Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Vodafone and CityFibre bring their gig to Milton Keynes; Ericsson trials data center energy management system; Ofcom revises spectrum auction timetable.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

January 18, 2018

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Vodafone Slices the Fixed Network With Huawei

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Vodafone and CityFibre bring their gig to Milton Keynes; Ericsson trials data center energy management system; Ofcom revises spectrum auction timetable.

  • Vodafone Ireland has teamed up with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd to conduct a field trial of fixed-access network slicing, using an approach that partitions a physical fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network into a number of virtual "network slices." In this experiment, separate consumer and enterprise network slices were set up on a live FTTH network, with the consumer slice carrying broadband Internet and TV services and the enterprise slice carrying OneNet business services, including voice services. The trial was carried out on Huawei's MA5800 optical line terminal.

    • Elsewhere on planet Vodafone, the mobile giant has seen the first fruits of its partnership with UK altnet CityFibre , announcing that Milton Keynes will be the first city to get gigabit-speed fiber broadband from this pairing. CityFibre says it will invest at least £40 million (US$55.5 million) in the project, which in effect will be an extension of its existing 160km full fiber network in the city. Construction is scheduled to start in March of this year. Milton Keynes may be famed chiefly for its concrete cows and its plethora of traffic roundabouts, but it is also becoming a tech hub -- it is hoped that the fiber project will bolster its credentials in this department. For more details and analysis, see this story on our sister site, Broadband World News.

    • Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) has teamed up with energy company Fortum to trial a new energy management system at its data center in Finland. Under the experimental system, Fortum briefly switches off the energy supply to the data center at times of peak energy consumption on the national energy grid. In this way, says Ericsson, its data center batteries act as "virtual powerplant" for Fortum.

    • UK telecom regulator Ofcom has published an update on the timetable for the auction of spectrum in the 2.3 and 3.4GHz bands, blaming litigation by mobile operators Three UK and EE for the delay in the process. Under the new timetable, the regulations governing the auction will be published on January 24, and once those regulations are in force Ofcom will confirm the date when it will start to accept bids. (See Eurobites: UK Regulator Accuses BT & Three of Erecting 5G Roadblocks.)

    • Facebook is to look again for evidence of Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum, the vote that saw Britain elect to leave the European Union. As Reuters reports, UK ministers were not convinced that the social media giant had done a thorough search for Russia-derived pro-Brexit propaganda in the run-up to the referendum.

      — 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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