Stellium Data Centres and CBRE have released The North of England Data Centres Market Report. The free report, which was commissioned by Stellium Data Centres, can be downloaded here.

Focusing on the economic growth and data centre capacity available in the North of England, the report notes the UK’s Northeast as having the lowest carbon intensity of any UK transmission area – a crucial requirement it says for a cloud service provider or hyperscaler – and which will benefit further with the development of large-scale renewable power from Dogger Bank, the largest off-shore wind farm in Europe.

CBRE cites Stellium 1, the Newcastle-based data centre operator’s scalable 80MW, 4,264 square metres colocation facility, as the largest in the region and one of the few capable of offering hyperscalers and large enterprises a viable alternative wholesale solution to London/Southern England. CBRE also highlighted Stellium’s campus as suitable for meeting wholesale requirements.

Keith Breed, Senior Research Analyst, Data Centres of CBRE said: “Selected Northern data centres such as Stellium 1 are becoming a strong proposition as a connectivity hub by providing access to fibre, dark fibre, Internet Exchanges (IXPs) and subsea cables – offering low latency local, national and international communications.”

He added: “The lower cost base compared with London and substantial reserves of available renewable power, positions the North as a potential alternative to the power constrained and relatively high-cost London region, where wholesale capacity has traditionally been based.” Stellium 1 is the only UK data centre with a secure landing station for housing the world’s latest subsea cable networks. These include AquaComms (to/from the US on the North Atlantic Loop) and Altibox (to/from the Nordics/Mainland Europe on NO-UK). Stellium also hosts the NCL-IX Exchange offering multiple peering opportunities to customers to minimise latency and transit costs.

Additionally, Stellium owns a 40 km carrier-neutral metropolitan area optical fibre network (MAN), complementing the Newcastle City high speed network and supporting the Northeast’s digital economy by enabling local full fibre network (LFFN) and 5G services.

Paul Mellon, Operations Director, Stellium Data Centres, commented: “CBRE’s research findings are well-aligned to our vision and strategy of making Stellium 1 the go-to wholesale data centre in the North of England for large enterprise, cloud and hyperscaler organisations. We are the only data centre operator offering a totally secure low latency UK alternative to London for internet traffic from the USA, Europe and Nordics.”

Stellium Data Centres will be joining Submarine Networks EMEA 2023 as a Gold Sponsor and will take part in a discussion on “Building the communications eco-system: from subsea, to the data centre, and beyond” on 31st May. To join Stellium and 800 senior leaders from the global subsea cable industry, head to the event website to book your ticket.

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According to reports, the deal could be worth over $4 billion

Vodafone has long lamented the highly competitive nature of the Spanish telecoms market, in which they compete fiercely with Movistar, Orange, and MasMovil in an ongoing price war.

For some time, the company had hoped that market consolidation would be the solution to their woes, with rumours of a potential merger with MasMovil rising and falling repeatedly in recent years.

Indeed, this focus on consolidation in competitive markets quickly became something of a bugbear for the multinational mobile operator. Championed by then CEO Nick Read, Vodafone explored numerous tie-ups in markets including Italy, Belgium, and the UK.

But while discussions with Three UK appear to now be bearing fruit, a dearth of other merger deals meant that this news came too late for Read, who resigned at the end of last year.

In Spain specifically, Vodafone’s dreams of consolidation were ultimately quashed when MasMovil instead signed a deal to merge with rival telco giant Orange last year.

As a result, it now appears that Vodafone may be looking to exit the Spanish market entirely, with sources speaking to Bloomberg suggesting that the company has been presented with takeover offers from various suitors, including  Apollo Global Management Inc.

The details of such offers have yet to be revealed, though the sources suggest that Vodafone Spain could be valued at over $4 billion.

Vodafone has not announced any formal intention to sell its Spanish unit, but the sources suggest that the operator will consider offers if the price is right.

The fact that Vodafone Spain is receiving unsolicited takeover offers should not come as too great a surprise given the unit’s perceived vulnerability.

Since the departure of Nick Read, interim CEO Margherita Della Valle has moved to reduce Vodafone Spain’s independence by aggregating it with the company’s wider European Cluster, a group that contains numerous smaller European units like Ireland and Greece. Della Valle says that this move will help to further simplify the Group’s management and revitalise business growth in Spain, with the Cluster under the direct leadership of CEO Serpil Timuray.

As a result of this strategic rebalance, Vodafone Spain’s CEO, Colman Deegan, resigned from his post at the start of this year.

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Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

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CEO Tim Höttges announced the news at the company’s latest shareholder meeting, saying the German operator now owns 50.2% of the US giant

This week, Deutsche Telekom has announced that it has finally achieved it long-term goal of regaining a majority stake in the world’s most valuable mobile network operator, T-Mobile US.

According to Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges, the Group now owns a 50.2% stake in the business, finally achieving the majority ownership goal it first laid out during its 2021 Capital Markets Day

When T-Mobile acquired Sprint three years ago, DT’s stake in the operator stood at 43%,. Since then, Deutsche Telekom has gradually regrown its stake in the US business, reaching 49% in 2022, according to the company’s 2022 Annual Report.

Now, the company has taken the final step to increase this stake to a majority once again.

“We have the majority and are the largest shareholder of the world’s most valuable telecommunications company – T-Mobile U.S.,” announced Höttges in a shareholder meeting this week.

The cost of this increased share is reportedly less than $1 billion in 2023, with Deutsche Telekom estimating that the benefits of the transaction will be between $7.2 and $7.5 billion.

At the shareholders meeting, Höttges also highlighted the Group’s ongoing sustainability efforts, noting the progress that has been made in recent years.

“We emit 94 percent fewer CO2 emissions than in 2017. We aim to be fully climate neutral by 2025. Last year, we reduced our energy consumption in Germany by 278 gigawatt hours – that is 11 percent,” he said. “We want to achieve net zero emissions from the production of cell phones. Anyone who fails to achieve green production will eventually be removed from the line-up. We import devices. But we export our environmental protection standards.”

Deutsche Telekom is aiming for its entire value chain to be carbon neutral by 2040.

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Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

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The test saw drones travel between the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites in Coventry and Rugby, in preparation for medical deliveries

This week, BT has announced the latest steps in its ambition to help create the world’s largest drone superhighway, with a new trial seeing drones travel successfully between two Midlands hospitals.

The trial, jointly conducted by Skyfarer Ltd and Medical Logistics UK, was initiated in October 2022.

Using connectivity from BT’s network, the trial saw 130 drone flights conducted on the 32km route between the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites. This included travelling in complex airspace, close to urban areas.

Cumulatively, the drones in the trial travelled over 1,900km, including 220km in a single day. Over 30 hours of these flights were beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) – the first time BVLOS drone flight has taken place over-land in the UK.

As well as delivering the obvious benefits of being faster and more direct than comparable car travel between the two locations, drone deliveries will also bring major sustainability benefits; Skyfarer recorded the carbon emissions of a drone delivery as being 99.98% lower than a diesel van and 90.5% lower than an electric van.

“This trial would not have been possible without our consortium of partners. BT Group’s support has enabled a considerable amount of application learning and development, pushing Skyfarer and our consortium closer to a point where turn key long range BVLOS drone operations are an everyday occurrence,” said Georgia Hanrahan, Business Manager, Skyfarer.

“The Skyfarer and BT Group relationship will be the driving force for this revolutionary innovation and its adaption to day-to-day life. With BT Group providing the technology and communications expertise, Skyfarer is able to offer long-range BVLOS capability in return to justify and prove systems.”

BT has been increasing its activity in the drone space for a number of years now, viewing ubiquitous mobile connectivity as a cornerstone for BVLOS drone flight. In fact, last year, a consortium including the operator introduced “Project Skyway”, a plan to build a 165-mile drone corridor spanning Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby.

Since then, BT has expanded its relationship with the consortium’s leader, Unified Traffic Management (UTM) specialist Altitude Angel, by entering into a £5 million deal to help the Altitude Angel scale up its ARROW tower network beyond its initial goals outlined in Project Skyway.

According to BT, the opportunity here is enormous – in healthcare alone, the recent research suggests that commercialised drones could increase the GDP of the sector by £4 billion by 2030.

Perhaps it should comes as no surprise, then, that BT is not the only operator expanding its drone-related activities in recent years, with both Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom among the major telecoms players helping to develop this ecosystem.

How will mobile networks enable commercialised drone flight? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Connected North conference

Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

Some metro fiber, some software-defined interconnection, some 800GE, and a significant federal contract award: … [visit site to read more]