Rome/Dallas, 28 October 2024

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, announces the pre-order launch of its Quantum Safe over Internet (QSI) service, the first product in its Network as a Service (NaaS) suite which soon will include additional use cases. The announcement is made during the Global NaaS Event (GNE) organized by MEF and currently underway in Dallas, where Sparkle is showcasing the service’s capabilities to the industry through live demos.

Establishing quantum-secure connections represents a crucial step forward in communications security. This solution, already tested on an international VPN between Italy and Germany and on Sparkle’s metropolitan fiber-optic network in Athens, allows companies to benefit from MEF-compliant on-demand Internet access protected by post-quantum encryption.

With the Network as a Service approach, customers will have the opportunity to use the service through a dedicated portal or via API, in an agile, flexible and fully automated way. The QSI service, currently available for pre-order at points of presence in Paris, London and Athens, will enable customers to access Sparkle’s network, establish secure connections between their offices, and utilize cloud resources with assurance against quantum attacks.

“In a rapidly evolving world, increasingly interconnected and supported by artificial intelligence, digital experience, data certification and security are continuously challenged,” said Daniele Mancuso, Chief Marketing & Product Management at Sparkle. “Quantum-Safe over Internet combines NaaS experience with post-quantum encryption, positioning Sparkle at the forefront of protecting communications against the risks associated with the advent of quantum computing.”

About Sparkle

Sparkle is TIM Group’s Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice – to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises. A major player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 33 countries.

Find out more about Sparkle following its X and LinkedIn profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com

Media Contacts

sparkle.communication@tisparkle.com

X: @TISparkle

Podcast

Two Lumen representatives joined Beyond the Cable to discuss challenges that make California’s middle-mile build unique and how the state is doing their part assist with timely network builds.

Large-scale infrastructure projects can be challenging but, according to Scott Pohlman, of Lumen Technologies, the state of California has worked hard to help providers build networks in a timely fashion.

Pohlman, who joined his colleague Michelle Watson, also of Lumen, on a recent episode of the BBCMag.com podcast Beyond the Cable, discussed some of the ways California has changed the game for broadband infrastructure builds.

“It’s very difficult to do things in the state of California,” Pohlman said.

He added that sometimes up to seven different agencies, at the local, federal, and state level, are involved in permitting processes for broadband builds.

“One of the nice things the state did was they sort of greased the skid,” he said. “I wouldn’t call them concessions but getting understanding from all these different regulatory agencies about the speed with which the network has to proceed.”

As a result, Pohlman said permits were issued faster and priority was placed on broadband builds.

‘Everyone has a voice’

“California has done a phenomenal job ensuring that everyone has a voice,” Watson added.

Watson said Lumen is there to provide the technology and share lessons learned, which has earned Lumen the status of a trusted business partner with the state.

Pohlman and Watson also discussed the prospect of proposed cuts to middle-mile broadband in California’s state budget.

“There may be hiccups along the way,” Pohlman said, but he said the scale of California’s broadband buildout signifies a massive investment from the state and a belief in broadband.

Pohlman said he feels confident that state, local, and federal initiatives will continue to support broadband builds.

Click here to subscribe to Beyond the Cable and get notified about episodes as they release on Spotify.

How is the US connectivity landscape shifting in 2024? Join the operators and their communities in discussion at Broadband Communities Summit West live in San Diego.

Alternative network operator and ISP Grain (Grain Connect), which has already built their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 220,000 UK premises RFS and 30,000 customers (21st May 2024), recently published their annual results and made some positive financial predictions. A further £18m of equity funding was also secured.

The operator’s full fibre network can currently be found in parts of 59 UK locations (plus over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of small-to-modest sized patches of various urban cities and towns like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Hull, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.

As part of this, Grain recently published their annual accounts for the year ended 31st March 2024 (here), which among other things revealed that “the business passed the point of peak EBITDA investment [in May 2023], and finished the year with a monthly profitability on a trajectory to EBITDA positive” – this is forecast to be achieved in the “second half of the next financial year” (ended 31st March 2025).

The ability to achieve a positive EBITDA (i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) usually indicates that a company’s core operations are profitable and likely generating positive cash flow. The same results also revealed that, in September 2024, Grain had secured a further £18m of equity funding from existing shareholders to help continue its network expansion (we’ve not previously seen that being mentioned).

Summary of Key Points from Grain’s Results (31st March 2024)

➤ 237,000 homes passed (204,000 Ready for Service / RFS)

➤ £435 spent of capital expenditure per home passed (covers end-to-end build, including everything required to deliver a live connection – from the boundary of every premises)

➤ Grain has full ownership of its end-to-end access network (the majority of many other altnets don’t own their access network, but rather rent access via Openreach’s PIA)

➤ Grain says they had low net debt per home passed, relative to others, at £147 by the end of the year

➤ Revenue up by 191% to £4.5m (2023: £1.55m)

➤ EBITDA of (£7.583m) vs 2023: (£7.401m)

➤ Gross profit of £2.063m (2023: £133k)

➤ Operating loss of £15.04m (2023: £10.61m)

➤ Customer base of over 27,000 (May 2023: c.14,000)

➤ Average operating cost per customer per month of £54.24, which is down 72% from £198 in the previous year and should continue to fall.

➤ Loss for the year, after tax, of £19.31m (2023: £5.21m)

As usual, network operators that are still in their build phase often have to spend huge sums of money on the deployment of a new network, which may then need 10–15 years before full payback is achieved. Keeping costs down is thus very important, but so too is the ability to generate a strong and durable level of take-up for payback, which normally takes a few years to mature after the completion of a new network.

Internet provider ASK4, which delivers gigabit-capable broadband to students and residents (renters) in multi-tenant buildings across the UK (as well as other parts of Europe), has signed a new strategic partnership with network kit manufacturer TP-Link to deliver “enhanced connectivity” across hundreds of thousands of their users in related buildings.

The deal will see ASK4 leverage TP-Link’s latest switch technology to boost internet connectivity throughout multi-tenant properties. TP-Link’s switches support not only high-performance residential internet access, but also facilitate the integration of third-party building systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices (sensors etc.), enabling various smart building operations.

The new kit will also harness TP-Link’s wider end-to-end networking solutions, managed through the Omada Cloud Management platform, which offers remote monitoring, management and troubleshooting capabilities. Key features, like auto recovery and reboot functions, should help to ensure that the network remains operational with only minimal downtime.

Andy Davidson, Chief Technology Officer at ASK4, said:

“Partnering with TP-Link and integrating their range of networking products adds to ASK4’s competitive advantage in our core markets. Our team has worked seamlessly with all levels of TP-Link’s business, and we’ve been impressed with their response and attention to detail in understanding exactly what we need and when. We are excited about further developing this relationship.”

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) and UK tech charity Jangala have this morning announced that, over the past year, they’ve provided more than 1,000 internet-enabling “Get Boxes” to charities and local authorities across the country, which are providing free WiFi hotspots to help thousands of people affected by “data poverty” to get online.

Just to be clear. The Get Boxes are effectively small (book sized) WiFi routers that can each connect up to around 20 people (there’s a larger Big Box unit for connecting up to 5,000 users!). The idea is that these routers can be posted to a user, who can then simply plug it into mains electricity and establish a secure Wi-Fi network instantly – linked back to O2’s mobile broadband (3G / 4G) connectivity, using data from the National Databank.

The original partnership for this, which was launched in September 2023 (here), pledged to send 5,000 Get Boxes to schools, charities, and other community initiatives by April 2025, and to then distribute those to households and other groups that need them the most.

So far more than 1,000 of these have now been distributed by various local authorities, including Coventry City Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, as well as charities such as digital inclusion charity, AbilityNet, and Roundhouse etc.

Nicola Green, VMO2’s Chief Comms and Corporate Affairs Officer, said:

“Virgin Media O2 is proud to be leading the way in helping those in need to get online.

Our partnership with Jangala is providing a lifeline to thousands of people who otherwise would be disconnected, giving them access to the online world so they can do everything from booking medical appointments to accessing digital skills training, or simply staying in touch with loved ones.

It builds on the measures Virgin Media O2 is taking to tackle data poverty. Whether it’s free O2 data from the National Databank, rehoming devices and data with people who need them via Community Calling, or offering reduced broadband and mobile plans for people receiving benefits, we’re committed to helping people in need stay connected.”

Organisations can apply for Get Boxes by visiting here. The announcement talks about these boxes as being able to deliver “free fast and reliable WiFi“, although you’d have to be in a location with both a strong mobile signal and good data capacity in order for the performance to be truly considered “fast“, particularly when sharing a single 4G link with multiple WiFi users. Sadly, there’s no 5G support.

UK ISP BT has published the final biannual progress update for 2024 on their delivery of Ofcom’s somewhat maligned 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband. The ISP has so far helped to build a USO connection to over 8,248 premises (up from 7,954 in April 2024), with 215 further builds in-progress (down from 265).

The USO is a legally-binding and industry-funded obligation that falls on BT across the UK and KCOM in just Hull. In short, people living in areas where they can’t yet receive a 10Mbps or faster download speed, and aren’t expected to be covered by such a network in the next 12-months, can request a service capable of 10Mbps+ downloads (1Mbps upload) from the aforementioned internet providers.

A cost sharing model also applies here, which means that the providers will “calculate the total excess cost of the build and divide that between the eligible premises. If that amount is below £5,000 per premises (on top of the £3,400), we’ll automatically split the costs“. But some areas can still end up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, even up to £1-2m, and would thus find the USO route to be unviable (here and here).

Ofcom states that 57,000 UK premises (0.2%) currently fall into the USO gap (i.e. those outside of suitable fixed line, fixed wireless or 4G mobile coverage) or under 400,000 premises if you exclude wireless solutions. But the regulator was expecting this 57k to fall to around 50k by September 2024, mostly as a result of upgrades via publicly funded schemes (connection vouchers, project gigabit contracts etc.).

Just to be clear about this. Many of those who pursue the USO option via BT say they were offered 4G (mobile broadband) connections via EE, but those actually considered to have been delivered under the USO itself usually get Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP). Commercial builds of the latter have also helped to shrink the USO gap.

The gap will continue to shrink as both commercial and subsidised builds (e.g. the Gov’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme) expand. The government are also still exploring how best to reach those who live in “Very Hard to Reach” areas even faster speeds – roughly equating to the same sort of area as the USO is focused upon – and at the same time they’re preparing to review the USO itself (here), which could lead to changes. But this work may have been delayed a bit by the recent change in government.

BT’s October 2024 USO Report

The latest statistics continued to show that the delivery of USO connections is slow (e.g. a year and a half ago there were 2,000 builds in progress, which fell to 800 in Apr 2023, then 185 in Oct 2023, 265 in April 2024 and now 215). We suspect this may be a combination of factors, such as a lack of consumer familiarity with the USO (apply for it here) and the fact that the policy may be running into the limitations of economically viable deliverability.

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has clarified to ISPreview that their Pay As You Go (PAYG) SIM plans still do NOT currently support their latest 5G (mobile broadband) network, which is despite the main product page for those plans being changed to state that customers will be able to “enjoy super-fast 4G and 5G with our Pay As You Go SIM cards.”

Some of ISPreview’s readers recently spotted (credits to hle13 and Lee) that the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section of O2’s Pay As You Go SIM (PAYG) plans page had been updated (we think, recently) to state that they now supported 5G. In response to the question “Can I get a 5G Pay As You Go SIM?“, O2’s web page stated: “Absolutely. Enjoy super-fast 4G and 5G with our Pay As You Go SIM cards.”

The move came as a surprise because other sections of O2’s website, such as their ‘How to use 5G’ section, were continuing to state that “5G connectivity is not currently available to our Pay As You Go customers,” which has long been our understanding too. Needless to say, we queried this contradiction with O2, albeit partly in the hope that the recent FAQ update might be signalling a welcome upgrade for PAYG customers. But sadly, it was not to be.

A spokesperson for O2 told ISPreview: “We do not currently offer 5G on PAYG“. The operator now plans to correct their website.

News 

The deal will support AT&T’ ongoing fibre network rollout 

AT&T has signed a multi-year deal with glass specialist Corning to supply the fibre optics and related technology to help expand its high-speed broadband network to more communities across the US.  

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but it is estimated to be worth in excess of $1 billion. 

As Corning’s biggest customer, AT&T will have priority access to Corning’s products.  

The move also aligns with federal initiatives like the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which require the use of locally sourced technology. 

“As data and bandwidth requirements continue to grow, Corning is committed to the work of ensuring all Americans have access to reliable, high-speed fiber connections,” said Wendell P. Weeks, chairman and CEO of Corning in a press release. 

“By extending our longtime relationship with AT&T, we’re helping bring the transformational benefits of fiber to more people and communities. We share a fundamental belief that the more people you connect, the more value you create. And optical fiber is bringing people together at an unprecedented scale,” he continued. 

The BEAD program is a US federal initiative to expand high-speed internet access across underserved and rural areas of the country. Part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it provides $42.5 billion to help states build broadband infrastructure and improve internet affordability. 

A key part of BEAD is the requirement to use mostly US made materials, boosting local manufacturing and jobs. The program aims to bridge the digital divide, making reliable internet accessible to all communities. 

Last week, AT&T reported its Q3 annual results, which showed that operating revenues were down 0.5% to $30.2 billion. Over 403,000 monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers were added in the quarter, above industry estimations, and 226,000 fibre business customers. Despite being held back by the two hurricanes that hit the US last month, AT&T still managed to pass 200,000 new customers for its 19th consecutive quarter. 

Join us at next year’s Connected America, 11-12 March in Dallas. Get discounted tickets here! 

Also in the news:
DigitalBridge acquires hyperscale data centre operator Yondr Group 
California’s aggressive approach to the digital divide
Smart cities and the neutral host approach

News

The German fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider says the move will allow it to help the company reach its goal of reaching 2.2 million homes

Fibre network operator Unsere Grune Glasfaser (UGG) is set to acquire rival operator Infrafibre, including the latter’s subsidiaries Leonet and Breitbandversorgung Deutschland (BBV).

The deal will expand UGG’s FTTH footprint by an undisclosed number of homes, contributing to the company’s goal of passing 2.2 million homes with FTTH.

The companies’ combined FTTH footprint will reportedly extend across eight German states, covering over one million homes.

“In view of the high demand for digital infrastructures, it is important to efficiently bundle and deploy capacities for fibre optic deployment,” said Jens Prautzsch, CEO of UGG. “We therefore see the planned acquisition of Infrafibre as an important and appropriate step towards achieving our goal of supplying 2.2 million households in Germany with state-of-the-art fibre optics even faster. Together, we will make an even greater contribution to fulfilling the German government’s gigabit targets.”

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, with market sources estimating the deal’s value at around €100 million.

Assuming regulatory approval, the deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

UGG itself was set up as a joint venture by investors Allianz and Telefónica Group in 2020, with its first customers connected roughly a year later. The partners intend to invest up to €5 billion into UGG, aiming to rapidly grow the company into one of Germany’s largest fibre infrastructure players.

Is the German fibre market moving quickly enough? Join the operators in discussion next week at Connected Germany live in Munich! Get your tickets today

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