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News

Leading telecom organisations are on track for digital transformations and, with it, the benefits that the best CPQ software can provide.

By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities

The wrong configure, price and quote (CPQ) system can send a company off the rails. It’s a fact that VicTrack, an Australian company operating rail assets in Victoria, knew all too well.

Once upon a time, VicTrack (with a portfolio that includes dark fibre and managed telco services) was struggling with pricy manual quoting. Even worse, the organisation found themselves unable to take on multiple projects efficiently or cost effectively.

Said plainly, the company needed a CPQ system that could simplify processes.

VicTrack’s decision to act has yielded results.

Today, the company reports a monumental 30% improvement in design and run time processes and offers over 1,800 miles of network to its public transport servicing partners. It also was able to consolidate its products, from hundreds to dozens, and now conducts 30% of transactions via digital channels. Bruce Moore, the executive GM for telecommunications at VicTrack, said they chose wisely in their journey for the right CPQ system.

“This is more than a transaction, it’s a partnership. CSG has gone above and beyond.” Sean Casey, during a recent appearance on Beyond the Cable, spoke to why CPQ systems prove so crucial in the current climate.

“While (traditional CPQs) can manage those (leads and sales) pipelines well and manage longer term sales engagements, they fall apart in the telecom and cable world,” Casey said.

He also said traditional CPQs not built for the telecom industry can add immense costs to the operations of communications service providers.

Not just a trend

As Casey points out, digital transformations like the one undertaken by VicTrack aren’t just a trend, they’re a necessity.

In July, Orange Business became one of the clearest examples of a large company coming to this realisation. That’s when they announced that they’d be switching to a catalog-driven CPQ solution, aimed at simplifying the quote-to-cash process.

At the time, John Marcus, a senior principal analyst with GlobalData, said Orange Business’ announcement represents “a strategic shift toward a platform-driven, innovative approach that aligns well with enterprise customer expectations.”

“Our transformation is not just about technology: it’s about how we create radically better experiences for our customers,” said Hriday Ravindranath, the chief technology and information officer for Orange Business. “By partnering with industry leaders, we are building a next-generation, fully digital, and AI-native Orange Business.”

The solution Orange Business settled on, CSG Quote & Order, “enables faster, error-free product configuration and order fulfilment,” according to Orange Business.

CSG Quote & Order is tailored to telco-specific complexities, creating faster time to revenue and improved process speeds.

Some main factors to consider

When it comes to choosing the right CPQ, CSG lists several main factors of consideration:

• Centralised and rules-based cataloging
• Seamless integration capabilities
• Dynamic pricing
• Margin analysis
• Mobile compatibility

A 2024 whitepaper from Appledore Research highlights the point. The survey that led to the whitepaper’s findings talked to 50 senior executives across 23 countries about their CPQs, mostly at tier-1 and selected tier-2 CSPs.

According to Appledore, 85% of respondents confirmed that their existing CPQ systems meet fewer than three quarters of their requirements.

The survey also reported that 60% of those questioned said their current CPQ was meeting less than half of their organisation’s requirements.

The CPQ systems falling short, also known as legacy or incumbent systems, as described in the whitepaper, leave CSPs with a lack of automation, delayed response times, and qualification inaccuracies. A lack of clarity on margins in real-time and poor financial capabilities is also symptomatic of legacy CPQ systems, the whitepaper says.

Telecoms face a split in the tracks

The paper also ends with a dilemma, painting a picture of a telecom industry at a critical juncture.

“The enterprise segment represents a crucial growth frontier, with connectivity serving as the foundation for modern business services,” the whitepaper’s author, John Abraham, a principal analyst at Appledore, concludes. “However, capturing this opportunity requires CSPs to overcome significant challenges in offer complexity, competitive differentiation, and time-to-market. Specialised CPQ systems emerge as a vital enabler in this transformation, particularly for enterprise market success.”

Abraham further continues with his findings.

“While CPQ systems alone cannot address all transformation challenges, they provide a critical foundation for modernising sales operations and accelerating go-to-market capabilities,” Abraham writes. “CSPs that invest in these specialised platforms position themselves to capitalise on enterprise opportunities more effectively, with the agility and precision required in today’s competitive landscape.”

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The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has allowed a class action claim – originally worth “at least” £3.285bn – against EE (BT), Vodafone (Three UK) and O2 (Virgin Media) to move forward, albeit with limitations. The case, brought by Justin Gutmann and law firm Charles Lyndon, accuses the operators of overcharging for mobile handsets beyond the end of their contractual term.

