News 

The trial is a step towards integrating satellite and terrestrial networks, making satellite broadband more accessible for 5G devices worldwide 

Eutelsat Group, MediaTek, and Airbus Defence and Space have completed the first successful 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) trial using the Eutelsat OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite system. 

The test used Eutelsat OneWeb satellites, MediaTek’s NTN test chipset, and a test gNB from ITRI, following 3GPP Release 17 standards. Sharp and Rhode & Schwarz provided the antenna and test equipment, while Airbus-built satellites handled the connection. A 5G device connected to the network via satellite and exchanged data successfully. 

“5G NTN will be a key feature of the IRIS2 constellation, and Eutelsat is at the forefront of this innovation and active member of the ecosystem. We are proud to be the first satellite operator to demonstrate the 5G air interface working on a commercial fleet in Ku-band and paving the way for new applications in future constellations,” said Eutelsat’s Chief Engineering Officer Arlen Kassighian in a press release. 

The success of this trial highlights the strong development of technology in this sector, allowing users to t jump seamlessly from 5G to satellite as necessary. 

The trial is part of Eutelsat’s broader efforts to bridge the digital divide. Earlier this month, the company reached the milestone of delivering high-speed satellite internet to one million people in Sub-Saharan Africa through its Konnect Wi-Fi hotspot solution. The initiative aims to expand connectivity in areas where traditional broadband infrastructure is lacking. The Konnect Wi-Fi project relies on a geostationary (GEO) satellite, positioned at a fixed point above the Earth, to deliver high-speed broadband via stationary hotspots.  

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom newsletter 

Also in the news:
EU commits €8 billion to strengthen submarine cable security
Vodafone using drones to plug holes in damaged networks
Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile to open research hub in Málaga

News 

The project is part of the EU’s plan to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers 

The European Commission has approved €227 million in funding to help Austrian semiconductor manufacturer ams Osram build a manufacturing plant in Premstätten, Austria.  

The new facility will produce wafers used in various industries, including automotive, consumer electronics, and healthcare. It will integrate advanced technologies to improve chip performance and reliability. Expected to be fully operational by 2030, the plant will be the first in Europe to produce Grade 0 automotive-certified chips, which which offer access to highly customisable products. It will also allow other semiconductor companies to use its facilities, boosting collaboration in the sector. 

With a total cost of €567 million, the project relies heavily on EU support. In return, ams Osram has agreed to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor supply chain, develop a unique manufacturing facility, prioritize production during supply shortages, and invest in workforce training. 

“This Austrian project will have wide positive effects for the European semiconductor ecosystem. It will support the development of a strong and resilient digital economy in Europe, ensure a secure supply of semiconductors for the industry and help create high-skilled employment while limiting any potential distortion of competition,” said Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition in a press release. 

The European Commission reviewed the funding under EU state aid rules and found it necessary to attract investment that might not happen otherwise. It determined that the aid would not significantly impact market competition but would provide long-term benefits for Europe’s semiconductor industry. This decision follows similar funding approvals in Italy, France, and Germany. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news direct to your inbox from Total Telecom 

Also in the news:
Eutelsat, Mediatek, and Airbus successfully trial 5G NTN over LEO satellites
EU commits €8 billion to strengthen submarine cable security
Vodafone using drones to plug holes in damaged networks

UK ISP Quickline has today given a progress update on their £118.9m state aid backed contracts under the Government’s Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme for Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire (Lot 23), which will see their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network being expanded to cover 72,000 premises in hard to reach rural areas.

The contract, which was officially announced back in late July 2024 (here), has already seen Quickline deliver gigabit-capable broadband speeds to nearly 850 funded homes and businesses, in and around the villages of Ruskington, Ancaster, and Burgh le Marsh in the south of Lincolnshire.

Work is now known to be underway further north in the villages of North Cave and Gilberdyke in the East Riding of Yorkshire, with Holme on Spalding Moor next in line. The first homes were thus reached within just 6 months of the contract being awarded and just 4 months after the network build got underway, meaning residents can finally connect to faster and more reliable broadband.

In total, the contract will transform connectivity for nearly 72,000 properties, with an additional 50,000 premises set to benefit from Quickline’s complementary (separate) commercial rollout.

Dan Hague, Project Delivery Director at Quickline, said:

“Bringing high-speed broadband to rural and hard-to-reach communities is at the heart of what we do. From day one, our focus has been to deliver results quickly, and connecting over 800 premises within just a few months is a remarkable achievement and a real testament to the dedication of our teams.

Every week hundreds more homes and businesses across Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire will be gaining access to fast, reliable broadband, transforming communities that have long struggled with poor connectivity.”

Telecoms Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, said:

“The lack of fast and reliable connectivity for people living and working in rural areas of Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire can be a huge obstacle to fulfilling day-to-day tasks, such as taking part in remote NHS consultations or staying in touch with loved ones.

Thanks to this UK Government-funded rollout, thousands of homes and businesses in the area will gain access to the fastest speeds on the market, boosting the local economy and improving opportunities even in the most isolated areas of the region.”

Across all its Project Gigabit contracts, Quickline aims to connect 170,000 subsidised homes and businesses in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), rising to 360,000 when you include their plans for associated commercial builds.

Customers of the service will typically pay from £29 per month for 200Mbps symmetric speeds on a 24-month term with free installation, which goes up to £32 for their top 900Mbps tier (£49 after 24 months).

Hull-based broadband ISP KCOM, which has spent the past few years deploying a new full fibre (FTTP) network across 305,000 premises in parts of East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), has today revealed that they’re working with Nokia to deploy their 10Gbps XGS-PON technology across the network and 25G PON in the future.

At present, much of KCOM’s existing full fibre network is still using older GPON technology, which places constraints on how much capacity can actually be delivered to each end user (i.e. GPON shares capacity of 2.48Gbps downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream between multiple users). This is partly why the provider’s recent move to introduce symmetric speeds ended up hitting a bit of a wall at uploads of 500Mbps (here).

The operator has, however, previously talked about upgrading to use 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology, although until now they’ve been quite coy with sharing any details. But Phase One of the new Nokia deal, signed last week, should facilitate the roll-out of XGS-PON to “thousands of customers on KCOM’s network in Hull City Centre“.

According to KCOM, the adoption of Nokia’s Optical Line Terminals (OLT) and Altiplano platform will “facilitate symmetrical upload and download speeds of up to 10Gbps” and “paves the way for 25G PON and new multi-gigabit services” to follow in the “future“.

Ian Shepherdson, KCOM’s Chief Technology Officer, said:

“This investment keeps Hull and East Yorkshire at the forefront of digital connectivity. It’s the first phase of a multi-year, multi-million pound investment in our fibre infrastructure. With rapid technological advancement now the norm, this upgrade means we’ll be ready for business customers or data-intensive households who want vastly increased speeds of 10Gbps – and even up to 25Gbps in the future. We’ve been pleased to partner with Nokia, who share our commitment to empowering customers with the connectivity they need.”

Paul Alexander, CEO UK and Ireland at Nokia, said:

“Designed with state-of-the-art technology, our solution will enable KCOM to future-proof its network and offer new services for applications that require massive bandwidth and low latency. With the ability to seamlessly evolve to 25G PON in the future, KCOM will be able to differentiate themselves from the competition and attract new customers who value speed, reliability, and quality.”

KCOM said the related upgrade works are now beginning, and it is “anticipated that the new speeds will be live for customers” by September 2025. At the time of writing, it’s unclear whether they mean this date in respect to the completion of Phase One, or deployment across their entire network (we’re checking and will report back shortly).

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has come top in a new network benchmarking study of 4G and 5G (broadband and calls) performance across London, which was conducted by the Berlin-based NET CHECK organisation and saw them score the highest number of ranking points (932.83 out of a possible 1,000 points).

The study, which involved a mix of driving tests that were performed by NET CHECK’s team between 30th of October and 7th of November 2024, was carried out across all 32 London boroughs and the City of London area using Samsung S23+ smartphones. The measurement technicians drove 23 routes and covered a distance of 1018km across Greater London.

The testing itself involved a range of voice and data service categories including, accessibility, reliability, speech quality and mobile broadband speed-tests using customer applications such as the browsing of popular web pages, video streaming and more. For data services, a total of around 15,700 data samples per operator were collected. For voice services, around 1,390 test calls were made and 12 speech samples were collected in each test call, resulting in a total of around 16,600 speech samples.

Overall, Vodafone scored the highest number of ranking points – 932.83 out of a possible 1,000 points. EE ranked second, closely following with around 9 points less (923.45). After that, O2 (Virgin Media) took third place on 834.16 points, while Three UK fell behind its competitors on just 757.82 points.

The study summarises its results in detail below, although you can read the full report to get the proper context for each measurement.

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has made a change this week that closes their Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) for Newcastle and North Tyneside (Tyne and Wear), which means that local homes and businesses in poorly served rural areas can no longer apply for big grants to help get a much faster broadband ISP network installed.

Just to recap. The GBVS usually offers grants worth up to £4,500 to help rural premises get a gigabit-capable broadband (1Gbps) ISP service installed, which is available to areas with speeds of “less than 100Mbps” – assuming there are also no near-term plans for a gigabit deployment in the same area (either via private investment or state-aid). Local authorities sometimes also work with BDUK to boost the value of such vouchers for their region.

However, the GBVS has been operating with a very low level of UK availability for the past couple of years (i.e. it’s not currently available to most counties), which is largely to ensure that it avoids conflicting (i.e. duplicating public investment) with Project Gigabit’s larger Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme (i.e. the big build contracts that have been awarded to operators like Fibrus, Openreach, Wessex Internet and many more).

As a result of this, regions do sometimes drop into and out of voucher eligibility as Project Gigabit’s various GIS contracts and market reviews run their course. For example, rural parts of Devon in England were recently added back into the voucher scheme (here), which meant that poorly served homes and businesses in that county could apply for vouchers again.

The change this week is that poorly served homes in parts of Newcastle and North Tyneside have just been removed from the voucher scheme. But what’s interesting here is that this region doesn’t currently appear to have its own contract LOT under the GIS programme. However, back in 2023 it was briefly considered for one under Lot 38 (here).

The original Open Market Review (OMR) for this region estimated that, without public intervention, 71,441 premises were at risk of being left without access to gigabit-capable broadband. But it seems as if BDUK might still have greater plans than merely vouchers for this region, which may become clearer with the publication of their next UK progress update in the near future.

The GBVS is currently still available to poorly served parts of Derbyshire, Devon, the Isle of Wight, Greater London, Merseyside and Great Manchester, Birmingham and the Black Country.

Mobile operator Vodafone has announced that they’ve completed a new trial that showcased their ability to deliver multiple 5G Standalone (SA) network slices simultaneously for different use cases. This included one that delivered a seamless live video stream and another that was required to ensure guaranteed upload speeds for a photography agency at the same site.

At present, most existing 5G networks in the UK are Non-Standalone (NSA) based, which means they’re still partly reliant on older and slower 4G infrastructure. By comparison, 5GSA reflects a pure end-to-end 5G network that can also deliver improvements such as lower latency times (fast), better mobile broadband upload speeds, network slicing capabilities, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, increased reliability and security.

In this new trial, Vodafone dedicated two portions of its new 5G SA network during the Wales vs. Ireland Guinness Men’s Six Nations match at Principality Stadium to provide dedicated connectivity using network slicing (a good test as the network will have been under heavy load for such an event).

As part of this, Welsh rugby legend, Ellis Jenkins hosted a seamless livestream watch-along made possible on a reserved slice of Vodafone’s network. At the same time a second slice was dedicated to support “guaranteed upload speeds and separation from wider network congestion” for Huw Evans Picture Agency, the WRU’s official in-house photography agency.

Nick Gliddon, Business Director at Vodafone UK, said:

“Network slicing allows us to work with our customers and adapt the network to suit their needs. This is a huge advantage of 5G Standalone – customers can define their own experience with a network which is built for them. As a result, businesses can expect to improve the efficiency of operations, help drive productivity gains and introduce new services to their customers that would not be possible otherwise.”

The network slice was created in partnership with Vodafone’s technology partner Ericsson, separating a portion of the capacity connecting to Ericsson technology on Vodafone’s mobile site. Sadly, Vodafone didn’t release any technical or performance data from the trial, but we should add that all operators deploying 5G SA should be able to deploy similar solutions.

