Eurobites: Nokia and Hololight combine to enhance the immersive experience

Nokia has teamed up with German extended reality (XR) specialist Hololight to explore how L4S, a Nokia-invented Internet protocol, can boost the performance of real-time applications such as cloud-rendered XR services that rely on very low levels of latency to generate truly "immersive" experiences. The two companies have developed a proof-of-concept test of their collaboration, using the L4S protocol with an extendable number of XR users simultaneously connected to the same infrastructure.

Meanwhile, back in the goggles-free world, Nokia has begun legal action against Amazon and HP for what the Finnish vendor claims is unauthorized use of its video-streaming-related patents in their products and (in the case of Amazon) services. In a statement, Nokia alleged: "Amazon Prime Video and Amazon's streaming devices infringe a mix of Nokia's multimedia patents covering multiple technologies including video compression, content delivery, content recommendation and aspects related to hardware … Separately, we have also filed cases in the US against HP for the unauthorized use of Nokia's patented video-related technologies in their devices."

Swisscom saw a year-over-year 0.6% revenue fall in its domestic core business in the first nine months of 2023 to 6.06 billion Swiss francs (US$6.70 billion), but things were much brighter at Italian subsidiary Fastweb, where a 6% increase in revenue (in local currency terms) was recorded. Fastweb's EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) was also up, by 1.9% to €12 million ($12.7 million). Blaming the strong Swiss franc and lower hardware sales in Switzerland, Swisscom is adjusting its revenue forecast downwards for 2023 and now expects net revenue of around CHF11 billion ($12.19 billion), previously CHF11.1 billion to CHF11.2 billion ($12.3 billion-$12.4 billion).

Swisscom rival Sunrise has renewed its MVNO contracts with TalkTalk and Digital Republic, which are both part of the Mobilezone group. Sunrise has six MVNO partners in total.

Paramount is combining its free, ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV with My5, the catch-up service owned by UK public service broadcaster Channel 5, for, erm, lucky British viewers. The new product is set to launch in the second half of 2024, with branding to be announced in early 2024.

Africa's Liquid Intelligent Technologies has appointed Oswald Jumira as the CEO of its Liquid C2 cloud and cybersecurity unit. Previously Jumira was CEO at Vaya Technologies which, like Liquid, is part of the Cassava Technologies group.

Planet Earth can surely breathe a sigh of relief after the signing of the Bletchley Declaration on AI Safety by representatives from the 28 countries attending the UK government's AI Safety Summit, which concludes tonight with a watch-through-your-fingers chat between Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and loose-cannon zillionaire Elon Musk. The Declaration, says the UK government, "fulfils key summit objectives in establishing shared agreement and responsibility on the risks, opportunities and a forward process for international collaboration on frontier AI safety and research, particularly through greater scientific collaboration."