News

The Medusa submarine fiber optic cable system, owned by AFR-IX Telecom, has achieved a significant milestone with its first landing at the cable station in Marseille, France. This marks the beginning of the cable’s rollout across the Mediterranean, establishing a crucial connection between Southern Europe and North Africa.

The initial segment will connect Marseille with Bizerte, Tunisia, and Nador, Morocco, with the landings expected between late October and December 2025. The first phase is slated to be operational by early 2026, paving the way for subsequent landings planned throughout the year to expand the system across the region.

The Medusa system will span around 8,700km with 19 landing points, linking 12 countries across North Africa and Southern Europe, including Portugal, Morocco, Spain, France, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Malta, Libya, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt.

The cable system will support up to 24 fibre pairs, each with a capacity of 20 Tbps.

The project also extends beyond the Mediterranean, with planned connections to the Atlantic Ocean via Portugal and the Red Sea through Aqaba, Jordan. Further expansion to Sub-Saharan Africa is planned, with Gabon scheduled to join the network in 2028.

Marseille is a major digital hub in Europe, offering critical infrastructure such as data centres and multiple submarine cable interconnections.

“By bringing Medusa to Marseille, one of Europe’s leading digital hubs, we are laying the foundation for a project that will transform communications between Europe and Africa. Medusa will act as a driver of economic growth for the region and a catalyst for knowledge exchange across the Mediterranean,” said AFR-IX Telecom’s CEO, Norman Albi.

The Medusa project, a private initiative, has attracted substantial public funding due to its strategic importance. The European Union has contributed €38.3 million through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program, supporting AFR-IX projects aimed at strengthening Europe-North Africa connectivity.

A notable participant in the Medusa network is Tunisie Telecom, which has signed a strategic partnership to operate a dedicated fibre-optic link between Bizerte and Marseille with a 20 Tbps capacity. The company’s involvement underscores the collaborative nature of the project, which is co-funded by AFR-IX Telecom, Orange, and the European Union.

As the first segment of Medusa approaches operational readiness, the project stands as a landmark development in Mediterranean telecommunications infrastructure, promising to enhance digital connectivity, foster economic integration, and strengthen ties between Europe and Africa over the coming decade.

Partner Article 

As enterprises across the world ramp up their digital and AI transformations, Huawei Cloud has emerged as a partner of choice with solutions targeted for key industry verticals, such as manufacturing, finance, public services, and retail, among others.

The company announced the expansion of its AI-driven cloud portfolio at the recently concluded Huawei Cloud Industry Summit, held as part of Huawei Connect 2025. The two sessions, Huawei Cloud: The AI Pioneer in Industry and Huawei Cloud AI Summit: Unlocking All Intelligence, together highlighted the evolution of Huawei’s cloud technologies and solutions that are enabling enterprises across the world to achieve business success through AI-led intelligent transformation.

“AI is reshaping industries and our lives. To fully understand how we can make AI serve different industries, there are three pillars of computing, algorithm and data. If we use these three elements to develop AI applications and agents for our industry and life, it can support us. We promise to work around these aspects to support our global customers and partners to help them grow very fast,” said Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Services. He highlighted that Huawei Cloud’s industry-leading solutions have been deployed in over 500 scenarios across 30 industries.

The unique and differentiating aspect of Huawei Cloud solutions is that they are designed for the particular requirements of different industry verticals.  at every stage of deployment. “AI has become the most influential general-purpose technology. In cloud native, Huawei Cloud containers have been recognized as a global leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Then we move to data and AI convergence and here Huawei’s big data and data warehouse ranked number one in market share in China. In addition, our Pangu models lead several major industries in China for AI,” said Joy Huang, Vice President of Huawei Cloud, in his keynote speech, `Accelerating Intelligence with Huawei Cloud’.

“To fast-track the intelligent transformation of our customers, Huawei Cloud will continue to innovate in the areas of cloud architecture, processes and tools, solutions and excellence operations,” added Huang. He also announced the launch of Enterprise Architecture Bench (EAB), a framework leveraging Huawei’s experience, methodologies and practices of deploying in over 500 AI scenarios, to help enterprises build and run AI solutions simply and efficiently.

Huawei Cloud recently announced the launch of its AI Compute Service powered by CloudMatrix384, a next-generation AI infrastructure solution designed for large-scale AI model training and inference.

“We launched CloudMatrix 384 Supernode in the first half of this year, marking our entry into the Supernode era for AI compute services. In terms of training, this allows us to scale up to 432 nodes into a single AI cluster, supporting as many as 160,000 chips, capable of training trillion-parameter models. With full-stack failure perception, we can now identify 95% of failures and recover from them quickly, maintaining stable training for up to 40 days and pushing MFUs above 55%,” said Bruno Zhang, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Huawei Cloud, in his keynote address on Huawei Cloud AI: Reshaping Industries with All Intelligence.

Leveraging Rich Experience to Gain New Capabilities

In both sessions of the Huawei Cloud Summit, several prominent global enterprises from varied industries shared their experience of deploying Huawei Cloud to accelerate their business growth and digital transformation.

“Dubai Municipality is driving the development of a digital transformation to enhance services across Dubai. By leveraging advanced tools like the 3D Digital Twin Engine and combining GIS data with AI technologies, the Municipality is implementing innovative solutions in human interaction, transportation, and tracking systems, with Huawei providing key technological support,” said Eng. Maitha Ali Al Nuaimi, Director of GIS at Dubai Municipality.

Huawei is empowering several enterprises, across different industry verticals, to transform their operations so they are better placed to take advantage of the new market opportunities. In her address, Xu Yue, General Manager Assistant at Conch Cement, highlighted how the company is using Huawei Cloud Stack, including Pangu prediction, to create an AI operating system that brings together central training, edge, inference, cloud-edgy synergy and optimization. It is able to leverage existing data for real-time data analysis and autonomous learning to improve quality control and equipment management, among others.

“The design process is typically very long, slow and inefficient. With the help of Huawei’s solution, we are able to use AI to generate background, size etc, to fast-track the process. We use Huawei Cloud AI Token Service to develop an AI-driven creative community for designers,” revealed Mi Qipei, Chief Product Officer at Gaoding (Xiamen) Technology.

On the other hand, XCMG, a leading manufacturer, shared insights into its partnership with Huawei Cloud, focusing on the integration of AI into manufacturing for autonomous vehicles and machinery. In the same vein, Faraz Arshad, Chief Technology Officer at Starzplay, the Middle Eastern streaming giant, highlighted how Huawei Cloud’s serverless scalability helped it to develop a high-performance content distribution and intelligent operations platform. Starzplay was able to enhance its platform’s user experience and scale the growth of its streaming platform. In Brazil, Itaú Unibanco was able to accelerate its multi-cloud strategy and cloud migration by leveraging Huawei Cloud’s solid foundation with security and automation capabilities.

In conclusion

These case studies effectively highlight how Huawei Cloud is enabling a range of industries to grow by helping them streamline their operations, acquire new capabilities, and foster innovation. Huawei Cloud is emerging as a leader in AI-powered, industry-specific cloud solutions, combining advanced infrastructure, software tools, and enterprise partnerships. Several successful deployments effectively demonstrate how it is helping enterprises streamline operations, enhance capabilities and drive innovation.

News

The plug-in-and-play SafetyCase emergency connectivity solution is designed to be deployed rapidly when terrestrial connectivity is unavailable

This week, Orange Business has announced it is incorporating Eutelsat’s OneWeb satellite services into its SafetyCase solution.

SafetyCase is a rapidly deployable emergency connectivity solution that creates a temporary bubble of Wi-Fi through the ‘intelligent hybridisation’ of available networks – i.e., combining available mobile and satellite network capacity – for emergency situations where terrestrial networks are unavailable. The solution has its own power source, allowing for deployment anywhere.

The solution comes in two formats: a ‘Mobile Unit’ that can be operational in seconds and the, presumably more powerful, ‘Crisis Center’ model, which takes 30 minutes to deploy, but provides up to 20 hours of connectivity to crisis cells or command centers.

It is unclear exactly when Orange Business launched SafetyCase, but the company says the solution saw usage during the severe flooding in Valencia, Spain, and during Cyclone Chido in Mayotte at the end of last year.

OneWeb’s low Earth orbit satellite constellation already provides coverage across France, adding additional network capacity to the SafetyCase wherever it is required.

Orange also stressed the sovereignty element of the partnership, highlighting that it’s choice of a European satellite operator allowed for greater trust for users, particularly emergency service and security service personel.

“With Eutelsat’s OneWeb, we reinforce the promise of SafetyCase: restore communications when everything stops. This European, sovereign advance gives firefighters, security forces, and local authorities a decisive capability: rapidly recreating a reliable network to coordinate, treat, alert, and decide. It’s a key building block of national resilience, powered by Orange’s network excellence and our new Defense & Security Division, at the service of safety and emergency,” explained Nassima Auvray, Defense and Security Director at Orange Business.

Orange has a long history of working with OneWeb, having initially signed an initial deal with the company back in 2023 to provide satellite fronthaul and backhaul services across the Group’s international footprint. The operator expanded this partnership earlier this year.

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News

Ofcom has confirmed that all three of the UK’s mobile operators – EE (BT), Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), and VodafoneThree – have been given the greenlight to participate in the upcoming auction

This week, UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has approved all three of the UK’s mobile operators to participate in the upcoming auction for spectrum in the 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) bands.

In total, 5.4 GHz of the spectrum will be available in 200MHz lots, with 68 licences available covering ‘high density’ areas across the country. For areas outside the remit of these licences, the UK’s Shared Access licensing framework will apply, meaning operators can attain permission to use the spectrum on a first-come, first-served basis.

The spectrum, often known as mmWave spectrum, has qualities that make it both appealing and challenging for the operators. On the one hand, it can support multi-gigabit-per-second peak data rates, with massive capacity and low latency. This makes it ideal for supporting large numbers of users simultaneously in dense environments like stadiums and city centres, as well as providing a ‘fibre-like’ broadband experience for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) users.

On the other hand, the spectrum has a much shorter range than the mid-band (generally 1GHz–6 GHz) spectrum typically used for 5G, hence more base stations are required to support an equivalent area, driving up deployment costs. It also has poor signal penetration, meaning it can be blocked by common obstacles, including walls, windows, and even the human body itself.

As a result of its limitations and inherent expense, mmWave deployments worldwide so far have been patchy.

At the dawn of 5G, the US quickly emerged as the poster child for mmWave, spending billions of dollars on relevant spectrum licences, with Verizon even targeting nationwide coverage. The reality, however, was underwhelming. While the spectrum has found some success in targeted urban environments and for FWA, deployment at scale has proven difficult, with the spectrum’s value sliding in response.

Indeed, this deployment challenge is being felt around the world. Even in South Korea – one of the most advanced mobile markets in the world – the country’s three national mobile operators were forced to surrender their mmWave licences to the regulator, having failed to meet minimum deployment targets.

This raises the question of how the UK mobile operators plan to use mmWave spectrum effectively – and how much they will be willing to pay for it.

Ofcom’s auction has reserve prices set at £2 million for lots in the 26GHz band and £1 million for those in the 40GHz bands. Given the relatively large amount of spectrum available and the expensive rollout of 5G Standalone the operators are already undertaking, it seems unlikely that they will be willing to shell out huge sums of money for mmWave.

While no official date for the auction has been given, it has long been planned for this month, with Ofcom saying that it will take place “soon”.

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News

Oaktree Capital Management is actively seeking new minority investors in its data centre development arm, Pure Data Centres Group, to support ambitious expansion plans.

The investment firm aims to raise at least £800 million ($1.1 billion) by selling a 20-40% stake in Pure DC, which is currently valued between £4 billion and £5 billion.

According to reports, the formal fundraising process could commence as early as November, although discussions remain in preliminary stages, meaning the final size and timing of the deal may evolve.

Pure Data Centres Group operates over 500MW of capacity either in operation or under development across a the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The company’s most recent development is its £1 billion joint venture with property investment firm SEGRO PLC, aimig to develop a fully fitted 56-megawatt data centre in Park Royal, London.

For Oaktree, the stake sale is indicative of the bullish outlook on the expanding data centre market. The firm is positioning Pure DC to capitalise on the increasing demand for hyperscale data infrastructure amid growing digitalisation and cloud adoption trends, both in the UK and internationally.

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 Intracom Telecom, a global technology systems and solutions provider and BroadbandOne, a rapidly growing enterprise connectivity provider in several States in the U.S, today announced a strategic partnership to expand their broadband points of presence across Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida. The pioneering initiative is based on Intracom Telecom’s high-performance multi-gigabit mmWave Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology and BroadbandOne’s highly differentiated service model.

BroadbandOne’s rollout delivers cost-effective gigabit connectivity for business customers, especially in areas where traditional fiber is limited or cost prohibitive. Powered by Intracom Telecom’s technology and operating at the 28 GHz mmWave frequency range, it is capable of connecting subscribers with download speeds up to 2.4 Gbps and reaching beyond 5 miles from the cell center. Each Intracom Telecom WiBAS™ G5 Smart Base Station radio offers 5.6 Gbps capacity and serves 120 subscribers, with powerful hierarchical QoS, and exceptionally high availability of service. The Intracom Telecom technology continues to offer reliable service where buried or aerial fiber fails due to cuts and weather inflicted damage.

The deployment strategy launched supports BroadbandOne’s Telco as a Service (TaaS) model, a fully managed solution that gives enterprises scalable, carrier-grade connectivity without the burden of owning and maintaining network infrastructure.

“Businesses need broadband that is as agile as they are,” said Eric Watko, CEO of BroadbandOne. “Through this FWA rollout, enterprises can access fiber-like gigabit performance without the delays and costs of traditional fiber builds. This is about giving customers faster time to service, predictable costs, and the flexibility to scale as their needs evolve.”

“Intracom Telecom is proud to support BroadbandOne in this multi-state rollout,” said Kyriakos Vergos, CEO of Intracom Telecom USA. “Our unique technology platform is designed to deliver high-capacity, secure, and ultra-reliable multi-gigabit connectivity at scale. By combining BroadbandOne’s innovative service model with our technology, enterprises across the U.S. can benefit from faster deployments and a broadband experience comparable to fiber.”

Together, BroadbandOne and Intracom Telecom are redefining how enterprises access and consume broadband by combining service innovation, advanced technology, and speed of deployment. The partnership is set to expand into additional U.S. regions in 2025, accelerating broadband access and digital transformation for businesses nationwide.

Press Release

The site uses Nokia’s dual-band massive MIMO technology to combine low, mid and high-band spectrum, including new spectrum obtained as part of Virgin Media O2’s deal with Vodafone UK

Virgin Media O2 has today announced the successful switch-on of a first-of-its-kind Giga Site in Paddington, London, utilising newly acquired spectrum and marking a major step forward in delivering faster and more reliable mobile connectivity across the UK.

The new Giga Site combines low, mid and high-band spectrum with Nokia’s new cutting-edge dual-band massive MIMO technology, which uses a large number of antennas to significantly improve 5G network performance by boosting capacity, spectral efficiency, data rates, and coverage. This is the one of the first deployments of its kind on a live European network.

By bringing together different spectrum bands on one mast, the operator can offer strong, reliable signal to a large area. The single site is using a combination of low band spectrum to provide broad coverage, mid band to offer additional capacity, and high band to give customers very fast speeds.

The new site can deliver more than 10Gbps of throughput which is more than the entire O2 UK network carried at the peak of the London 2012 Olympics, and is enough to support 2,000 simultaneous 5Mbps HD video streams.

Following many months of detailed technical planning, the site has been able to make use of newly acquired spectrum from Vodafone UK, with the signal put to use just one minute after it was transferred. Virgin Media O2 will continue to deploy this spectrum over the medium term.

Virgin Media O2 plans to roll out 1,000 of these new Giga Sites nationwide throughout next year to bring a further step change in mobile connectivity for customers on the O2 network who will experience faster speeds and a more reliable connection.

Dr Robert Joyce, Director of Mobile Access Engineering at O2, said: “The switch on of our first Giga Site here in central London is a really important demonstration of how we are investing and innovating to continue improving our mobile network and customer experience. These new sites will deliver faster speeds, greater capacity, and more reliable connections for our customers. As we carry out upgrades and roll out hundreds more Giga Sites across the country, we’ll put our new spectrum to work helping us keep improving mobile connectivity nationwide.”

Mark Atkinson, Head of Radio Access Networks at Nokia commented: “Our partnership with Virgin Media O2 to implement Giga Sites reflects our commitment to helping our customers differentiate with superior performance. This is one of Europe’s first dual-band Massive MIMO deployment combined with our TDD carrier aggregation solution, which showcases how our latest high-performance radios and versatile carrier aggregation solutions allow operators to fully harness the power of their spectrum, enabling the next wave of 5G services.”

These upgrades are part of Virgin Media O2’s Mobile Transformation Plan, which will see the operator invest approximately £700m this year to future-proof its mobile network. The plan is focused on expanding 4G and 5G coverage, a dedicated small cells rollout to boost capacity in dense urban areas, and innovative solutions to address persistent network pain points including along railway lines, at airports, on motorways, and in stadiums and arenas.

Virgin Media O2 recently announced that it had agreed a deal with Vodafone UK to acquire 78.8 MHz of spectrum, bringing the operator’s total spectrum holding to approximately 30% of UK mobile spectrum and materially enhancing the company’s network position.

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News

The island nation is the biggest producer of semiconductors in the world and maintaining this dominance is about more than just the economy.

This week, the Taiwanese government has denied that they are considering shifting 50% of their semiconductor manufacturing operations to the US, despite statements made to the contrary by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier this week.

Speaking to NewsNation on Tuesday, Lutnick said that his latest trade talks with Taiwan had included discussions of shifting up to half of the country’s chip production to the US.

“That’s been the conversation we had with Taiwan, that you have to understand it’s vital for you to have us produce 50%,” said Lutnick in an interview with NewsNation.

Taiwan is the world’s largest producer of semiconductors, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) controlling over 68% of global semiconductor foundry revenue at the end of 2024, according to data from TrendForc, Second-place producer, South Korea’s Samsung, accounts for just 8%.

On Wednesday, however, Taiwan’s Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun rejected the suggestion that the matter had even been discussed.

“Our negotiating team has never made any commitment to a 50-50 split on chips. Rest assured, we did not discuss this issue during this round of talks, nor would we agree to such conditions,” said Cheng, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency.

Instead, Cheng said the discussions were focussed on resolving issues surrounding tariffs and the US’s Section 232 investigations, which seek to probe whether imported goods represent a threat to national security.

Taiwan’s exports to the US are currently subject to a 20% tariff, with the island’s government hoping to negotiate this rate’s reduction.

The rapid expansion of the US’s domestic chip production capabilities has been a focus for the government since the start of the decade, when the coronavirus pandemic exposed the fragility of global supply chains. The Biden-era CHIPS and Sciences Act – described by President Trump as a “horrible, horrible thing” – has set aside $39 billion in subsidies for domestic chip production, encouraging major investments from giants like Intel, Micron, and Samsung.

The subsidies even proved enough of a lure to draw interest from TSMC, which announced a $65 billion commitment in 2024 to build three greenfield fabs in Phoenix, Arizona, supported by $6.6 billion in US subsidies. Earlier this year, this investment was scaled up by a further $100 billion.

This investment, however, is seemingly not enough for the US government, which wants far less reliance on overseas production.

Naturally, the elephant in the room during discussions are the major geopolitical factors in play. Taiwan is under constant existential threat from China, and the vital role its semiconductor industry plays in the global tech supply chain is a key reason for its US support. Moving chip production to the US would not only be a technical and economic challenge for Taiwan, but a disintegration of the nation’s so-called ‘Silicon Shield’, removing its largest deterrent against Chinese invasion.

With news published just this week that Russia is reportedly helping China plan an invasion of Taiwan, the country is surely less motivated than ever to hand over its technological crown jewels.

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Fibre optic networks across the country have been deactivated, causing widespread disruption

This week, the Taliba have imposed a nationwide internet blackout in Afghanistan, largely cutting off the country’s 42.65 million people from the outside world.

The internet shutdown began with little warning yesterday, with citizens waking up to find they were no longer able to get online.

According to internet watchdog Netblocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, Afghanistan’s connectivity is “at 14% of ordinary levels”.

The shutdown was reportedly ordered by the Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) and the Ministry of Telecommunications at the behest of Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, but no official statements have been made.

The Taliban first began cutting fixed internet across the country’s northern provinces earlier this month, with Attaullah Zaid, a spokesperson for the local government in Balkh, saying that Akhundzada had issued the order to ‘prevent immorality’.

As is to be expected, the cutting of fibre network cables is having widespread repercussions for Afghanistan far beyond fixed broadband services. These backbone networks carry data supporting a wide array of critical services, including banking and education, as well as being a key component of local mobile service delivery. As a result, much of the country has ground to a halt, with reports suggest that Kabul airport is at a standstill and banks are overflowing with customers that can no longer access their money online.

“All our business relies on mobiles. The deliveries are with mobiles. It’s like a holiday, everyone is at home. The market is totally frozen,” Najibullah, a 42-year-old shopkeeper in Kabul, told news agency AFP.

None of the country’s mobile operators, including Afghan Wireless (AWCC), Etisalat, and Roshan, have issued an official statement on the blackout.

The Taliban say the shutdown will last until further notice, with Zaid noting in the aforementioned social media post that “alternative options will be put in place across the country to meet connectivity needs”.

Far reaching internet shutdowns have long been a feature of repressive regimes, seeking to limit dissenters’ ability to communicate with each other and with the outside world. Perhaps the most notable example of this in recent years is Myanmar, which has instigated multiple blackouts since the military junta overthrew the civilian government in 2021.

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