Press Release

Nokia and Orange France haved complete world’s first 20 Gbps microwave carrier aggregation link trial using E-Band and traditional frequencies

Nokia today announced that it has extended its collaboration with Orange France to upgrade its microwave backhaul network with the latest product generation. Combining the capabilities of Nokia’s latest high-power E-Band microwave and traditional microwave frequency products, the trial enabled a high-capacity link over a distance of almost 4 kilometers.

The trial successfully demonstrated the use of microwave carrier aggregation techniques, achieving a throughput of 20 Gbps over a distance of 3.6 km. This was enabled by combining the carriers from two microwave radios operating in the 18 GHz band with two E-Band microwave radios operating at 80 GHz, using a single dual-band (18+80 GHz) antenna.

In addition to new products from its Wavence microwave portfolio, Nokia will provide Orange France with a range of products and services from its comprehensive AirScale 5G radio access portfolio, as well as a state-of-the-art network management solution and associated professional services.

The Nokia Wavence portfolio includes innovative, high-capacity ultra-broadband microwave transceivers, designed to support operators as they build out their 5G networks. Wavence products support the evolution of both backhaul and fronthaul with multi-gigabit capacity, low-latency characteristics, and industry-leading RF power output for deployment flexibility.

Christian Gacon, CTO Fixed/IP/Optical/Microwave Networks at Orange France, said: “Nokia’s innovative Wavence portfolio and microwave technology will ensure that we can deliver high-capacity services and experiences to our customers over long distances, which is critical as the usage of 5G increases. This technology will support Orange’s ambition to remain the indisputable best network in France. I look forward to continuing our partnership with Nokia moving forward.”

Giuseppe Targia, VP Transport Business Unit, Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “High-performance microwave backhaul is essential for extending the reach of 5G networks. I am extremely proud to continue our work with Orange France into the 5G era, with our Wavence portfolio providing a solid foundation for the operator’s 5G services all across the country. We continue to drive important innovations for microwave and millimeter wave wireless transport solutions that support our customers with coverage and capacity where it is needed.”

News

The fine relates to a data breach that took place in 2019 and may have affected over half a billion people

This week, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has issued Meta with another multi-million Euro fine, marking the latest in a series of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) woes to befall the US tech giant.

The €265 million fine comes in response to a data breach that Meta announced in April last year, which immediately sparked an investigation from DPC, the regulatory body in charge of overseeing Meta’s EU operations.

The breach itself took place back in 2019, with Meta reporting that the personal information of around 533 million people had been ‘scraped’ and made accessible on the internet.

The DPC investigation found that, during the period from the 25 May 2018 to September 2019, Meta had failed to live up to GDPR standards with regards to its Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer tools.

Other EU regulators were consulted before the DPC issued the formal fine. The DPC has also ordered Meta to update various systems so that they comply with GDPR law.

“There was a comprehensive inquiry process, including co-operation with all of the other data protection supervisory authorities within the EU,” said Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon. “The decision imposed a reprimand and an order requiring [Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd] to bring its processing into compliance by taking a range of specified remedial actions within a particular time frame. In addition, the decision has imposed administrative fines totalling €265 million on [Meta].”

This is the latest in a series of fines Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has imposed on Meta. Last October, the regulator fined Meta (then Facebook) €225 million over various violations related to its WhatsApp platform not fully informing users how it was using their data. More recently, Irish authorities fined the company €405 million after an investigation had found that teenagers had been allowed to set up business accounts displaying their phone number and email addresses on Meta’s subsidiary Instagram.

EU regulators have been cracking down on Big Tech in recent years, with Google, Apple, and Meta all facing fines in the hundreds of millions of dollars for breaches of GDPR and competition regulations.

How is the increasing role of hyperscale tech companies impacting the US telecoms industry? Join the experts in discussion at the upcoming Connected America conference

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

STARTUP STORY

Leipzig based Vesputi are the startup behind Mobilitybox, a mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) offering that enables a scalable technology interface between transport operators and third-party providers including hotels, airlines, and more. The founders see their offering as a complimentary add-on to telco’s main product offerings.

Tell us about your start up
Vesputi is one of Europe’s leading B2B tech providers for sustainable mobility solutions.

Vesputi is building the Mobilitybox, a standardized, europewide B2B interface, that companies use to integrate public transport into existing apps and platforms. The Mobilitybox enables the Mobility-as-a-Service vision, as public transit becomes available, standardized and at scale.

Vesputi´s customers include, amongst others, hotels, airlines, and event organizers. By integrating public transport, these partners deliver additional value to their clients and increase traction and retention on their apps while decreasing their carbon-footprint.

