Business

A company that has turned fibre optic cable into an ultra-sensitive microphone has been nominated for a prestigious engineering award.

OptaSense joins Cobalt Light Systems, an SME using cutting-edge materials science to fight terrorism; and Rolls-Royce, the engineering giant behind the world's first vertical take-off system for a supersonic fighter jet, as a contender for in the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, the UK's longest running national prize for engineering. It identifies outstanding innovation with proven commercial promise and tangible societal benefit.

Comcast has agreed to shed nearly four million subscribers to ensure that it does not become too large if it goes ahead with a merger with Time Warner Cable.

The US company has agreed to a net reduction of approximately 3.9 million video customers – meaning that, if the merger goes ahead, Comcast will retain less than 30 percent of total national MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) subscribers, while maintaining what it describes as 'the compelling strategic and financial rationale' of its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

Etisalat – Abu Dhabi's Emirates Telecommunications Corporation – has agreed to buy a controlling stake in Maroc Telecom from the French company Vivendi.

The deal was initially proposed back in November, at a price of €4.2 billion, and is intended to be concluded by the end of May.

Etisalat says the deal will create a company that provides services from Morocco in the west to Abu Dhabi in the Gulf region and Sri Lanka in the east.

The Irish government has revealed a €500 million plan to bring high-speed broadband to around a million rural homes and businesses across the country.

Eire's minister for communications Pat Rabbitte announced that the fibre scheme would bring high-speed connectivity to premises in more than 1,000 towns and villages, and would involved the country's Electricity Supply Board (ESB) and Vodafone, using an existing network of pylons.

Vastly differing download speeds across the UK have been revealed in a survey of broadband services across the country.

According to the comparison website uSwitch, two roads – Erw Fawr, Henryd, Wales, and Weatley Road, Stanford-Le-Hope, Essex, have average download speeds of just 0.6 megabytes per second, which means that it would take as along as 15 hours to download an HD-quality film.

Xtera Communications has announced that its '100G-and-beyond' optical networking platform, Nu-Wave Optima, has been approved for use in Brazilian backbone networks.

The Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações – Anatel – has confirmed that Xtera’s equipment fully complies with the requirements of the Brazilian telecommunications authorities and will enable Brazilian operators to benefit from Xtera’s Wise RamanTM solution for long spans and long reach in their long-haul networks.

Alcatel-Lucent and Elisa, Finland’s provider of mobile and fixed broadband services, have announced a significant network upgrade that will give Elisa ultra-broadband capacity. Finland has one of the highest mobile penetration rates and customer usages in the world.

European investment will play a major role in helping deliver next-generation broadband to 96 per cent of Wales’ homes and businesses by 2016, according to its finance minister.

The combined investment in fibre broadband in Wales, including the Superfast Cymru programme and BT’s commercial roll-out is around £425m, of which £90m is from the European Regional Development Fund – as well as £220m from BT, £58m from the Welsh Government, and £57 from the UK Government.

UK telecoms operators Sky and TalkTalk have joined forces with CityFibre to create a new company that will deliver ultra-fast broadband services in the city of York.

The joint venture company plans to build a state of the art, city-wide, pure fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) network to deliver broadband speeds of one Gigabit direct to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in York, offering customers better quality and value.

One in four UK residential fixed broadband connections is ‘superfast’, according to research by Ofcom.

The proportion of superfast connections – those offering headline speeds of 30Mbit/s or more – has risen from five per cent in November 2011 to 25 per cent in November 2013, the regulator says. The average superfast connection speed has also continued to rise, reaching 47.0Mbit/s by November 2013 – an increase of 47 per cent, or 15.1Mbit/s since May 2010.