Contributed Article

The need for speed – high-speed internet – along with greater bandwidth capacity will continue to be critical for communities everywhere in 2025 and beyond

By: Tony Thakur, Chief Technology Officer of Great Plains Communications

Network operators should anticipate demand for more and more bandwidth, as network traffic growth shows no sign of slowing down.

What’s driving all the bandwidth consumption? We rely on the internet for products, services, and applications we use continuously more and more. Smartphones, smart watches, other wearables, smart TVs, streaming services, real-time events (e.g. concert, sports), online gaming, along with virtual and augmented reality are some of the products and applications growing network traffic and consuming bandwidth.

As a fiber optic network provider, Great Plains Communications sees a continued rise in network traffic as an ongoing trend. Knowing there is a critical need for increasing bandwidth, network operators must implement best network practices in key areas to meet demand, improve productivity, and minimize disruption of customers’ everyday lives.

Here are key factors to support the demand.

AI plus good data = best customer experience

AI means different things to different groups. Transferring information between data centers for AI applications consumes high bandwidth. Yet, AI is now part of the pit crew that keeps the network running. For network operators, AI means automation to drive greater efficiency across organizations and supply bandwidth on demand.

We view AI evolving as an enabler to enhancing the customer experience. In the past, operators were reactive: a customer alerted the operator when something broke and they fixed it. Currently, most are more proactive, deploying technologies in a ring topology with redundant equipment to mitigate downtime. With AI, events can be more predictive: for example, a problem is detected and fixed before the issue can be customer affecting.

Thanks to AI’s prediction ability, potential network disruptions can be averted. It stands to reason that a network will need more bandwidth during a live Thursday night football game. AI can calculate if the network has the necessary capacity and redundancy to ensure the audience never misses a play through buffering or other hiccups.

Network operators must leverage AI to create a better experience for their customers. However, along with the right tools and systems, AI must leverage reliable data to make the right decisions.

Timely network services

We’ve come to expect real-time services like Amazon Web Services model, which is available 24/7/365. We shop online, press a button, and our purchase arrives the next day. That has become consumers’ standard. So, they expect other products and services to be simpler and faster to obtain as well.

People rely on cell phones to do almost everything, and when we pull up all the applications we’re using, we’re consuming more bandwidth than we realize. Hyperscalers that want more and higher bandwidth to connect their data centers are another driver of increased network traffic. At Great Plains Communications (GPC), we see more demand for 400 Gig services, especially between key markets.

As a result, network providers must become more agile, monitor services more effectively, and add more products and services that work in tandem to meet current and future customer needs. One of the biggest challenges network operators face is predicting demand and growth trends and then planning and updating networks accordingly to be ready. To accomplish this, it is vital to have flexible architecture to scale the network capacity to meet changing bandwidth requirements in metro and rural areas.

Data to the cloud

Over the past decade, most businesses have either already done so or are planning to migrate most of their data from their own private onsite servers to cloud storage, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others. It’s a big shift from how data used to be stored in private clouds to public clouds and a multi-cloud environment.

It is critical for businesses (and all of us) to have real-time access to data. We don’t want to wait or have the data lag. The cloud data warehouses offer virtually unlimited space with the ability to compute capacity and storage to scale up and down at greater cost savings. This is a tremendous advantage, which does require more bandwidth.

As consumers, we also rely on cloud storage. After all, we can’t store all our videos in our phone. We want to view a video and interact immediately. This requires reliable connectivity to the cloud, so we have immediate access to our data, wherever it’s stored. Reliable connectivity — to the internet and to cloud providers — is essential.

Future runs on higher bandwidth

From my point of view, both as a telecom network operator and as a consumer, having bandwidth infrastructure optimized to support current and future rising network traffic is a must-have. There are many considerations, but here are factors I consider essential.

First, the network infrastructure has to deliver adequate speeds. Speed alone is not enough. We also need reliable connectivity we can trust day in and day out. This calls for careful planning and best-in-class architecture when designing the network. And, most important, we need to provide the best possible customer experience in our digital age. We should take advantage of AI and other technologies to anticipate network demands, automate processes to drive efficiencies, and provide the best possible solutions for our customers.

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In an unexpected development, the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has just announced that rural broadband ISP Voneus has “mutually agreed to terminate” the £17m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01), which would have expanded a full fibre (FTTP) network to 6,000 premises in hard to reach areas.

Breaking news.. more to follow..

Broadband operator nexfibre, which shares some of their UK parentage with retail ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today announced that they’ve made their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network available to more than 13,000 additional homes in the city of Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire, England).

The city already had a significant level of coverage from Virgin Media’s own gigabit broadband network, although the nexfibre build – most of which has taken place around the edges of the city – means they’re now able to reach the vast majority of local premises. Both Openreach and Freedom Fibre (Lila Connect) also have a significant level of FTTP coverage in the city, as well as the usual smattering of smaller builds from Hyperoptic and others.

Nexfibre itself has already covered around 1.6 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn this year, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises by the end of 2024 (reaching a total footprint of c.2m).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally set up the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

Residents in the rural Cumbria (England) villages of Kirkoswald and Great Salkeld, which previously worked with local ISP B4RN to build a new full fibre (FTTP) broadband network (partly funded by government vouchers), have been left puzzled after Fibrus started building a similar network in the same area under a publicly funded Project Gigabit contract.

A quick look at both of the Eden Valley villages shows that they appear to be well covered by B4RN’s network, which is a registered Community Benefit Society (i.e. they can’t be bought by a commercial operator and profits go back into the community) and one that often engages local volunteers to help fund and build their network. This often facilitates strong community engagement and a high take-up for B4RN’s fibre optic network.

In theory, this would normally mean that the vast majority of both villages would not have been eligible for public funding under the government’s regional Project Gigabit contract for Cumbria (Lot 28), which was awarded to Fibrus back in November 2022 (here and here). Under that contract, which is worth £108m (state aid), the provider is expected to extend their network to reach 60,000 hard-to-reach premises across rural parts of the county.

However, some residents within the aforementioned communities have recently reported (via CW Herald) receiving a letter from Fibrus, which states that street works aimed at deploying a new FTTP network are due to take place in the communities via Viberoptix (Fibrus’ civil engineering contractor). In fact, Fibrus has already started the work, with a new street cabinet recently appearing in Kirkoswald.

Beverley Pink, a villager who initiated the B4RN project, said:

“I couldn’t believe it when I learnt that some residents were in receipt of a letter saying works are to be carried out by a company called Viberoptix, working on behalf of internet provider Fibrus. The letter further states that this has been made possible by Building Digital UK (BDUK) government funding. I was surprised to hear this, since our parish already benefits from being part of a B4RN community broadband project and every household, no matter how remote, already has access to the network at very reasonable rates.

The B4RN project was only possible with the support of a government-funded voucher scheme, along with lots of local volunteer input. We have, therefore, already benefited from public funding, so I was shocked to find that BDUK are now paying for a second set of fibre cables to be laid. This work is expensive and it is a monumental waste of money for a second network to be laid, at vast public expense, when there are other areas in Cumbria with very poor connectivity who would benefit greatly from this spending.”

Similar clashes have occurred in the past, albeit between Openreach and B4RN, but those occurred under an older scheme and sometimes involved a mix of commercial builds, rather than ones that are supported by public funding.

By comparison, Project Gigabit was designed with a more robust Open Market Review (OMR) and Public Review (PR) process (i.e. used for identifying existing and future gigabit broadband coverage over the next 3 years, to avoid unnecessary overbuild), which should be helping to avoid such conflicts.

However, both Fibrus and the government have now suggested to ISPreview that local residents may have been given the wrong impression by the recent letters, with the operator being more focused on building through the area in order to reach premises outside those two communities (i.e. not to serve the villages themselves).

A DSIT spokesperson told ISPreview:

“Broadband provider Fibrus has installed a cabinet in Kirkoswald as part of their Project Gigabit rollout. The infrastructure is necessary for delivering faster broadband to hard-to-reach premises outside the village. It is not intended to serve any premises in the immediate area, which already has good coverage thanks to the government’s gigabit voucher scheme.”

A Fibrus spokesperson said:

“Fibrus is committed to adopting the most effective and least impactful network build solutions possible to connect premises in Cumbria. Therefore, we use existing infrastructure to minimise disruption wherever possible.

In this instance, the cabinet in Kirkoswald conforms to safety and planning requirements and is located on our backhaul route to maximise the use of existing infrastructure. The placement of this cabinet allows residents from 300 premises in villages nearby, who did not previously have access, to enjoy the benefits of Full Fibre broadband.”

Quite why some locals received the seemingly promotional letters is unclear, but we suspect they were probably just a generic build notifications that simply hadn’t been updated to reflect the unique nature of Fibrus’ plan to build through (rather than to) B4RN’s existing villages. The cabinet is only sited in Kirkoswald due to existing spine routes and for network performance reasons.

However, there are still cases where overbuild could still occur due to additionality in the future, which is where a contracted network operator goes beyond their intended coverage (i.e. the bit that takes places with public funded) as a result of the build making some previously unviable premises, viable. But such extensions, while facilitated by the contracted build, normally involve a separate commercial investment and so do not duplicate public investment. It remains to be seen whether this will also happen in Kirkoswald and Great Salkeld.

Openreach (BT) has today announced that they’ve expanded their small scale ‘Prove Telecare’ trial into a full pilot, which aims to help UK consumers with old analogue based phone (PSTN / WLR) and telecare systems to safely migrate to modern broadband (FTTP etc.) connections with IP / digital phone (VoIP) services.

Just to recap. BT and Openreach recently delayed their planned switch-off of copper-based analogue line services (PSTN phones and WLR) from the end of December 2025 to 31st January 2027 (here and here) in order to give broadband ISPs, Telecare providers and vulnerable users more time to adapt (other groups should still expect Dec 2025 to be the deadline).

The delay was not unexpected (here), due primarily to the fact that the old 2025 date was deemed to be putting telecare users at risk (i.e. vital health / medical monitoring services for vulnerable and seriously ill people). The main problem being that many older systems aren’t compatible with modern Internet Protocol (IP / VoIP) based phone services. Not to mention that, without battery backup, they may cease to function during protracted power cuts.

The issue of poor telecare support is largely the fault of telecare and alarm providers (i.e. failing to upgrade their systems), but the reality is that around 1.8 million UK people use these vital systems and a more cross-industry approach has been adopted to tackle that. Often such users exist in rural and isolated areas, where mobile services may also go down during power cuts, but that’s another matter that Ofcom are separately examining (here).

Shortly after all this, in July 2024, Openreach introduce their new Prove Telecare Trial. This was a small volume field engineering trial with limited availability that had been designed to support ISPs and customers to “safely migrate” their fixed line telecare devices to modern broadband lines (FTTP, FTTC/SOGEA) with IP voice services. The operator has today announced that they will expand this to a full pilot (here), which will run from 1st February 2025 to 31st August 2025.

Openreach Statement

This Pilot is testing a new Openreach field engineering SVR [Site Visit Reason] providing support to CPs [ISPs] to safely migrate their customers fixed line telecare devices to SOGEA and FTTP with new CP-provided IP voice services (VoIP).

The Pilot will test the systems, engineering training, on the day processes and procedures associated with migrating end customers’ fixed voice telecare device(s) safely to new IP broadband and VoIP services.

The Pilot will include a new reversion capability whereby in the scenario that the telecare device is found to be incompatible with the CP provided IP voice service, the Openreach engineer will fail the provision order and reconnect the phone and telecare device to the legacy voice service.

We assume the pilot includes the same stipulations as the previous trial, which required participating ISPs to have agreements in place with telecare providers to ensure that the telecare provider could arrange for a telecare engineer to be present with an Openreach engineer at the migration appointment (we’re querying this now). This was intended to ensure that the end customer is always left with a working telecare service.

Openreach and BT are separately also piloting a new SOTAP for Analogue product (here), which is a phone line service that does NOT require broadband to work and can harness modern networks to function like the older analogue service. But it’s currently unclear when the final product for this will become available.

News 

The “radical” restructuring is the latest step to avoid company collapse 

UK ISP TalkTalk is set to cut hundreds of jobs, as announced in an investor’s meeting last week, The Telegraph has reported. 

According to the report, the firm has already begun redundancy consultations, as it plans to cut 130 jobs in its consumer division based in Salford. More are set to follow at its wholesale business, Platform X. 

Earlier this month, the company’s latest accounts revealed that it had reached £72 million in losses in the six months to August 2024, up from £47 million in the same period last year. Revenue also fell 6% to £700 million, in reflection of its dwindling customer base. 

Furthermore, back in October, TalkTalk’s auditor Deloitte resigned from its position after 22 years, citing “weaknesses and deficiencies” in TalkTalk’s internal controls over financial reporting, which had not been addressed despite previous warnings. Deloitte said that the reporting was “not at the level we would expect for groups the scale and complexity of TalkTalk.” 

“This is the first stage in a multi-year transformation of our business to deliver differentiated service and product to our customers.  We are simplifying our business to ensure that we can continue to offer great value connectivity to our millions of customers across the UK. As part of this, we have made the difficult decision to launch a consultation about the future of some roles at TalkTalk’s consumer business,” said a TalkTalk spokesperson. 

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

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Japanese telcos unite to strengthen disaster response 

SAN FRANCISCO, 12th of December 2024 – Gigs, the operating system for mobile services, today announced that it has raised a $73M Series B led by Ribbit Capital. All existing investors, including Google’s Gradient, YC and Speedinvest participated in the round. Gigs will use the funding to expand its geographical footprint and invest in an expanded suite of products and services for tech companies. This will enable more tech brands to meaningfully innovate in telecom, provide more value to their customers, and tap into a new recurring revenue stream.

The Walled Garden Of Telecom

Before Gigs, high barriers to entry kept the telecom industry closed-off to innovators. New entrants faced years of tough commercial negotiations with carriers and had to pour tens of thousands of engineering hours into navigating the messy patchwork of single-purpose vendors with archaic, fragmented operating systems. Engineering teams had to wrestle with clunky, unstable and inconsistent APIs from multiple carriers—like building tech from the early 2000s—all just to enter one market. 

On top of that, businesses were forced to commit more than $100 million upfront in order to achieve competitive rates from networks and get priority network access, all before selling a single subscription. These operational and capital expenses were hard to recoup and tied businesses to network-specific investments, ultimately hampering scalability and eroding margins. 

Even businesses capable of managing these burdens still faced the slow and bureaucratic processes of carriers, which hindered their ability to optimize in the long-run. Moreover, any plans to expand internationally required repeating the entire effort with each network operator—an untenable challenge for technology platforms that don’t consider telecom their core business. 

As a result, the internet economy lacks the infrastructure and tools to connect to the global telecom grid, something tech companies take for granted in areas like hosting and payments.

Democratizing Access To The Mobile Service Market

Gigs is radically democratizing access to the mobile service industry. The company’s mission is to reduce the cost of setting up a mobile service in one or multiple markets, as well as lowering operational and service costs to near zero. Without Gigs, it would take new entrants to the mobile service market years to develop and refine their service.

The company’s operating system empowers tech players to launch their own mobile service on premium networks globally within weeks, all through a single integration—eliminating the need to hire large teams of telecom engineers, navigate compliance hurdles, or manage multiple vendors and platforms. By providing everything you need to launch your own mobile service in one platform—including premium wholesale connectivity, a best-in-class connectivity API, a hosted checkout, a multi-currency payments suite, a tax engine, a subscription and analytics platform, and AI-powered customer service—Gigs removes the complexity, time-to-market, and costs for tech brands wanting to embed their own mobile services into their digital products and services.

To ensure customers maintain a competitive edge and operate state-of-the-art services with the highest customer satisfaction and lowest cost to serve globally, Gigs continuously productizes every aspect of its business and automates every customer support ticket. For the first time, this makes telecommunications accessible to tech companies that expect to work with modern tools and high-performance platforms.

Hermann Frank, co-founder and CEO at Gigs: “We believe that getting a phone plan should be as easy as ordering an Uber, not as complicated as leasing a car at a  dealership. The truth, however, is that phone plans are stuck in the past: analog, uniform, and, frankly, unloved. Extremely high barriers to entry have kept innovation out of the industry for too long. Now, the world’s leading product companies can bring this innovation to their users. Gigs breaks down these hurdles by empowering any tech company to distribute phone plans directly through their apps, transforming connectivity from a standalone commodity into a core, customizable feature of every digital product experience. Ribbit has a proven track record of upending markets burdened by incumbent lethargy. We were impressed by the team’s vision so when the offer came to lead our Series B, it felt very natural to lean in.”

Dennis Bauer, co-founder and President at Gigs: “Since our launch in 2020, Gigs has significantly increased its annual recurring revenue, cementing its position as one of the fastest-growing B2B companies globally. Leading tech brands with large, highly engaged audiences—ranging from high-growth neobanks like Nubank and Wealthsimple to major HR platforms, travel companies and phone manufacturers—are leveraging Gigs’ connectivity platform to integrate phone plans into their core services, delivering unique and seamless product experiences. With exciting new product launches and lighthouse customer announcements in 2025, Gigs is set to inspire even more innovative tech companies to launch their own mobile services.”

Jordan Angelos, General Partner at Ribbit Capital: “Mobile connectivity, like banking, is one of the most widely used consumer services globally. Yet, it consistently ranks among the lowest in customer satisfaction. Gigs is seizing a once-in-a-decade opportunity to revolutionize the $1T+ annual mobile subscription market, empowering innovators and trusted brands to digitize and enhance customer experiences, with phone plans serving as the ultimate superglue. We are impressed by the team’s vision, execution, and global momentum, and we’re excited to partner with them on this journey.”

About Gigs

Gigs, the operating system for mobile services, empowers tech companies to seamlessly embed connectivity into their offerings in weeks. By bundling phone plans and travel data with their core services, Gigs’ customers can increase stickiness and unlock a new recurring revenue stream with digital mobile experiences that meaningfully create value to consumers. Gigs’ end-to-end platform provides everything brands need to launch and operate their own multi-market mobile service: premium wholesale connectivity, a hosted checkout, billing, subscription management, analytics, and AI-powered customer service. Backed by Ribbit Capital, Google, Y Combinator, Speedinvest and BoxGroup, Gigs was founded by Hermann Frank and Dennis Bauer in 2020 and now employs over 90 people across the US and Europe. For more information, visit gigs.com. 

About Ribbit

The mission of Ribbit Capital is to transform the world of finance by backing visionary entrepreneurs. For over a decade, Ribbit has partnered with founders challenging the status quo to make money more transparent and accessible around the world. Ribbit has invested in exceptional teams across six continents, including at Brex, Bridge, Chainalysis, Coinbase, Coalition, Credit Karma, Fireblocks, Groww, Imprint, NEXT Insurance, Nubank, ONE, Parafin, Razorpay, Revolut, Robinhood, and others.

News

The Asia Direct Cable (ADC) spans approximately 10,000km, connecting China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam

Today, Japanese tech giant NEC Corporation has announced the activation of the long-awaited ADC submarine cable system.

The cable, which connects China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, has a capacity of over 160 Tbps and represents a significant boost to data traffic route diversity in the region.

“This new cable marks a significant milestone, providing a vital foundation to support the ever-growing communications needs of Asia and the world,” said Koji Ishii, MC Chairperson of the ADC Consortium. “The milestone represents the culmination of our efforts to overcome numerous challenges, made possible through steadfast collaboration and partnerships with esteemed stakeholders from various countries, including NEC. We are confident that this cable system will significantly contribute to the development of the AI industry in the Asia region.”

Planning for the cable began in 2020 with the formation of the ADC consortium, which includes SoftBank, China Telecom Global, China Telecom Corporation, China Unicom, Singtel, TATA Communications, National Telecom and PLDT, and Viettel Solutions.

Japan’s NEC was contracted to deploy the cable, initially planning the route to be ready for service in 2022. However, various factors, including lengthy permitting procedures, have seen the cable launch delayed for over two years.

Keep up with all the latest cable news at Submarine Networks EMEA, the world’s largest submarine connectivity event live in London

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PRESS RELEASE

Independent Power Transmission Operator and Serverfarm Join Forces to Spearhead Hyperscale Data Center Development and Operations in Greece   

Athens, 16^th December 2024

The Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO) of Greece and Serverfarm, a global data center developer and operator, announced today the signing of a Heads of Agreement regarding the formation of Gemini, a Joint Venture with the objective of developing and operating state-of-the-art, hyperscale-ready data center facilities in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, on sites owned by IPTO.

This strategic alliance marks a significant milestone in advancing Greece’s digital infrastructure and fostering sustainable growth in the data-driven economy.

Gemini will combine the collective expertise and resources of two leading entities in their respective fields. IPTO, as a crucial pillar of the Greek energy sector, plays a pivotal role in managing the country’s electricity grid, ensuring stability, and embracing renewable energy solutions.

Leveraging its extensive experience, IPTO will be providing reliable and sustainable power supply, essential for supporting data center operations along with strategically located sites with access to power and optical fiber networks, as well as other operational resources. Serverfarm, as an expert in data center development and operations globally, with a strong track record in commercial real estate ventures, will be bringing unparalleled industry experience and advanced design and operational know-how, ensuring that the Joint Venture will become a point-of-reference for data center services in Greece.

Gemini plans to construct and operate hyperscale-ready data center facilities in the Greater Athens Area, leading initially with a campus with committed power of 130MW, creating the foundations for establishing a robust digital ecosystem to meet the escalating demands of cloud service providers, content delivery networks and enterprises.

The data centers will be designed with a focus on energy efficiency, utilizing state-of-the-art cooling technologies and renewable energy sources to minimize their environmental impact, creating an unparalleled platform for hyperscale computing in Greece. The Joint Venture envisions Athens as a prominent digital hub, offering secure, reliable, and low-latency data center facilities to national and international clients, bolstering Greece’s position in the global data economy.

The Founder and CEO of Serverfarm, Avner Papouchado, said:

“As leading tech and hyperscale organizations continue to expand into Greece, we see a great opportunity to leverage our expertise in this region. Our strategic partnership with IPTO, underscores our mission to invest in transformative projects that create long-term value. The Greek data center market is still one of the most under-served in Europe, but at the same time, its geographical location makes it ideal to serve as a data gateway between continents. Our collaboration with IPTO in creating Gemini and our shared commitment to excellence and sustainability, will enable us to leverage this immense potential to offer high quality, data center services in Greece. Our goal is to cater to the growing needs of hyperscale customers in the area and elevate Athens as a major hub for the industry, shaping the digital landscape in the broader region.

The Chairman and CEO of IPTO, Manos Manousakis, said:

“IPTO is building critical infrastructure for tomorrow’s electricity and telecommunications backbone networks throughout Greece and beyond, interconnecting the future. We are delighted to partner with Serverfarm, through Gemini, to deliver world-class data center facilities in Greece. Serverfarm’s vast experience in developing state-of-the-art data centers, coupled with IPTO’s robust energy infrastructure and its strategic location at the crossroads of continents, will create an unparalleled platform for hyperscale computing in Greece, catering to the escalating demand for digital services in the region. This alliance symbolizes a significant milestone for Greece’s digital transformation, which is poised to build the foundation for a flourishing data-driven economy in Greece. In this way, we fully exploit synergies and create win-win business opportunities, transforming Greece into a critical energy and data hub of high geopolitical value, at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia.”

– End –

About IPTO:

  The Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO) is responsible for the operation, monitoring, maintenance, and development of the “Hellenic Electricity Transmission System”, aiming to ensure safe and undisrupted power supply across the country. IPTO’s “Ten Year Network Development Plan” provides for the electrical interconnection of major Greek islands in the High Voltage System by 2029, the strengthening and modernization of the continental power grid as well as the facilitation of Greece’s transition towards a cleaner energy mix. IPTO’s investment program, includes the Crete-Attica power link, supplemented with dual optical fiber cables, the completion of Cyclades as well as the interconnections of the Dodecanese and the NE Aegean islands. IPTO is developing new international interconnections to Italy, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia and Turkey, and supports new subsea electricity interconnectors to Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, with Greece as the main hub. IPTO is the project promoter of the “Great Sea Interconnector” between Greece, Cyprus and Israel and is currently maturing the “Green Aegean Interconnector”, a new electrical corridor between Greece and southern Germany, for the transmission of clean energy originating from Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean region to the large consumption centers of Central Europe.

For more information, contact:

Email: pressoffice@admie.gr

About Serverfarm:

Serverfarm is an established multi-regional data center platform that provides data center solutions to key hyperscale, webscale, technology & network customers. These data center solutions include Colocation, Data Center Design, and IT Infrastructure Management, through Serverfarm’s proprietary InCommand DMaaS technology. For more information, visit serverfarmllc.com.

For more information, contact:

Email: media@sfrdc.com  

Customers of Sky’s broadband-based Sky Glass and Sky Stream pay TV streaming devices have finally got access to the provider’s new Ad-Skipping feature, which is an add-on pack that appears to have been introduced alongside Sky’s latest firmware update (e.g. QS34.022.00P on Sky Glass).

The new update, which started to be rolled out last week, also included various other bug fixes and feature additions (e.g. a new Extra-vivid viewing mode and various tweaks to the User Interface). But the headline change was arguably the introduction of ad-skipping, which is only available with their “On Demand” content (i.e. not cloud recordings or within apps, with a few specific exceptions).

“Skip Ads will pop up in the bottom right corner at the start of an ad break. Once it’s clicked it will skip the ads completely. This will stop the need for you to manually fast forward through ads,” said Sky’s Update Notice. Customers can also fast-forward through adverts when using Live Pause (up to the live broadcast only), Restart / ‘Watch from start’ and Playlist.

In addition, it’s also possible to fast-forward adverts in the ITVX, STV Player and All4 TV apps, but those are the exceptions. “The Ad Skipping pack doesn’t mean that you won’t see any adverts. It just lets you skip or fast forward through the ads using the relevant remote control buttons and on screen menu options for what you’re watching. It doesn’t fast forward ads in: Live TV; or other TV apps, like Netflix, YouTube or Spotify,” said Sky.