News 

The acquisition will boost DigitalBridge’s capacity in hyperscale data centres amid a growing demand for digital infrastructure 

DigitalBridge Group has agreed to acquire Yondr Group, a global developer and operator of hyperscale data centres, through one of its investment funds. The acquisition aims to expand DigitalBridge’s data centre portfolio to meet rising demand for digital infrastructure driven by AI, cloud computing, and digital transformation.   

Yondr is a developer, owner, and operator of data centres. With over 420MW of current capacity and plans to support up to 1GW, Yondr’s assets align with DigitalBridge’s strategy to address increasing demand for data processing power as global demand also continues to increase. 

“Yondr’s assets and strong relationships with leading hyperscale clients align with DigitalBridge’s vision to support the future of digital infrastructure,” said Jon Mauck, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge in a press release.  

“Yondr enhances our existing data centre portfolio and strengthens our ability to support hyperscalers. Together, we are well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing demand for hyperscale data centres – fueled by AI, cloud computing, and the ongoing digital transformation across industries,” he continued. 

Yondr will continue to operate as an independent entity within DigitalBridge’s portfolio, using DigitalBridge’s resources to expand its global presence. 

The transaction is expected to close in early 2025, pending regulatory approval. 

Last week, DigitalBridge also announced that it had completed its acquisition of Japanese infrastructure company JTower. In a deal worth JPY 70.1 billion ($466 million), DigitalBridge has acquired a 75.62% controlling interest in the company.  

JTower is currently one of the largest shared infrastructure companies in Japan, owning 7,700 towers in both suburban and rural areas.  

“JTOWER is well-positioned to further enhance capital efficiency for its customers and drive the advancement of infrastructure sharing in Japan,” said Atsushi Tanaka, Representative Director of JTOWER. 

The acquisition was first announced in August and, since its completion, DigitalBridge has announced plans to take the company private.  

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

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

Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has this morning announced the next batch of 16 new UK locations (towns and cities) where their new 5G Standalone (SA) network will be deployed “before the end of the year“, which will bring various benefits such as faster speeds, network prioritisation and other features to customers.

The majority of UK 5G mobile networks today are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are still partly reliant upon older and slower 4G infrastructure. But SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for Voice over New Radio (VoNR or Vo5G) and increased reliability and security etc.

Just to recap. EE officially launched a range of new 5G SA supporting mobile plans across 15 major UK cities last month (here), including Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield.

The next batch of 16 additional locations, which are due to go live before the end of this year, should result in EE’s new 5G SA network being able to “cover an area of more than 21 million people, almost a third of the UK population“.

EE’s 16 New 5G SA Locations
Ashton-under-Lyne
Barrow-in-Furness
Barry
Birkenhead
Bury
Coventry
Dudley
Dundee
Newport
Nottingham
St Helens
Stockport
Swansea
Weston Super Mare
Wigan
Wolverhampton

We should point out that, unlike some other operators, EE generally don’t announce a new location as being live until they’ve achieved a good level of initial coverage. Take note that EE has committed to delivering at least 95% outdoor coverage in “every town or city where it launches 5G standalone to date“.

The operator claims that its own network performance data has shown that 5G standalone is already “delivering a better mobile internet experience, with customers using the network benefitting from improved video calls, streaming and online gaming, both in and out of their homes – as well as higher quality voice calls even in congested areas“, although they didn’t substantiate this with any results.

However, 5G SA technology is still somewhat constrained by limited device support, with EE saying it’s currently available on the following kit: Apple iPhone 15 and 16 series, Samsung Galaxy S23 and S24 lineup, TCL 50, Moto Razer 50 Ultra, and Moto G85 5G with further smartphones to be enabled in the “coming months“. It is also available on EE 5GEE WiFi and 5GEE Home (Smart 5G Hub).

Rural UK broadband ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), which is a community benefit society that has deployed their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network to 25,000 premises across England (inc. 13,000+ customers), has secured new grant funding to help them reach more villages in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley area.

According to details released during a recent meeting of the Ribble Valley Council, some £100,000 has been approved to support several of B4RN’s deployments. The new investment forms part of £675,000 that has been committed to various local community projects (solar, broadband, EV charging, playgrounds etc.) under the Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) – this rural scheme sits alongside the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF).

The approved allocations include a £50k grant toward one of B4RN’s deployments in the Ribchester area, as well as another £50k toward similar deployments in the tiny remote rural communities of Bolton by Bowland and Paythorne.

However, it wasn’t all good news, because there wasn’t enough funding available to approve all of B4RN’s applications. As a result, the operator’s application for an additional £50k in order to support their deployment of a new full fibre broadband network across Grindleton and Sawley was not approved. Admittedly, this is only a small slice of the estimated total project cost of £866,800.

The project team for the rejected application now have most of the wayleaves in place and have 183 requests for connection. The project team have secured £492,500 worth of funding from the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS). They have also raised £103,900 of private investment from local residents and businesses. With the support of the grant, the project team could have delivered on phase 1 of the project well in advance of the cut-off of March 2025 for this funding. The grant would have been used to cover part of the cost of the initial network installation and would therefore meet the timescales of the grant funding.

Still, getting two out of three applications approved remains a positive outcome, and the roll-out for Grindleton and Sawley looks as if it will still proceed.

Network operator Openreach (BT) has announced that they’ve started to deploy their 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the Berkshire (England) town of Wokingham, although it’s unclear exactly how many premises will benefit, but it is “expected to reach the majority” of local premises.

The work, which is only expected to take around 6 months to reach the majority of homes and businesses, forms part of the operator’s wider deployment of full fibre connectivity, which has already covered nearly 16 million UK premises (inc. more than 175,000 properties in Berkshire alone). Openreach are currently investing up to £15bn to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030 (ambition).

Openreach previously had a smaller FTTP deployment in the town, although the new roll-out will clearly be much more significant. The catch is that Wokingham already has significant gigabit broadband coverage from Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre), while CityFibre also covers more than half of the same area.

In addition, several other alternative networks also have small patches of FTTP coverage inside the town, such as Hyperoptic and Trooli (Gigaclear also come very close, albeit mostly positioned directly outside the town).

Martin Williams, Openreach Partnership Director, said:

“We’re bringing ultrafast broadband to Wokingham and letting local people know what to expect. This is a major infrastructure upgrade, so there will be more engineering teams, equipment and vans around town, and we’re working hard to keep disruption to a minimum.

Wherever possible, we’ll use our existing network of ducts and poles to avoid roadworks, new street furniture and disturbance. But there may be places where we need to install new poles, underground ducts and fibre cables because it’s the only way to make sure households get included in the upgrade.”

The service itself, 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 (e.g. TalkTalk) have now started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Alternative broadband operator Spring Fibre, which seems to have been in the early stages of rolling out a new 10Gbps capable wholesale full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network since 2021 – starting in Lincolnshire (here), has confirmed to ISPreview that they’ve taken the “difficult decision” to file a Notice of Intention (NoI) to appoint an administrator.

Spring Fibre, which was initially backed by Kingsley Capital Partners and telecoms specialist Graphite Strategy, is known to have originally secured an investment of “up to” £155m from R&M’s (River and Mercantile) infrastructure business to support their aspiration of covering 1 million premises in England (here).

However, despite the long passage of time since they first surfaced, we’ve seen very few details or updates on their build progress and no sign of any retail ISP availability. The operator did at least appear to start building in Lincoln, as well as the small towns of Mablethorpe and Louth during early 2023 (here), but how far they got with those locations remains shrouded in mystery.

The operator’s situation then took a turn last month, after the publication of their annual accounts (here), which revealed that Spring Fibre’s principal investor said they would “not continue to fund its network construction plan“ or meet their continued operational expenditure. This left the operator to go on the hunt for a new investor, which in the current climate of high interest rates and competitive network build is a challenging prospect.

Nevertheless, a spokesperson for the altnet still told ISPreview that Spring Fibre was “in a strong position as they continue to build network in the East and Northeast of England, with supportive investors, having gone live with Customers in recent months.” The trail then went cold again, until the end of last week, when some of our sources started pointing toward an expectation of more redundancies, and we soon discovered why.

A spokesperson for Spring Fibre told ISPreview:

“We can confirm we’ve had a significant level of interest, including indicative offers for the business, we don’t today have an offer that provides the necessary liquidity in the time we have available. Unfortunately, with this in mind, we have taken the difficult decision to file a notice of intention.

We continue to progress discussions with the potential purchasers, with the aim of completing a transaction which maximises value for the business.”

Administration often occurs when a company, such as one that is in financial difficulty, is put into the hands of an administrator. The administrator then decides whether they can help the company to continue running or sell it off for a good price.

Once in administration, the company is often protected from legal action by people or organisations who are owed money (creditors). Administration can also mean that the company may not have to pay all its debts in full, but if deemed necessary, they can still be wound up.

Spring Fibre are currently still in the early stages of preparing to appoint an administrator, and there’s still a chance that a solution could be found. But it’s difficult for us to judge the network’s value given that we still don’t know how much fibre they were actually able to build or what level of overbuild may be involved.

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has increased the bundled 4G data allowance (mobile broadband) on their £8 per month SIM Only Basics plan from 30GB (GigaBytes) to 40GB. The operator’s Basics plans also come with unlimited UK minutes and texts on 12-month term.

The plans, which Vodafone make quite hard to find on their website (here’s a direct link) – they don’t even display them on their SIM Only deals page, are very simplistic plans that don’t include any support for 5G services (only 4G and older). Otherwise, £7 a month gets you just 6GB of data, then £8 for 40GB and £10 for 50GB – there’s certain some odd allowance jumps there.

Just remember that these are still subject to the usual mid-contract price hikes, thus your monthly Basics Plan will increase each year on 1st April by £1.

Customers of UK broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2), specifically those who take their pay TV service (TV 360, Stream Box etc.), may like to know that they’ll be able to get access to 14 premium South Asian TV channels at no extra cost until 8th November 2024 in celebration of Diwali.

The channels are normally part of Virgin Media’s Asian Mela bundle, which usually costs £12 per month and offer customers access to the latest South Asian dramas, comedies, reality TV, movies and more – all in HD quality.

David Bouchier, Chief TV & Entertainment Officer at VMO2, said: “Diwali is an incredibly special time for families and friends to come together and celebrate. We want to add to the festivities the best way we know how – giving Virgin Media TV customers access to world-leading South Asian entertainment channels at no extra cost. From the latest South Asian TV premieres to classic Hindi movies in HD, there’s something for everybody to enjoy this Diwali across our Asian Mela channels.”

The list of Asian Mela TV channels available to all Virgin Media TV customers includes:

Channel 801: Utsav Gold HD
Channel 802: Utsav Bharat
Channel 803: Utsav Plus HD
Channel 805: Sony TV HD
Channel 806: Sony MAX HD
Channel 808: Sony MAX2
Channel 809: Zee TV HD
Channel 810: Zee Cinema HD
Channel 811: Zee Punjabi HD
Channel 815: B4U Movies
Channel 825: Colors Gujarati
826: Colors HD
827: Colors Rishtey
828: Colors Cineplex

News  

The “extremely complex” deal has been more than a year in the making, say the companies 

Czech telco group PPF has completed the sale of a 50% plus one share stake in its telecom assets in Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia to Emirati-based telco e&. In doing so, the companies have formed a new joint venture called e& PPF Telecom Group.  

The deal is valued at €2.15 billion, with a potential earn-out of up to €350 million. 

The joint venture combines PPF’s telecom experience in Central and Eastern Europe with e&’s global tech resources to boost telecom services in the region.  

PPF will retain full ownership of its telecom assets in the Czech Republic, including O2 Czech Republic and CETIN Czech, which are outside the partnership’s scope. Additionally, PPF is set to acquire a 30% stake in CETIN Group from Roanoke Investment, making PPF the sole owner of CETIN Czech. 

“Together, we have created a platform to drive value creation in fast-developing telecommunications markets,” said PPF CEO Jiří Šmejc in a press release. 

“Our partnership with e& testifies to the quality of PPF’s industry expertise and local knowledge. In return, PPF’s telco teams will benefit from the global scale and technology know-how of e&, enabling us to meet our ambitions for further growth,” he continued. 

Earlier this year, the European Commission (EC) opened an investigation into the deal, over concerns that it has been “granted foreign subsidies that could distort the EU internal market”.  

Concerns stemmed from discussions that e& may have received financial support from UAE banks and the national government, which would have given PPF an unfair edge in the EU market according to newly introduced competition rules that came into effect in July last year.  

Earlier this month, the EC unanimously approved the deal. 

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

Also in the news: 

The new, if still imperfect, One Touch Switching (OTS) system, which is Ofcom’s solution for making it quicker and easier for consumers to switch between broadband ISPs and phone providers, is now fully in control after the old backstop (NoT+) system was decommissioned today. But some issues remain with customer matching and ISP support.

