Eurobites: Macron changes phone in bid to thwart Pegasus

Forget switching on that long-forgotten coffee percolator or weeding the front garden; the best way of selling your house is to make sure it has good mobile connectivity. That's the gist of a new study from Virgin Media O2, which concludes that some house-hunters would be willing to pay up to £10,000 (US$13,759) over the asking price for a property with a strong indoor and outdoor phone signal. In fact, 70% of house-hunters would be prepared to walk away from their preferred home, or not make an offer at all, if there aren't enough bars lit up on their smartphone screens. It's the pandemic, of course, that has helped bring about this strange state of affairs, as homeworkers realize that they no longer need to be within commuter-train distance of their office and can instead live the dream and buy themselves a slice of heaven in, for example, one of the UK's many dilapidated seaside towns.

Belgian operator Proximus and the EU's Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) are two of the new sign-ups to the 25GS-PON MSA Group, which is dedicated to the cause of 25-gigabit symmetric PON technology. The technology is the latest addition to the point-to-multipoint family, using a single optical fiber to support numerous endpoints. It is not without controversy, however: Huawei and some if its Chinese customers effectively blocked the standardization of 25G PON by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), apparently viewing it as a threat to their investment in 50G PON. Other big-name members of the 25GS-PON MSA gang include Nokia, At&T and CableLabs. (See Nokia networks boss defends bet on 25G PON and Antwerp mayor keeps pants on for Nokia's 25Gbit/s speed record.)

Sky, the UK-based purveyor of pay-TV and more, is adding High Dynamic Range (HDR) to Ultra HD (UHD) – presumably giving us HDRUHD – for the first time on its live sport coverage this summer. HDR enables TVs to show greater contrast, and those with a Sky Q box will be able enjoy the full HDRUHD experience.

UK altnet Hyperoptic is trumpeting the fact that it has notched up 10,000 five-star reviews on Trustpilot, the online review platform. This, it claims, is more five-ratings than Sky, BT and Virgin Media combined. Losers.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading