Telecom news

• First photos from inside the Silvertown Tunnel

  14-08-2023 19:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Tunnelling work on the two new road tunnels under the Thames in east London has been completed, and the first photos inside have been released by the company building the tunnels.
  Tunnelling breakthrough by the TBM (c) RiverLinx
  The tunnel boring machine (TBM), named in honour of Jill Viner, the first female bus driver in London, completed the 1.1km drive from Greenwich to Newham late last month, after completing the first bore in February 2023, meaning that all main tunnelling works were comple
  
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• A guide to Open RAN

  14-08-2023 17:49
  Telecoms.com has gathered together a panel of industry experts to define and analyse the future trajectory of one Open RAN, or the approach to building out networks from an à la carte menu of equipment manufacturers.
  Open RAN is one of those esoteric industry terms that doesn’t tend to survive escape from Planet Telecoms’ orbit. While your average person on the street might have half a chance of visualising what all the fuss is about with the rise of satellites connectivity, o
  
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• National Gallery offering £1 tickets for its Frans Hals exhibition

  14-08-2023 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The National Gallery has confirmed that it will retain its Pay What You Wish scheme for the forthcoming Frans Hals exhibition.
  The Laughing Cavalier, 1624 (c) Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London
  The exhibition, opening at the end of September is the first large-scale monographic exhibition devoted to the 17th-century Dutch portrait painter for a generation, and will be bringing some fifty of the artist’s greatest works from museums and private collections from around the world.
  The
  
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• Low-cost London to Edinburgh rail service Lumo launches flexible ticket offer

  14-08-2023 14:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The low-cost train company, Lumo which operates between London and Edinburgh has launched a slightly more flexible ticketing option, called LumoFlex.
  It’s only marginally more flexible though.The current standard ticket is for specific trains and times, although you can change them after buying tickets for a £10 admin charge.
  The new LumoFlex ticket lets you change your journey if necessary for free before the day of travel. If you try to change on the day of travel though, then thei
  
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• The Telecoms.com Podcast: Rakuten, BT and US vs China

  14-08-2023 13:54
  The Telecoms.com Podcast · Rakuten, BT and US vs China
  
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• Sky keen to buy TalkTalk’s business arm

  14-08-2023 13:54
  Sky has joined the race for TalkTalk’s business services arm, according to a UK media report this week, which claims a deal could be imminent.
  The TV and telecoms firm is one of a small number of potential buyers for TalkTalk Business Direct, the Sunday Times reported, without citing sources. The paper also named business comms provider Daisy Group as a likely suitor.
  Conjecture over the future of TalkTalk and its various assets is nothing new; speculation has been rife for a number of yea
  
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• Cisco buys mobile core-as-a-service specialist WG2

  14-08-2023 13:26
  US networking giant is augmenting its mobile core offering with the acquisition of Norwegian outfit Working Group Two.
  To be precise, Cisco already had a piece of WG2 and is buying out the other main investor – Telenor – at an enterprise value of $150 million. As it’s name implies, WG2 started as a development project within Telenor before it was spun out with the help of Digital Alpha, a fund that seems to represent Cisco’s interest in the venture. Before this deal, Tele
  
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• Telcos tap up OpenAI veterans for their own AI tech

  14-08-2023 13:19
  The recently-launched Global Telco AI Alliance has brought in some heavy hitters to build its very own large language model (LLM).
  The news arrived via one of the group’s founding members, SK Telecom (SKT), which announced on Sunday its Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm, SK Telecom Venture Capital (SKTVC), has partnered with Anthropic.
  Based in San Francisco, Anthropic was started in 2021 by siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, both of whom served at Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Anthropic
  
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• Telcos tap up OpenAI veterans for AI tech

  14-08-2023 13:19
  The recently-launched Global Telco AI Alliance has brought in some heavy hitters to build its very own large language model (LLM).
  The news arrived via one of the group’s founding members, SK Telecom (SKT), which announced on Sunday its Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm, SK Telecom Venture Capital (SKTVC), has partnered with Anthropic.
  Based in San Francisco, Anthropic was started in 2021 by siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, both of whom served at Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Anthropic
  
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• Italy to buy into TIM’s NetCo, pushing sale ahead

  14-08-2023 13:11
  The Italian government has agreed to take a stake in TIM’s networks business, potentially speeding up the process and increasing the likelihood of the sale actually going ahead.
  The Ministry of Economy and Finance late last week announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the telecoms incumbent that should lead to it acquiring up to 20% of NetCo.
  Given that the role of the state was always likely to be a crucial element of the NetCo sale, the news is highly positive for
  
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• Ericsson and TPG Telecom show off AI analytics tool

  14-08-2023 13:01
  Kit vendor Ericsson and Australian operator TPG are rustling up a cloud-native AI-powered analytics tool, apparently the first of its particular type in the region.
  The tool is designed to throw up insights about the operator’s 4G and 5G subscriber base, using ‘smart data collection with embedded intelligence’ to predict and resolve performance issues in real-time.
  The idea is TPG can therefore react quicker to network issues and reduce the need for ‘infrastructure-based
  
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• Kingston bus station to close for rebuilding work

  14-08-2023 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Kingston’s main bus station on Cromwell Road will close later this month to allow for a replacement building to be constructed on the site, eight years after the initial plans for the replacement were approved.
  Replacement bus station (c) TfL
  The current bus station opened in July 1995, replacing the bus garage on Clarence Street which dated to 1922. That old bus garage was on the opposite side of the road from the current one and was where the Rotunda/Odeon is today. The current bus stati
  
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• Mastercard to take minority stake in fintech arm of South Africa’s MTN

  14-08-2023 12:37 via ft.com
  Division that covers payments and remittances valued at more than $5bn
  
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• London’s Alleys: St. Ermin’s Hill, SW1

  14-08-2023 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  This is a dank dirty passage that slips in between the London Underground’s former head office and a posh hotel.With a name like St Ermin, you’re going to expect something religious going on, but, not unlike religions themselves, the origins of the name seem potentially more myth than fact.
  It’s generally said that this patch of London was the site of a 12th-century chapel originally built by Henry II in thanks for an Irish monk’s prayers which he believed saved him and h
  
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