Telecom news

• Netflix is now as popular as traditional TV – PWC

  20-12-2017 17:40
  The trends for the traditional TV industry have only been heading in one direction, and according to PWC’s Consumer Intelligence Series, the trends are only getting worse.
  The report claims cord cutting is now hitting an all-time high, with the number of subscriber to Pay TV down to 73% in the US, equally posed against the 73% who subscribe to Netflix. Unfortunately for the traditional TV space, 75% state they couldn’t handle using more than four services in addition to Pay TV. Consi
  
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• Orange chief to face trial over government payout

  20-12-2017 16:08 via ft.com
  Charges against Stéphane Richard date back to his days in the French finance ministry
  
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• Uber dealt regulation blow by European Court

  20-12-2017 15:50
  Uber has been dealt another blow in the courts, with the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling the firm should be considered a taxi company and therefore subject to those rules.
  While such a ruling is not necessarily a massive surprise, some might have been hoping it went the other direction. Uber will absorb the majority of the damage dealt here for the moment, though there could be wider consequences for other companies which operate in the increasingly influential ‘gig economy&r
  
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• Huawei & China Unicom Collaborate to Build Network-Wide Anti-DDoS System

  20-12-2017 15:04
  China Unicom has partnered with Huawei to deploy Huawei’s AntiDDoS8000 products on backbone network nodes across China. This constitutes the largest anti-DDoS system on China Unicom’s network and provides comprehensive anti-DDoS protection capabilities for their customers.
  China Unicom has long been dedicated to delivering superior and stable network services to customers. As bandwidth increases and hackers hone their techniques, DDoS attacks are now a common network security threat
  
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• High court rules in favour of Ofcom in spectrum battle

  20-12-2017 14:12
  Ofcom has beaten back a legal challenge from Three and BT/EE which threatened its planned auction of mobile spectrum for 4G and 5G assets set to take place next year.
  The High Court ruled in favour of the regulator, which has sought to limit the amount of new spectrum that any single operator could acquire. While the decision impacted BT/EE the most, as the biggest hoarder of spectrum in the UK (42% currently), Three was the first to throw a wobbly, believing the restrictions didn’t go far
  
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• Vodafone and Ericsson claim successful standalone 5G test

  20-12-2017 12:20
  Vodafone and Ericsson have teamed up with King’s College London to perform what they claim is the first successful 5G test in the UK which works independently of any 4G technology.
  Making use of a prototype device in a central London 3.5 GHz spectrum field trial, as well as other technologies including Massive MIMO, the trio claim to have demonstrated the value of 5G, without making use of any 4G technologies.
  “We’re delighted to be the first provider to test standalone 5G in t
  
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• UK Gov turns down BT’s £600m rural broadband offer

  20-12-2017 11:57
  The UK Government has finally revealed its plans to connect the unconnected, as it turns down BT’s bold plans in favour of a universal service obligation (USO) which puts the power in the hands of the consumer.
  The new plans will effectively give consumers the right to demand a broadband connection which would deliver download speeds of 10 Mbps by 2020, irrelevant as to where they are based in the UK. Such regulation is built on the same lines as rules dictating practices in the fixed-line
  
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• Iliad takes a bite of Irish telco Eir

  20-12-2017 10:51
  French operator Iliad has teamed up with its founders private investment vehicle, NJJ, to buy a majority stake in Ireland’s largest telco, Eir.
  As part of the new deal, Iliad will pay roughly €320 million to acquire 31.6% of Eir, while NJJ will take 32.9%, while existing shareholders Anchorage Capital Group and Davidson Kepner will retain a combined 35.5% of the Irish telco. While this is a minority stake for the moment, there are options for Iliad to take operational control of the t
  
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• Facebook finds itself in trouble in Germany as well

  20-12-2017 10:27
  During a week where employees are usually winding down ahead of the holidays, Facebook’s lawyers are finding themselves very busy as Germany accuses it of abusing market position with data sharing practices.
  Earlier in the week, Facebook has irritated the French with its WhatsApp sharing policies, and now the Bundeskartellamt, Germany’s telco watchdog, has piled on the misery. Facebook is accused of merging data from third-party websites with its own, without the knowledge of the use
  
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