Eurobites: Allegations fly in Phones 4U case

Openreach, the semi-autonomous network access arm of UK incumbent operator BT, has added 56 more exchange locations to its full-fiber rollout program. These range from Durham in the northeast to Bearsted in the southeast. The additions represent just under half a million homes and businesses and, says Openreach, mean that more than 2,700 towns and villages are now included in the program. Openreach is also investing £58 million (US$72.3 million) into bringing full-fiber broadband to 13 new exchanges in London, equating to more than 195,000 additional homes and businesses. Across London, says Openreach, more than 120,000 homes and businesses have already ordered a full-fiber service from one of several retail service providers using the Openreach network – though this means that another 480,000 locations have yet to upgrade.

In the Netherlands, Ziggo has hooked up another 25,000 homes and businesses to gigabit speeds over its fiber/coaxial hybrid network, in the town of Hoogeveen. This brings Ziggo's nationwide gigabit reach to more than 6 million Dutch premises. By the end of 2022, says Ziggo, all customers will have access to download speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s through the existing network.

Next door, in Belgium, the fiber fun continues with Proximus and Ethias committing to connect 36,000 homes and businesses in the country's German-speaking regions to the technology by 2026 in a public-private partnership with what is called the "German-speaking Community."

Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia (TIM), has signed a three-year deal with Atos to offer cloud services to enterprises. The collaboration is kicking off with Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE), an initiative that aims to accelerate the digitalization of European universities and research centers.

Colt Technology Services and Equinix have extended their existing partnership with the addition of a new Colt point-of-presence (PoP) in Equinix's BX1 data center in Bordeaux. Enterprise customers in the Bordeaux region will be able to tap into the Colt IQ Network, which connects to metropolitan area networks across Europe, including Paris, Marseille and Madrid.

Ten months after the acquisition of AdaptiveMobile Security, Sweden-based Enea has launched the new Enea AdaptiveMobile Security brand. In addition to software for mobile network security, Enea offers software for data and traffic management, policy and access control, traffic intelligence, IoT security and Wi-Fi service management.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading