Eurobites: Orkney taps into water-pipe network for high-speed broadband

Residents of the island of Papa Westray in Orkney, Scotland, are now getting their high-speed broadband delivered via drinking-water pipes thanks to a Scottish government-funded project that saw contractor CloudNet using the community-owned water authority's existing infrastructure to carry fiber. The fiber cable is delivered through a second pipe housed within the drinking-water network, while remote sensors placed in the water pipe are helping to monitor the island's water quality. CloudNet installed connections using a radio signal from the neighbouring island of Westray, which is then distributed to premises using fiber. Earlier this year, a fiber-in-water project run by the Westminster-based UK government was abandoned due to technical and regulatory hitches.

UK regulator Ofcom has written an open letter to online service providers gently drawing their attention to how the UK's Online Safety Act will apply to generative AI and chatbots. The letter has been prompted by some sickening uses of the technology in recent weeks, such as the creation of "virtual clones" of murdered children by a chatbot platform. The letter points out that any AI-generated text, audio, images or videos that are shared by users on such platforms would be regulated in exactly the same way as human-generated content – so deepfake fraud material is regulated no differently to human-spawned fraud material. The Online Safety Act passed into law in October 2023 and work is now being carried out to bring its hoped-for protections into effect.

Brighton, on England's south coast, and Milngavie, in central Scotland, are the latest locations to be ticked off on Openreach's fiber rollout list. More than 50,000 homes and business in and around Brighton are now covered by the network, while in Milngavie the first 3,500 properties have now been connected.

Vodacom Tanzania is carrying out a major upgrade of its infrastructure in a bid to improve network resilience, the Nation reports. The operator admitted, however, that the complex nature of the upgrade may itself lead to occasional outages.

Telefónica has donated €3 million (US$3.2 million) to support those affected by the recent catastrophic flooding in the Valencia region of Spain. As part of its response to the disaster, the company launched an urgent initiative to collect donations of essential supplies from its employees, raising 19 pallets of basic items to be sent to the affected region for distribution in just 36 hours.

UK mobile operator Three – which may soon form one half of what would be the country's largest mobile operator – is warning its customers to stay vigilant against the rising tide of smartphone-based scams as Black Friday and the ensuing holiday season approaches. Last year, Three saw scam activity triple during the month of Black Friday compared to the monthly average from August to October 2023 – the equivalent of approximately 3,467 scams reported daily.