The UK government has weighed in on talks between the UK's four main mobile operators that were supposed to see the widening of coverage through the creation of a shared rural network. As the Financial Times reports (paywall applies), officials are exasperated with the lack of progress on the issue, and in particular with a proposal by BT on mast access charges which, in the government's eyes at least, threatens to scupper the project. James Heath, director for digital infrastructure at the government's media department, sent an email to the four operators -- EE (BT's mobile operation), Three, O2 and Vodafone -- telling them to "step up negotiations," with a view to getting a deal sorted by the end of this week.

EE has come up trumps in the latest RootMetrics survey of network performance, being named top dog for overall performance, reliability, speed, data and call, and joint first for text. EE's aggregate median download speed across the entirety of the UK clocked in at 36.5 Mbit/s, compared with 19.8 Mbit/s for Vodafone, 12.5 Mbit/s for O2 and 11.7 Mbit/s for Three. To simulate real-world conditions, RootMetrics used Samsung Galaxy S9 4G LTE smartphones purchased off the shelf from operator stores and conducted tests with them during the day and night while walking and driving.

But it's a different story on another UK mobile network survey, carried out by Global Wireless Solutions in partnership with Jigsaw Research. It found that O2 offered the most reliable network (for the second year running), ranking top in 18 out of 36 locations tested in the UK. EE came second in terms of reliability, though it did collect the consolation prize of most improved network. On a more general level, the survey found that UK smartphone users still rated voice calling, and the satisfactory functioning thereof, as the most important feature of their chosen network, with data speed concerns coming a distant second.

Wholesale network operator Telia Carrier believes it is the first carrier in the world to have a 400 Gigabit Ethernet-ready network, following an upgrade based on Cisco NCS5500 series routers. The press release announcing this development is worth reading as it points to interesting tends in the use cases and deployment of IP-over-DWDM platforms and open optical line systems.

Major African operator Vodacom, which today announced strong financials for the closing quarter of 2019, has pledged to launch 5G services in South Africa this year by leveraging a roaming agreement with Liquid Telecom. (See Vodacom to launch 5G services in SA in 2020 and Vodacom reports strong end to 2019.)

Denmark's TDC has appointed Henrik Clausen as its new CEO. Most recently Clausen was CEO of fancy-dan hi-fi company Bang & Olufsen, though he has had plenty of telecom experience with the likes of Telenor and DiGi.

HardenStance, a cybersecurity research firm, has revealed details of what it describes as the world's first 5G cyber hackathon, during which Ericsson and Nokia exposed their 5G infrastructure to the "ethical hacker" community. Taking place in late November at Oulu University in Finland, the exercise shed light on a number of vulnerabilities exposed by hacks that targeted a 5G NR (New Radio) product, a 5G remote hospital and fixed wireless applications.

Brits are mad for shiny new 5G phones -- but they're not quite sure why. Such are the findings of new research from Amdocs, which concludes that 35% of UK consumers plan on buying a 5G phone in 2020, despite only 55% of them claiming to know what 5G is. When asked which services they were interesting in firing up their 5G handsets for, 81% said Internet browsing (boring!), followed by streaming services (74%) and connected home devices (32%). For more, see this story on our sister site, Telecoms.com.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading