Chapter 253 Christmas is coming

When Barron ran around the Regent River and returned to The Holme, he saw Tamaran still sleeping in bed.

  When he walked out of the bedroom, Alia had already prepared hot water for him.

  "Your Highness, Mr. Inkster has arrived and is waiting for you downstairs."

  After Barron finished taking a shower, Alia came in personally to help him put on his clothes and said to him - after working as Barron's personal assistant for some time, Alia has now completely gotten into the role. Facing Barron's impressive figure, although her face is still rosy, she is no longer as shy as she was at the beginning, when her hands were even shaking.

  "Your Highness the Duke..."

  When Barron went downstairs, he saw Nigel Inkster, who was wearing a suit and sitting on the sofa in the hall waiting for him.

  "Mr. Inkster, have you had breakfast? Let's eat together."

  Barron was feeling a little hungry at the moment, so he invited Nigel to have breakfast with him.

  "The current situation in Kolo is that the government forces have been driven out of the central area, but their resistance in the plateau area is very tenacious. With the advantage of terrain, the anti-government armed forces' offensive has been halted..."

  After breakfast, Nigel introduced the situation of the Kolo civil war to Barron:

  "Currently in the central region, the capital Sokode is occupied by the Free Kolo Alliance. They and the Kolo Resistance Army have divided the central region west of the Mono River. The Kolo Liberation Front led by Sheikh Hassan occupies the area east of the Mono River in the central region. This area is also the smallest territory among the three anti-government armed forces, and the resources are much scarcer than those on the west bank of Mono. Therefore, the Kolo Liberation Front, which joined the war last, is the most active in attacking the government forces in the plateau area."

  "What are their casualties like?"

  Hearing Barron's question, Nigel said,

  "The anti-government forces did not suffer much loss. According to a rough estimate, among the more than 3,000 militants on their front line, the total number of casualties is less than a quarter. On the contrary, the government forces suffered greater losses due to their low morale. The anti-government forces also obtained some captured weapons and equipment and began to expand their personnel in the local area. However, so far, the most elite Nassin Brigade of the Kolo government forces, which has been stationed in the capital Loti and has a size of more than 1,000 people, has not been transferred to the front line. This is an elite force named after the Kolo leader Nassin Dema. It was originally led by Nassin himself and their equipment is all French ordnance."

  Barron also knew that for armies like those in Africa, morale is often the most important thing. When the offensive is unstoppable, the force can be maintained. However, once setbacks occur, those black guys will often start to scatter like birds and beasts, and it will be difficult to maintain the overall formation.

  Therefore, although the anti-government armed forces seem to be attacking fiercely at present, once this offensive is blocked and the opponent's elite troops enter the field, they will most likely suffer a defeat.

  It is now late December, and the 200 newly recruited local armed personnel that the Protector Military Company added to the Munger base have arrived there. Together with the 200 new recruits just recruited and trained in Kolo, the Protector Military Company now has more than 400 British soldiers and 300 Kolo soldiers in the Munger base and the barracks near the newly acquired diamond mine, with a total armed force of 700 people.

  In addition, they now have standard equipment comparable to that of the British Army - these were previously transported from Iraq to the Munger base through various means and stored there. Apart from anything else, there is no problem in guarding their two mines.

  Markel Paulson even assured him that with these troops, any single armed force, including government forces, would be defeated within Kolo.

  After all, in addition to individual light weapons and equipment, the Munger base also has armed helicopters and artillery. They even considered transporting back two of the tanks that the coalition forces "lost" on the battlefield in Iraq...

  Well, with so many rebel groups in Iraq, it makes sense to destroy a few tanks, right?

  Last month, it was reported that more than half of the British Challenger 2 tanks used in the Iraq War had been grounded, with many of them completely destroyed and beyond repair.

  …

  Before Christmas, when the exchange rate of the euro against the US dollar was close to 1.25, DS Capital had already begun closing its positions.

  However, because their positions are relatively high, it is estimated that this closing operation will be completed before January next year.

  Now that Christmas is approaching, the whole of England is beginning to feel the festive atmosphere.  

  Christmas trees have been delivered to both of Barron's residences and are decorated in the halls.

  At the same time, O2 Telecom has also started another promotion.

  At present, in the French market, the 2G network built by Huawei has been able to cover their major cities, and it is expected that by February next year, 2G coverage of the whole of France will be completed.

  At the same time, 3G network coverage and broadband network coverage will be launched in major cities.

  In fact, the 3G network in O2 Telecom's current markets will only be opened in the two or three most developed cities in each country. When Apple is about to launch the iPhone in 2007, it will start to provide full coverage of the 3G network.

  And in these European markets, 3G networks will be sufficient for more than ten years by then...

  Yes, you read that right.

  Because until 2020, in countries like Germany and France, the 3G network is still the most widely used by the public. The so-called 4G and 5G networks are probably only available in some large cities...

  So you know why many people brag about how there is WIFI on European trams and that there is WIFI coverage in many public places.

  There's no reason for this. Without WIFI, I can only watch videos on the extremely slow 3G network. What a terrible experience.

  In China at that time, many people had tens or hundreds of gigabytes of 4G and 5G data, which they could not use up. Who would have the need to connect to the so-called public WIFI? How fast could the WIFI be with so many people connected?

  Also because of the increase in the scope of mobile network deployment in France, coupled with O2 Telecom's low tariff policy, the number of their users in the French market has increased very rapidly during this period, and it has become the main source of new users for O2.

  To date, the total number of O2 Telecom users has reached nearly 20 million. In the British mobile communications market, it has surpassed Vodafone to become the mobile communications company with the largest number of users. In the global market, it is also the British telecommunications company second only to Vodafone.

  Of course, if fixed-line and broadband services are included, O2 Telecom is still inferior to BT. However, the gap between the two has been reduced a lot due to O2 Telecom's development in broadband business.

  After all, because of the cooperation with Digital UK to provide it with preferential home broadband packages, the number of users brought by the Freeview platform alone has exceeded 7 million.

  This time, O2 Telecom's activity is to increase the pre-recharge fee by half. For example, if you recharge 1,000 pounds, you can get a total of 1,500 pounds more.

  Of course, the intensity of this campaign is definitely not as strong as the last time where you could get as much as you deposit, but that's how things are. Before, it was to compete for users and obtain liquidity, but now the situation is different.

  And because many of the users who participated in the previous event have not yet used up their recharged funds, most of the users participating in this event are new users.

  Even so, the promotional event, which lasted for half a month from December 20 to the New Year's Day, still brought O2 Telecom up to 500 million pounds in pre-charge funds.

  Under such circumstances, and given that the quality of Huawei's equipment deployment in the French market had been recognized by O2 Telecom, Huawei did not wait for the French market to be completed and directly signed a follow-up agreement with them in advance, thus starting the deployment of 2G networks in the German market.

  Of course, it will start from the big cities first.