Eurobites: Eutelsat chooses Airbus to extend OneWeb constellationEurobites: Eutelsat chooses Airbus to extend OneWeb constellation

France-based Eutelsat has chosen Airbus to build 100 new satellites in the first phase of a program to extend Eutelsat's OneWeb low-Earth orbit constellation. This first satellites are due for delivery at the end of 2026 and, says Eutelsat, will be compatible with Europe's multi-orbit IRIS2 constellation. Among other features, the new satellites will incorporate 5G on-ground integration.

The Finnish president has cast doubt on a claim in The Wall Street Journal that Russia directed the crew of a Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, to deliberately sever Baltic subsea cables. As YLE reports, President Alexander Stubb said he found it "terribly difficult" to agree with the WSJ's interpretation of events, based on the information he had. (See Eurobites: Sabotage suspected after latest subsea cable cut.)

The Dutch data protection authority has fined Netflix €4.5 million (US$4.98 million) for what it deemed a lack of transparency on the streaming giant's use of customer data. As Reuters reports (paywall applies), a five-year investigation led the authority to conclude that Netflix "did not inform customers clearly enough in its privacy statement about what exactly Netflix does with those data" and that it was therefore violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In similar territory, the equivalent authority in Ireland has fined Meta's Irish arm €251 million ($263 million) following two inquiries into a personal data breach in 2018 that was said to have affected 29 million users worldwide. As the Luxembourg Times reports, the snaffled data included full names, email addresses, phone numbers, posts on timelines and online groups of which the user was a member. Unauthorized third parties exploiting "user tokens" on Facebook were to blame, said the authority.

South African operator MTN has made a number of management changes. Mitwa Ng'ambi, currently CEO of MTN Cameroon, will move to the same position at MTN Côte d’Ivoire, effective March 1, 2025. She succeeds Djibril Ouattara, who is taking early retirement. Wanda Matandela, currently chief commercial operations officer at MTN South Africa, becomes the new CEO for MTN Cameroon, also effective March 1. Mazen Mroue, MTN Group chief technology and information officer, will assume additional responsibilities as CEO of digital infrastructure (Infraco). This new role will incorporate the mobility and fiber businesses of Bayobab; Frédéric Schepens, the current CEO of Bayobab, is leaving the group.

Vodafone says it has enhanced upload performance for users of several models of Google Pixel phones on the operator's 5G network through a combination of MIMO and carrier aggregation technology. The network enhancements, says the operator, are a response to the growing trend for user-generated content: At this year's Glastonbury Festival, 18.14% of total traffic on Vodafone's network was uploaded data.