Press Release

Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, AI-Native Networking, today announced that Thai Airways has modernized the network infrastructure of its headquarters in Thailand, by deploying Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform to deliver the right data, the right real-time response and the right infrastructure for reliable, measurable and secure wired and wireless services. With the upgrades, Thai Airways can now achieve better simplicity, productivity and consistent performance at scale to deliver exceptional end-to-end operator and end-user experiences.

With a vision to implement better processes for improved operations and workflow while also enhancing the customer experience when researching, booking and managing flights online, the airline embarked on a digital transformation. It selected Juniper to overhaul and upgrade its network solutions – becoming the first organization in Thailand to deploy Wi-Fi 6E through the use of Juniper AP45 access points, alongside Juniper EX Series Ethernet switches for its core, distribution and access networks. 

“Slow, unreliable Wi-Fi was previously hampering productivity and efficiency at our Bangkok head offices, but the upgrades have turned networking complaints into compliments. With the Juniper solution, we are now also able to unify management of our wired and wireless networks through an industry-leading, cloud-native solution purpose-built to leverage AIOps. Enabled by Juniper, we are excited to continually uplift the user experiences of our operators and customers alike, as Thai Airways continues to grow and soar into the skies internationally going forward,” said Tana Kantipan, Team Lead, Network and Cybersecurity, Thai Airways.

The deployment is driven by Mist AI™, which leverages purpose-built AIOps trained on nine years of insights and data science development, to deliver rich insights into user experiences and proactive fault resolutions that can reduce network-related trouble tickets by up to 90%. In unifying the end-to-end management of Thai Airways’ wired and wireless networks, Juniper Mist Wired and Wireless Assurance cloud services were implemented to enable efficient operations of its business-critical systems, requiring minimal human intervention while ensuring every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset. 

In addition, the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant allows the airline’s IT team to detect and resolve networking issues through a seamless conversational interface, determining the root cause of issues, providing proactive insights and suggesting prescriptive actions. This has resulted in a significant decrease in issues and user complaints since the upgrades, ultimately reducing the overall time required for network operations by Thai Airways, enabling it to focus efforts on delivering stronger value, services and outcomes for its customers. 

Thai Airways’ Network: Strategic for Business Growth

As Thailand’s national carrier and a strategically located flight hub and gateway to Asia, Thai Airways is regularly ranked amongst the world’s top airlines, renowned for its hospitality and services across an extensive global network. To maintain its reputation while meeting surging demand for post-pandemic travel, the airline recognized its corporate network as a key strategic component of its planned business growth.

The new network from Juniper empowers Thai Airways’ IT team to continue delivering exceptional end-to-end operator and user experiences across all its stakeholders – especially as it explores further extending the roll-out of Juniper’s solutions to its hubs at Thailand’s two major international airports, deployments which could potentially surpass the scale of the current deployment at its head office.

Also in the news:
Nokia and Lenovo forge partnership to drive AI and automation in data centers
UK govt announces £22m investment in ‘smart data’
“We’re on track to close the loop”: Adtran talks data, AI, and network automation at Connected Britain

The state-aid supported Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme has suffered yet another problem with one of their rural broadband contracts, which occurred today after they announced that their full fibre roll-out deal with Worcestershire-based Airband was being “scaled back” following its underperformance.

In case anybody has forgotten, CDS is a local government-led partnership that has spent many years helping to deliver faster internet infrastructure to areas where the market had failed to invest (usually rural locations). The scheme has already helped over 326,000 poorly served premises to access “superfast broadband” speeds (usually 30Mbps+), which mostly occurred via deployments by Openreach (FTTC + FTTP), as well as some smaller alternative networks.

On the flip side, CDS has also suffered from plenty of big bumps and delays along the way, which often related to the inability of contracted operators – usually smaller players – to deliver on their deployment plans without suffering big delays. For example, there was the scrapping of Gigaclear’s contract in 2019 (here), then the decision to terminate Truespeed’s deal in 2022 (here) and both of those followed after CDS rejected BT’s original Phase 2 build proposal in 2015 (here).

The latest problem child of this programme appears to be Airband. CDS contracted with the provider, initially in 2016 to deliver fixed wireless infrastructure, and additionally in late 2020 to rollout fibre broadband networks to communities across Devon and Somerset, with four contracts originally due to conclude at the end of 2024.

In total, Airband is contracted to deliver 55,493 premises (examples here and here), but to date the operator has only delivered 18,794 premises in collaboration with CDS. Much of this work was originally due to complete by the end of 2024, but it hasn’t escaped our notice that there haven’t been any progress updates from CDS on this since last year.

Similarly, back in June 2024, we reported on some very public complaints by local councillors, which highlighted how “hundreds of homes and businesses” were being affected by slow broadband speeds and delays in work to install new fibre cables (here). This followed earlier news of Airband’s restructuring, which included some job losses and a slow-down in their deployment plans (here); the operator has since focused more on growing take-up.

What’s happened now?

The CDS announcement highlights that Airband, following its earlier restructuring and reduction in their build plans, can “no longer complete its contracted build for CDS in full” and has thus sought a change to its contract. After detailed discussions between CDS, the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency and Airband, the provider has now committed to provide full fibre access to 8,377 more premises covered by the contracts

The new agreement will see Airband providing FTTP broadband to a total of 27,171 out of the 55,493 premises it was originally contracted to deliver (we understand this will now be completed by Sept 2027). This additional build will further unlock fibre delivery by Airband to 10,997 non-contracted premises along the network build routes, giving an overall commitment to connect a further 19,834 premises in Devon and Somerset.

Rufus Gilbert, CDS Board Member and Devon County Councillor, said:

“Sadly we’re in a position where we have little choice other than to scale back these contracts with Airband. The company is unable to fulfil its contractual obligations, which is deeply disappointing for us and the communities that have been waiting for a decent broadband connection. A lot of work has gone into coming to an agreement on what they can now complete, and we’re urging BDUK to work with us to find solutions to the communities that are missing out.”

Mike Rigby, CDS Board Member and Somerset Council Lead Member for Planning, said:

“Naturally we’re disappointed that many local residents who should have been receiving access to fibre broadband will no longer benefit from these contracts. There’s no escaping the fact these are not easy times for the industry as many alternative network providers have slowed their build. If it was easy and profitable to build fibre broadband networks in rural areas, it would have done commercially by now. But it’s challenging.

When it became apparent that Airband would have to scale back its build for CDS, following the company’s restructure, our teams have worked behind the scenes to come to an agreement with Airband over what could still be delivered. That has ensured that nearly 8,400 homes and businesses will still be provided with access to full fibre, but for those not included in Airband’s ongoing delivery, CDS will do everything it can to help communities get a connection as we know how vital it is for rural communities to have decent broadband.”

Kash Rahman, MD of Airband, said:

“We’ve had to make tough decisions on our build activity this year and we are sorry if this news comes as a disappointment to residents who are left waiting for better connectivity. We have come to an agreement with CDS and will continue building the fibre network, albeit scaled back from the original contracted number. The region is an important part of our network, we have worked hard to deliver against engineering challenges, and we will continue to deliver better broadband for people who need it. I’m really proud of the team for the work done to date.”

The CDS team said they were now urging BDUK to “re-enable rural [gigabit broadband] voucher applications to open promptly in communities where Airband will no longer be delivering“, which could offer those communities a potential alternative. CDS is also seeking confirmation of the Devon and Somerset premises that will be connected under the nationally led contracts awarded to Openreach (BT) as part of the Government’s separate Project Gigabit programme (here).

Meanwhile, the CDS contract with rural ISP Wessex Internet, covering South Somerset, remains in place and to date has connected 3,006 homes with a further 302 going live by December 2024. The contract is on track to complete in June 2025. CDS adds that superfast broadband coverage in Devon and Somerset currently stands at around 93% of premises, which is said to be above the 86% average for UK rural areas. Public take up of CDS-funded broadband connections is also claimed to be above the national average.

The Airband situation is clearly embarrassing for CDS, given their many similar challenges over the past few years, and probably won’t help Airband’s reputation all that much either.

News

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says the operator’s sales staff had acted “unconscionably” towards hundreds of vulnerable customers

This week, Australia consumer watchdog the ACCC has launched a legal suit against telco giant Optus, alleging that 429 customers had been affected by ‘misconduct’ from Optus’ sales staff over a two-year period up to June 2023.

The suit alleges that sales staff used aggressive tactics to pressure customers to buy expensive and unnecessary mobile products, many of which they could not afford. Some were even sold mobile products despite being from remote parts of the Northern Territory currently without mobile coverage.

These actions disproportionately affected vulnerable customers, some of which were even chased by debt collectors following these purchases.

“We allege Optus’ conduct disproportionately impacted consumers experiencing vulnerability and/or disadvantage, and that these practices were incentivised by the commission-based remuneration for sales staff,” the ACCC’s chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb. “In some cases, we allege Optus took steps to protect its own financial interests by clawing back commissions to sales staff but failed to remediate affected consumers.”

The ACCC is asking the court to issue financial penalties to the operator, order them to renumerate and implement a compliance programme.

According to Optus, the salespeople responsible for the misconduct have already been reprimanded.

“We have taken disciplinary action (including terminations) against staff whom we determined were responsible for this misconduct involving vulnerable customers,” Optus Interim CEO Michael Venter told Reuters via email.

He also noted that the company has already begun remediating affected customers through refunds, waiving outstanding debts, and enabling them to keep devices.

Also in the news:
Nokia and Lenovo forge partnership to drive AI and automation in data centers
UK govt announces £22m investment in ‘smart data’
“We’re on track to close the loop”: Adtran talks data, AI, and network automation at Connected Britain

10/29/24

Internet benchmarking firm nPerf has today released the results of a new study into mobile broadband (3G, 4G and 5G) performance across several EU countries, which analysed 61,696 internet speed tests via their app (crowdsourced) to reveal that the average UK download is 80Mbps – this makes the country slower than Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland, France and Portugal.

The study, which is based on thousands of tests carried out between 1st January 2024 and 30th September 2024, reveals that Italy scored slightly faster than the UK on 81Mbps, followed by Spain (84Mbps), Germany (99Mbps), Ireland (102Mbps), France (113Mbps) and front-runner Portugal (177Mbps).

Elsewhere, the fastest device for mobile data connectivity in the United Kingdom was found to be the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The average speed with this Apple device has been 154Mbps, while Portugal also achieves the fastest speed with the same iPhone 15 Pro Max (an average of 269Mbps). The same Apple device is also the fastest in France and Germany, while Ireland ranks last with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (133Mbps).

Finally, in the United Kingdom, the average loading time for a webpage on mobile internet was 3.4 seconds, which compares poorly with Ireland (2s), France (2.8s), Italy (2.9s), Germany (3s), Portugal (3.2s) and Spain (3.2s). Sadly, the report didn’t include any other details or a breakdown by each mobile operator.

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has announced that, until 5th February 2025, both new and existing Pay As You Go (PAYG) mobile customers will get the chance to boost their data (mobile broadband) by up to three times the amount for no extra cost (e.g. those with a 10GB plan can boost it to 30GB – GigaBytes).

The offer is available to both new and existing PAYG customers who take one of O2’s ‘Big Bundles’ or ‘Rolling Plans’ tariffs. New customers will get this by default, but existing customers on eligible Plans must text ‘MORE’ to 2424 to opt-in, after that they will receive the increased promotional allowance when their data next refreshes.

The extra data can be used in the UK and the EU (up to 25GB when roaming), at no extra cost, so PAYG customers can get more for their money at home and while they’re away too.

Big Bundles

£10 8GB 21GB
£15 25GB 60GB
£20 40GB 120GB
£30 125GB 250GB

Rolling Plans

£10 10GB 30GB
£15 30GB 80GB
£20 50GB 150GB
£30 150GB 300GB

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with ISP partner Virgin Media (VMO2), has published their latest quarterly (Q3 2024) progress update on the roll-out of their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network. This includes details on build locations for 2025 and 2026.

We’ll start with the usual recap. Back in 2022 Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners setup nexfibre as a new £4.5bn joint venture (here), which aims to deploy an open access full fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

The operator so far deployed their network to cover 1,557,000 premises ‘Ready for Service’ (up from 1,277,800 premises in the last update), which doesn’t yet include last year’s acquisition of Upp and its c.175,000 premises, and they’re in the process of investing another £1bn this year to help cover an additional 1 million UK premises (i.e. on top of their existing coverage). This should get them to around c.2m by the end of 2024.

The latest Q3 2024 update reveals planned build locations for 2025 and into 2026, although this is produced in a .PDF format that makes it difficult to easily identify the changes from the prior update. In addition, there’s a fairly vague map of their updated deployment plan.

Nexfibre UK Build Update Map for Q3 2024

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has announced that they’ve extended their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network to cover 18,000 additional homes in the West Sussex (England) town of Horsham.

The town itself is now well covered by both Virgin Media and nexfibre’s combined gigabit broadband networks, although it’s worth noting that Horsham is also home to several other full fibre networks with strong coverage, such as Openreach, F&W Networks and CityFibre. In addition, a few areas are also reached by smaller networks from Hyperoptic and OFNL etc.

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.

Alternative network operator AllPoints Fibre Networks, which is the UK wholesale division of Fern Trading’s recently consolidate alternative FTTP broadband ISP networks (Giganet, Jurassic Fibre, and Swish Fibre), has today announced that they’ve acquired Glasgow-based full fibre ISP Brillband for an undisclosed sum.

In case anybody has forgotten, Brillband was only founded in 2022 and tended to focus their CityFibre based broadband services toward customers in Scotland. The ISP also once quirkily described itself as the “world’s first … app-based broadband provider“ (here) and has, to date, attracted over £800,000 of investment. But what isn’t known is how many customers they were able to connect.

By comparison, APFN has tended to adopt a more vertically integrated approach and have been selling broadband packages to consumers via retail ISP Cuckoo, which harnesses both their own full fibre networks and those of several rivals (e.g. CityFibre and Openreach).

Under the new deal, Brillband will continue to operate as a standalone entity and brand within the APFN Group, and its team will remain in place. Work will begin immediately so Brillband can serve customers across the country via APFN’s open access wholesale platform.

Jarlath Finnegan, CEO of APFN, said:

“Today is an exciting step in APFN’s journey. As the full fibre market evolves, we’re always looking out for compelling opportunities to invest in or acquire other firms. In a short time, Brillband has built a loyal customer base and a strong brand via savvy technical investment and a commitment to automation. I’m looking forward to working with Duncan and the team to take the business to the next level.”

Duncan Di Biase, Brillband Founder and CEO, said:

“This is a landmark moment for Brillband. We have the energy and the passion to transform how people feel about their broadband, and now we have the backing of a major player in the full fibre industry. We can’t wait to start working with Jarlath as we continue on our journey.”

ISPreview understands that Duncan Di Biase, Brillband’s Founder and CEO, will remain in place; while Jarlath Finnegan, Group CEO of APFN and Cuckoo Fibre, will become Brillband Chairman in addition to his current role.

Eastbourne-based alternative network builder and ISP Lightning Fibre, which has been building a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of Sussex and Kent in England, has today launched a big winter sale across their various full fibre packages for homes.

The operator, which has built to a number of locations like Eastbourne, Brighton and Hove, Worthing, Lancing, Hastings and St Leonards, Heathfield, Hellingly and Broad Oak, Hailsham and Polegate, originally planned to cover 140,000 premises with their gigabit-capable network. But it remains unclear how many premises they actually reached, and they’ve since had to slow their network build due to various challenges (here and here).

The good news is that the provider has just launched a Winter Sale, which offers some fairly bit discounts. Rob Reaks, CCO, said: “This is the first time we have discounted all 24 month packages, and I am particularly pleased to see the 2Gbps package reduced to half price. It makes a residential multi-gig package more affordable for busy homes and gamers“.

Summary of Lightning Fibre’s Winter Discounts

150Mbps 24-month contract, residential customers, was £26 per month plus £48 one off set up fee. NOW £22 per month, free set up and first month FREE.

500Mbps 24-month contract, residential customers, £35 per month, free set up and THREE months FREE.

1Gbps 24-month contract, residential customers, was £39 per month. NOW £29 per month, free set up and first month FREE.

2Gbps 24-month contract, residential customers, was £99 per month. NOW £49 per month, free set up and first month FREE (where available).

The company offers a fixed price for 24 months, although 12 month and rolling contracts are also available (these are not part of the Winter Sale). The sale itself ends on 31st December 2024.