The Q4 2024 Global Call Threat Report from Hiya, which works with broadband ISPs and mobile operators (BT, EE, O2, Virgin Media etc.) to help tackle SPAM and fraud calls, has revealed that UK residents received 4 spam calls per person each month (unchanged from Q3) and the percentage of unknown calls that are spam hit 32% (up from 28%).

Overall, the latest report found that 3% of all UK calls were classified as “fraud calls” (unchanged), while 29% were “nuisance calls” (up from 25%) and the remaining 68% reflected all other (normal) calls – reflecting a spam flag rate of 32% (up from 28%). Generally, fewer spam/scam calls are making it past the network-level filtering systems being adopted by various phone providers, but they aren’t perfect and not everybody uses them.

The good news is that this means the UK has one of the lowest SPAM call rates in Europe, while the proportion of unknown calls that are fraud (3%) is also low compared to other European countries. Similarly, the level of spam and scam calling fell sharply toward the end of 2024, although tax scams impersonating Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) were still the most common.

Interestingly, the fourth most commonly reported unwanted calls in Q4 came from mobile phone providers, often offering a discount. Most users reported these as fraud calls, while some reported them as telemarketing, which helps to highlight how difficult it can be to tell the difference.

In addition, 26% of British respondents said they had experienced an audio deepfake, often on a personal or work call. This is a newer class of scam and one that may even involve the use of AI, which in some cases can go so far as to duplicate the voice of a family member in order to sound more authentic. Suffice to say, it’s getting harder to trust modern phone calls.

Network testing and benchmarking firm MedUX has today previewed a new study, which examined the performance and quality of 5G (mobile broadband) networks from EE, O2, Vodafone and Three UK across London. Sadly the results, which also tested 14 other major European cities, put the UK’s capital at the very bottom of the table.

The measurement campaign is said to have consisted of drive tests that were conducted during Q2 and Q4 2024 in 15 major cities across Europe, covering more than 5,500km and 1,700km2 to understand how mobile operators cover the most important European capitals. The tests, which involved several 5G Standalone capable Smartphones, measured network availability, accessibility, download / upload speeds (broadband), gaming and more to reach a QoE (Quality of Experience) score.

The research revealed that Porto and Stockholm share the top spot in Europe for overall QoE, a measure of user satisfaction, each scoring 4.78 out of 5. By comparison, London sits firmly at the bottom of the table for 5G performance (the same as they did last year), and was also found to have one of the lowest levels of 5G availability.

The full report is due to be published at MWC25 in Barcelona (Spain) on Monday 3rd March, although it’s formatted in quite a tedious way, which makes it difficult to summarise in a deeper way that would make sense.

Kidwelly-based wireless broadband provider and supplier Dyfed Telecom Limited, which over the past few years has helped to connect various premises in rural Wales to broadband using a mix of mobile (EE powered 4G/5G), satellite (Starlink) and WiFi based solutions, has suffered a blow after HMRC filed a winding-up petition against the business.

For those who may be unfamiliar with this process, a Winding Up Petition (WUP) is a legal action that is usually taken by a creditor or creditors, which in this case appears to be the UK tax authority – HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), against a company that owes them money. Such petitions are an expensive approach and so are usually only considered as a last resort (e.g. when all other approaches to settle a debt have failed).

According to The Gazette, the petition was presented to the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division) on 21st January 2025 by the Commissioners for HMRC. The case itself is expected to be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 5th March at 10:30am.

At the time of writing, it’s not clear what caused the situation, although it’s possible they could have been put under strain by the Welsh Government’s (WG) August 2024 suspension of the long-running Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) grant scheme (here). This offered funding to help rural homes get a faster broadband service installed in areas of slow connectivity.

The company’s most recent annual accounts, which cover the year to 30th September 2023 (published 1st Dec 2023) stated that the company had net liabilities of £28.5k (2021: £137.6k) and was continuing to “explore funding options to allow it to continue to meet its ongoing liabilities, including HMRC, and has the continued support of its directors and certain financial institutions“. But under the section for “Creditors: amounts falling due within one year“, there was a total of £1.193m listed. Sadly, these accounts are now quite old, and so we don’t know what the situation is today.

ISPreview has attempted to contact Dyfed Telecom in the hope of securing a comment, and we will report back once that arrives.