The computer is officially the most sustainable supercomputer in the UK 

The UK’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, known as Isambard-AI, has been switched on at the University of Bristol this week. 

The Isambard-AI supercomputer was first announced by the government last March alongside a £225 million investment. The facility has been built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and contains over 5,000 NVIDIA superchips, allowing it to complete 200 quadrillion calculations per second. 

By Ronny Haraldsvik, CMO / SVP Business Development & Field Systems Engineering at Cohere Technologies

What constitutes success is different for every business. For Flarion, the telecoms start-up where I served as a VP of marketing and helped lead the business to an impactful exit, success meant having our technology included in — what was then — the new 4G standard. We knew our best route was to have support from leading mobile operators, OEMs and the industry. Another option was to become acquired by one of the leading telco giants. 

Natalia Lemarquis, CEO of Space Villages, discusses her experience on the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN) support programme.

More women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are using mobile internet than ever before, 1.5 billion (66%) in total. In 2023, an additional 120 million women connected to the internet via mobile. Mobile remains the primary – and often only – way people in LMICs access the internet, accounting for 84% of broadband connections in 2023. However, an alarming 785 million women remain unconnected, with approximately 60% residing in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has now completed its acquisition of Lit Fibre (Lit) from Newlight Partners. The share-based acquisition, announced two months ago, will accelerate CityFibre’s nationwide full fibre rollout by up to 300,000 premises as part of its 8m rollout programme and will see Newlight Partners join as minority shareholders.

Vietnam's datacentre sector is attracting a lot of interest from foreign investors with international developers and operators, such as NTT and Alibaba, starting to enter the market in a sector that, currently, offers somewhat limited capacity and availability but has the potential for rapid and extensive growth. 

All Elizabeth line stations now have 4G mobile coverage as the Mayor and TfL’s programme to improve connectivity for those travelling underground continues.

Hello, I’m Emma Philpott, a principal technical consultant at FarrPoint: I work  on various connectivity projects involving 4G, 5G, IoT, fixed wireless access and fibre networks aimed at improving digital connectivity across the UK. I also lead and manage our space practice  which focuses on leveraging satellite technology to extend digital communications to unserved or underserved areas across the UK. 

SK Telecom believes it will have its first telco-specific large language model (LLM) ready for action by June, and has developed what it calls an ‘intelligence platform’ that can be used for the development of generative AI (GenAI) applications for the telecom sector. 

Building on the UK’s regional and national strengths, UKTIN’s Clusters Programme has been designed to ensure the UK can benefit from a thriving and resilient telecoms sector. In a recent meeting, Poonam Parihar, founder of bandarlog.dev shared her insights into establishing a tech start-up as a non-UK-national. 

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