Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: OneWeb teams up with Telstra; Arqiva, MediaKind tackle headend operations; French fiber latest.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

September 9, 2022

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Telecom Italia sets enterprise stake sale in motion – report

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: OneWeb teams up with Telstra; Arqiva, MediaKind tackle headend operations; French fiber latest.Telecom Italia (TIM) is preparing to sell off a minority stake in its enterprise service arm, according to unnamed sources cited by Reuters. It's just the latest instalment of a wide-ranging company turnaround plan being pursued by CEO Pietro Labriola, a plan that includes the spinning off its fixed network assets to potentially merge them with rival Open Fiber to create a single network provider in Italy. (See CPD may delay TIM bid until after Italy's election.)Figure 1:(Source: Arcansel/Alamy Stock Photo)OneWeb, the LEO satellite broadband company co-owned by the UK government and Bharti Global, has signed a letter of intent with Australian operator Telstra to cement their joint efforts to bring connectivity to the more remote parts of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The pair's joint testing program, which started in the UK on OneWeb's live constellation, has now moved to Australia where use cases that improve connectivity for Telstra's most remote customers will be tested in local conditions.Arqiva and MediaKind have come together to launch Arqplex, a hybrid content processing service that is intended to simplify the headend operations of broadcast and OTT networks. The service provides content aggregation, encoding, multiplexing and packaging for content distribution.More than half of all broadband subscriptions in France are now of the FTTH variety, though rollout of the technology has slowed compared with the same period last year. Those are two of the findings from the latest scoreboard produced by Arcep, the French communications regulator. Over the course of the second quarter, 1.2 million additional premises were passed for fiber – 20% fewer than in Q2 2021. A total of 35 million households in France are now able to subscribe to a "superfast" broadband service over a fixed network, which equates to more than four in five premises.A1 Telekom Austria Group's broadcasting division is to provide technical satellite services to the LUXE.TV channel in Europe and Asia. Broadcast in both French and English, LUXE.TV claims to reach more than 462 million subscribers across 65 countries worldwide.The European Union is planning a cybersecurity clampdown on smart devices such as Internet-connected fridges and TVs, with manufacturers failing to come up to scratch facing fines or even bans, according to a Reuters report. The European Commission document seen by Reuters relates to the Cyber Resilience Act, which is due to be officially proposed on September 13.UK altnet CityFibre has broken ground in the northeastern English town of Hartlepool, whose inhabitants reputedly hanged a shipwrecked monkey in the early 19th century. (It's a long story.) The £21 million (US$24.3 million) build is being carried out by Granemore Group on behalf of CityFibre and is due to be completed by 2025.— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Paul Rainford

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.

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