Rockley Photonics, a silicon photonics start-up founded by entrepreneur Andrew Rickman, has formed a partnership with the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the UK’s University of Southampton to develop integrated photonics technology for mass market applications.

Through the ‘Prosperity Partnership’, Rockley Photonics will match the ORC’s government funding over the next five years. The scheme is designed to strengthen ties between university and industry, and speed up the time it takes innovation to progress from concept to market place.

Juniper Networks has completed its search for a chief technology officer, and selected former Google engineer Bikash Koley for the role.

He will replace Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper Networks’ co-founder and CTO. Sindhu said earlier this year that he will transition to the role of chief scientist, reducing his work at Juniper so he can devote more time to his position as CEO of cloud data centre start-up Fungible. Juniper is a Fungible investor.

US tower operator Crown Castle International has agreed to acquire privately held Lightower Fiber Networks for about $7.1 billion in cash, a deal that will make it one of the largest owners of metro fibre in the US.

Crown Castle, which is the largest provider of shared wireless infrastructure in the US with 40,000 towers and 50,000 small cell nodes on air, is buying Lightower from a group of investors including Berkshire Partners and Pamlico Capital.

German company Keymile plans to focus on broadband communications systems, following the sale of its mission-critical communication business unit to Swiss industrial automation specialist ABB for an undisclosed sum.

The company wants to ride the demand wave for broadband, which continues to roll on at breakneck speed. Keymile’s products allow network operators to offer their end customers a variety of voice and data services across all types of fibre-to-the-x access network architectures.

The UK Government has described how it plans to spend the £400 million investment aimed at bringing bring ‘full fibre’ connections – installing fibre-optic cables to individual properties – to two million more homes across the country.

ADVA Optical Networking has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MRV Communications, a California-based provider of packet-optical networking equipment, in an all-stock deal worth $69 million (€60.7 million).

If successful, the acquisition will strengthen ADVA’s optical, Ethernet and software portfolio, and help the company broaden its customer base, especially outside Europe.

The boom in data centre optics is benefitting a small Scottish components start-up: Optoscribe has closed a series B investment round of £1.8 million as it continues to grow.

The funding was led by Scottish business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, supported by existing investors Par Equity, the Scottish Investment Bank, and Optoscribe’s management team.

Nokia has signed a definitive agreement with China Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy Development Center to integrate Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell (ASB) and Nokia's China business. The new joint venture will be branded Nokia Shanghai Bell (NSB).

The arrangement is similar to the joint venture that existed between Alcatel-Lucent and China Huaxin, which is a Chinese state-owned investor.

One of the barriers to retail competition over local fibre networks has been lack of software to connect retail service provider systems with those of local infrastructure providers. Now fibre companies in Ireland have joined forces to address this issue.

Enet, a wholesale communications provider, has signed a deal with SIRO that will enable enet to become a SIRO aggregator.

Gigaclear has secured an additional £111 million (€131 million) in equity funding to build new fibre networks in rural Britain. This will enable a significant acceleration in the build rate of these ultrafast fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks, reaching and connecting hundreds of thousands of people.