Telecoms

• Spain and Portugal suffered a major power outage this week
• Telcos scrambled to switch to power back-up options to maintain at least some services
• Ookla and Cloudflare have reported on the performance of the mobile operators and the impact on internet traffic volumes

• Opensignal surveyed customers of ‘brand MVNOs’ and their host mobile networks in seven markets, including the UK and US
• MVNO users are prepared to accept slower speeds for lower costs
• The MVNO market remains buoyant, with a recent uptick in activity in Europe

A n

• Nokia to support Maersk's next-generation IoT connectivity platform with new mobile network to enhance operational efficiency.
• Nokia supplied its private wireless network solution including Shikra small cell equipment and MantaRay NM for network management.

Nokia announced th

• The major hyperscalers have reported their first-quarter 2025 financials
• Synergy Research Group has collected all the data
• AI workloads have fuelled a 23% year-on-year increase in the value of the global cloud infrastructure services sector to almost $94bn

While

Hello, I’m Matthew Key, and I’ve worked in the telecoms sector for around 25 years. Previously, I worked at BT, where I gained a lot of contacts, and now I am an independent consultant, under the umbrella of Ideas Crucible. 

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket has delivered into orbit the first 27 low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation.

EU Commissioner visits London as UK researchers and businesses get access to more Horizon Europe funding calls for quantum and space research

On 24–25 April 2025, the 3GPP - O-RAN ALLIANCE joint workshop brought together experts from across the telecom ecosystem at ETSI Headquarters for a focused exchange on coordination for 6G.

Kit vendor Ericsson will inject €200 million over the next three years into its Athlone facility in central Ireland, in order to research open network management and automation capabilities for 5G.

The European Commission is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to its clamp-down on US Big Tech.

It has just imposed fines on Apple and Meta of €500 million and €200 million respectively after they were found to have breached the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

UK comms regulator Ofcom has closed a loophole that can allow fraudsters to manipulate mobile networks.

South Korean authorities have launched a probe into a cyberattack on SK Telecom (SKT) that exposed customers' SIM-related data.

The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) said it has sent experts to SKT to provide technical support, analyse the cause of the incident, and mitigate its impact.

Rakuten Mobile and AST SpaceMobile have announced the completion of what they say is the first-ever broadband video call between unmodified smartphones in Japan using a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite.

Chip firm Intel and Arqit Quantum, which specialises in quantum-safe encryption, have launched a security solution in which even they “are outside the trust boundary.”

• India’s two main telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have built nationwide 5G networks
• As well as marketing 5G mobile packages, they have both been offering 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband services
• Jio is currently dominating India’s 5G FWA sector with a near 85% market

Vodafone, Austria-based A1 and Ericsson have reached a new 5G standalone (SA) milestone that shines a light on the technical complexity of taking this technology across borders.

NEC Corporation has successfully achieved Japan’s longest terrestrial wireless optical communication (*), or free-space optical (FSO) communication, over a distance of more than 10 km.

German incumbent Deutsche Telekom is going to great lengths to demonstrate its quantum networking prowess.

Londoners experience a poorer quality of experience on 5G mobile networks than residents of other UK cities and the gap appears to be widening, according to new data published this week.

European leadership in the development of next-generation 6G mobile technologies is set to be boosted with the launch of a new €104 million call to support cutting-edge research and innovation in mobile networks.

According to the Worldwide Security Spending Guide published by International Data Corporation (IDC), European security spending is projected to grow by 11.8% year on year in 2025.

44% of UK respondents said they used AI in a professional setting, compared to the global average of 67%, according to a report by EY.

Hello, I’m Dimitrios Pezaros, a professor of Computer Networks at the University of Glasgow.

• The UK universities of Bristol and Cambridge have been collaborating on quantum-safe networking developments
• They have achieved live, quantum-secure transfer of encrypted medical data, secure remote access to a distributed datacentre and the world’s first long-distance quantum secured video call.