A new broadband report from Openreach reveals that 62,000 petabytes of data were consumed across the UK in 2021, up from 50,000PB in 2020 and a paltry 22,000PB in 2019. Pandemic lockdowns were partly to blame for the increase, of course, though English Premier League soccer on the Amazon Prime streaming service during the Christmas period also helped push up the numbers – on December 28, when four live Premier League soccer matches were screened on Prime, 214PB of data were burned through.

In Kenya, Telkom has introduced the T-kash app, which will enable its customers to – among other things – send money to any mobile wallet within the Telkom network, an M-Pesa wallet, an Airtel Money wallet, a bank account or to buy airtime and data bundles for their own Telkom line or another Telkom customer. According to Telkom, the rollout of T-kash forms part of its long-term network expansion strategy, which was announced in August 2020.

UK altnet CityFibre has found a home for its Ethernet 1000 Flex service at the ground of Peterborough United, a club in the second tier of English soccer. Flex, says CityFibre, enables the club – known to its fans as "The Posh" – to meet occasional surges in demand for capacity sparked by matchdays and the like.

UK-based World Mobile, which describes itself as a "global mobile network built on blockchain," has hired Steve James as its new chief marketing officer. James was previously with Vodafone. World Mobile's focus is on bringing smartphone-based digital services to the world's "unconnected," with Africa being a significant stamping ground for the company. The basic idea is that people with an Internet-connected computer help create a mobile network in places where traditional network operators fear to tread – and earn cryptocurrency in the process.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading