Telecom news

• Why operators need to mitigate against the rising crop of ‘access broker’ spy firms

  04-10-2023 19:39
  Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece John Hughes, Senior Vice President and Head of Enea AdaptiveMobile Security, analyses some contemporary security threats telcos should be aware of.
  The surveillance landscape has evolved dramatically since whistle-blower Edward Snowden leaked evidence that the USA and its ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence allies were responsible for a surveillance d
  
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• FCC issues its first ever space junk fine

  04-10-2023 18:19
  US operator Dish has earned the dubious honour of becoming the first company to get in trouble with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s new Space Bureau.
  The agency this week announced it has settled an investigation that found Dish failed to properly deorbit its Echostar-7 direct broadcasting satellite (DBS). Launched in 2002, the geostationary satellite until recently provided spot beam services to the Western US.
  The method of retiring these expensive bits of kit depends on th
  
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• VMO2 calls in helicopters to plonk 4G towers on remote island

  04-10-2023 17:47
  ‘Get to the chopper!’ VMO2 engineers may have screamed as six new partial not-spot masts were deployed on the island of Islay in Scotland via helicopter.
  The extra masts are there to add a greater choice of provider for the residents of Islay as well as obviously boost coverage there, which is apparently blighted by countless not-spots and areas of patchy signal.
  Currently just 60% of Argyll and Bute, the region the island is in, has from 4G coverage from all four mobile network oper
  
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• The Millennium “wobbly” Bridge is closing for three weeks of urgent repairs

  04-10-2023 16:40 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The Millennium Bridge, better known as the wobbly bridge that links Tate Modern with St Paul’s Cathedral, will be closing for three weeks of maintenance work later this month.The closure is needed because the synthetic membrane separating the bridge’s steel structure from its aluminium bridge deck has started degrading and needs to be replaced urgently.
  As a result, the bridge will close at 8am on Saturday 14th October and reopen on Sunday 5th November or sooner if the work is comple
  
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• HS2 will reach a scaled-back Euston station – but Northern expansion cancelled

  04-10-2023 14:10 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  A significantly cut back HS2 railway will reach Euston station, but won’t be extended past Birmingham, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced.
  The previously proposed Euston station (c) HS2
  Announcing the cancellation of the rest of the HS2 project, the Prime Minister said that the government plans to spend the budget allocated to the HS2 railway on a new Northern Network to link up towns and cities across the midlands and north of England.
  He promised that the new “Network N
  
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• Vocus and TPG can’t agree

  04-10-2023 13:15
  TPG Telecom has announced that the exclusivity period it granted to Vocus to carry out due diligence on the acquisition of its fibre business has now expired.
  This does not mean the pair are scrapping the deal. Far from it; talks between them are still ongoing, TPG said. But presumably the way is now clear for TPG Telecom to hook up with other would-be buyers, should there be any out there.
  Reading between the lines of a fairly snappy securities exchange announcement, the major stumbling block a
  
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• Softbank edges towards APAC IoT expansion

  04-10-2023 13:03
  Japanese telco Softbank has fleshed out its plan to launch Internet of Things (IoT) services in 19 additional markets.
  It is going on a massive hiring spree that will quadruple the size of its IoT salesforce, and ramping up its marketing efforts. It has set a target of reaching 2 million connections across Asia-Pacific by the end of fiscal 2025, or to put it another way, March 2026.
  With Transforma Insights forecasting that IoT connections in Japan and Southeast Asia will reach 3.4 billion by 20
  
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• Delayed but Expanded: Victoria station upgrade set for March 2024 completion

  04-10-2023 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Plans to add more ticket barriers at London Victoria station have been changed by Network Rail to add even more than they had initially planned.
  London Victoria station (c) Network Rail
  Refurbishment work started last year to remove some of the kiosks that sat in front of the platforms and reuse the space for more ticket barriers to reduce congestion as people leave the trains.
  They had planned to increase the number of ticket barriers in the station from 88 to 111, including adding 8 more wide
  
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• Orange Spain and friends launch Open RAN 5G SA pilot

  04-10-2023 12:43
  Orange Spain has led a band of merry firms including HPE, Casa Systems, Mavenir and Dell Technologies, to deploy Open RAN nodes connected to a cloud native 5G SA core network.
  This pilot has proven ‘the expected benefits of Open RAN technology combined with the advantages of 5G SA networks’, says the release. Such benefits apparently include a less than one hour deployment of the network ‘thanks to the automation capabilities enabled by these new technologies.’
  Alongside
  
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• TalkTalk sells Business Direct division to shareholders

  04-10-2023 10:12
  TalkTalk has agreed to sell its business services division to a group of its own shareholders for £95 million, a move that effectively gets its separation plan underway.
  The move also likely means that the company was unable to ink a deal with an established player in the market, despite having reportedly drawn interest from business communications provider Daisy Group and – more recently – Sky.
  In the end, it was TalkTalk group’s shareholders that stepped up. The telco r
  
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• Moco Museum gets approval to open Marble Arch museum of modern art

  04-10-2023 10:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  A new museum will be opening in Marble Arch next year, as the Amsterdam based Moco Museum (Modern Contemporary Museum) has taken a lease on three floors of an Oxford Street building.
  CGI concept – source: planning documents
  They applied for planning permission to convert the space from being allocated as retail into a museum, and last night, Westminster Council’s planning committee approved the change of use.
  The Moco Museum is an independent commercial museum specialising in modern
  
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• London’s Pocket Parks: Bernie Spain Gardens, SE1

  04-10-2023 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  These two pocket parks next to the OXO Tower on the Southbank, created in the 1980s, are named after a local campaigner and present two very different aspects depending on which you visit.The two gardens sit on land that was reclaimed from derelict buildings, a warehouse next to the river, and behind it the large Eldorado ice cream factory. They had closed down and were earmarked for redevelopment into offices. However, the buildings gained the nickname of the “berlin wall” and and l
  
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