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As expected, Sky has today soft launched their new Sky Glass Air televisions for customers of their broadband-based pay TV streaming service, which is essentially a slimmed down version of their recently launched Gen 2 TVs (introduced February 2025). The new kit will become available to buy on Tuesday 10th June (Currys stores from 18th).

In case anybody has forgotten, the Sky Glass Gen 2 TVs were priced from £14 per month and came in several sizes – 43″, 55″ and 65″, as well as three updated colours, Volcanic Grey, Arctic Silver and Atlantic Blue. Cosmetically, they were a modest refinement on Sky’s original design, albeit with a brighter 4K Quantum Dot display and enhanced Dolby Atmos® sound via seven speakers (soundbar and dual subwoofer built-in). Not to mention a new stand and mount for flexibility.

However, Sky’s original announcement also teased another new TV set for the future – Sky Glass Air, which will also have a 4K Quantum Dot HDR screen, plus global dimming and contrast enhancements that automatically brightens the screen for a clearer, more vivid picture. But it only has 2.0 stereo speakers with Dolby Audio. In short, it was a cheaper, slimmed down version of the regular Gen 2 TVs, albeit with most of the same features and the full Sky OS (software).

The big news today is that Sky will finally put these Sky Glass Air TV sets on sale from Tuesday next week (10th June), starting from just £6 a month at Sky.com, Sky stores, Sky call centres and Currys.co.uk. This is on top of a Sky Essential TV (or greater) subscription, which starts from £15 a month for new customers.

The Sky Glass Air TVs will be available in three colours – Sea Green, Carbon Grey, and Cotton White – and three sizes, 43”, 55”, and 65”, like normal.

Carli Kerr, MD of Sky TV & NOW TV, said:

“With Sky Glass Air, we’re bringing the Sky experience to more people through a beautifully designed TV with stunning picture quality from just £6 a month. It’s all about giving people better for less: more choice, great tech, and the content they love, without compromising on quality. From the ultimate performance of Glass Gen 2 to the incredible value of Air, there’s now a Sky Glass to suit everyone, whether you’re new to Sky or already with us.”

Take note that the £6 per month price mention above reflects their 43″ TV on an 48-month interest free loan, but prices may change during the 24-month Sky TV subscription (Sky often does annual price hikes) and there’s a one-off upfront payment of £20 to pay too. Pricing for a shorter 24-month interest free loan = £12pm for 43”, £20pm for 55”, £26pm for 65”.

Customers can also opt to pay for Sky Glass Air upfront, all in one go, which costs as follows: 43” – £309, 55” – £509 or 65” – £649. Consumers could alternatively forget Sky Glass entirely and go with the Sky Stream box(es) instead, which can be used with your existing TV set and for a lot of people that will make more sense.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Telecoms and broadband giant BT Group yesterday officially launched their new standalone ‘International’ unit to serve their multinational customers, which was previously predicted (here) to comprise over 8,000 staff and will report separately from the company’s UK business.

The operator has been gradually reducing their international operations for some time as part of wider cost-cutting plans. The decision to shift what remains of that into a separate unit, while complex, could make it easier and more cost-effective to manage. On the flip side, it might also make the whole thing easier to sell, or possibly even to merge with another network operator.

The former chief of BT Business, Bas Burger, has been tasked with running the new unit and taking on competitors that are often said to have “gained strength” in the wider market. But there’s also the potential for further redundancies as BT brings everything together.

Bas Burger, CEO of BT International, said:

“Today, we launch BT International, serving our multinational customers as a dedicated operation within BT Group with its own people, products and platforms.

It comes as our customers face unprecedented disruption across their markets driven by geopolitics, regulation and technology — with AI catalysing change faster than ever. We have designed BT International specifically to help our customers meet these challenges head on and anticipate future opportunities to thrive.

The way we do this centres on two highly scalable telco platforms designed for the age of multi-cloud and AI: Global Voice and Global Fabric, with security built in by design. We’ve channelled our investments into these cloud-centric global platforms and concentrated our expert teams where customers need them most.

…

Looking to the future of our industry, we believe international networks will gravitate towards fewer, larger, telco platforms able to manage the demand generated by increased cloud and AI services. We invite other service providers to work with BT International, as we build out our ecosystem of partners, including our recently announced partnership with Google Cloud, and scale fast so we can, as an industry, offer the best value to customers across the globe.

We’re at a pivotal moment as an industry. It is an opportunity to move away from fragmented legacy international networks to a platform designed with the reality of AI, cyber and cloud at its core, reflecting customers’ expectations of speed, security, sustainability, sovereignty and naturally the skills to support future growth and prosperity.”

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One of the UK’s largest utility contractors, Network Plus, which also helps a number of network operators to deploy full fibre broadband infrastructure, has appointed workforce management firm Totalmobile to overhaul how it manages and delivers its field services across the country.

The “collaboration” will see Network Plus deploying new work order management, mobile working, and dynamic scheduling solutions to support the delivery of essential utility and infrastructure services across the United Kingdom.

The goal is to streamline core processes with integrated digital solutions, which should boost productivity, increase workforce agility, and improve the experience for both its workforce and end customers – impacting operations spanning over 80 depots and sites.

Joe Erling, Spokesperson for Network Plus, said:

“Investment in the Totalmobile platform is a key step in enhancing efficiency across both our back-office operations and field delivery teams at Network Plus. By deploying work order management, automated dynamic scheduling, and configurable mobile forms, we will achieve significant improvements across contracts, which will ultimately support our wider strategic growth ambitions.”

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Network operator CityFibre, which has already deployed their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network to cover 4.4 million UK premises (4.2m Ready for Service), has today taken the wraps off their new “Multi-Gig” product, offering its ISP partners symmetrical speeds of 5.5Gbps (Gigabits per second) – over twice as fast as their current top 2.5Gbps tier.

The new product tier is being made possible by the operator’s ongoing upgrade from their existing GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) to XGS-PON (10Gbps symmetric capable PON) platform, which has already rolled out across 85% of CityFibre’s network and is currently “due for completion later this summer“.

In addition, the operator also hinted that they’re planning “faster Multi-Gig services due to launch” sometime in 2026, which we suspect might well see them push into the 7-8Gbps territory like other altnets (e.g. Netomnia/YouFibre, B4RN etc.). Going faster than 7-8Gbps on even XGS-PON in the real-world is difficult due to network overheads and other caveats.

“Over three times faster than BT Openreach’s fastest available 1.8Gb downstream / 0.12Gb upstream service, and available at a much lower wholesale cost, CityFibre’s 5.5Gb symmetrical product will enable partners to offer a range of Multi-Gig speed tiers to customers, improving margins whilst providing a valuable customer retention tool for the long term,” said the announcement.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“The UK’s full fibre future is here, thanks to CityFibre’s powerful, 10Gb XGS-PON network. Our ISP partners are already connecting customers with speeds over 2Gb and exceeding expectations when it comes to quality and reliability, but our next generation of full fibre will set a new standard for what’s possible.

CityFibre started out to challenge the incumbents and bring choice and competition to the UK market. This is another huge step-forward, giving ISPs more power and flexibility than ever before and bringing affordable Multi-Gig speeds and an unrivalled experience to millions of UK consumers.”

The network operator, which has so far attracted 550,000 live customers (March 2025), currently still aspires to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their new full fibre network (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and nearly £1bn of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK. But quite when they’ll reach that point is unclear.

The announcement comes shortly after we reported on how Openreach’s technical documents for their own XGS-PON deployment were hinting at plans for a top symmetric speed of 3.3Gbps (here). At the same time, we’ve also seen Netomnia pushing into 50Gbps capable (50G PON) territory (here), although business users will be the first to benefit from any future 10Gbps+ packages via that network.

The usual catch in all this is the difficulty of actually being able to harness all that speed when online. Most internet services still seem to struggle to harness more than 1Gbps (1000Mbps), assuming they can do even that, while the multi-gigabit domain remains more of a premium luxury product (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver 1Gbps). But technological evolution rarely waits for the slowest users.

Naturally, there will always be those who find reason to moan, even when a network providers do things as striking as this. But pushing the boundaries of modern technology is part of what makes an operator exciting (marketing carries power) and as coverage matures then service performance / quality inevitably becomes the next battleground, alongside price.

The catch for retail ISPs is that, in order to take advantage of such speeds, they’ll need to invest in more capacity and better equipment (e.g. optical modems / ONT and routers, as well as fresh engineer visits for existing customers). All of that comes with its own costs and complexity, thus it may take a bit of time before all of CityFibre’s retail ISPs are pushing their new top speeds to consumers.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

by Bas Burger, CEO, International, BT

Today, we launch BT International, serving our multinational customers as a dedicated operation within BT Group with its own people, products and platforms.

It comes as our customers face unprecedented disruption across their markets driven by geopolitics, regulation and technology — with AI catalysing change faster than ever. We have designed BT International specifically to help our customers meet these challenges head on and anticipate future opportunities to thrive.

The way we do this centres on two highly scalable telco platforms designed for the age of multi-cloud and AI: Global Voice and Global Fabric, with security built in by design. We’ve channelled our investments into these cloud-centric global platforms and concentrated our expert teams where customers need them most.

From asset-light to platform-rich

We have evolved our ‘asset-light’ strategy for several years, designing our platforms to reflect the trends we see in customer traffic crossing our networks — from data flows to and between the big cloud providers to the emergence of hybrid cloud as a preferred model for many businesses. We see that AI has unpredictable impacts on our customers’ networks — from the lumpy, bulky training workloads of large language models (LLMs) powering GenAI to the low latency demands of conversational AI and augmented reality. These trends are set against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving cyber security threat landscape and a fast-moving regulatory environment.

Telecoms gets its voice back

Our Global Voice platform enables businesses, governments and the people they engage with to communicate with each other effortlessly. We’re already world leading in the global voice services market, managing over 16 billion calls to customer call centres in over 70 countries every year. We’ve migrated these services onto a new SIP-powered, cloud focussed platform enabling voice to be carried across data networks. SIP has been around for a while but the fact that Global Managed Voice is both SIP-powered and cloud-focused means that it’s perfectly poised to unlock the full potential of integrating voice with AI.

Indeed, Gartner predicts that 30 per cent of Fortune 500 companies will offer customer service through only a single, AI-enabled channel by 2028. I believe our Global Voice platform is strongly positioned to enable this, backed by our experts who have delivered over 5,000 contact centres to over 2,000 customers around the world.

Wrapping the world in Global Fabric

Next, we have Global Fabric, our brand-new, AI-ready, cloud-centric network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform. This offers customers instant, secure and resilient connectivity to practically every app or digital service they want, including the world’s top cloud and software-as-a-service  (SaaS) providers. It launched to live customer traffic earlier this year and it is the platform that will help us achieve our goal to be the world’s number one provider of secure multi-cloud connectivity.

Global Fabric could have hardly arrived at a better time. We were one of the first telcos off the starting blocks with a truly greenfield international platform to eliminate the drag that the previous generation of networks had on customer innovation. With traditional networks, setting up or making changes to connectivity for a new or existing app, including AI, could take days or weeks. With Global Fabric, it happens in an instant.

Now think of the increasingly complex international regulatory environment. Technology and data have become geopolitical pawns. That means customers must double down on sovereignty, ensuring the right data stays within the right jurisdiction while enabling them to unlock its value to the business. With Global Fabric, customers can choose both the cloud destinations their data goes to and the route it takes along the way. This means regulated data never leaves the designated national borders and helps customers stay compliant.

Sharing a platform for success

Looking to the future of our industry, we believe international networks will gravitate towards fewer, larger, telco platforms able to manage the demand generated by increased cloud and AI services. We invite other service providers to work with BT International, as we build out our ecosystem of partners, including our recently announced partnership with Google Cloud, and scale fast so we can, as an industry, offer the best value to customers across the globe.

We’re at a pivotal moment as an industry. It is an opportunity to move away from fragmented legacy international networks to a platform designed with the reality of AI, cyber and cloud at its core, reflecting customers’ expectations of speed, security, sustainability, sovereignty and naturally the skills to support future growth and prosperity.

Join us at Connected Britain, 24-25 September in London. Tickets available here  

Also in the news:
SWR deploys Europe’s first ’Rail-5G’ Wi-Fi  
BT accelerates fibre rollout amid cost cuts
AT&T agrees $5.75 billion deal for Lumen’s consumer fibre assets

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Angola Cables is proud to announce that it is now a Premium Wholesale Reseller Partner of DE-CIX, the world’s leading Internet Exchange (IX) operator. As a Premium Wholesale Reseller Partner, Angola Cables will leverage DE-CIX’s extensive interconnection ecosystem to enhance its service offerings, providing businesses and enterprises with seamless access to one of the largest and most advanced IX platforms globally. This collaboration underscores Angola Cables’ commitment to driving digital transformation and expanding its reach in the international connectivity market. According to Executive Board Member, Rui Faria, Angola Cables has been in strategic partnership with DE-CIX since 2014. “Over the past decade this partnership has been strengthened by a mutual intent to improve global interconnectivity and providing the most efficient premium connectivity access and seamless peering experience for the customers we serve in Africa and Brazil,” notes Faria.

“Angola Cables and DE-CIX have been working together successfully for many years, which is now also reflected in their Premium-Partner status,” says Mareike Jacobshagen, Head of Global Business Partner Programme at DE-CIX. “Together, we are driving forward the business and thus the solutions that companies need to network, peer and interconnect.” In addition, Angola Cables is one of around 1,100 networks that are directly connected to DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world with a data volume of over 45 Exabytes per year, as of 2024.

Today, Angola Cables is more than a leading Angolan operator, being internationally recognized as a major player operating in the ICT sector and providing customized connectivity solutions. With over 6.000 peering agreements, Angola Cables now ranks among the top 23 Internet Service Providers in the world and the #1 interconnected operator in Africa. Its IP network has proven to be robust, resilient and offers a value proposition in terms of low latency routings and directs interconnections with the major Tier 1 operators across the world.

“Integration with DE-CIX strengthens the value proposition of Angola Cables’ and our TelCables subsidiaries by enabling interconnection with Tier 1 carriers, cloud providers, and OTT platforms, ensuring the lowest latency and the high resilience of our IP network,’’ says Faria.

“Together with DE-CIX, we continue to reduce digital barriers and promote a more efficient and accessible internet, connecting businesses and users to the world’s leading content sources,” concluded Faria.

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News

Colt Technology Services, Honeywell, and Nokia have announced a strategic partnership to trial quantum-safe networking using satellite technology. This collaboration aims to address the security risks posed by quantum computing, which could compromise traditional encryption systems. The project will test quantum key distribution (QKD) via low earth orbit satellites to support secure data transmission over long distances, overcoming the geographic limitations of terrestrial networks.

As quantum computing advances, it threatens to render conventional cryptographic algorithms obsolete by solving complex mathematical problems at unprecedented speeds. QKD offers a potential solution by enabling the secure sharing of encryption keys. However, current implementations are limited to around 100 kilometers due to fiber optic constraints. By deploying satellite-based QKD, the companies aim to extend secure communication globally, including across transatlantic networks.

This initiative is expected to benefit sectors that manage highly sensitive data, including finance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and government. The partnership builds on Colt’s recent pilot of terrestrial quantum-secure networking and demonstrates a proactive approach to future-proofing cybersecurity infrastructure.

Each company brings a unique strength to the project. Colt focuses on customer-centric digital infrastructure, Honeywell leverages over 50 years of aerospace innovation, and Nokia offers deep expertise in optical networks. Together, they aim to enable secure digital transformation in a quantum computing era.

A white paper titled The Journey to Quantum-Safe Networking has been released, detailing the trial’s scope and the broader implications of quantum cryptography. The trial marks a significant step toward resilient, secure global communications.

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Struggling internet service provider TalkTalk is reportedly withholding millions of pounds from Sky (Sky TV, Sky Broadband etc.) due to a contractual dispute, which relates to fees owed for use of the media giant’s NOW TV video streaming service. The budget ISP had been offering this to customers until relatively recently (part of a bundle via a single bill).

The Salford-based group has certainly had a rough few years and in September 2024 secured a crucial refinancing package worth c. £400m (here and here), which saved it from the immediate risk of a default on its debts. But it’s still in a difficult position and recently suffered another round of redundancies (here), as well as the continued shrinking of its customer base from 3.6 to 3.2 million customers over the past year (here).

Suffice to say that saving money is also a key focus for the embattled internet provider as it tries to get its finances under control, at the same time as fending off against a highly competitive market. This might give some context to the new dispute with Sky over TalkTalk’s prior bundling of the NOW TV streaming service.

According to The Telegraph (paywall), the dispute over volumes is said to have been going on for some months, with sources within TalkTalk allegedly indicating that it reflects changing viewing habits. A source at one supplier also claimed there was “significant concern” about the company’s ability to pay its bills, although TalkTalk says it does not recognise that description of its finances.

Meanwhile, the ISP is still said to be planning a consumer-focused product refresh in the near future, which it’s hoped could help to turn around their fortunes. Time will tell.

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In a subtle but interesting development, ISPreview has spotted that mobile operators Vodafone and Three UK have launched a new website – VodafoneThree – that sets out their plans ahead of the official completion of their c.£16bn mega-merger. This replaces their previous site (i.e. vodafoneandthree.uk has been retired in favour of vodafonethree.com).

Just to recap. The deal will see Vodafone retain a 51% slice of the business and CK Hutchison (Three UK) hold 49%. Both operators have previously promoted the deal as being “great for customers, great for the country and great for competition,” while also promoting a major £11bn investment to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile (broadband) infrastructure and coverage.

The new website largely reiterates their prior commitments, albeit now re-packaged around the singular ‘VodafoneThree‘ branding. But the language of the website also indicates that the announcement of their final deal completion must be imminent, possibly even occurring this week. For example, there’s this extract:

Tomorrow starts today

Better yet, customers don’t have to wait to feel the benefits. Within just six months, around 27 million Vodafone and Three customers will automatically be using each other’s networks – connecting them to the best coverage available, at no extra cost.

Meanwhile, the UK’s largest full-fibre footprint will be further supported by Fixed Wireless Access offers and site upgrades. All of which means a faster, more reliable service for every single customer, without having to lift a finger.

But we did notice the odd slight error or contradiction. For example, at the bottom of the front page of the new website it states that they’ll be “#1 for network … with full, nationwide 5G Standalone coverage by 2032“, which contradicts the 2034 date given elsewhere on the same site for achieving this (probably a typo).

However, it’s worth remembering that the hard part, which involves integrating teams, networks and offices (it’s also unclear what will happen to the ‘Three’ brand long-term) – as well as launching new products, often takes several years to be fully realised. Just ask BT and EE or O2 and Virgin Media, although they also had the complexity of fixed line networks to consider.

UPDATE 8:44am

Well that didn’t take long, the official announcement of merger completion dropped into our inbox right as we posted this article. We’ve covered that here.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The huge £16bn+ merger between mobile network operators Vodafone and Three UK (CK Hutchison) officially completed today, which will change the competitive dynamic of the UK market. The deal is also expected to help improve the national coverage of the latest 5G Standalone (mobile broadband) technologies, but concerns remain over jobs and consumer pricing.

Just to recap. The merger, which was first announced in June 2023 (here) and finally approved by the competition authority in December 2024 (here), will see Vodafone retain a 51% slice of the business and CKH hold 49%. Both operators have previously promoted the deal as being “great for customers, great for the country and great for competition,” while also resulting in a major £11bn investment to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next ten years.

The move to create a single company (VodafoneThree) will, however, require the parties to follow several legally binding commitments. The goal of this, as expressed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), is to ensure that the new company delivers on its planned improvements to network coverage and caps the prices of “selected” mobile tariffs and data plans for the next 3 years. The CMA also required some changes to ensure effective wholesale (MVNO) competition.

The move should help the Government to deliver on their “renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030,” which is something that Ofcom will now need to ensure is delivered. The operators have also launched a new website to highlight their plans – VodafoneThree, which is something we covered earlier and only a few minutes before the official announcement (here).

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:

“The merger will create a new force in UK mobile, transform the country’s digital infrastructure and propel the UK to the forefront of European connectivity. We are now eager to kick-off our network build and rapidly bring customers greater coverage and superior network quality. The transaction completes the reshaping of Vodafone in Europe, and following this period of transition we are now well-positioned for growth ahead.”

Canning Fok, Deputy Chairman of CKH and Executive Chairman of CKHGT, said:

“As we have demonstrated in other European markets, scale enables the significant investment needed to deliver the world-beating mobile networks our customers expect, and the Vodafone and Three merger provides that scale. In addition, this transaction unlocks significant shareholder value, returning approximately £1.3 billion in net cash to the Group.”

However, despite all of today’s soundbites of optimism, many consumers remain unconvinced by the agreement and are still concerned about what will happen to cheaper mobile plans once the three-year period of price protection has elapsed. The fears of future price hikes and the gradual removal of cheap plans from the UK market, either directly or via MVNO providers (e.g. iD Mobile, Smarty etc.), seem unlikely to go away anytime soon.

In addition, many of the merged company’s workers will now be going through a period of some uncertainty, which reflects the fact that the new company will be looking for cost efficiencies and such things often get reflected through the removal of duplication (i.e. duplication of both roles and network infrastructure). Inevitably, such deals tend to result in job losses, which may hit in the near future.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering that today’s completion only refers to the legal agreement and its details. The hard part, which involves integrating teams, networks and offices (it’s also unclear what will happen to the ‘Three’ brand long-term) – as well as launching new products, often takes several years to fully realise. Just ask BT and EE or O2 and Virgin Media, although they also had the complexity of fixed line networks to consider.

According to today’s announcement, in its first year, VodafoneThree plans to invest £1.3 billion in capex. This will enable the company to accelerate its network deployment. Consistent with previously communicated expectations, the combined business is expected to deliver cost and capex synergies of £700m per annum by the fifth year after completion and the transaction is expected to be accretive to Vodafone’s Adjusted free cash flow from FY29 onwards. Full alignment to Vodafone’s accounting policies is ongoing and pro forma financials will be provided in due course.

Finally, O2 (Virgin Media) and EE (BT) will now naturally face competition from a much larger player in the UK mobile market. At the same time, Ofcom’s staff may quietly relish the greater simplification of only having three mobile operators to herd instead of four, even if that outcome may have some negatives.