Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson settles with patents firm; Telefónica commits to fiber for everywhere in Spain by 2024; Finland's Elisa in analytics tie-up.
Three UK is hoping to eclipse mobile rival EE by committing to launch a 5G home (fixed wireless access) broadband service in London in August, before rolling out 5G-based mobile and home broadband offerings in 25 towns and cities across the UK before the end of the year. In its 5G launch last month, EE committed to switch on 5G services in just six UK cities. Three is positioning its home broadband offer as a credible alternative to fiber-based broadband, offering as it does the opportunity for customers to set themselves up with a decent new connection without the need for an engineer callout -- Three's mobile broadband hub just plugs into a standard home electrical socket. For more on this development, see the coverage on our
sister site Broadband World News. (See Three Preps 5G FWA Launch in London and Eurobites: 'Sick' Day for EE as 5G Switch Is Flipped in UK.)
Ericsson has reached a settlement with intellectual property firm Intellectual Ventures, which the vendor says will mark an end to all patent infringement lawsuits between the two companies. One such suit, that went to trial earlier this year, resulted in an $43 million award to Intellectual Ventures. Just how much Ericsson is paying to make its peace has not been disclosed.
In a Movistar blog post of impressive length, Telefónica has committed to taking fiber to every home in Spain -- even those in the most far-flung rural corners of the country -- by 2024. The blog says that Movistar is already carring out pilots in Malaga, Segovia and Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), and that the network will begin to "deploy massively" in 2020.
Finland's Elisa is to pay €70 million ($79.2 million) for analytics firm Polystar OSIX. The plan is to combine Polystar's analytics expertise with Elisa's automation know-how to develop new software and services that can be sold to mobile operators worldwide.
Nokia has unveiled a new security program, DFSEC 2.0, that it says addresses the needs of 5G networks in areas such as "end to end" identity management, network slicing, SDN security and virtualization. To coincide with the launch, the Finnish vendor has opened an extension to its Future X network lab in New Jersey, which will be open to those wanting to conduct joint testing and verification of industrial automation offerings in private LANs and across public WANs.
UK cable operator Virgin Media is making its Asian TV entertainment apps available to view at no extra cost for its TV customers until July 4. Virgin's Desi App Pack brings together two of India's biggest entertainment apps, Eros now and Voot.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
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