Telecom news

• AWS data centre launch implies all is not well following Brexit

  14-12-2016 14:06
  Amazon Web Services has announced a new availability zone in London which indicates all is not well in the UK following Brexit.
  The new data centre creates the 16th availability zone worldwide for the public cloud leader, and is the first available in the UK. To date, customers in the UK would have primarily been served by assets in Ireland or Germany, though the move may suggest the Brexit vote is starting to impact businesses in the UK.
  Taken alone, this move implies very little, after al
  
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• Friday lunchtime performances at the Royal Opera House

  23-09-2026 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  It’s not that well known outside the usual circles, but the Royal Opera House puts on occasional lunchtime performances.
  Paul Hamlyn Hall (c) ianVisits
  Artists from The Royal Opera, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, The Royal Ballet, and a range of guest artists perform at the Royal Opera House roughly twice a month on Friday lunchtimes – and tickets cost just £5 per person.
  They used to be free, but you had to risk a long queue and not getting in. Now they charge a fiver
  
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• Tickets Alert: Nightime drone show coming to Lord’s Cricket Ground

  23-09-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Lord’s Cricket Ground will open to the public one evening in November as it hosts a new night-time drone show.
  (c) Wild
  The event, WILD: The Drone Light Show, will mark London’s first feature-length drone light show and the first event of its kind to be staged at the Home of Cricket. Launched in 2015, WILD follows a series of successful touring drone shows from Yuup and Celestial, including A Christmas Carol and Evolution. Since launching the UK’s first ticketed touring drone l
  
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• Plans move forward for new London Overground route across west London

  23-09-2026 13:34 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Plans for a new London Overground railway in west London have moved forward, with the first public consultation now open.
  (c) TfL
  Transport for London (TfL) is running an eight-week consultation inviting feedback for the first time on proposals to create an 18.5km passenger route on rail lines currently used for rail freight across west and northwest London.
  If built, the West London Orbital (WLO) could run up to six trains an hour and provide ten new interchanges with rail and Underground
  
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• Westminster Abbey to display a memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien

  23-09-2026 11:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner will get a new resident next year, when a memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien is unveiled to mark the 90th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit.
  The Tree of Amalion, 1928 (c) Tolkien Trust, 1978
  The new memorial has been inspired by Tolkien’s Tree of Tales, which he called the Tree of Amalion. Featuring the imagery of a tree in a forest as its central theme, it will be a significant new artwork for the Abbey, inlaid vertically within a stone pil
  
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• New step-free Tube entrance opens at King’s Cross St Pancras station

  23-09-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  King’s Cross St Pancras tube station has gained a new step-free entrance, replacing two staircases that used to block the pavement.The station’s main entrances are on the north side of Euston Road, on the same side as the mainline railway stations, but it also has a subway under the road to the south side. However, that subway ended in two staircases that lacked lifts and also obstructed half the pavement, creating a well-known bottleneck for pedestrians.
  The old entrance in March 20
  
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• Airtel Money poised to launch one of London’s biggest IPOs in recent years

  22-09-2026 19:24 via ft.com
  African mobile payments group to file paperwork as early as this week as it looks to raise $800mn at $8bn-$9bn valuation
  
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• TfL’s cycle hire scheme offering half-price monthly subscriptions

  22-09-2026 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  TfL’s Santander Cycles hire scheme is offering new subscribers half-price monthly subscriptions.For the next few days, new customers can purchase a Santander Cycles Monthly Pass for just £10, reduced from the usual £20.
  The Monthly Pass includes unlimited 60-minute rides using the cycle hire bikes – so is a lot cheaper than the dockless hire bikes. And they don’t clog up the pavements.
  Additional charges apply for rides lasting longer than 60 minutes. E-bike hires c
  
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• Southwark Cathedral offers local artists free exhibition space

  22-09-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Artists across much of South London are being offered a free opportunity to exhibit their work inside Southwark Cathedral’s café next year.
  (c) Southwark Cathedral
  Southwark Cathedral says that it will dedicate its café exhibition programme in 2027 to the work of artists with a connection to the Diocese of Southwark – which is a much larger area than you might expect.
  The Diocese of Southwark covers South London and East Surrey, including communities across Southwark, L
  
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• Tickets Alert: Talk and tour of the Bank of England building

  22-09-2026 14:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Next month, the Bank of England will host art history talks focused on its rich interior design, and they will include tours of the bank itself. Tours inside the bank are quite rare, so this is a chance to see inside a building you wouldn’t usually be allowed to.Boris Anrep’s Mosaics at the Bank of England
  Tuesday 6th October – 1pm to 2pm
  Boris Anrep’s extraordinary mosaics for the Bank of England are a vibrant and deeply symbolic work of art and craftsmanship across the
  
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• Barbican gets permission to restore its outdoor Sculpture Court