Just to recap. Mobile operators often offer a choice of either SIM Only (airtime) plans or bundles that include those in with a handset (e.g. Smartphone). However, the legal case itself centres around bundles, which tend to cost more because you’re also spreading the cost of the handset across the contract term. But issues often arise when some operators maintain the same monthly charge even after your contract ends (i.e. you effectively keep paying for the handset, which has already been paid off).

Savvy consumers impacted by this would just switch to a SIM-Only option on a different operator or re-contract to a new plan, but not everybody does that (some people just forget or don’t realise). Ofcom has since put pressure on the mobile operators to mend their ways and in recent years there have been improvements (with mixed success), but the aforementioned class action claim is more concerned with historic “overcharging“.

Back in 2023 Justin Gutmann, the former Head of Research and Insight at Citizens Advice, and law firm Charles Lyndon launched class action proceedings (here) against the major mobile operators (Loyalty Penalty Claim). The case alleged that the operators had been “abusing their dominant positions” by charging a “loyalty penalty,” in which long-standing customers were overcharged for handsets beyond the end of their contract.

The case claims that operators have overcharged on up to 28.2 million contracts and, as a result, would be seeking damages of at least £3.285 billion. If successful, someone who held a contract with just one of the mobile operators could receive as much as £1,823. Many consumers are expected to have claims against more than one mobile operator and so could, hypothetically, receive more than this, if it succeeds.

What’s the latest?

Back in April 2025 we reported that the mobile operators were attempting to get the case dismissed (here). The operators argued that the lawsuit was fundamentally flawed, not least because they say it alleges anti-competitive behaviour “in an industry renowned for its competitiveness” and because large parts of the case (dating back to 2007) were raised too late. They added that it would also be “extraordinarily difficult” for them to identify eligible class members.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has now ruled that claims for damages arising before 1st October 2015 in the Vodafone, EE, Three UK and O2 Proceedings are “struck out“. The operators had also sought to do the same for all claims for losses that arose between 1st October 2015 and 8th March 2017, but the court “refused” that part of the request and allowed it to proceed.

The Tribunal also ruled that they were “satisfied that the Eligibility and Authorisation Conditions were met and granted the CPO Applications in all four proceedings“, which is despite the mobile operators raising questions over Gutmann’s (Proposed Class Representative – PCR) ability to fund future proceedings and to fairly represent claimants. But the tribunal did direct the PCR to inform them “immediately of any material development in respect of his funding arrangements” and to provide them with an update on his current funding position in advance of the next case management conference.

In short, the case can proceed, albeit now with a much more limited scope and doubts remain over its prospects for success. A spokesperson for O2 separately told The Register (credits for spotting this development): “We maintain that there is no merit to Mr Gutmann’s case for the remaining period and will continue to robustly defend our position as it proceeds.”

A spokesperson for EE similarly echoed O2’s remarks and said they “do not accept the substantive allegations of the claim” and that their “priority is, and always will be, to provide a great experience for our customers“.

Big legal cases like these often have to grapple with complex issues, such as with respect to how the law approaches consumer choice, package / brand value and ignorance of contract details. At the same time mobile operators also have the freedom to set retail pricing however they so choose, albeit often restricted by the realities of natural competition (i.e. making your service too expensive can be counter-productive).

Lest we forget that the separate Collective Action on Land Lines (CALL) campaign recently tried and failed to argue a different class action case against BT (here), which related to the alleged overcharging of several million landline-only phone customers. The court ultimately dismissed the case and found that BT’s “prices were not unfair, and therefore there was no abuse of dominant position.”

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The American content delivery network (CDN) and IT service management company, Cloudflare, appears to be suffering from a major global outage. This is currently disrupting connectivity to some of the internet’s most popular websites (e.g. X, ChatGPT, Digital Scotland, Tinyurl.com’s anti-abuse system etc.) and many smaller online services too.

The situation, which appears to have started at around 11:20am today, has been steadily propagating sporadically across the internet and causing websites that use Cloudflare’s services to spit out Error 500 (Internet Server Errors) messages on a holding page (pictured), albeit not due to the website itself but rather a failure within Cloudflare’s platform.

According to Cloudflare’s service status page: “Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service. We will update as we are able to remediate. More updates to follow shortly.” But at 12:21pm, the provider added that they were starting to “see services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts“.

The situation bears some similarities to last month’s major global outage of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-platform (here), although at first glance the disruption doesn’t appear to have lasted as long or been as disruptive as that. But that may depend upon how things progress over the next few minutes or hours.

UPDATE 1:07pm

A number of websites and services did briefly come back to life for a few minutes, before promptly falling over again just a moment ago. The impacts appear to be quite sporadic and variable.

UPDATE 1:17pm

The latest update from Cloudflare suggests some progress is being made.

Update – Nov 18, 2025 – 13:13 UTC

We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates.
We have re-enabled WARP access in London.

We are continuing to work towards restoring other services.

UPDATE 2:25pm

Cloudflare has just said they’re “continuing to work on a fix for this issue“, which over the past hour seems to have returned yet again for many sites and online services. For those who can’t access DownDetector‘s website due to the same problem, here is the current graph of reports:

UPDATE 2:42pm

Quite a few websites just returned to life and Cloudflare has posted the following update: “A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.”

The catch is that some customers may be still experiencing issues logging into or using the Cloudflare dashboard.

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Network access provider Openreach (BT) has issued a progress update on their deployment of a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across rural parts of Scotland. This forms part of their £157m (public subsidy) Project Gigabit contract (here) with the UK government to upgrade 65,000 premises (albeit managed by the Scottish Government).

Just to recap. Openreach has previously been chosen to deliver all of Project Gigabit’s Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (here, here and here) via a Single Supplier Framework agreement (here) – currently reflecting £745m in total public subsidy to help upgrade 297,000 premises to full fibre technology in some of the hardest to reach parts of rural England, Scotland and Wales (i.e. premises with no prior access to gigabit connectivity). The value of this could also be raised up to £1.2bn in the future as more builds are added (here).

The areas covered by these Type C contracts typically reflect locations where no or no appropriate market interest had previously been expressed before to the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, or areas that have been de-scoped or terminated from a prior plan. Areas like the ones above are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers; all the other contracts have gone to smaller alternative networks.

Openreach has today issued a few additional progress updates on their related Project Gigabit contract for Scotland (Call off 6), which reveals that their engineers have now started deploying in Aboyne, Dunure, Fisherton, Aberfoyle, Balfron, Drymen and Killearn. More than 1,600 properties across Aberfoyle, Balfron, Drymen and Killearn already have access to Full Fibre broadband, plus a further 1,400 properties in the Aboyne if we include their separate commercial investment.

Scotland’s Business Minister, Richard Lochhead, said:

“Bringing faster broadband across Scotland is a key priority for the Scottish Government, and it’s encouraging to see Project Gigabit starting to make real progress alongside our £600 million R100 programme.

Fast, reliable internet is essential for modern life – it supports businesses, enables remote working and attracts new opportunities for our rural economy. We will continue to work closely with partners to maximise the impact of public investment and deliver these benefits to every part of Scotland.”

The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn. But it’s important to reflect that Openreach won’t always reach 100% of premises in every location they target on the first pass.

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A new YouGov survey of 5,209 participants from the UK, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Italy, which was conducted during August 2025 and commissioned by FRITZ! (somewhat of a vested interest), claims to have found that users regard European brands of broadband router as the “most trustworthy“.

According to the results, only 10% of respondents said they distrust European router manufacturers, which compares well with 48% for Chinese and 55% for Russian brands. Almost all participants also named reliability, speed and security as the most important purchase criteria.

However, this is hardly a surprising outcome and if Chinese respondents were, for example, asked the same question, then they’d probably trust their own brands more. Curiously, there’s no mention in the press release of the USA (Cisco, Netgear, eero etc.) or Taiwan (e.g. ASUS, D-Link etc.), which are home to many key router brands.

In addition to features such as Wi-Fi coverage and speed, consumers in the UK and Europe also placed great importance on aspects like security (e.g. a powerful firewall or encryption), reliability, or price, performance, and service. Over 90% of all participants rated these aspects as important or very important.

The above is relevant as the EU is currently meeting in Berlin to find ways for how Europe can become less reliant on tech giants from the US and China.

Jan Oetjen, CEO of FRITZ!, said:

“The security of routers is directly linked to digital sovereignty in Europe. An increasing amount of sensitive data – from online banking to tax returns – is transmitted via our home network. Compromised routers therefore pose an immense threat, as they can be misused as weapons for cyberattacks and malicious traffic is hardly distinguishable from legitimate traffic. Similar to the decisions made in the 5G sector, we must ensure that our routers are secure and remain in European hands to protect our digital freedom.”

Naturally, no survey commissioned by a party with a vested interest in the outcome would be complete without a bit of self-promotion. Across all countries surveyed, FRITZ!Box routers are separately claimed to have achieved the highest Net Promoter Score (i.e. a gauge of how likely participants are to recommend their router). But no comparative details were provided for rival brands.

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Press Release

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – 18 November 2025 – Connected World KSA is proud to reveal the winners of its first-ever Connected World KSA Awards, presented today during the event at Riyadh Front Exhibition & Conference Center. The awards recognise organisations and initiatives driving innovation, connectivity, and digital transformation across the Kingdom.

The 2025 winners are:

• Digital Infrastructure Innovation: OneWeb NEOM
• Borderless Connectivity: STC & Ciena
• Smart Society: Mobily
• Next-Gen Talent & Inclusion: Zain KSA
• AI for Operations: Nokia

“These awards highlight the organisations and projects shaping the future of connectivity and digital innovation in Saudi Arabia,” said Edwards Haines, Project Director of Connected World KSA. “We are proud to recognise the achievements of this year’s winners, who exemplify the vision, ingenuity, and commitment required to drive digital transformation in the region.”

The inaugural Connected World KSA Awards reflect the Kingdom’s growing role as a hub for technology innovation and its commitment to building a smarter, more connected society. Winners were selected by a panel of industry experts and leaders, acknowledging outstanding contributions to infrastructure, connectivity, AI, and talent development.

For media enquiries, interviews, or additional information, please contact:

Teresa Leese, Senior Marketing Manager Te**********@*******nn.com

About Connected World KSA

Connected World KSA is Saudi Arabia’s premier conference and exhibition dedicated to digital transformation, connectivity, AI, and next-generation infrastructure. The event brings together global technology leaders, innovators, and decision-makers to explore the future of a connected world.

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News

The move comes as part of long-term restructuring underway since 2023

According to reports, Nokia is set to close its site in Munich by 2030, a move that will see 700 jobs cut or relocated.

Around 300 of these jobs are to be cut in 2026, with the remainder taking place by the end of 2030.

The closure is part of Nokia’s major restructuring announced back in 2023, aimed at streamlining the company and reducing costs. Part of this plan is a reduction of the company’s workforce by between 9,000 and 14,000 jobs cut by the end of 2026. This, the company said, will help it cut costs by between €800 million and €1.2 billion. Around €400 million of these savings were planned to be reached in 2024, and a further €300 million in 2025.

Nokia currently employs 2,500 people across Germany, including its additional sites in Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Ulm, and Nuremberg. All these sites, Nokia says, will be affected by the nationwide headcount reduction in 2026, but will not be closed.

“This will strengthen our capacity for long-term growth and customer loyalty, while ensuring that our teams have the framework conditions necessary for their success,” said the company in a statement.

The trade union IG Metall, however, has described the decision to close the Munich site as ‘disastrous’.

“Especially in times of geopolitical challenges, it is a fatal signal when a key company scales back its presence in Germany,” said Daniele Frijia, managing director of IG Metall Munich and member of Nokia’s German supervisory board, speaking to heise online.

“Instead of cutting jobs, Nokia should invest in the future,” she added.

But it is not all doom and gloom for Munich’s relationship with tech giants.

Earlier this month, Deutsche Telekom announced a deal with Nvidia to build a new ‘AI factory’ in Munich, seeking to meet not only Europe’s demand for AI computing but also its desire for data sovereignty. Similarly, AI company Anthropic has shown interest in the city, announcing plans to open a new office in Munich, alongside another in Paris.

It would appear that Munich’s position as a European tech hub is not at risk just yet.

Connected Germany 2025 is taking place right now! Get your ticket here

Also in the news
Connected Britain Award winners 2025 announced!
Netomnia announces ‘powerful and ambitious’ rebrand ahead of Connected Britain
VodafoneThree drops Samsung, relies on Nokia and Ericsson for £2bn network upgrade

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UK ISP Virgin Media (O2) and network partner nexfibre, which enjoy some of the same parentage, have today announced that they’ve expanded the reach of their 2Gbps (symmetric) speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to reach more than 6,000 homes in the North Yorkshire (England) based Cathedral City of Ripon.

The city, which is home to a population of around 17,000, currently only has some very limited gigabit speed full fibre coverage from Openreach and other alternative networks (CityFibre, Quickline etc.). Suffice to say that nexfibre’s new deployment covers most of the urban area and should thus come as a welcome development for local homes and businesses.

Nexfibre reflects a £4.5bn joint venture between Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here). This has so far already covered around 2.4 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, which is being built by Virgin Media’s engineers. But the operator’s original plan to cover “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises was recently dealt a blow by Telefonica’s strategic review (here).

The network operator currently only expects to reach 2.5 million UK premises by the end of 2025 and uncertainty remains over what comes next. But Virgin Media has recently announced the creation of a new fixed wholesale unit, which will enable retail ISPs to harness both of their FTTP networks (here) – currently available to a combined 7 million UK premises.

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A new study from a team of three researchers working out of the University of California (USA) has taken a “deep dive” into the impact of solar storms on Starlink’s global network of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The results uncovered some “previously overlooked patterns” of vulnerability and suggest that “more adaptive, region-aware mitigation strategies” may be needed.

The Starlink constellation currently has around 8,990 satellites in orbit (c.5,470 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for many areas) on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers) directly from Starlink, which promises UK latency times of 26-33ms, downloads of 116-277Mbps and uploads of 17-32Mbps. Cheaper, albeit more restrictive (data capped), options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £50 per month for 50 GigaBytes of data).

Prior studies have confirmed that such networks do suffer a “modest but noticeable impact” on their performance during solar storms (when intense solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere). This typically manifests as an immediate rise in packet loss and a sustained increase in round-trip time (RTT / latency).

Such radiation can sometimes damage satellites, not only directly but also by spawning shifting currents and plasmas, which may cause the atmosphere to warm a little and atmospheric density to increase. In order to mitigate against the risk that this may stress related hardware systems and affect satellite trajectories (in extreme cases it may even result in satellite loss), SpaceX will often raise the altitude of their satellites a bit to avoid the extra drag. But these satellites will usually return to their original altitude within 1–2 days.

The new study (credits The Register) investigates how atmospheric drag from geomagnetic disturbances affects different parts of the LEO constellation during such events, and in turn, network performance. The study notes that the corrective action SpaceX takes triggers a “cascading effect“, with orbital adjustments propagating across neighbouring satellites in both spatial and temporal dimensions.

“Full stabilization of the orbit often takes 3–4 days. These dynamic adjustments can disrupt satellite links and routing paths, contributing to performance issues such as a sustained increase in round-trip time (RTT),” said the report.

Study Findings

By localizing the impact of increased atmospheric drag at the level of individual satellites and orbits, we reveal significant heterogeneity in how different parts of the network are affected. We find that the degree of performance degradation varies significantly across geographic regions, depending on satellite positioning during the storm.

Specifically, we find that (i) not all satellite orbits are equally vulnerable, (ii) within a given orbit, certain satellites experience disproportionate impact depending on their position relative to geomagnetic conditions, and (iii) autonomous maneuvering of satellites might be a cause of the sustained increase in RTT.

Our findings uncover previously overlooked patterns of vulnerability in LEO satellite constellations and highlight the need for more adaptive, region-aware mitigation strategies to address space weather-induced network disruptions.

However, while the study doesn’t really provide much data in terms of the performance impact, it does look as if the negative impacts are fairly small in the sense of their impact upon real-world usability (i.e. you might not even notice it). Crucially, Starlink also kept operating during several of the examined solar storm events, although we would have liked to know if there was any impact on data speeds too etc.

While this study focuses on Starlink, which has the largest LEO constellation currently in operation, the methodology can also be extended to analyse other similar networks, such as OneWeb (Eutelsat) and Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper).

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The cross-party Home-based Working Committee (Lords Select Committee) has published its report on remote and hybrid working in the UK, which among other things finds that the government should “increase long-term investment in digital infrastructure, particularly broadband” in order to properly support such working.

Currently, over 88% of UK premises can already access a 1000Mbps+ (gigabit) capable broadband network (here), while Ofcom separately forecasts that this may reach between 91% to 97% of homes by January 2028 (here). Most of this has been delivered by commercial builds (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas), but there are some areas in the final 10-20% of premises that are simply too expensive for commercial providers.

The government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme was thus established in 2021 to help extend gigabit broadband ISP networks to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by 2030 2032 (here) – focusing on the commercially unviable areas (usually rural and semi-rural locations).

However, while the new report does recognise the aforementioned project (‘Is working from home working?‘), it also calls on the government to “increase long-term investment in digital infrastructure” and to “clearly articulate how it will deliver its targets and commit to funding it further into the future“.

The report goes on to recommend that the government should develop a long-term plan for improvements to business connectivity, including in rural areas with limited access to digital infrastructure.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market, Chair of the Committee, said:

“The extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic transformed working from home into a ‘new normal’ for many workers. Our report represents a comprehensive examination of all aspects of home working based on a thorough consideration of the available evidence.

The increased flexibility of remote and hybrid working can be especially beneficial to people with disabilities and to parents or carers, and may help them to work where they couldn’t previously. If the Government wants to encourage more people back into work, then it should look into the potential of remote and hybrid working alongside existing back to work initiatives.

While we don’t expect the Government to legislate further on a subject that is best handled by employers and workers, it should provide relevant guidance and promote already existing guidance more widely. As it implements the Employment Rights Bill, it should ensure its changes to flexible working requests do not put undue pressure on the employment tribunal system.

The recommendations in our report are practicable and deliverable and we look forward to receiving the Government’s response in due course. We urge the Government to work towards implementation, including cross departmental data gathering so that current trends can be tracked, analysed and put to good use when developing policy in the future.”

Paddy Paddison, Chief Executive of INCA, said:

“This report recognises that access to fast, reliable broadband is fundamental to people’s ability to work, learn and participate in society. The ability to work from home depends entirely on the strength of the UK’s digital infrastructure, and we welcome the Lords Committee’s call for greater long-term investment and a clear plan to deliver on Project Gigabit’s 99% coverage target.

Across the country, over 100 Altnets now serve more than 16.4 million homes and have attracted more than £17 billion in private investment since 2020 – averaging over £1,000 invested per premises passed. This level of commitment has transformed connectivity in towns, cities and rural areas alike.

That progress is not guaranteed. It relies on fair competition and a regulatory environment that allows independent networks to continue investing. The digital divide affects opportunity as much as connectivity, and the UK’s ambition for a modern, flexible workforce depends on getting this right.”

The full summary of what the report says on technology and digital infrastructure can be found below (it also coves many other areas). But we note that their recommendations for broadband somewhat fail to spell out much in the way of any specifics for how the proposed additional investment should be used, or even how much extra funding may be required.

At present, the public subsidy available under Project Gigabit should be enough to help do most of the job in terms of network coverage, although a question mark does exist over the final c.1% of very hard to reach premises (i.e. the bits that are too expensive for even Project Gigabit). Satellite and fixed wireless (FWA) solutions may be able to plug some of this gap, but these are not always perfect solutions and won’t work for every single location or building. Ofcom’s related Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband is also overdue for a review.

Chapter 8: Technology

75. The Government should increase long-term investment in digital infrastructure. While we welcome Project Gigabit, the Government should clearly articulate how it will deliver its targets and commit to funding it further into the future. It should develop a long-term plan for improvements to business connectivity, including in rural areas with limited access to digital infrastructure. In doing so, it should draw on international best practice such as from Sweden, Spain, and Norway.

IS WORKING FROM HOME WORKING?

76. The Government should improve digital access and the development of digital skills. It should communicate the benefits which improved connectivity can confer to businesses and communities through the Digital Inclusion Action Plan. It should promote the development of employment skills for young people, such as using computers to perform tasks which may be challenging with smartphones. This includes assisting employers with providing digital training for their staff, while communicating that employers should take responsibility for developing workers’ skills and adapt to a generation which prefers to use smartphones.

77. Digital technology and software are critical for facilitating remote and hybrid working. Having a broadband connection in offices and homes is an essential requirement. There is a range of software available to enable better project management and collaboration, but some of this may be under-utilised, particularly when it operates on a relatively small scale.

78. Some technology, such as surveillance software, may not achieve meaningful benefits, since it does not necessarily track useful outcomes. It may even be harmful due to the demands it can place on workload and availability.

79. Remote and hybrid working do not necessarily pose widespread additional cybersecurity risks, provided proper procedures are understood and followed. The cybersecurity training and systems required are widely available. We welcome the guidance provided by the National Cyber Security Centre, including the advice tailored for SMEs. The National Cyber Security Centre should continue to treat remote and hybrid working as a priority as it develops and communicates this guidance.

The Government should further promote the guidance of the National Cyber Security Centre on cybersecurity, particularly as it relates to remote and hybrid working. It should consider how this can be incorporated into its existing activity in the area, including engagement with industry and the forthcoming national cyber strategy.