Private equity investor Macquarie's £627m takeover of Hull-based broadband monopoly KCOM has been approved by the UK High Court.

Shareholders voted in support of the acquisition, at 120.3p per KCOM share, with the court giving the thumbs-up on Tuesday.

In a market update today, KCOM said its shares have now been suspended.

The five-day auction closed last month after Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund 6 SCSp (MEIF6) saw off rival bidder USS (Universities Superannuation Scheme).

Last year, KCOM reported revenue of £301.89m, down from £331.3m the year before. Profit grew to £36.4m from £32.75m.

KCOM sells broadband to 140,000 businesses and

Cisco finds its bank balance $8.6m lighter after it agreed to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit in the US over its video surveillance software.

On Wednesday, attorneys for whistleblower James Glenn announced that the networking giant's payout would settle the first ever US False Claims Act case to involve information security. For his trouble, Glenn (and his lawyers) stands to pocket $1.6m from the payout, while US states grab the other $7m.

Glenn, a former Cisco contractor, filed the whistleblower complaint in 2011, accusing Switchzilla of knowingly selling Uncle Sam, including all four branches of its military and FEMA,

Broadcom billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III and a pal will avoid a stretch behind bars after cops seized a huge stash of narcotics from their Las Vegas hotel suite.

Nicholas, 60, and his companion Ashley Fargo, were arrested and charged with drugs trafficking in August 2018. Officers had been called to the Encore hotel by its staff, where they discovered a substantial amount of heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and ecstasy in the tech billionaire's room, and busted the pair.

This week, lawyers for Nicholas and Fargo indicated they will,

Apple has lost its fifth legal appeal against the holder of network protocol patents, VirnetX, inching the case forward one judgment at a time.

This time a US federal court agreed [PDF] with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that two patents owned by VirnetX were in fact valid. It has previously – and repeatedly – been decided that Apple infringed those patents in its FaceTime video-conferencing and as a result has been ordered to pay VirnetX over $1bn in damages.

But since the case was first filed in 2010, Apple has adopted a legal strategy of stringing the

BT's Openreach is forking out £14m to refund internet service providers for network outages and faults.

BT announced the payment in results for the first quarter, ended 30 June, posting a 1 per cent fall in revenue to £5.63bn and profits down 1 per cent to £642m, compared with the same quarter last year.

It said: "Openreach have recently identified that they have been underpaying service level guarantee compensation for their Ethernet Backhaul Direct product since October 2016.

"Openreach have informed Ofcom and are informing those external communications providers who were affected. Openreach are in the process of refunding in