Weekly Brief – 05 September 2025

As usual, our weekly brief covers news items we didn’t cover in the past few days but are noteworthy nonetheless:

Eight Advisory appoints Nicholas Collins as Senior Advisor

Telecoms consultancy Eight Advisory has appointed Nicholas Collins as a Senior Advisor to assist with digital infrastructure projects across Europe. He is a former member of the leadership teams of EXA Infrastructure in London and previously at Telstra across the US and Asia.

“We are delighted to welcome Nicholas to the Eight Advisory network. As investors and operators face growing complexity in the digital infrastructure space – having deep, hands-on sector insight is critical. Nicholas strengthens our capabilities to support clients across the full investment lifecycle – from initial deal evaluation through to value creation.”

Adam Bradley, Partner, Eight Advisory

Point Topic updates FTTP adoption rates in Europe

Point Topic has updated its European FTTP adoption rates up to the end of 2024. The tracking shows the changes between 2013 and 2024. Headline stats show that the adoption rates ranged from 19.6% in Austria up to 97.7% in Iceland. The average across the 30 European countries tracked was at 60.1% up from 57.8% at the end of 2023.

Amazon Kuiper satellite broadband tested at 1.29Gbps

Amazon Kuiper, the low Earth orbit satellite broadband network that is aiming to rival Starlink, has been tested by the team building the network, and they have recorded speeds on a speedtest that peaked at 1.29Gbps. So far, the company have launched over 100 satellites, and will include more than 3,200 once the initial constellation is complete.

B4RN hits 15,000 customer milestone

B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) have announced that they have now connected 15,000 customers to their full fibre broadband network, which operates predominantly in Lancashire and Cumbria. B4RN, which started in 2011 with a group of volunteers and is set up as a Community Benefit Society, has now built a network that covers 23,285 premises based on our tracking.