Network operator Elevate (formerly Telcom and Luminet) has today announced that they’ve signed a strategic deal to expand their UK wholesale reach in London by adding access to Vorboss‘s 100Gbps capable full fibre network to their platform, which is focused on serving businesses across the city centre.

The agreement means that Elevate Wholesale®, the channel partner division of Elevate, will now be able to reach “tens of thousands more London business premises” than they could before via their existing networks. Vorboss has spent the past few years deploying 500km of their own dedicated point-to-point fibre optic cables across Central London (covering most of zones 1 and 2), which we’re told is enough to potentially connect all commercial buildings in the area to their direct internet access and Ethernet network.

The move should complement Elevate’s rooftop point to point fixed wireless network, which was originally established across London – covering over 80,000 businesses – under the Luminet brand. Elevate Wholesale channel partners will now be able to quote and order Vorboss lines through the Elevate® Wholesale Portal.

Andy Tatlock, CRO at Elevate, said:

“It’s so important that we continue to offer our partners options, so they can always access the best pricing and service to meet their needs. Our partnership with Vorboss hugely expands the footprint and services we can offer in the London area. At the same time, we’re making things simpler – consolidating access options into one Portal, so partners can easily get access to the best infrastructure options for their requirement.”

Malcolm Puddefoot, Vorboss, said:

“We built our network to solve the connectivity challenges that have held London back. Working with Elevate will help more of London’s businesses to get high speed, dedicated fibre. Our network combined with Elevate’s experience as a premium managed service provider will be a compelling new offer for London’s business community.”

Apparently, Elevate Wholesale’s partners will also be able to access speeds of up to 10Gbps and a 100% uptime SLA (Service Level Agreement) guarantee, created by combining a primary fibre connection with a secondary rooftop wireless backup connection.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced that Starlink have now launched enough Direct to Cell (DtC) capable broadband satellites to be able to deliver “robust” global coverage of their new 4G mobile roaming service. But the first commercial products won’t be able to launch until final regulatory approval is gained.

At present Starlink‘s network has a staggering 6,740 satellites (c.2,600 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) in orbit – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ plan (inc. £20 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.

However, a key development occurred yesterday after SpaceX launched another batch of 23 Starlink’s into orbit, which included 12 that were DtC capable – this brings the total (in Low Earth Orbit) with this feature to 322. This has long been deemed the level needed for the constellation to achieve a commercially viable level of global coverage for the new mobile service, at least in its most basic (text messaging) form. But Starlink has plans to launch a total of 7,500 DtC satellites in the future, which could be put into even lower orbits of between 340 and 345km.

Just to recap. SpaceX previously aimed to launch an initial constellation of hundreds of DtC capable Starlink satellites to support a basic based text (SMS) messaging service by the end of 2024, using nothing more than regular unmodified 4G (LTE) capable smartphones on the ground. Support for voice, data (mobile broadband), and Internet of Things (IoT) services are then due to follow later in 2025.

Musk previously stated (here) that the first DtC capable Starlinks will only support data speeds of around “7Mbps per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks.” But it’s not quite that simple, given both the current altitude (i.e. lower orbits = faster performance, but weaker coverage) and the designed performance ranges stated below.

Related documents released in 2022 stated that the DtC system can provide “theoretical peak speeds of up to either” 3Mbps or 7.2Mbps on upload (Earth-to-Space) over 1.4MHz or 5MHz bandwidth channels per beam, respectively, and up to either 4.4Mbps or 18.3Mbps on the downlink (Space-to-Earth) over the same bandwidth channels per beam using LTE (4G) technology.

Starlink recently gave all of this a much more robust test when, during October 2024, they enabled the text messaging feature to provide free emergency SMS texting for hurricane victims in the USA. Despite not having officially launched, the service succeeded in connecting to 27,000+ 4G mobiles in affected areas, resulting in over 250,000 texts sent over the course of several days.

The next step for Starlink is a full commercial launch, which requires two things – the support of a domestic mobile operator and regulatory approval to use certain radio bands (these must avoid causing interference with other terrestrial wireless services). The FCC have not yet granted that approval in the USA, but it is anticipated to follow.

Supporting DtC Mobile Operators (Country)

T-MOBILE (USA)

OPTUS (AUSTRALIA)

ROGERS (CANADA)

ONE NZ (NEW ZEALAND)

KDDI (JAPAN)

SALT (SWITZERLAND)

ENTEL (CHILE)

ENTEL (PERU)

At present Starlink has not reached any agreement with a UK mobile operator, although we think EE or O2 are probably fair bets for the future, not least because Vodafone (soon to include Three UK) seem to be hitching their wagon to the larger comms satellites being launched by AST SpaceMobile (here).

Ofcom are currently in the process of developing a new authorisation regime for such services (here), with their first proposals being expected in early 2025. Crucially, there are also still no details on how much the DtC feature will actually cost, although it’s expected to be competitive with other roaming services. But true global roaming will require wide support from many mobile operators and regulators.

Engineers working for Openreach (BT) have started to extend the operator’s new 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to the beautifully remote Inner Hebrides island of Iona, which is sometimes described as the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland and sits just off the Ross of Mull on the country’s western coast.

The tiny island is home to a local population of around 177, although this is often boosted by seasonal workers who swell the community during the summer and more than 100,000 tourists (inc. pilgrims) who visit each year – often to see the Iona Abbey. But until now the local fixed broadband lines would have struggled to deliver more than a handful of megabits per second, assuming locals didn’t get Starlink (satellite) instead.

The good news is that Openreach’s engineers have now begun to extend their full fibre broadband network to the island, which forms part of their roll-out contract under the Scottish Government’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) programme.

The operator’s new network already exists on the neighbouring island of Mull. The fibre path for Mull and Iona currently travels 90km from Tobermory on Mull through a fibre optic repeater in Pennyghael and on to new signal-boosting equipment (i.e. transmitting optical fibre signals over long distances) in a specially-adapted street cabinet in Fionnphort, then under the sea to Iona via a new subsea fibre optic cable (here).

The fibre cables on Iona will then follow existing 19th and 20th-century roads leading north from the main village of Baile Mòr and through the Iona Conservation Area to provide telecoms links to farms in the northern, southern and western extents of the island. The build will pass close to three historic monuments – Iona Nunnery, Maclean’s Cross and the iconic Iona Abbey – and through areas where there’s high potential for survival of archaeological remains from the Prehistoric, early Medieval and Medieval periods.

Fraser Rowberry, Openreach Chief Engineer for Scotland, said:

“As anyone who’s been to Iona knows, it’s a truly special and spiritual place. Its historic and environmental importance make it an ultra-sensitive build location.

Our top considerations have been protecting precious archaeological sites like the Street of the Dead and the grounds of the Abbey, avoiding the corncrake breeding season; and making sure we don’t disrupt the tourist trade, which is vital for the local economy.

Iona residents couldn’t have given us a warmer welcome. Young islanders who risk missing some mainland schooling each winter, seasonal workers and businesses are all overjoyed at the prospect of better broadband.”

Harrie Burney, National Trust for Scotland, said:

“Iona is a pretty special place in terms of the history of Scotland. A lot of people know Iona for the Abbey and St Columba but it also has a history that goes a lot further back. It’s also vital that we protect the nature on the island, with the works scheduled to manage this carefully.

Our aim is to care for, protect, and share this special place for the benefit of everyone. We’re working with the engineers to put archaeological monitoring in place and make sure we’re not going to cause any disturbance, but there’s also an opportunity to uncover new finds along the way.

Connectivity on Iona is a real issue and something that’s very important to the population here. There’s been a real buzz around the connectivity improving, so this project will make a huge difference.”

As above, Openreach’s engineers have already begun to deployment the new network on Iona, with works within the scheduled area around Iona Abbey taking place at a later date once Scheduled Monument Consent is agreed with Historic Environment Scotland. Engineers expect the first islanders to be connected in “early 2025“.

After Iona, the operator is also expecting similar work to start on Tiree, another Inner Hebrides Island, within the “next few weeks“.

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today revealed the top ten locations for coverage of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in Kent (England), which sees the coastal town of Minster on the Isle of Sheppey top the table with “almost” 90% of all residents able to upgrade.

Openreach added that they deployed Subtended Headend (SHE) technology for two of the island’s exchanges (i.e. basically mini exchanges), installing ultrafast broadband optical signal boosting equipment. This meant a new fibre ‘spine’ didn’t have to be built over the Sheppey Crossing – disruptive work which would have taken months to complete.

Sadly, the Kent announcement is otherwise quite vague and doesn’t include any investment or take-up figures, which would have been useful to know. In addition, we don’t get any specific coverage figures for the other locations in their top list (see below), which is relevant because some of the locations may have a much lower level of coverage than those at the top of the table.

The operator claims to have so far deployed their new full fibre network across over 480,000 homes and businesses in Kent, with active build currently taking place in parts of Rainham, Gillingham, Medway/Chatham, Strood, Hoo, West Malling, Pembury, Snodland, Archers Court – Dover, Ashford, Canterbury, Cheriton, Dartford, Dymchurch, Folkestone, Hawkhurst, Sevington, Aylesford, Deal, Bearsted, Barming, Gravesend, Blue Bell Hill, Loose, Greenhithe, Newington, Swanley and Maidstone.

Andy Whale, Openreach Chief Engineer, said: “This Full Fibre upgrade is a huge boost for Kent. We’re adopting a balanced build, bringing ultrafast speeds to the county’s biggest cities and most rural communities. We’re not stopping our build – and people in Kent should visit the Openreach website to see if they can upgrade to Full Fibre already, or see when we’re coming to their area.”

Top 10 Locations for Openreach FTTP in Kent (Exchange area):

1. Minster on Sea
2. Sheerness
3. Hawkinge
4. Sevington
5. Deal
6. Sevenoaks
7. Sandwich
8. Faversham
9. Seal
10. West Kingsdown

Openreach’s service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

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The companies are also reportedly discussing the possibility of forming a $200 million joint venture

Anonymous sources speaking to Reuters suggest that the digital arm of Saudi Arabia oil company Aramco could be preparing to take a minority stake in US telecoms tech firm Mavenir.

The deal, which is not guaranteed to proceed, would see Aramco Digital take a $1 billion stake in the Open RAN specialist, valuing Mavenir at around $3 billion.

Additional funding cannot come soon enough for Mavenir. Last week, a report from Light Reading claimed Mavenir was at risk of defaulting in the face of maturing debts and poor cash flow. Financial analysts from S&P Global, quoted in the article, suggested that Mavenir would be forced to default or restructure if additional funding or an extension of debt maturities could be attained.

Part of the challenge for Mavenir has been the lacklustre adoption rate of Open RAN – a disaggregated, open approach to mobile infrastructure technology of which Mavenir has been a major proponent. Outside of a number of handful of greenfield developments – such as with Dish in the US, Rakuten Mobile in Japan, and 1&1 in Germany – Open RAN technology had gained little traction among major operators.

The global RAN market, which has itself been declining over the past two years, remains dominated by Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei.

That is not to say, however, that the telecoms industry at large has completely given up on Open RAN. Indeed, Aramco Digital itself has already shown significant interest in the technology, having announced the creation of Saudi Arabia’s first Open RAN Development Centre in partnership with Intel at the start of this year.

Aramco Digital, headed by ex-CEO of Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony, Tareq Amin, was launched in January 2023 as a part of efforts to diversify the energy company, as well as to align with the Saudi Arabia government’s Vision 2030.

Both the Saudi Arabian government and China-averse President Donald Trump have been significant supporters of Open RAN, potentially offering a more positive environment for the struggling Open RAN market over the coming years.

In addition to taking a minority stake, the report suggests that Aramco Digital is separately discussing the formation of a $200 million joint venture with Mavenir focussed on regional technology development.

Reports suggest the deal could be finalise before the end of the year.

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Also in the news:
VMO2 launches UK’s first 5G standalone small cells in Birmingham
BT says Labour’s budget will cost company £100m
Vodafone Spain and Telefonica complete FibreCo deal

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The new service is powered by technology from California-based cybersecurity company Fortinet  

BT has expanded its secure networking service for UK businesses, introducing new features designed to protect cloud data and applications. The upgrade, powered by cybersecurity company Fortinet, adds increased security to BT’s existing Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) services, making it easier for companies to securely access the cloud and managing their networks effectively. 

The new capabilities include AI-powered Security Service Edge (SSE) features, such as firewall-as-a-service, secure web gateways, and zero-trust network access. These tools ensure that only verified users and devices can access sensitive company resources.  

As businesses increasingly shift to cloud-based operations and support employees working from various locations, these new features provide a solution for keeping data and applications safe. With this expanded service, BT aims to simplify network security and help companies protect themselves against growing cyber threats while maintaining seamless access to cloud services, the company said. 

“Building upon our decade-long partnership, we’re proud to collaborate on the new SASE service with BT to enable its UK customers to converge networking and security,” said Nirav Shah, Vice President, Products and Solutions at Fortinet in a press release.  

“SASE complements the cybersecurity platform approach to delivering integrated security and secure network access regardless of where users are located. By combining Fortinet’s cutting-edge SASE and secure networking solutions with a leading choice of fixed and 5G access networks from BT, customers can have a nimble, robust, and more secure network to help them get the best from the cloud,” he continued. 

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Also in the news:
VMO2 launches UK’s first 5G standalone small cells in Birmingham
BT says Labour’s budget will cost company £100m
Vodafone Spain and Telefonica complete FibreCo deal 

Business UK broadband ISP Commsworld has today announced that they’ve completed the construction of the core network build for a new full fibre infrastructure in Northumberland (England), which is designed to replace the county council’s ageing Wide Area Network (WAN). But local homes, schools and business are also seeing the benefit.

The Edinburgh-based operator, which holds a 20-year strategic partnership with Northumberland County Council (NCC), has deployed 262km of new full-fibre infrastructure that can connect employees in 150 council sites. In addition, the new infrastructure has helped to upgrade connectivity for around 115 Northumberland schools.

The infrastructure is also helping Commsworld’s partner and rural focused ISP, Alncom, which has been working alongside the project by utilising funding from the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) to upgrade broadband for 50,000 properties in harder-to-reach rural areas of the county. “The new infrastructure is already providing benefit and enabling us to focus our build plans where the need is greatest to target areas left out by incumbent operators,” said Alncom’s MD, Stephen Pinchen.

Elsewhere, Commsworld is working alongside the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) and Community Action Northumberland (CAN), funding a project which will recruit and train volunteer Digital Champions to engage in rural communities to improve digital skills and confidence. NICRE will also be carrying out a three-year study to capture learning and impact of the project.

Craig Scott, Public Sector Director at Commsworld, said:

“We are delighted to have completed the transformation of Northumberland County Council’s WAN as part of our long-term strategic partnership. This delivery, coupled with our future-proofing of connectivity for years to come, has already seen council sites, schools, businesses and communities benefit from this significantly enhanced connectivity.

Commsworld is now looking forward to working with NICRE and CAN to support people in rural Northumberland to get online and get the most out of digital technology. Digital champions will help bring the benefits of significantly improved internet access to people across the county.

As we all – including the council – adopt more digital ways of living and working, we are committed to supporting people to develop the digital skills and confidence they need to reap the rewards and boost their standards of living.”

Cllr Wojciech Ploszaj, Northumberland County Council, said:

“This is great news for our county. The completion of this project will deliver significant benefits to our communities, particularly in rural areas.

This enhanced digital infrastructure will enable us to improve educational resources and support local businesses by providing access to the fastest internet speeds available. This strengthens our commitment to bridging the digital divide, ensuring even the most remote areas are connected.

I would like to thank Commsworld and Alncom for helping us bring these valuable improvements to Northumberland.”

The new network was previously said to be worth £22 million and has been linked to Commsworld’s latest Optical Core Network (OCN), a next generation network in which it invested £10m.

In somewhat of a unique development for the UK and Wales. Transport for Wales (TfW), which is a not-for-profit owned by the Welsh Government, has launched a new “arm’s-length initiative” called TfW Ffeibr (Fibre). This has built a new full fibre broadband network alongside the railways and is offering access to help serve communities in the South Wales valley.

Essentially, while building the South Wales Metro and carrying out huge infrastructure changes to electrify the railway line in the South Wales valleys, TfW also seized the opportunity to, at the same time, install a new full fibre network. The new arms-length commercial subsidiary business was thus set up to help drive the new opportunity forward and realise the potential advantages for TfW and the Welsh economy.

In short, TfW Ffeibr (Fibre) was established to offer internet service providers (ISP) access to the new infrastructure via wholesale. The network itself currently runs through Wales’ Core Valley routes into the Capital City region, connecting some of the hardest-to-reach places in Wales.

The hope is that this will “enable significant inward investment to the region“, as businesses will now be able to enjoy multi-gigabit speeds – potentially attracting everything from data centres, the AI sector, manufacturing, large-scale film and TV production and other industries. It should also “support reducing areas of digital poverty in South Wales and contribute to regional economic development“.

Alexia Course, Chief Commercial Officer at TfW, said:

“We’re extremely proud and excited to be launching TfW Ffeibr today, to provide a state-of-the-art high-speed network for companies to use and sell within valley communities.

We’ve been carrying out huge infrastructure works in the valleys, electrifying the railway line as part of the South Wales Metro and this presented us with an opportunity to also build the infrastructure for a high-speed core network.

The South Wales Metro project is about physically connecting people and TfW Ffeibr is about connecting people in the digital world. At TfW, we’re fully aligned to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act and this new subsidiary business reinforces our commitment to improving the lives of people in Wales.”

Guy Reiffer, Managing Director at TfW Ffeibr, said:

“This is an industry and UK first – a rail infrastructure project that has diversified and utilised its construction to also install a high-speed, full fibre internet capable network.

We’re excited to launch today and we’re looking forward to working with telecoms companies to provide big-bandwidth full fibre internet for communities that are harder to reach.

For people living in the valleys, high-speed internet enabled by our core fibre offering will open up lifestyle and business opportunities.”

The announcement itself is quite vague, although the operator’s website points to a mix of Dark Fibre and optical wavelength products, which will offer a range of active services with data speeds from 10Gbps and all the way up to 100Gbps (Gigabits per second). The website is currently quite basic and doesn’t include a lot of information, but you can see the route it takes.

A number of network operators are currently building fibre in South Wales, such as Openreach and Ogi, which may well have an interest in this. But quite how much interest will exist is difficult to say, particularly as fibre has already spread across a lot of core routes for such operators and the hard part is often in extending that to individual premises.

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Anthropic continues to grow rapidly, having received over $7.3 billion in funding over the past year alone 

AI company Anthropic and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced an expansion of their partnership with a new $4 billion investment from Amazon, bringing its total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. AWS is now Anthropic’s primary cloud and training partner, supporting the development of advanced AI systems. 

Anthropic, which was co-founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei in 2021, is partnering up with AWS to improve the latter’s AI training hardware Trainium. The collaboration, according to the partners, will ensure faster, more cost-effective development of AI models by optimising both the hardware and software. 

Another key focus of this partnership is the further development of Anthropic’s AI model, Claude. Amazon currently offers a managed service via AWS called Amazon Bedrock that offers customers a choice of high-performing foundation models – including Anthropic’s Claude – via a single API. Similar offerings from Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, and Stability AI are also included as part of Bedrock.  

The investment is Amazon’s second in Anthropic this year. Back in March, the company injected $2.75 billion into Anthropic, in a bid to compete with AI rivals such as Google and Microsoft through its AI chatbot Claude. 

“Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI at AWS in Amazon’s press release in March.  

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Also in the news:
Nokia and Microsoft expand data centre partnership
Openreach’s full fibre rollout to boost economy by £73bn in next decade – report 
FCC launches first review of submarine cable rules since 2001

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The ongoing cyber-attack was first reported last month 

A recent espionage attack on US telcos, allegedly linked to the People’s Republic of China. is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history – by far”, according to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner. 

Investigators believe these hackers may have gained access to confidential data via wiretap requests to telcos from federal agencies.  

The full scope of the breach is still being assessed, with major tech firms like Microsoft and Mandiant supporting the investigation.   

Over the weekend, US senators sat down with telecom executives and federal officials to discuss the attacks. The breach, which has been attributed to a group known as “Salt Typhoon,” exploited weaknesses in systems used for lawful surveillance, potentially exposing sensitive government and private messages. 

The discussions focused on how hackers gained long-term access to these systems, raising questions about whether current security standards are strong enough. Officials stressed the need for telecom companies to strengthen their defenses and improve coordination with the government to stay ahead of these threats. 

“National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger hosted a meeting with executives from the telecommunications sector to share intelligence and discuss the People’s Republic of China’s significant cyber espionage campaign targeting the sector,” read a government statement. 

“The meeting was an opportunity to hear from telecommunications sector executives on how the U.S. Government can partner with and support the private sector on hardening against sophisticated nation state attacks.” 

Names of the attending companies were not disclosed, but it is thought that AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen are among targeted companies. 

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has vehemently denied government involvement in the cyberattacks, calling the accusations “a distortion of fact” and a political attempt to “smear” China. In a new statement released on Friday, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, said that “for quite some time, the US side has been floating all sorts of disinformation about threats of “Chinese hackers” to serve its own geopolitical purposes. China firmly opposes and combats all kinds of cyber attacks.” 

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

Also in the news:
Nokia and Microsoft expand data centre partnership
Openreach’s full fibre rollout to boost economy by £73bn in next decade – report 
FCC launches first review of submarine cable rules since 2001