Just to remind. Implementation of OTS is being handled by the industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which went live on 12th September 2024 after being delayed from 3rd April 2023. But Ofcom initially opted to retain the old NoT+ (Notification of Transfer) migration process – until 24th October 2024 – to act as a fallback for OTS failures. For example, there were (and still are) some problems with getting the “matching process” right, which is necessary to ensure that customer switches are correctly verified and migrated between providers.

Ofcom’s view is that the “system overall is working well for the vast majority of customers“ (here), thus NoT+ has been decommissioned as planned. The latest update from TOTSCo echoes this viewpoint below, despite there still being some problems with the matching process left to resolve.

However, some ISPs have echoed concerns to ISPreview because not all providers have managed to get their systems live on TOTSCo’s platform in time for the removal of NoT+. This in turn has made it difficult for customers who want to leave ISPs that aren’t yet live on the switching platform, which is extremely frustrating for gaining providers that are live (i.e. switching them is difficult as the losing ISP isn’t yet listed as a supported brand).

Paul Bradbury, TOTSCo’s CEO, said:

“This week marks a significant milestone just six weeks after the launch of One Touch Switch: 100,000 orders have been successfully completed! With 197,000 orders placed, we expect the lag between order and completion following the decommissioning of NOT+ earlier this week. This achievement highlights industry’s commitment to adoption and the effectiveness of the new switching process.

This makes collaboration among users more crucial than ever. I’m encouraged to see a continued increase in sign-ups for the CP-to-CP tool, which is vital for facilitating communication and resolving issues during the OTS process.”

The reality is that the remaining bugbears may still take a little longer to iron out (check out TOTSCo’s live system data to see the current switch match success rate), while Ofcom’s patience with ISPs that have failed to get themselves live on TOTSCo’s new platform in time may have been exhausted. “We are monitoring communications providers compliance with their responsibilities under OTS, and we will take appropriate steps should we have any concerns,” said a spokesperson for Ofcom to ISPreview.

At this stage, ISPreview isn’t yet at the naming and shaming stage, but that may change if we see more gripes coming our way from consumers who are being prevented from switching because their ISP is not yet using OTS. The regulator’s rules suggest that providers risk penalties if they fail to follow the new OTS rules.

One final point to make is that TOTSCo’s membership list isn’t a useful guide for identifying which ISPs are NOT live on the platform. This is because quite a few providers will be sitting – often unseen by the public – behind a third party Managed Access Provider (MAP), although we are already seeing some trends (i.e. reports of failed migrations that come our way) that identifies those who are trailing on the adoption front.

News 

The deal is another stepping stone in IOH’s “to become an AI TechCo” 

Mastercard and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) have launched a new prototype that uses Mastercard’s in-car payment system in combination with IOH’s AI-powered fleet management platform, NEXTFleet. The joint effort aims to reshape urban travel in Indonesia by bringing together payment and mobility technology, the companies said. 

The solution allows drivers to make payments for tolls, EV charging, fuel, and drive-throughs from the dashboard, using Mastercard’s biometric and token technology. 

The payment information is stored in the car’s system, letting drivers pay with a fingerprint. At the same time, NEXTFleet helps companies manage multiple vehicles in real-time, tracking and optimising their use through IoT and mobile apps. 

IOH announced its intention to turn from telco to TechCo at its Capital markets day last year. The company wants to move beyond traditional telecom services to focus on AI and digital solutions across various industries. 

“At Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, we are dedicated to leveraging AI and innovative technologies to revolutionize urban mobility in Indonesia. This collaboration with Mastercard highlights our ambition to become AI TechCo, reflecting our larger purpose of empowering Indonesia through smarter, more efficient solutions that enhance the quality of life for every Indonesian,” said Vikram Aileen Goh, Country Manager and President Director, PT Mastercard Indonesia Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive Officer at IOH. 

As urbanisation in Indonesia rises, the need for connected travel solutions is growing. Digital transactions in the country are set to increase by over 25% this year, with more than 157 million vehicles on the road, a press release stated. 

“Through this collaboration with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, we are showcasing the possibilities that could unfold when innovation, mobility and commerce come together, and what the future holds with more connected, efficient, and sustainable urban mobility ecosystems in Indonesia,” echoed Aileen Goh, Country Manager and President Director at PT Mastercard Indonesia. 

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

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