Eurobites: Gigaclear bags £1.5B more in funding

UK altnet Gigaclear has secured an additional £1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) in financing from a group of banks, promising to use the money to reach its target of putting fiber within reach of 1 million homes by 2027, according to a Bloomberg report (paywall applies). The new money comes just six months after Gigaclear bagged around £420 million ($523 million) in a phased investment led by Equitix.

Meanwhile, in the "good luck with that" corner, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is thinking of trying to restrict social media access for children under the age of 16, the Guardian reports. A government spokesperson played down the measures being considered, saying that the headline-hungry PM was "looking at ways to empower parents rather than crack down on anything in particular."

In related news, the UK government has been accused of watering down proposed online safety laws by a group of parents who share a common tragedy – they are all bereaved parents of children whose death was thought to be linked to the use of social media or gaming. As the BBC reports, the government announced in June that coroners were to be given new powers to access data held by tech companies about bereaved families' loved ones, but it now appears that this is being amended so it only applies to children who took their own lives and not those who were, for example, groomed online and murdered.

Kyivstar, which was hit by a massive cyberattack earlier this week, says it has restored voice services across Ukraine and has begun the reactivation of mobile data services, with more than 90% of basestations now operational. Data connectivity on the fixed network is described as "active and available."

The UK government is drawing up new plans intended to force data centers to introduce tougher security and resilience measures. A new regulatory function is also being considered, to ensure that operators of data centers report incidents and work with the sector to test risk mitigation against potential threats, be they hackers or extreme weather conditions.

Threads, Meta's answer to X (or Twitter, as normal people call it), has been launched in Europe after its privacy provisions convinced the European Commission that it was good to green-light. As the Guardian reports, users must already have an Instagram account if they want to set themselves up on Threads.

The board of TIM (Telecom Italia) has agreed to give investment firm KKR until the end of January to carry out due diligence and put in a final bid for Sparkle, TIM's international services arm. (See TIM starts exclusive talks with KKR over fixed assets.)

Secondhand device retailer musicMagpie saw its share price leap by a quarter on Thursday after it reported healthy Black Friday sales, City AM reports. The company said it expects its earnings before tax to be up by more 15%, from £6.5 million ($8.3 million) in 2022 to £7.5 million ($9.5 million) for this full year. Last month musicMagpie acknowledged that it was in acquisition talks with BT and Aurelius, but the discussions ultimately came to nothing.