What is your USP?
Vesputi is opening up a new digital B2B sales channel for public transit operators. The Mobilitybox comes with a state-of-the-art developer portal and allows a seamless integration with a single contract and without worrying about technological standards and politics in the public transit space.

Vesputi has developed its own backend system and hence adapts entirely to its public transit partners current tech set-up.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
The telecom sector is a route to market. By adding mobility to the service portfolio, telcos can complement their service offering and cover a wider range of its users daily lives. Vesputi enables the integration through its product – the Mobilitybox.

Additionally, the entire smart city and mobility sector is heavily dependent on digitalization and connectivity. In that aspect, our solution depends on reliable connectivity and smart digital offering by third party providers.

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How have you got to your current stage of development?
Vesputi is a trusted partner of public transit operators since 2016. At the beginning, Vesputi successfully implemented mobility projects with public utilities, transport companies and enterprises such as multimodal apps and simulation tools. Today, the company is fully focused on its product: the Mobilitybox. Vesputi is supported by different organizations and government bodies on national and European level, such as the BMDV and EIT Urban Mobility and is backed by a group of private investors.

Why did you establish the business?
We are mobility experts and enthusiasts from a private and professional background and want to use our strong technological background to not just improve user experience in the mobility space, but to create something with a real purpose. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges in today’s world and public transit is a major lever to reach the UN sustainable development goals in the transport space.

Who inspired you?
We are inspired by the vision of a sustainable mobility ecosystem and convinced of the potential that technology can enable a transition towards sustainable mobility behaviour.

What does the future hold for your business?
The future of mobility will be sustainable, connected and easily accessible for everyone. Vesputi will be a major technological enabler to reach that vision.

Vesputi´s technology reduces complexity and decreases the barrier to collaborate with public transit across different regions and countries. In consequence, public transit becomes easily available from the user perspective, ridership increases and sustainable mobility behavior becomes more attractive.

Vesputi aims at providing a Europe wide standardizes access to public transit.

COMPANY CV
HQ: Leipzig, Germany
Number of employees: 10
Last Funding Type: Pre-Seed
Website URL: https://www.vesputi.com/
Founders: Linus Frank and René Meye

Vesputi are one of the startups you can meet at Connected Germany on the 6-7 December 2022. We have a limited number of free tickets for telecom operators and public service organisations. Register at www.totaltele.com/connectedgermany

STARTUP STORIES

Startup DEVITY say their KEYNOA Engine enables you to automatically establish an encrypted connection of any IoT device to any data platform.

Tell us about your start up
DEVITY is your expert for IT security and cloud connectivity in large scale Internet of Things projects. Based on our team members’ research in cryptography, identity management and OT security at the University of Paderborn, we have developed into a reliable partner for manufacturers, integrators, and operators in industrial automation. The team of experts supports in building scalable IoT infrastructures with our core product KEYNOA as well as in designing and developing IoT security architectures.
Our product KEYNOA simplifies the configuration and installation of IoT devices such as sensors, industrial computers, and machines to unravel the access to secure operation of IoT infrastructures for organizations across Europe.

What is your USP?
Fundamental to KEYNOA are unique identities that are assigned to each device produced. KEYNOA ensures that these identities are transferred throughout the supply chain and used for trustworthy mass enrolments. A unique feature is its capability to bind devices to IoT clouds and data platforms at a late stage – just before physical installation – in the device life cycle. The configurations and credentials can also be created or chosen at a late stage. Therefore, the device owner can choose the configuration and operation purpose of a device fleet at any point of time. This results in a major advantage for operators – in addition to IT security. Until now, experts have had to configure each device individually and in a time-consuming manner. With KEYNOA there no difference in the programmatic configuration effort for 10 or 10,000 identical sensors or gateways.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
We enable the telecom sector to accelerate installations of devices as well as IT security operations in large scale projects for critical infrastructures, industrial manufacturers, and energy plants.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
DEVITY was supported from day on by garage33, the start-up centre of the University of Paderborn. Besides that, we worked with Founders Foundation in Bielefeld and KASTEL in Karlsruhe.

Why did you establish the business?
In his research at University of Paderborn and work for IoT solution providers Sven Uthe recognized that IT security was not considered at all or inoperable for non-experts in IoT projects. He decided to change that und make IT security available for every user of Industrial IoT technology.

What is your motivation?
Our motivation is that many companies don’t understand how dangerous their IoT security gaps are. We want that cyberattacks don’t become a disadvantage for any company.

What does the future hold for your businesS?
DEVITY is on the mission to reduce manual tasks and enable IT security in every IoT use case. In 2023, we want to triple the number of partners and deploy fife time more devices.

COMPANY CV
HEADQUARTERS: Paderborn, Germany
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 7
LAST FUNDING TYPE: Research Funding
WEBSITE URL: https://devity.eu/
FOUNDERS:
Sven Uthe – Co-Founder, CTO
Christoph Milder – Co-Founder, CEO

You can meet DEVITY in the Startup Village at Connected Germany on the 6 – 7 December 2022 at Mainz Congress, Germany. You can still grab a free ticket on the website

News

The operator hopes to leverage its mobile network to gain a stronger market share in the fixed broadband market

This week, Vodafone Spain has announced that it will launch a 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service offering by the end of the month.

The service will originally be available in parts of Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Malaga, Bilbao, and A Coruna, with Vodafone intending to increase this availability to 65 cities in future.

Customers will be able to receive speeds of “up to 1Gbps” according to Vodafone, though average speeds are likely to be lower.

The motivation for this push into 5G FWA is clear enough. While Vodafone’s share of the Spanish mobile market is around 23%, its share of the broadband market is much smaller. This is largely due to Vodafone’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network itself being dwarfed by those of its closest rivals, only passing around 3.5 million homes, compared to 27 million for Movistar and 17 million for Orange.

Vodafone’s 5G network, by contrast, is much more competitive, set to cover around 46% of the Spanish population by the end of the year. Couple this availability with the quick and easy installation process of the FWA hardware and it becomes a very attractive prospect for businesses and consumers, especially in relatively remote locations.

Vodafone already offers 5G FWA in various European markets, including Italy, Germany, and the UK.

Also in the news:
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CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

News

The investment will expand their existing LD7 and LD8 sites in London, as well as establishing a new MA5 datacentre in Manchester

This week, Equinix has announced the investment of a further £179 million into its UK-based data centres, aiming to meet the country’s rapidly growing data demand.

More specifically, these funds will be used to expand the company’s existing LD7 and LD8 data centres, located in Slough and London Docklands, respectively, and opening a new datacentre, MA5, in Manchester.

“The location of these data centres complements the growth of the UK’s two biggest cities. Manchester is one of Europe’s fastest growing business centres for technology and media, while London is a long-established financial centre of the world. Despite Brexit-born uncertainty, there are many reasons to be optimistic about digital transformation and technology investment in the UK,” explained Russell Poole, Managing Director for Equinix UK.

Explaining the motivation for the investment, the company said that despite the difficult global economic climate, businesses around the world are continuing to prioritise digitalisation, particularly the adoption of hybrid multicloud services. As such, additional investment is needed to ensure that the UK data centre sector is robust, allowing businesses to compete on a global scale.

According Equinix, the investment will create “multiple career opportunities”, with the company noting a number of programmes it has underway aiming at attracting female talent to the IT and tech industry.

In total, the new expansions will bring the digital infrastructure company’s total investment in the UK to over £1 billion.

In related news, just last week Equinix announced its participation in the Gaia-X project, an initiative aimed at building a framework for open IT standards and APIs to support decentralised, federated digital infrastructure. In short, to enable European service providers to interoperate and exchange data more smoothly via players like Equinix.

How is new digital infrastructure changing the economic landscape in the UK? Join the telecoms industry and local stakeholders at the upcoming Connected North conference in Manchester

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

News

written by Nicole Lumley, Editor at MOVE

Dublin City Council, Ireland, alongside Virgin Media Business, is installing Wi-Fi 6 Access Points that are compliant with TIP OpenWifi as a trial of open, disaggregated solutions for potential use in the city’s public Wi-Fi network

TIP OpenWiFi is compliant with the technical requirements of the European Commission’s WiFi4EU initiative, the benchmark for public Wi-Fi deployments in Europe, said the company. 

“A smart city is built around collaboration and openness. We are delighted to be trialing Wi-Fi options that are built with an open-source architecture that enables multi-vendor interoperability,” said Jamie Cudden. Smart City Program Manager, Dublin City Council. 

Wifi4EU is a project that promotes free access to WiFi connectivity for citizens in public spaces including parks, squares, public buildings, libraries, health centers and museums in municipalities throughout Europe.  

The municipalities will receive a voucher that pays for the network including maintenance of the equipment to offer free and high-quality Wi-Fi connectivity for at least three years.  

“Virgin Media is recognized for providing ‘clever tech’ with ultrafast speeds and ultra-reliability. We’re industry leaders offering our customers the latest technology and it just made sense to trial Dublin City Council’s Wi-Fi network using TIP OpenWiFi standards as part of our innovation partnership with the council,” said Noel O Reilly, Business Products and Solutions Manager, Virgin Media Business. 

Dublin City Council will be using TIP OpenWiFi- compliant products and software including a cloud-based controller from NetExperience and access points from Edgecore and HFCL.  

TIP OpenWiFi is an open source-based Wi-Fi architecture that enables multi-vendor, interoperable Wi-Fi networks. This will enable both companies to mix and match additional access points and controllers.  

This article was originally published on Movemnt.net.

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

News

The pair’s “one million phones for the planet” initiative is designed to encourage customers to trade in their old devices and support the circular economy

This week, Vodafone has announced a new partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), initiating a new campaign to encourage smartphone reuse and recycling.

As part of the new three-year “one million phones for the planet” project, Vodafone will launch various strategic initiatives in its European and African markets to promote more sustainable choices by customers, as well as leverage mobile technology to tackle conservation and sustainability challenges.

The largest part of partnership, however, revolves around extending the lifecycle of customer smartphones.

Vodafone says it will offer competitive prices for customers to trade in old handsets, which will be refurbished and resold where possible.

According to Vodafone, purchasing a refurbished smartphone saves roughly 50kg of CO2e (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent) and reduces its environmental impact by 87% compared to a newly manufactured device.

Beyond reuse and refurbish approaches, Vodafone is also rolling out a suite of phone repair services, hoping to extend the lifespan of existing devices.

Phones that cannot be resold will be recycled or repurposed for social or charitable causes.

From today, for each phone traded in to Vodafone during the three-year programme, the operator will donate £1 to WWF conservation projects.

“Every one of us has a role to play in helping to bring our world back to life, and the technology we use every day can play a major role in tackling the climate and nature emergency,” said Tanya Steele, Chief Executive of WWF-UK. “Through our partnership with Vodafone, we will be exploring how everyone can reduce their environmental footprint using digital technologies and services, while also using mobile technology to drive forward key WWF conservation projects around the world. We look forward to working together on our shared vision for the planet.”

The new project will run alongside similar device campaigns Vodafone already has underway in Germany and the UK.

Are operators doing enough in the battle to combat climate change? Join the operators in discussion at the upcoming Connected North conference in Manchester

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IRIS cable set to link Iceland and Ireland

STARTUP STORIES

Essen based startup, Your Easy AI, thinks it has a solution to the skills shortages preventing so many from capitalising on artificial intelligence with software enabling development of artificial intelligence within minutes, without programming or AI knowledge. Their Startup Story is the latest in our regular series.

Tell us about your start up
The lack of artificial intelligence experts prevents many companies from realizing the potential of their data. Our software enables companies to create AI without these experts. With Your Easy AI, decision-makers can create AI that solves their business questions without prior programming or AI knowledge.

Our customers are businesses, that do not have their own (or a small) data science department and most are currently located in the DACH-Region.

What is your USP?
Existing software solutions can either only be operated by a data scientist or are so complex that normal employees cannot use them to analyse data. With our software, we empower employees to solve business questions independently.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
The telecom sector is a very important component of the growing AI and Auto-Machine Learning market. A partnership provides the necessary infrastructure to deploy our software, as well as ensure interoperability across platforms by utilizing cloud-based computing.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
Jan and Patrick started to work on the prototype in 2020 already. After successful prototyping throughout 2021, the company was officially founded in April of 2022. We are proud to have received support from the startup-incubators startport, and BRYCK. A few months after founding, we finalized our first pilot projects and received our first revenue. We were able to win the Unicorn-Pitch, the SlushD Cash Award, as well as the RuhrPitch. We are also very happy to have recently been accepted by the AI-Founders program!

Why did you establish the business?
The founders, Patrick and Jan, have known each other since their days in the same chess club. During Patrick’s time teaching non-parametric statistics, he realized, that the lack of data scientists is one of the biggest hurdles for companies in adopting AI for process optimization. In 2020 he paired up with Jan, who received awards for programming artificial intelligence and both started to work on a prototype that drastically simplifies the analysis process.

Who inspired you?
Wolfgang Grupp (German entrepreneur)

What does the future hold for your business?
We are planning to reach profitability in Q1 of 2023 and start to scale up after that. Future technological developments include a project to teach an AI how to program another AI.

COMPANY CV
HQ: Essen, Germany
Employees: 6
Last Funding: Private Loan, Still bootstrapping
URL: https://youreasyai.de/
Founders
Patrick Imcke, CEO & Founder
Jan Dette, CTO & Founder

Come and meet Your Easy AI at Connected Germany, 6 – 7 December 2022 – Mainz Congress, Germany