Eurobites: UK satellite push could carry on with CLEO

Following the European trend of debt-burdened telcos offloading mobile infrastructure, Telekom Austria has confirmed it will sell off its towers to newly created spinoff EuroTeleSites AG. The demerger is expected to be officially implemented in the fall, with EuroTeleSites shares listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange shortly after. (See How Europe's biggest telcos lost control of their towers and Towerco consolidation would show up huge conflicts of interest.)

Arm, the Japanese-owned but UK-based chip design firm, is aiming for an initial public offering (IPO) on the US stock market. at a valuation of between $60 billion and $70 billion as early as September, according to a Bloomberg report (paywall applies). Last year the UK government had hoped to persuade Arm to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than its New York equivalent, but its ministers' overtures were in vain. (See As SoftBank preps IPO, Boris tries to Arm the FTSE .)

Vodafone has signed a 15-year services agreement with DCC to provide 4G-based IoT connectivity for the UK's smart meter network, the £13.5 billion ($17.2 billion) rollout of which is now four years behind schedule, according to a recent report in the Financial Times.

Ookla's latest research into roaming speeds in Europe underlines past analyses which demonstrated that mobile speeds are usually slower for customers roaming abroad than they are when they are moving around their own country, despite the promise of the "roam like at home" agreement reached between the European Parliament and EU member states back in 2021. Of the Big Four European countries, the speed drop-off during Q2 2023 was particularly pronounced in France: median roaming download speeds there reached 43.46 Mbit/s, as opposed to 61.64 Mbit/s for local download.

Neos Networks, the joint venture set up in 2019 between energy company SSE and private equity firm Infracapital, is launching national 400Gbit/s optical wavelength services across 26 UK data centers. (See Neos Networks eyes a fifth more in sales in UK fiber rush.)

Around a quarter of small businesses in UK are generating more sales from advertising on social media than from any other channel, according to new research from BT. Meta-owned platforms are the favored media, with 30% of those asked saying Facebook was the primary social media channel they use for sales generation, followed by Instagram (18%), Twitter (10%) and TikTok (9%).

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading