Eurobites: Switzerland's Salt hooks up with SpaceX

MultiChoice, one of Africa's largest pay-TV companies, has entered a joint venture with Comcast's NBCUniversal and Sky to offer a revamped version of its Showmax streaming service across MultiChoice's 50-market footprint in sub-Saharan Africa. The new venture will be 70% owned by MultiChoice and 30% by NBCUniversal and will be powered by the Peacock platform. Content-wise, it will be a blend of MultiChoice's locally produced fare and international material from NBCUniversal and Sky, third-party content from HBO, Warner Brothers International, Sony and others, as well as live English Premier League (EPL) soccer.

Nokia has landed the contract to upgrade Ooredoo's radio access networks in Algeria and Tunisia. Under the terms of the deal, Nokia will replace the existing radio network for Ooredoo Tunisia, as well as expand the network with the addition of new radio sites. Nokia will increase its share in Ooredoo Algeria's network to almost 50%, and in Ooredoo Tunisia's network to around 40%.

Deutsche Telekom (DT) has teamed up with Intel to offer large German companies a new way of connecting to their overseas operations, comprising "premium" Internet and Intel-powered uCPE boxes, the latter combining and virtualizing network services in one device, according to DT.

Ericsson has signed a reseller agreement with Comsol, a "last-mile" connectivity company that specializes in the mining sector. The agreement gives Comsol the right to resell Ericsson's pre-packaged private 5G network offering to customers across the South African mining industry.

The co-founder of Arm, the UK-based but SoftBank-owned chip design company, has slammed the UK government's strategy on semiconductors, saying it "couldn't be any worse than it is at the moment." As Bloomberg reports (paywall applies), Jamie Urquhart said: "Even now we are waiting for the government to come out with a semiconductor strategy."

Orange has secured a €500 million (US$531 million) loan from the European Investment Bank to partly finance the rollout of its 5G network in France and the strengthening of its 4G capacity in rural areas of the country.

Telecom Italia (TIM), which has been in corporate firefighting mode for some time, has reorganized its business unit, TIM Enterprise, with the intention of, in the words of the press release, "increasing the value of all reference assets related to connectivity, the cloud, the IoT and cybersecurity." Inevitably, the word "synergies" also puts in an appearance. (See Telecom Italia hopeful about future as it reveals plans for 2025 and Telecom Italia is how other telcos fear they may one day look.)

Vodafone has signed a multi-year deal with the people behind the UK's famous Glastonbury Festival, making it the "official connectivity partner" for the event. As part of the deal, Vodafone customers will be able to gain access to tickets to a sold-out festival via its VeryMe Rewards program available on the MyVodafone app. In the meantime, just enjoy this.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading