Eurobites: Nokia plugs into private network deal for Poland's power grid

Arcep, the French communications regulator, is beginning an information-gathering campaign to better assess the impact of telecom networks and associated devices on the environment. The indicators being collected relate to greenhouse gas emissions that the main telecommunications operators in France produce through their networks, and to the energy consumed by the devices used by their customers. The campaign is being carried out in collaboration with the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).

UK-based Nuvias has agreed a European distribution deal with Versa Networks for the Versa Secure SD-WAN cloud service aimed at small and midsized enterprises. Nuvias' version of the service will be called Versa Titan, and will offer users "services such as network routing, security and analytics, along with intuitive user and support portals and a mobile application to manage branch networks remotely."

Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, late of Google, has joined Telecom Italia (TIM) to support CEO Luigi Gubitosi with the development of the TIM Cloud Project and the nurturing of the operator's partnership agreement with Google.

Net Insight, the Swedish media delivery specialist, is to start discussions with its staff with a view to temporarily reducing their working time by 20%, in response to a fall in demand for its products prompted by the COVID-19 crisis. "We use short-term lay-offs as a temporary measure to lower our costs, while keeping our skilled employees. As soon as we see signs of an improved market situation, we want to be able to quickly increase our activity level again," said CEO Crister Fritzson in a statement.

Mauritanian satellite-broadband services provider CSS has teamed up with Forsway and Arabsat in a bid to deliver affordable satellite broadband in West Africa via the Xtend Africa managed service.

Swisscom's shareholders approved all the board's proposals at Monday's company general meeting, albeit remotely due to restrictions imposed in the face of the coronavirus. The ordinary dividend was set at 22 Swiss francs gross per share, as in the previous year.

US streaming-device maker Roku has launched its over-the-top Roku Channel in the UK, offering those with a Roku, Now TV or Sky Q set-top box free access to a ropey-sounding vault of British programs such as Homes Under the Hammer as well as some more promising movie fare that includes Get Carter and The Wicker Man.

The CEO of UK operator Three has weighed in to the issue of coronavirus-crazed mobile mast vandalism, as reported on these pages yesterday, with a statement supporting Three's engineers carrying out their difficult duties in the face of basestation-burning and more. "Fears around 5G masts are entirely baseless and we welcome the moves by government to dispel these myths," says Robert Finnegan. "We thank our engineers for their vital work at this time and are doing everything we can to protect them."

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading