Eurobites: Virgin's gigabit reaches 12.8M mark in UK

Netherlands operator VodafoneZiggo has chosen Red Hat's OpenShift as its hybrid cloud platform. The provider was looking for supplier-agnostic technology to grease the wheels of its multivendor infrastructure. With OpenShift, VodafoneZiggo hopes to be able to scale up more rapidly and efficiently across multiple clouds and to the edge as its needs change.

A clutch of Google's smaller search engine rivals have told European Union lawmakers to deploy new tech rules drafted by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in order to successfully challenge the US giant's stranglehold on the search market. As Reuters reports, US search engine DuckDuckGo, Germany's Ecosia and French rivals Qwant and Lilo used a joint letter to lawmakers to point out that a menu that allows users to choose their default search engine when setting up an Android device is not available on other operating systems, and urged EU officials to use Vestager's Digital Markets Act to ensure true and fair competition.

UK-based Colt Technology Services has announced the availability of what it claims is a telco industry first: a 400GE service across Europe and Asia-Pacific. The service is based on Ciena's WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optical technology.

Iliad-owned Free has launched fiber services on the Calvados and the Côte Fleurie Public Initiative Networks (PINs) in northern France, which between them cover more than 159,000 homes. Both PINs are operated by the Covage network.

Up next: squirrel news. Britain's red squirrels, to be precise. The Mammal Society has teamed up with the University of Bristol, Rainforest Connection and Chinese vendor Huawei to help secure the future of this endangered creature, which has lost 60% of its range in England and Wales over the last 13 years as it does battle with its big bad gray rival. Huawei's software will be used to analyze the natural noise of woodland environment and generate data which can be used to help the red squirrel numbers get back on an even keel. Figure 1: Deep dive: Huawei's AI software is being used to find out why the UK's red squirrels are dwindling.
(Source: Jonny Gios on Unsplash)

CityFibre has appointed Dan Ramsay as its new chief marketing officer. Ramsay brings both insider government knowledge – he was previously CMO at the Cabinet Office – and expertise gained behind enemy lines in various roles at BT and EE. Sounds like a handy hire.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading