UK govt announces £22m investment in ‘smart data’ 

News 

The investment will benefit university researchers across the country 

Smart Data Research UK, a national programme for data research and part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has announced a £22 million investment to help UK researchers access new ‘smart data’. 

Smart data is information that has been processed to provide clear, actionable insights. Unlike raw data, which can be difficult to interpret, smart data is focused, helping businesses make informed decisions quickly. For example, instead of analysing every customer interaction, smart data highlights key patterns, such as common reasons for support requests, allowing companies to improve their services efficiently. 

The new projects being funded by this £22 million investment include the UK’s first smart data donation platform and a satellite imagery service, providing valuable data about the UK’s economy, environment, and public health. 

The investment will be targeted at four key areas, based at universities across the country: 

The Imagery Data Service (Imago): Led by professors at Newcastle University and University of Liverpool, this data service combines AI and stakeholder collaboration to develop new data products based on satellite imaging, helping tackle challenges like urban development and social inequalities in the UK.
The Smart Data Donation Service (SDDS): The SDDS will recruit data donors to provide data securely with researchers, aiming to help develop evidence-based policy around online safety and digital wellbeing. Initially focused on 90,000 data donations from video game users, the SDDS will enable research into mental health, digital literacy, online community, addiction, discriminatory behavior, and disinformation. It will be led by professors at the University of York.
3.The Geographic Data Service: This project will bring together different data sources to provide insights into fair and sustainable growth, focusing on geographic differences and the challenges faced by vulnerable groups. It will support new partnerships and coordinate a national master’s dissertation programme to help nurture the next generation of smart data researchers. The project is led by professors from UCL and the University of Liverpool, with collaboration from from the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh. 

The Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service: Led by the University of Leeds, this project will leverage data sets from the retail, business, transport and infrastructure sectors to help tackle ongoing challenges related to health and sustainability in local economies.

“This investment in a new network of smart data services helps put the UK at the forefront of data-driven innovation. Data infrastructure is as critical to our shared prosperity as transport, water or power networks. When we invest in data infrastructure we are investing in economic growth, improved public services, and a more sustainable future,” said Stian Westlake, Executive Chair of ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) in a statement. 

“By providing researchers with safe access to new data, methods and tools we are empowering them to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing the UK today, from boosting productivity to improving health outcomes,” echoed Joe Cuddeford, Director of Smart Data Research UK. 

Join us at next year’s Connected North, 23-24 April in Manchester. Early discounted tickets are available here! 

Also in the news:
Singtel becomes latest telco to launch AI cloud services
South Korean telcos accused of collusion, may face fines of $4bn
Hexatronic: Innovation will be needed to reach rural customers

News

The funding will benefit over 80 schools across the UK

This week, the UK’s largest altnet CityFibre has pledge £150,000 to support education charity STEM Learning on its mission to improve STEM learning across the UK.

The funds, which will be delivered over three years, will help fund STEM Learning modules in 80 schools within the Project Gigabit footprint.

These modules include Computer Clusters, I Belong, and ENTHUSE Partnerships, which focus on the delivery of computer science and IT lessons, supporting girls to pursue careers in STEM, and enhancing young people’s awareness and understanding of STEM subjects, respectively.

In addition, the funds will help provide additional KS1 and KS2 resources through teaching support platform Explorify.

“We believe in the power of technology and education to transform lives and, with this partnership, we aim to bridge the digital skills gap and help inspire the next generation of digital innovators to pursue a career in STEM,” said Stacey King, Senior Partnership Manager at CityFibre. “Our partnership with STEM Learning underlines CityFibre’s social value commitments and, as part of the Project Gigabit programme, we are investing in the future and equipping young people with the skills they need to thrive in a digital world.”

With around a fifth of the existing engineering workforce expected to retire by 2028, the growing shortage of engineers is becoming a major pain point for the UK economy. A study published last year suggested that the UK could be facing a shortage of one million engineers by 2030, potentially hamstringing up to £542 billion in infrastructure projects.

This skills shortage is particularly acute for the UK’s telecoms industry. Data from TechUK suggests that there will be a shortage of around 30,000 telecoms engineers over the next decade, describing the situation as “heading for a cliff edge”.

Is the UK telecoms sector doing enough to support the next generation of telecoms engineers? Join the discussion at Connected North, live in Manchester

Also in the news:
Singtel becomes latest telco to launch AI cloud services
South Korean telcos accused of collusion, may face fines of $4bn
Hexatronic: Innovation will be needed to reach rural customers

Network provider PlatformX Communications (PXC), which was formerly known as Talk Talk Wholesale before the demerger (here), has joined the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA UK), a trade body for UK ISPs and associated organisations, as part of its Partnership Programme.

PXC sees the move as being part of their bid to strengthen links with the wider telecoms and broadband sector, which reflects their ambition for becoming the UK’s go-to alternative networks aggregator at the wholesale level.

The company already provides its (circa 1,000) partners (e.g. retail ISPs) with access to various networks, such as CityFibre, MS3, Freedom Fibre, CommunityFibre, ITS Technology, Netomnia / Brsk and Openreach. But they also have plans to scale this list in future.

Katie Crellin, PXC’s Head of Regulation, Policy and Compliance, said:

“A key part of PXC’s strategy is to become the UK’s leading alternative networks aggregator platform and offer The Channel, and the UK businesses it serves, the most reliable fibre connectivity, at the best prices. The forum ISPA has created, and the work they’re doing to encourage the market to work closer together, plays into our strategy and we’re really excited to be able to work with them to share our story and join their mission.”

Some customers of UK broadband ISP Zen Internet have complained about repeated service disconnections after their bundled FRITZ!box 7530 routers from AVM received a firmware update to the latest FRITZ!OS v8 software, which appears to have introduced an unexpected instability into the device.

In fairness, new firmware updates for any device can sometimes result in a tiny number of people experiencing unexpected bugs, although such things are normally extremely rare. But in this case, something about Zen’s update process or the update itself appeared to cause Zen’s FRITZ!box 7530 routers to reboot themselves for some customers with a fair bit of regularity, which in turn disrupted related broadband connections.

Curiously, we haven’t been able to identify any issues – at least not to a similar scale – on other providers that have gone through the same process with the same router, such as those in Germany, which already received the same update. This suggests that the cause may be something more specific to Zen.

ISPreview has received several emails about this problem over the past week, as well as spotting a few related reports on social media (example) and a long TBB thread covering the same fault that began on 14th October 2024 (here). But Zen has not made any obvious mention of the problem on either of their service status pages (here and here).

The good news is that Zen appears to have rectified the problem today, which should hopefully return some connection stability to those impacted by it.

Dean Burdon, Zen’s Customer Experience Director, said:

“We are aware of an issue affecting a small number of our customers using the Fritz!Box 7530 router following the recent OS8 firmware update from AVM. This issue has impacted less than 0.5% of the routers we have in circulation. Nonetheless, customer satisfaction is our top priority, and we are committed to ensuring that all our customers have a seamless experience.

The recent firmware update triggered an automatic reboot of the device, which may have appeared as a disconnection to some users. We have identified and stopped this auto reboot and are closely monitoring any further reported faults. We urge any customers experiencing issues to contact our support team for assistance.”

UPDATE 22nd Oct 2024 @ 7:22am

Despite Zen claiming to have “identified and stopped this auto reboot” cycle, we’re still seeing reports of the problem occurring after that statement was made. Clearly there’s a bit more work to be done.

Network operator Openreach (BT) has revealed that they’re gearing up to be one of the first to deploy Nokia’s Altiplano Access Controller cloud (SDN) platform across their open access full fibre (FTTP) broadband and Ethernet network. This could boost automation, network visibility + control, and product flexibility for both ISPs and end-users.

In simple terms, this is all about making their network easier to manage, more efficient, reliable (e.g. quicker to identify faults via automation) and also cutting some operational costs. The approach is similar to what Openreach are already doing on the Adtran side of their FTTP network with the Mosaic Cloud Platform (Adtran and Nokia are two of Openreach’s primary strategic network suppliers).

The development was officially confirmed by the operator’s Network Technology Director, Trevor Linney, who mentioned their plans during a speech last week at the Network X event in France. Trevor has since provided a bit more information to ISPreview (see below).

The new Altiplano deployment isn’t live yet (except in their labs), although their first live site using their next generation Ethernet Access Direct 2 (EAD2) product for businesses and UK ISPs is due to go live in April 2025 and a full product launch would then follow in 2026.

Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology for Openreach, told ISPreview:

“We are working on what we believe to be a world first deployment of the Altiplano access controller platform to enhance resilience and service in our fixed full fibre network.

This is the next step in our plans to build a future proof, multi-service, one network platform – that supports both full fibre FTTP and future ethernet products.”

We also put a few quick questions to Trevor about the new platform, which should help to add a bit of additional context.

What are the primary advantages of this platform vs the current approach?

Today we use Nokia’s AMS platform for managing our Full Fibre FTTP network
As we evolve to our new data centre inspired “leaf-spine-leaf architecture” we will use Altiplano to manage clusters of Nokia equipment
These clusters will support FTTP and point to point Ethernet for EAD2 in either dedicated or shared configurations
Altiplano’s abstraction capabilities and modern interfaces gives us the benefit of OSS simplification by leveraging the use of “intents” – asking Altiplano to configure an end to end services across the cluster, rather than our OSS needing to understand complex network topology and configure each individual component in cluster.
It will also enable streaming telemetry giving us far greater insight into our network performance in near real time.
It’s worth highlighting that we already have many of these benefits on our ADTRAN FTTP platform which will be further enhanced over the coming year.

Will this enable any new products that would have been difficult to do before?

Our new EAD2 product leverages the new cluster headend architecture and integrates multiple Nokia product families together
These clusters will enable higher speeds, use ~50% energy and up to 80% reduction in space compared to EAD1
In future, we will also leverage these clusters for XGS-PON [FTTP] and potentially higher speed cablelink products

How long is the roll-out likely to take?

Our Altiplano PoC is live in the labs, and our first live EAD2 site will land in April 2025 to support our network build ready for the product launch in 2026.

I note that Nokia last week enhanced the Altiplano Access Controller with AIOps to drive better network decisions. Will Openreach launch with that too?

Today we are focused on enabling the underlying network technology, once this is in place we will look to exploit Altiplano’s more advanced features.

UPDATE 9:34am

Openreach weren’t particularly clear on which aspect of this would be a “world first deployment“, which is an issue because they’re not the only UK operator to be harnessing Nokia’s Altiplano platform. But the operator has clarified that this specifically refers to how they will be managing a cluster that includes the OLTs and the IP equipment – this has required Nokia to develop new capabilities.

Eastbourne-based alternative network and UK ISP Lightning Fibre has announced that they’ve just connected their first customer in the seaside town of Worthing (West Sussex) to FTTP broadband. This is part of their recently agreed expansion (here) to harness CityFibre’s existing network across the Brighton & Hove and Worthing areas.

The operator has also built their own full fibre network across a number of locations like Eastbourne, Hastings, Hailsham, St Leonard’s, Heathfield and more. But Lightning Fibre’s own build has recently slowed down “considerably” and they’ve had to make redundancies after a turbulent year (here). The focus now is thus more on growing take-up within their existing areas of coverage, while also expanding via some of CityFibre’s areas.

Lightning Fibre’s Consumer packages (including social tariff) in their CityFibre based areas will remain broadly the same (price etc.) as their current plans. Prices for the service start at £26 per month for their 150Mbps package on a 24-month term and rise to £39 for their 1Gbps tier. The provider also offers a 2Gbps+ package for £99, but this is currently only available to their own-build areas and not via CityFibre.

In a separate development, the ISP has revealed that one of their customers just won a full year of free broadband service (as well as a special food hamper) after successfully referring 12 new customers to the provider via their ‘Refer a Friend‘ scheme.

Existing customers of UK mobile operator Vodafone, specifically those who take their Pay As You Go 1 plan, have been informed that the daily cost of the service will increase by 100% – from £1 to £2 – on 11th December 2024. The cost of data (broadband) usage per 50MB (charged after the first 250kb) is also rising from £1 to £2!

Just to be clear. Vodafone’s PAYG1 plan currently charges just £1 on the days you use your phone (£0 if you don’t use it), which grants access to the following allowances until midnight of each day (unlimited minutes, calls and just 50 MegaBytes of data). This is quite expensive when compared with many entry-level Pay Monthly or other PAYG plans, but it makes sense for infrequent mobile users who are unlikely to be going online.

Sadly, customers recently got somewhat of a shock when they received the following text message (credits to Steve for sharing with ISPreview): “Hello. We hope you’re enjoying your flexible Pay as you go 1 plan. From 11 December 2024 the cost of Pay as you go 1 will be changing from £1 to £2 a day. This applies only to the days you use your phone, where you’ll get unlimited minutes and texts plus 50MB data. For further info, visit vodafone.co.uk/2024-change.”

Increasing the price of such a plan by 100% represents a major change, one what would appear to make the plan significantly less attractive for its customers, which we suspect may be part of Vodafone’s intention (i.e. pushing customers toward their newer plans). But naturally, Vodafone’s price change page puts a different spin on things: “Changes to our Pay as you go 1 pricing are necessary to allow us to continue offering ultimate flexibility on our reliable, award-winning network.”

The operator states that they’ve given all impacted customers 30 days’ notice and the right to leave your agreement: “If you want to exercise your right to leave, you’ll need to tell us within that 30-day period. If no action is taken within the 30-day period, the new Pay as you go 1 charge will take effect from 10 December 2024.”

Alternative broadband ISP Airband, which was aiming to cover 400,000 premises in rural parts of Wales and South West England via a mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and full fibre (FTTP) networks by 2026, appears to have quietly introduced symmetric speeds to their fibre packages for new customers. New subscribers can also get 6 months of free service.

Until recently the provider only offered asymmetric speeds, which for example meant that their 150Mbps package came with a slower upload rate of 50Mbps, while their top 900Mbps tier offered an upload of 200Mbps. But one of ISPreview’s readers (credits to William) helped us to spot that they recently upgraded their full fibre plans to offer symmetric speeds at no extra cost (i.e. same top speed both ways).

In addition, Airband recently started running an early Black Friday discount that offers the first 6 months of broadband service for free to new customers, which applies to both their FTTP and FWA packages – this makes for a significant cost saving.

A spokesperson for Airband told ISPreview:

“We introduced the change in early September and are working to migrate existing customers to symmetrical speeds. Any customers who are wanting to upgrade their speeds can give us a call and the team will implement for them.”

The operator currently claims to have brought “superfast connectivity access” to 315,000 UK premises in over 200 communities across 7 counties (here). But we believe this reflects 230,000 RFS premises (Ready for Service) and combines both their wireless and full fibre deployments (they also have 19,000 customers). We think upwards of 220k premises from that 315k total are being catered for solely by FTTP.

The latest move could perhaps be seen as part of Airband’s efforts to improve take-up of their service(s), which follows after a period of restructuring that disrupted some builds and caused redundancies (here and here). But since then, the operator has been able to secure additional investment from abrdn to “accelerate rural broadband expansion” across the West of England (here).

A recent study from Source Advisors has revealed that the UK ranks 8th globally in “telecommunication innovation” with 1.85% of telecom patents filings since 2010. But it also calls on the UK government to improve this by adopting an intellectual property strategy to compete with global telecoms leaders.

The report analysed filings that are either granted and active or currently patent pending, therefore excluding any expired or lapsed patents or patent applications. Patents (and patent applications) are often seen as a “useful indicator of the R&D direction for a given sector“, which offers an insight into the density of innovative activity.

However, the UK’s 1.85% share of telecoms related patent filings since 2010 could be improved, particularly with neighbouring Germany delivering 4.08%. But the US and China continue to dominate the space, with over three-fifths of global telecoms patent filings.

The fear is that a lack of action from the UK government on closing the above gap could increase the risk of being overtaken in telecoms technology patents by close neighbours, such as France (1.62% of global patent filings) and Italy (1.13%).

Luke Hamm, Managing Director at Source Advisors, said:

“Now the election is over and the new government gets down to business, the headline-grabbing commitment to economic growth now must take shape in actual policy. There are choices to be made on what we want to be famous for and how the legal, and regulatory framework complements this, as well as how fiscal incentives will drive greater levels of investment.”

Top 10 Countries by Sector Based Patent Filings

 
Automotive
Telecoms
AI

1
China
USA
China

2
USA
China
USA

3
Japan
Japan
Korea

4
Germany
Korea
Japan

5
Korea
EPO
EPO

6
EPO
Germany
India

7
France
India
Germany

8
India
Great Britain
Great Britain

9
Great Britain
France
France

10
Italy
Italy
Taiwan