  22-09-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The Barbican Centre has secured planning permission to restore and revive its outdoor Sculpture Court, which subject to funding, will see it reopen as a public space in 2030.
  Sculpture Court (c) Barbican Arts Centre
  Located above the Concert Hall and framed by the curve of Frobisher Crescent, the semicircular Sculpture Court was originally conceived as a space where people could experience art and architecture as part of their daily lives.
  However, limited accessibility, poor seating, and deteri
  
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• Apple opens 600-capacity music venue at Battersea Power Station

  22-09-2026 11:30 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Battersea Power Station has opened a 600-capacity music venue that Apple, which operates it, says has been designed for small-scale concerts while offering production facilities more commonly associated with larger venues.
  (c) Apple
  The new concert hall includes a 38ft-wide stage that can be configured for conventional or in-the-round performances, and a 48-speaker spatial audio system surrounding the audience.
  The venue will also include two recording and mixing studios behind the stage. The ve
  
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• The London Buzz – 21st Sept 2026

  21-09-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Old London – Acre Lane in Brixton, London, around the early 1900s
  Today’s London news round-up:
  ‘Cyclists don’t stop’: disabled residents frightened of floating bus stops as council urged to reject them  Hackney Citizen
  She had no heating. It was December. The council took four months to visit Putney News
  Warren Street Tube noise waking residents in the early hours  Fitzrovia News
  Gallows Corner has fully reopened to traffic more than a year after the clos
  
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• Tickets Alert: Open days at Greenwich’s Admirals’ House

  21-09-2026 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The usually private Admirals’ House at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich will be open for a few days this Christmas for people to wander around and photograph.
  (c) Old Royal Naval College
  One of the oldest surviving parts of the site, Admiral’s House, overlooking the Thames, was once the residence of the Governor of the Royal Hospital for Seamen.
  Dressed for the holidays, all four rooms of this historic house will be adorned with decorations, allowing visitors to explore a bui
  
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• Specialist train deployed to prevent c2c and London Overground delays

  21-09-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Passengers on c2c and London Overground’s Mildmay line could benefit from fewer delays after specialist equipment was used to identify potential overhead line faults before they cause major disruption.
  Greater Anglia train equipped with PANDAS-V on the London Overground (c) GBR Anglia
  That’s because a Greater Anglia train fitted with the monitoring technology travelled over both routes on two Sundays in July and August, gathering information about the condition of their overhead elec
  
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• Handel treasures go on display for London museum’s 25th anniversary

  21-09-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The Handel Hendrix House is marking the 25th anniversary of its opening after successfully saving the building from partial demolition, with a new exhibition of loaned artworks rarely seen outside their usual homes.The exhibition, which runs throughout the building, tells a series of stories about the music Handel wrote within its walls and performed as he became Georgian London’s go-to composer and most celebrated musical personality.
  His importance is highlighted in a painting of the Roy
  
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• TfL to build 53 new toilets for London bus drivers

  21-09-2026 10:30 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Transport for London (TfL) is to build 53 new toilet facilities for bus drivers over the next three years, as part of efforts to ensure suitable facilities are available on every London bus route.The announcement follows a recent strike threat over conditions for bus drivers during heatwaves, which saw an agreement to install air conditioning in drivers’ cabs.
  TfL says it will invest a further £6 million in driver welfare facilities during the current financial year. The programme wi
  
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• London’s Alleys: Terrett’s Place, Islington, N1

  21-09-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  This rather shabby-looking short passageway off Islington’s Upper Street has an unexpected gem with a Dickens link in the corner.This part of London began developing in the 1720s, but even a century later, it was still largely fields, with houses lining only the few main roads.
  Terrett’s Place is developed by now, but was always what it is today – a tiny little corner passage behind the back of a couple of shops. If it was ever expected to get larger with future housing develop
  
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• Free immersive dining experience coming to Shoreditch

  18-09-2026 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  If you fancy a free meal, then there will be a free three-day immersive dining experience in Shoreditch next month.
  Lurpak 125 Good Food Vault
  It’s a publicity event by Lurpak, but free food is free food —  so over two hours, you’ll be able to taste meals from the past 125 years of dining in the UK.
  The tasting menu travels through select defining eras of British cooking, covering the 1900s, the flavour rebellion of the 1960s, the good-food indulgence of the 1980s, and vir
  
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• Tate Modern to stage large Monet exhibition in 2027

  18-09-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Tate Modern is about to stage a Monet exhibition, presumably hoping to avoid the huge fuss about the price of tickets the last time a gallery put on a Monet exhibition in London.
  The Saint-Lazare Railway Station, 1877
  Staged 100 years after the artist’s death and featuring more than 60 paintings, Tate Modern says that its show will be the UK’s largest presentation of Monet’s work in nearly a decade.
  And a decade ago, the National Gallery took a lot of brickbats for its £2
  
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• Tickets Alert: Walk through the Postal Museum railway tunnels

  18-09-2026 14:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The Postal Museum has announced October dates for its after-hours Tunnel Walk events, including two tours on Halloween (Saturday, 31 October), offering visitors the chance to explore London’s shadowy Mail Rail network on the spookiest night of the year.
  (c) Postal Museum
  The 1.2km walk takes guests deep underground, over tracks, into tunnels, and onto platforms usually off-limits to the museum’s visitors.
  Tunnel walkers will explore the abandoned Mail Rail platforms, left as they wer
  
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• Tove Jansson’s Moomins, lovers and island life explored in new exhibition

  18-09-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  An exhibition exploring the life, relationships, and career of Moomin creator Tove Jansson will open in London this autumn.
  The Moomins (c) Moomin Characters
  The exhibition will be held at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, and they say it will be the first UK exhibition dedicated to Jansson’s work as an illustrator and the first major display of her original artwork in Britain for almost a decade.
  The last was at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2017.
  This new exhibition will bring
  
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• The London Buzz – 16th Sept 2026

  16-09-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Old London: Wimbledon Windmill
  Today’s London news round-up:
  Putney Pusher suspect, 44, ‘found dead at home’ nine years after woman shoved under bus Mirror
  Council tax in Wandsworth will double this April unless central government reverses its funding cuts, the council’s finance chief told councillors last night. Putney News
  Heathrow’s third runway cannot be approved without changes to current climate policies, the government’s advisers have said. BBC News
  May
  
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• How a Leicester Square dinner could get you Bayeux Tapestry tickets

  16-09-2026 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  If you really want to see the Bayeux Tapestry in October, you could, if you don’t mind having supper as well.The Whitcomb restaurant inside the Londoner Hotel on Leicester Square offers a deal that pairs a visit to the Bayeux Tapestry with an à la carte lunch or dinner. You need to book a meal from their à la carte menu – so not the fixed or set menus, and hence a bit more expensive – and a ticket to see the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is included with the meal.
  Ho
  
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• Step-free access comes to Northolt tube station in west London

  16-09-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  After a lengthy construction project, Northolt tube station has now gained step-free access with a new lift and walkway.The station has a modest ticket hall entrance on a busy road, then steps down to an island platform with trains on either side. Facilities-wise, there is a glass waiting room on the platform, a ticket office, some toilets, and a bike store.
  Many other stations that add a lift from the ticket office to the platform have managed to find enough space at the end of the platform nex
  
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• Francis Barber – Britain’s first known Black schoolteacher honoured with London plaque

  16-09-2026 12:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The first known Black schoolteacher in British history has been commemorated with a plaque at the City of London house where he lived as a servant, friend and eventual heir to Dr Samuel Johnson.Francis Barber was born around 1742 on the Orange River sugar plantation in Jamaica. Enslaved from birth and given the name Quashey, he was brought to England at about the age of eight after the plantation was sold. Here, he was baptised and renamed Francis Barber.
  Barber eventually joined the household o
  
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• Inside the Natural History Museum’s room sealed off since WWII

  16-09-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  A large room in the Natural History Museum that’s been closed since WWII has finally reopened to the public as a new gallery.The once-hidden gallery sits just above the museum’s main entrance and, in size and location, mirrors the minerals gallery on the second floor of the museum’s main Waterhouse building.
  Historically, it served as both an osteology (skeleton) gallery and a mammals gallery. After the Museum’s original herbarium was damaged during the Second World War,
  
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• Vodafone takes up to €1.1bn hit from Drahi’s German broadband deal

  16-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  Patrick Drahi’s sale of 50% stake in OXG will deprive joint venture partner Vodafone of potentially substantial future earnings
  
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• The London Buzz – 15th Sept 2026

  15-09-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Old London: Opening Stockwell tube station 4th Dec 1890
  Today’s London news round-up:
  A pro-Palestine activist who spray-painted slogans on to a statue of Sir Winston Churchill has been found not guilty of criminal damage. Standard
  Miniature model maker Dean Sarsfield writes about his hobby, which recently had him downsize a much-loved Holborn pub — and now has him nominated for a prestigious art prize. Londonist
  Sadiq Khan has said he will continue “banging the drum for London
  
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• Night time Halloween trail coming to Kew Gardens

  15-09-2026 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Kew Gardens is going spooky next month with a Halloween-themed illuminated trail.
  Pumpkin-Scarecrow (c) Ollie Dixon
  From Friday 16th October, there will be a 1.5 km trail through Kew Gardens, including Dracula’s Lair, a haunted Cursed Tomb, a dark Medieval Dungeon, and a mysterious Forest Ritual tucked away among the trees.
  Elsewhere, an imposing executioner stands guard in the Medieval Dungeon, Dracula hides in the shadows of his lair, and a horned ritualist conducts a spooky woodland cer
  
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