Europe > Communication

Communication / ICT in Europe

  • Swedish PM fights for survival amid IT scandal

    SWEDEN, 2017/07/29 Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Loefven, is under pressure to resign next it emerged that a government agency mishandled highly sensitive classified data.
  • Ukraine ‘Ground Zero’ For Hackers In Global Cyberattacks

    UKRAINE, 2017/07/08 Ukraine’s heavy reliance on Russian technology impairs its ability to adequately defend against cyberattacks such as the Petya virus ravaging computers around the world and has helped make the country ground zero on the front lines of the world cyberwar. The “unprecedented” June 27 attack started in Ukraine, which hit government computer networks and websites of banks, major industrial enterprises, the postal service, Kyiv’s international airport, and its subway system — before spreading to other nations and international companies around the world.
  • Telecom News in Brief 25 May 2017

    WORLD, 2017/05/28 Africa: European access - Econet World subsidiary Liquid Telecom said on 15 May that it had established a point of presence (PoP) at Interxion's data centre in Marseille, its initial foothold in mainland Europe. The PoP will reduce roundtrip delays from Africa by up to 20 milliseconds. Interxion's MRS1 data centre in Marseilles is a major connectivity hub for Europe since it opened in 2014. It offers direct access to 13 major international submarine cables, inclunding SEACOM, I-ME-WE and SEA-ME-WE4, providing Liquid Telecom with onwards connectivity to its World PoPs in London, Mombasa and Fujairah. MRS1 provides direct access to the France-IX, NL-ix and DE-CIX Internet exchanges, providing new peering opportunities for Liquid Telecom.
  • Orange eyes stake in Iranian telecom titan

    IRAN, 2016/09/12 French telecom giant Orange SA is in early talks about buying into Iran's biggest cellular network operator, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Such a transaction could make history as the initial time a Western firm has acquired a significant holding in a major Iranian company since Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program last year in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Orange, which is part owned by the French government, is one of several European companies that have explored the potential of getting a stake in Mobile Telecommunication Co. of Iran, or MCI, the Journal said, citing people close to the matter. Orange would need to coax financing for a transaction out of Western Banks likely to be wary of tripping over US sanctions.
  • Nigeria: Arrested Ringleader Of Global Network Behind Thousands Of Online Scams

    EUROPEAN UNION, 2016/09/01 The chief of an international criminal network behind thousands of online frauds has been arrested in a joint operation by INTERPOL and the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), according to INTERPOL.. The 40-year-old Nigerian national, known as ‘Mike’, is believed to be behind scams totalling additional than USD 60 million involving hundreds of victims worldwide. In one case a target was conned into paying out USD 15.4 million.
  • Rocket Internet’s Africa Internet Group raises $326M from Goldman Sachs and others

    GERMANY, 2016/07/24 Fresh from pulling in $83 million from European insurance giant AXA last month, Africa Internet Group (AIG) — the Rocket Internet-backed company behind e-commerce site Jumia — has announced that it has raised a much larger €300 million ($326 million) in fresh funding. That sum includes that before disclosed chunk of money from AXA — which valued AIG at over $1 billion, by the way, making it Africa’s initial tech unicorn — and participation from existing stakeholders MTN, an Africa mobile operator, and Rocket Internet inclunding new backer Goldman Sachs. (Rocket Internet watchers will recall Goldman invested in Food Panda last year, and Rocket Internet tends to attract repeat investors once they buy into its philosophy.)
  • The next generation A new wave of mobile technology is on its way, and will bring drastic change

    WORLD, 2016/02/21 THE next is by presently arriving, it is just a question of knowing where to look. On Changshou Road in Shanghai, eagle eyes may spot an odd rectangular object on top of an office block: it is a collection of 128 miniature antennae. Pedestrians in Manhattan can catch a glimpse of apparatus that looks like a video camera on a stand, but jerks around and has a strange, hornlike protrusion where the lens should be. It blasts a narrow beam of radio waves at buildings so they can bounce their way to the receiver. The campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, is dotted with 44 antennae, which form virtual wireless cells that follow a device around. These antennae are vanguards of a new generation of wireless technologies. Although the previous batch, collectively called “fourth generation”, or 4G, is still being rolled out in a lot of nations, the telecoms industry has by presently started working on the next, 5G. On February 12th AT&T, America’s second-major mobile operator, said it would begin testing whether prototype 5G circuitry works indoors, following similar news in September from Verizon, the number one. South Korea wants to have a 5G network up and running at the same time as it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018; Japan wants the same for the summer games in 2020. At the same time as the industry holds its annual jamboree, Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona this month, 5G will top the schedule.
  • French telecom firms Orange and Bouygues in merger talks

    FRANCE, 2016/01/06 French telecoms operators Orange and Bouygues have confirmed that they are in talks over a possible merger. In separate statements, Orange said that the talks were "preliminary" while Bouygues said that "no decisions have been taken". If the transaction did go ahead it would reduce the number of French telecoms operators to three from four. The combined group would have a near-50% share of the French mobile and fixed telecoms market.
  • Cyber Attacks Loom as Growing Corporate Credit Risk: Moody's

    WORLD, 2015/11/26 Cyber attacks on the private sector are an increasingly significant risk in corporate credit analysis, U.S. ratings agency Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The threat of computer hacking varies from sector to sector and remains hard to measure because intrusions often go undetected or are not publicly disclosed, Moody's said. Likening cyber attacks to natural disasters, the agency said the two pose similar challenges in anticipating the duration or severity of problems in calculating ratings impact.
  • FBI ,Probe of 1.2 Bln Stolen Web Credentials

    UNITED STATES, 2015/11/26 A hacker who once advertised having access to user account data for websites like Facebook and Twitter has been linked through a Russian email address to the theft of a record 1.2 billion Internet credentials, the FBI said in court documents. That hacker, known as "mr.grey," was identified based on data from a cyber security firm that announced in August 2014 that it had determined an alleged Russian crime ring was responsible for stealing data from additional than 420,000 websites, the documents said. The papers, made public last week by a federal court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, provide a window into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of what would all to the major collection of stolen user names and passwords.