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Outbrain, Teads close merger
Outbrain has announced the closing of its acquisition of Teads, first announced in August 2024, following receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals. The two companies will merge their respective branding and performance offerings to create an omnichannel outcomes platform for the open internet, and will operate under the name Teads. The new Teads will create…
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Ultrafast broadband goes live on Hebridean islands
The Hebridean islands’ first ultrafast broadband connections are now live in a transformative upgrade by Openreach engineers for the Scottish Government’s ‘Reaching 100% (R100)’ programme. For years, connectivity on the islands has been a challenge due to their location and dispersed populations. Now, the first households and businesses on Tiree can access some of the…
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UKTV acquires Side Hustlers from ITV Studios
UKTV has acquired the UK premiere of Side Hustlers, the US business reality series produced by Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine, part of Candle Media, for its free-to-air entertainment channel U&W and streaming service U. UKTV and BBC Studios’ Global Acquisitions Manager, Roxana Rehman, secured the deal, overseen by Melanie Rumani, Global Head of…
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AST SpaceMobile announces FCC grant of STA
AST SpaceMobile has announced that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted the company Special Temporary Authority (STA) authorising testing service in the US. This approval enables AST SpaceMobile’s first five commercial BlueBird satellites, operating in low Earth orbit today, with unmodified smartphones in AT&T and Verizon premium low-band wireless spectrum supporting voice, full data,…
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EnSilica awarded £10.3m funding from UK Space Agency Award
EnSilica, a chip maker of mixed signal ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), has been awarded £10.38 million (€12.4m) funding over the next three years from the UK Space Agency for a development project under its Connectivity in Low Earth Orbit (C-LEO) programme. EnSilica put forward in its application a business case supported by letters of…
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Vodafone, AST test video call game changer
Last week a Vodafone engineer, Rowan Chesmer, somewhere in the middle of Wales and very much in a dead zone for cellular connectivity, used an AST SpaceMobile satellite to send a video call to Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle and British astronaut Tim Peake. The demonstration led to some enthusiastic celebrations from AST themselves and…
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Falklands unhappy over OneWeb
Eutelsat’s share price meltdown continues and not helped by a group of unhappy residents of the UK’s Falkland Islands. Local reports say that the Falkland Islands government “wants its money back” from an agreement which it entered into with local telco SURE and which provides national and international fixed line, mobile data and broadband services…
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South Africa DSO hindered by STB fiasco
South Africa is due to end transmissions of analogue TV signals by March 31st. This much-delayed event looks like it will again be in jeopardy. Local South Africa press is quoting contractors responsible for installing new digital set-top boxes saying that the switch off date is in disarray because of a shortage of boxes and…
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UK Lords call for AI, tech start-up ‘ambition’
The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee has warned that the UK is at risk of becoming an ‘incubator economy’ unless it does a better job supporting UK AI and creative tech start-ups to grow into global competitors. “If we do not reverse the trend of innovative British technology companies moving to other markets…
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CNN opening new Qatar operation
CNN is expanding its footprint in the Middle East through the creation of a new operation in Qatar as part of the news network’s broader strategy to deepen its global and regional content creation capabilities. The presence in Qatar will complement CNN’s existing Middle East programming and newsgathering hubs: the flagship regional headquarters in Abu Dhabi,…