Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: ADVA in 200G trials with Telefónica Germany; BMW finds room for Alexa; BT maintains complaints quota.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

September 28, 2017

3 Min Read
Eurobites: Nokia Crosses Jordan With Fiber for Orange

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: ADVA in 200G trials with Telefónica Germany; BMW finds room for Alexa; BT maintains complaints quota.

  • Orange Jordan has teamed up with Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) to deploy a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network across the Middle Eastern country by the end of the year, delivering 200Mbit/s speeds and triple-play services in a broadband market that up until now has been dominated by wireless connections. The deployment will use a combination of Nokia's GPON technology, managed services, analytics and device management software. Currently only 5% of Jordan's 6 million broadband subscribers use a fixed connection, according to a 2017 report cited by Nokia.

    • ADVA Optical Networking says it has successfully completed a 200G joint field trial of its FSP 3000 CloudConnect and OpenFabric technology in Telefónica O2 Germany GmbH & Co. OHG 's live network. Disaggregated 100, 150 and 200Gbit/s connectivity was achieved over Telefónica's existing 10Gbit/s line system, says the vendor. The nationwide trial involved the operator's major metro hubs including Düsseldorf and Frankfurt.

    • German carmaker BMW plans to add Alexa, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) 's voice-controlled "personal assistant," to all its BMW and Mini models from mid-2018. So the chances are Alexa may one day have to deal with requests such as "Alexa, drive too close to the car in front," and "Alexa, park so that I take up two spaces rather than just the one I actually need."

    • BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) gets a bit of a drubbing in the latest count of customer complaints by UK regulator Ofcom. The operator topped the gripes list in both the fixed broadband and pay-TV segments, and came second-worst after Vodafone UK in mobile.

    • Clavister AB , the Swedish network security company, has signed a financing agreement worth 50 million Swedish kronor (US$6.1 million) over three years, with TageHus Holding AB as lender. Clavister hopes to use the funding to increase market share.

    • Still in Sweden, operator Tele2 AB (Nasdaq: TLTO) has launched 2Route, which it describes as a "cloud-based router solution" to help enterprises using the Internet of Things to collect, route and manage their IP data from multiple cellular service providers more easily, from a single interface.

    • Swiss operators Swisscom AG (NYSE: SCM), Sunrise Communications AG and Salt SA have announced their support for Mobile ID, an authentication technology that allows those banking via their smartphones to confirm their identities securely with just a six-digit PIN, provided the phones in question are equipped with the latest-generation SIM cards. For its part, Swisscom says it will be sending out more than a million next-generation SIM cards by autumn 2018 to help its customers take advantage of the technology.

    • BT's Openreach has signed a five-year digital investment deal with Grosvenor Britain & Ireland, a property company that owns chunks of prime real estate in some of London's most upmarket districts. As Think Broadband reports, the deal will see Openreach using a mixture of FTTP and FTTC technology to bring high-speed broadband to some 600 premises.

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

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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