Telecom Italia (TIM) has completed its acquisition of two BT Italia business units, one of which provides communication services to a number of Italy's ministries and agencies at national and local government level, while the other offers connectivity and cloud services to the country's SMEs. BT insists it will retain a strong presence in Italy, henceforth concentrating on selling its goods and services to large enterprises and multinationals. BT's scaling down of operations in Italy follows sales of some other European assets, in Spain and France. Italy has not proved a particularly happy hunting ground for BT: In 2017 it was forced to slash its earnings forecast after acknowledging that an accounting scandal at its Italian unit would prove far costlier than originally anticipated. (See BT scales back in Italy and Dodgy Italian Job Savages BT Earnings, Share Price Tanks.)

Meanwhile, on the content front, TIM has done a three-year deal with Mediaset to distribute the Mediaset Infinity streaming app on the TIMvision TV platform. The agreement will bring, among other fare, 104 UEFA Champions League soccer matches per season to TIMvision viewers.

Openreach, the semi-autonomous network access arm of BT, says it will give its wholesale service provider customers in the UK ten years of "pricing certainty," provided they commit to using FTTP technology wherever it's available, rather than FTTC or purely copper-based technology. The company adds that a single national rental price will apply to its entire FTTP footprint. See this release for details of the pricing structure. (See Eurobites: Openreach pushes UK fiber further into the sticks and BT ups FTTP target to 25M premises by 2026.)

Telefónica Tech is to acquire Altostratus Cloud Consulting, a Spanish multicloud specialist and Google Cloud partner. According to Telefónica, Altostratus provides cloud services to more than 300 customers, from large corporations to SMEs.

Deutsche Telekom has joined forces with the GSMA to publish a white paper to promote the use of high altitude platform systems (HAPS) technology to boost broadband coverage worldwide. HAPS are unmanned aircrafts – free-floating balloons, airships or powered fixed-wing aircraft – that fly at altitudes of about 20km. Specifically, the white paper is intended to create a common understanding between mobile operators regarding HAPS technology, as well as building a basis for regulatory work and standardization and encouraging other industry partners to accelerate HAPS development.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone who's not been under a rock for the last year or so, but 98% of workers in the UK's National Health Service have seen increased demand for remote health services in the past 12 months. That's one of the findings of a new study carried out by BT and iGov, which explores how health organizations in the UK are adopting new approaches to patient care in the COVID-19 era. However, "cultural resistance to new digital processes" was cited as a barrier to further digitalization of healthcare by 60% of NHS workers surveyed.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading