNO dissatisfied with progress on cyber directive.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

December 3, 2021

3 Min Read
Eurobites: BT's Allera has another nibble at net neutrality

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia plans new R&D campus in Oulu; Virgin Media suffers ten-hour TV outage; ETNO dissatisfied with progress on cyber directive.

  • BT's Marc Allera has returned to the company pulpit to have another dig at net neutrality rules, after mass streaming of midweek soccer action from England's Premier League brought the highest peak yet in terms of data flowing over BT's fixed network – 25.5 Tbit/s, which is 12% higher than the previous peak set in December last year. Says Allera in his blog: "The net is not neutral and becomes less so yearly; a quick glance at our own network data suggests that at peak times up to 80% of traffic – and therefore capacity on our network – comes from just a handful of companies, some using models that can find and consume every last bit of space. It's hard to argue that that doesn't unfairly impact other users of the internet … The rules that once signaled fairness are out of date and serve only to support the concentration of services, not support their diversity." (See BT and the taming of the net neutrality beast and Eurobites: BT's Allera demands net neutrality rethink.)

    • Nokia is to build a new R&D campus in Oulu, Finland, with work starting on it next summer – after some local roads have been suitably rearranged – and a scheduled completion date of 2025. Oulu, dubbed controversially by Nokia as the "Home of Radio," "enjoys" a subarctic continental climate and is Nokia's third major domestic site alongside Tampere and Espoo.

    • Some Virgin Media customers were left without TV services for more than ten hours yesterday (Thursday) in the UK after what the cable operator described as a "major power outage." As the BBC reports, troubleshooter website Downdetector received more than 18,000 complaints from telly-starved Brits at one point.

    • Also complaining is the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO), which reckons that the EU member states' progress on the NIS 2 cyber directive is all well and good but falls short of "securing the ICT supply chain." As the directive moves towards being finalized, ETNO calls on the powers-that-be to take a "broader look [at] ICT service providers" and to provide a "comprehensive and future-proof cybersecurity framework for all crucial ICT suppliers."

    • Tree-planting: it's the new rock and roll. Earlier this week Eurobites was digging the arboreal deeds of Telefónica in Spain, and now it's the turn of Openreach engineers – with the assistance of local volunteers – in the English county of Lincolnshire to spread the leaf love, with a planting of 3,339 saplings in the village of Old Bolingbroke. Figure 1: Can you dig it? Openreach engineers spread the tree love in Lincolnshire. (Source: Openreach) Can you dig it? Openreach engineers spread the tree love in Lincolnshire.
      (Source: Openreach)

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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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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