Eurobites: Vodafone Greece Extends Network With CYTA AcquisitionEurobites: Vodafone Greece Extends Network With CYTA Acquisition

Swedish cable operator Com Hem AB increased revenue 1.1% year-on-year to 1.81 billion Swedish kroner ($206 million) in the second quarter, though operating profit decreased by 3.6% to SEK222 million ($25.3 million) due, says the operator, to exceptional items skewing the year-on-year comparison. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Com Hem says it will be continuing with its network upgrade in preparation for a "1+ Gbit/s" service launch.

In the UK, Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) is adding the BT Sport 4K UHD channel to its premium bundles, at no extra cost to subscribers. This will bring Virgin 351 UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League soccer games alongside 42 live Premier League matches, the FA Cup, European Rugby Champions Cup, boxing, MotoGP and more, all in pimple-revealing, higher-than-high-definition detail.

Elsewhere on the UK cable front, takeover target Sky has completed the sale of its 20% stake in Sky Betting & Gaming (SBG) to The Stars Group for £635 million ($840 million). Sky says it will use a proportion of the proceeds to fund a software innovation center at its Osterley campus, just west of London. (See Fox Trumps Comcast With $32.5B Bid for Sky.)

In a move akin to a massive bull elephant being pricked on its behind with a toothpick, Facebook is to be fined £500,000 ($662,000) by the UK's data protection watchdog for data breaches relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Why such a miniscule fine? It's the maximum allowed under current UK law. As the BBC reports, the Information Commissioner's Office has also sounded the alarm about political parties buying personal information from so-called "data brokers." (See Facebook: The Sick Man of Silicon Valley.)

3 Denmark is planning to keep data-hungry music fans at the forthcoming Roskilde Festival happy by deploying Huawei's 4T6S SingleRAN offering. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd claims the deployment will shorten the average upload and download times by 82% and 79% respectively.

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading