Telecom news

• One of the world's youngest nations launches first locally-owned MNO

  13-07-2021 02:00
  South Sudan first became a sovereign nation in January 2011, seceding from Sudan following an independence referendum that saw almost 99% vote for independence.  By October that year, four pre-existing telcos had received operating licences: Kuwaiti operator Zain, South Africa’s MTN, the Gambia’s Gamtel, and Vivacell, owned by Lebanon&rsquo…read more on TotalTele.com »
  
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• US telcos shed $60bn in value after SpaceX announces spectrum purchase

  09-10-2026 19:41 via ft.com
  Elon Musk takes big step towards launching Starlink mobile service for US consumers
  
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• The London Buzz – 9th Oct 2026

  09-10-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Olde London – Denmark Hill and the Fox Under The Hill pub around 1904–1905Today’s London news round-up:
  Artists are taking over the old Wandsworth library on Garratt Lane, nearly three years after the library moved to a new building yards away. Putney News
  Window cleaners become trapped on 15th floor of London skyscraper Independent
  An underground wartime shelter that could hold up to 800 people was found during works to revamp Lewisham town centre, The Greenwich Wire
  Prime Min
  
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• US telcos shed $45bn in value after SpaceX announces spectrum purchase

  09-10-2026 16:37 via ft.com
  Elon Musk takes big step towards launching Starlink mobile service for US consumers
  
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• Tickets Alert: The atmospheric Dennis Severs’ House Christmas experience

  09-10-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The atmospheric Dennis Severs’ House gets even more special for Christmas, and tickets are now on sale for the often sold-out winter season.Just around the corner from Spitalfields Market in East London, Dennis Severs’ House is laid out as a Georgian house where the family has just stepped outside for a moment. You are invited into their home to walk around while they’re out.
  It’s not a museum with lots of precious objects but an experience. You are exhorted to step back
  
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• TfL staff’s art exhibition on public display in Canary Wharf tube station

  09-10-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The people who drive London’s trains, staff its stations, and reunite passengers with lost belongings are showing another side of their talents at Canary Wharf’s Jubilee line station.It’s the TfL staff art exhibition and brings together images of 80 artworks created by TfL staff in their own time, ranging from paintings and drawings to textiles and woodwork.
  TfL’s annual staff art exhibition is usually held internally, but this year its property arm, Places for London, ha
  
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• Virgin targets 2030 launch for cross-Channel trains from London

  09-10-2026 09:15 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Virgin Trains has confirmed that it plans to launch its cross-Channel rail services in 2030, after signing an agreement for 12 new Alstom trains and securing a deal to maintain them at Temple Mills depot in east London.
  (c) Virgin Trains Europe
  The company proposes to run 20 daily return services linking London with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, adding almost 7.5 million seats a year to the cross-Channel market. It says the venture could create up to 1,000 jobs.
  In August 2025, Virgin Trains Eu
  
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• US telcos stocks tumble after SpaceX announces spectrum acquisition

  09-10-2026 00:50 via ft.com
  Elon Musk takes big step towards launching a Starlink mobile service for US consumers
  
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• Rare chance to see Nelson’s letters before £6 million auction

  08-10-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  (c) Sotheby’s
  A collection of Admiral Lord Nelson’s letters, ranging from accounts of naval battles to intimate correspondence with Emma Hamilton, will go on display at Sotheby’s this month, offering a rare chance to see the documents before they are sold at auction.
  The exhibition at Sotheby’s runs from 21st to 28th October, opening on Trafalgar Day, the anniversary of the battle in which Nelson was killed in 1805.
  Assembled over 40 years by the collector and philanthrop
  
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• Chelsea’s Garrison Chapel hosts a celebration of traditional craft

  08-10-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  An intricately painted Ganesha, a roughly textured Christian icon and watercolours inspired by ancient rock art bring very different religious artistic traditions together in a graduate exhibition.Held every three years, the exhibition features work by past and present students from the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts. This year’s theme, Light and Darkness, leaves plenty of room for interpretation, so the exhibition ranges from clearly religious paintings to a collection
  
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• TfL confirms it will apply for DLR extension to Thamesmead in early 2027

  08-10-2026 12:35 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The third and final consultation on the proposed DLR extension to Thamesmead has, unsurprisingly, favoured building it. After all, if you ask people if they want better public transport, you’d have to propose something really bad for people to say “no thanks”.
  (c) TfL
  Although the general plans were already known, the latest consultation focused on the finer details, such as the design of the two new DLR stations and the construction impacts in the local communities.
  TfL says t
  
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• King Charles III’s formal state portrait to go on display in London

  08-10-2026 11:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The first official portrait of King Charles III in formal state attire, with a coronation robe and an orb and sceptre, will be on display in central London for a couple of weeks.
  Stern Pissarro Gallery
  The portrait is by Toronto doctor artist Dr Suan-Seh Foo and was commissioned by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia for their official portrait.
  It will be permanently displayed at Government House in Halifax, but for a short while, it will be on display in London.
  The oil-on-can
  
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• London’s Pocket Parks: St Johns Street, Clerkenwell, EC1

  08-10-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  This is a new linear park near Farringdon Station that opened a few months agoSt Johns Street is a historic street in Clerkenwell and forms the first section of the original route of the Great North Road – the coaching route between London and Scotland. This section of the road has always been very wide, probably as a turn around spot before the road reaches Smithfield markets, so in 2022, plans were put forward to shrink it a bit for the first time in its history.
  The two way road has bee
  
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• The London Buzz – 7th Oct 2026

  07-10-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Olde London – Parliament Hill, Hampstead
  Today’s London news round-up:
  O2 has struck a record deal thought to be in the region of £200m to retain the naming rights to the London venue the O2 in the largest renewal of its kind in UK history. The Guardian
  In photos: Kennington Skatepark (the Kenny) becomes a homeless camp Brixton Buzz
  The candidates hoping to be London’s second Tory mayor BBC News
  A new study published today explains, for the first time in detail, how the s
  
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• Future GBR trains expected to offer step-free access by default

  07-10-2026 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  All new Great British Railways (GBR) trains will be expected to try to offer step-free access without needing staff-assisted ramps, the government has confirmed.
  No more ramps with GBR trains?
  The Transport Secretary has confirmed that unassisted access between platform and train will be a baseline expectation for new GBR trains.
  The commitment forms part of the government’s rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, announced last month, which will bring decisions about trains, track, dep
  
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• Sleepy European telcos turn to data centre craze

  07-10-2026 16:28 via ft.com
  With data centres, companies in the sector may finally be on to happier hunting grounds
  
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• Tickets Alert: Chelsea Flower Show tickets going on sale shortly

  07-10-2026 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  A date for your floral diary, as tickets to next year’s Chelsea Flower Show go on sale later this month.
  The flower show runs from 18th-22nd May 2027, but the first two days are for RHS members only, so the public have three days – Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd May — to attend.
  It’s not a cheap show to visit – and prices are still to be announced, but for 2026, they started at £107 per person.
  Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday 21st October from here.
  A tip
  
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• Exhibition explores how London turned fire and coffee into an insurance industry

  07-10-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  In 1700s London, if you needed household insurance to protect your home from fire, you had to visit a place that sold “essence of old shoes”. That unlikely location is where the London insurance market began, and a new exhibition explores its origins and how it spurred London’s emerging financial markets.Of course, what we are talking about are the coffee shops, and famously Lloyds, where Edward Lloyd started by importing coffee from Yemen and roasting it.
  Away from London&rsqu
  
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• HS2’s Wendover tunnel is ready to start disappearing beneath the countryside

  07-10-2026 11:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  The busy, noisy A413 road has been protected from the occasional swoosh of an HS2 train after the final segment of a 1.4km concrete tunnel was installed alongside it.
  The structure in June 2026 (c) ianVisits
  When the HS2 railway was being planned, running it through the Chilterns next to an existing busy road seemed like the obvious choice, but local opposition has seen the railway covered in a concrete tunnel as it passes near the town of Wendover.
  Unlike HS2’s deep-bored tunnels, the Wen
  
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• The 1920s proposal to build an airport in Hyde Park

  07-10-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Did you know that Hyde Park should be an airport? Yes, really! Because a century ago, when London was smaller and planes even more so, there was a semi-serious attempt to build an airport on Hyde Park.
  You what!?
  Complaints that London’s sole international airport, at Croydon, was too far from central London and too inconvenient for busy people to schlep all the way down there for a flight spurred the idea of a more central airport.
  In October 1926, it was reported that Lord Apsley MP prop
  
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• Bayeux Tapestry’s lost ending reimagined for Westminster Abbey exhibition

  06-10-2026 20:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Coinciding with the final few months of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition in the British Museum, Westminster Abbey will display what the final missing panel might have looked like.
  How did it end?
  The tapestry is thought to be missing its final panel, either because it was lost or never completed, but modern artists have occasionally attempted to imagine what it might have looked like. And a millennium after the birth of William the Conqueror, Westminster Abbey will display such a possible panel. D
  
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• The London Buzz – 6th Oct 2026

  06-10-2026 18:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Old London – Commercial Street in Spitalfields around 1907
  Today’s London news round-up:
  Lambeth Council has confirmed that it is due to review the possibility of introducing a four-day week trial. Local Gov
  Works to remove flammable material from a large block of 100 flats in Barking town centre have been approved. Barking Star
  Harrow council had already slapped poppies on lampposts. Diamond Geezer
  Londoners could get a reward of £500 by reporting persistent Tube fare evaders
  
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• Hither Green’s new footbridge opens for station’s step-free upgrade

  06-10-2026 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Last week, two shabby old footbridges at Hither Green railway station were replaced with one single very long spanning modern footbridge, as part of the station’s upgrade to make it step-free and build two new entrances.Although only the footbridge and a new ramp between platforms 4 and 5 have opened so far, the wider step-free scheme will also add four 16-person lifts. They are installed, but undergoing testing.
  The new footbridge is a substantial structure and is clearly much larger than
  
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• Kew Gardens to offer rare visits inside its emptied Palm House

  06-10-2026 14:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Next year there will be a rare opportunity to step into Kew Gardens’ famously large Palm House and see the entire structure for the first time in generations, totally empty of plants.
  Palm House (c) ianVisits
  The nearly 180-year-old tropical glasshouse is usually packed full of plants – and very humid – so the remarkable structure of the building is often hard to appreciate. As part of a once-in-a-generation restoration project, staff are currently moving all the plants from th
  
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• Frieze drops eleven sculptures into Regents Park

  06-10-2026 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Visitors to Regents Park may notice some very odd additions at the moment as the annual Frieze sculpture trail returns.Featuring work by 11 artists, the collection ranges from seemingly random assemblages of metalwork to a tree that’s easy to miss but worth seeking out to pointless slabs of stone in the ground.
  The black palm is worth seeking out because when you look closely, you’ll see that the leaves are all made from old car tyres.Elsewhere is a rather sci-fi looking structure, a
  
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• Your guide to London’s 2026 fireworks and bonfire displays

  06-10-2026 12:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  It’s that time of year again, with Christmas in the shops and fireworks in the parks – Fireworks Night is back for 2026, and in a few locations, the displays still include the traditional bonfire.Prices below are for adults – children and family rates are also available. You can probably see the top half of the display for free from outside most venues, but since many raise money for local charities, pay for tickets if you can.
  And, yes, there are a few displays in October.
  Fri
  
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• Alice in Wonderland experience in London opens next month

  06-10-2026 11:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  A new Alice in Wonderland experience opens next month at Dock X in Canada Water, promising to take visitors through ten rooms spanning 26,000 sq ft. The 120-minute production combines live actors, theatrical storytelling, projection mapping and sensory effects to tell Lewis Carroll’s story.
  Alice Immersive Wonderland (c) Cités Immersives
  The route includes a Rabbit Hole, the Caterpillar’s Den, a Cheshire Cat forest, a Mad Hatter tea party and the Queen’s Court. It ends w
  
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• DLR staff get their own Monopoly-style board game

  06-10-2026 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  
  Lots of companies buy corporate-branded goodies to hand out to staff and other worthies, and oh, look, yet another branded water bottle and tote bag. But sometimes, it’s a DLR-themed clone of the Monopoly board game – KADOPOLY.It was commissioned by the Docklands Light Railway’s (DLR) operator, KeolisAmey, as gifts for staff, so you’re not going to see it in shops, but it’s still been done to a high standard, with a lot of DLR touches to the board game.
  Community Ch
  
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• The creditor bloodbath in UK telecoms

  06-10-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  BT struck a deal to buy TalkTalk but the majority of the struggling broadband provider’s creditors are likely to be left with nothing
  
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• BT’s swoop on TalkTalk has regulators over a barrel

  06-10-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  UK watchdog typically takes a robust view of reduced competition in telecoms market but is taking a back seat this time
  
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