Broadband
Aberdeen is set to become a forerunner for digital transformation in Scotland with the announcement of a new Gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network under the Vodafone and CityFibre Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) programme. The Vodafone and CityFibre partnership will mean that Aberdeen becomes Scotland’s first city in which nearly every home and business will have access to gigabit-speed broadband.
Amazon Prime YouTube
Earlier today, Netflix announced it was reducing video quality on its services in Europe for the next 30 days in an attempt to alleviate the strain on internet service providers. Amazon and YouTube have both now confirmed that they will join Netflix by reducing the quality of their streams.
Amazon
Amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Business, a new service to meet the procurement needs of businesses of every size. Sellers on amazon.co.uk now have the opportunity to grow their sales by reaching business customers.
AWS
Amazon has launched AWS Wavelength, an AWS infrastructure that enables enterprises and developers to build ultra-low latency applications that can be delivered via the Vodafone 5G network. Amazon says that by embedding AWS compute and storage services at the edge of 5G networks, “AWS Wavelength enables software developers to serve edge computing use cases like machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and video and game streaming.”
Amazon UK has announced that Prime is getting even better with the introduction of Prime Music. Amazon Prime members have access to over one million songs and hundreds of playlists at no additional cost to their membership.
Amazon Prime Day 2021
Amazon’s annual Prime Day event will be held June 21 and June 22 this year, delivering Prime members over 2 million deals across every category, including fashion, home, beauty, electronics, and more, along with the best in entertainment benefits and never-before-seen exclusives across Prime Video, Amazon Music, Prime Gaming, and more.
Three UK
Amdocs is partnering with Three UK as the prime Systems Integrator (SI), in a multi-year managed services deal, to build an Omni Channel digital business system to grow its B2B services in the United Kingdom.
Apple Pay UK
Apple Pay has officially launched in the UK. Apple Pay will allow iPhone users to "tap-and-pay" with their smartphones and Apple Watch for the first time, marking the first time the software will be available outside the US.
O2 is now offering the cellular version of the Apple Watch. When Apple first launched an LTE version of its Watch (with Series 3) it exclusively partnered with EE. Vodafone connectivity was added at the end of last year and now O2 customers can get the smartphone on the company's custom plans.
Money
Responding to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s budget announcement today, Tania Bowers, Legal Counsel and Head of Public Policy for the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), said
Chip manufacturer ARM is to resume its supply of chips to Huawei after cutting them off in May thanks to the US-China trade war. ARM  has concluded an investigation by its legal team which found its designs are of UK origin, and so supplying the Chinese tech manufacturer with them would not breach the embargo placed on Huawei by the US.
Ads
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned "misleading" advertisements from BT and O2, following complaints from rival companies and members of the public.
Ads
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a "misleading" advertisement campaign from Three UK. The ad campaign ‘if it’s not Three, it’s not real 5G’, has been banned following complaints from BT and Vodafone, five members of the public and an independent telecoms consultant.
Asda
Asda is working with Dell to provide 7,000 laptops to schools across the UK to help those children who are at risk of falling behind in their education because they do not have the technology to take part in online lessons during lockdown.
Asda Mobile
Vodafone has been selected by Asda as the new network for its Asda Mobile MVNO. In a five-year exclusive deal, Asda Mobile customers will benefit from Vodafone’s 4G and 5G coverage, unlimited mobile data plans, Wi-Fi calling and other benefits, such as family discounts.
Babble
Unified Comms, Contact Centre and Cyber Solutions provider, Babble, has acquired Digital Communications Systems Ltd (DCS) and Halo Communications Ltd (Halo)
In conjunction with OnePoll, Carphone surveyed mobile habits of 2000 smartphone users in the UK to find out what habits annoy us most, and which habits we’re guilty of ourselves, in a bid to bring back good old-fashioned phone etiquette.
A man is in a serious condition in hospital after being stabbed in the neck at an event attended by singer Jessie J. Police were called to the event hosted by Rim at Bankside Vaults nightclub in Southwark, Central London, shortly after midnight.
eBay PayPal
BlackBerry recently released updates to BBM for Android, BBM for BlackBerry and BBM for iOS which brought Paypal payments via BBM to Canada. This confused many beta users as betas had already implemented Paypal not only to the UK but to the UA, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa and Spain.
BIg Data Ldn 2020
The UK’s largest event for data, Big Data LDN (London) will be a virtual event this year and will take place on 23rd and 24th September. Global data leaders will gather virtually for the first time ever to allow visitors, speakers and exhibitors to remotely explore the new data frontier.
TCL launched the BlackBerry KEY2 yesterday at events in New York and China, featuring an iconic BlackBerry physical keyboard and a lot of upgrades from the BlackBerry KEYone. The mid-range device is now available to pre-order in the UK from Selfridges for £579 ($649 USD / €649 EUR / / $829 CAD) and at the time of publishing, we are unaware if this is for an exclusive period or not. Pre-orders are available until June 27.
BlackBerry AtHoc
BlackBerry is now providing dedicated EU instances of its BlackBerry AtHoc service, enabling customers to comply with EU data protection regulations and prepare for the upcoming Public Warning directives by localising personal data in additional data centres located in the Netherlands and France, as well as the existing one in the UK.
Blis
Blis has today announced an exclusive partnership with O2 that will give clients exceptional accuracy and scale when advertising online. The proposition, Telco-powered Targeting – together with O2, will use aggregated and anonymised customer behaviour data to match websites with audience segments.