Broadband ISP Quickline, which is building a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and 5G powered fixed wireless access (FWA) network across rural and semi-rural parts of the North East and Midlands of England, will this morning significantly cut the prices on some of their packages and introduce symmetric speeds on their full fibre plans.

Just to recap. The network operator is currently being supported by funding of c.£500m from Northleaf Capital Partners, as well as c.£296.4m of public subsidy from Project Gigabit (here, here and here), £225m in term loans and debt guarantees from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) and a £25m term loan from NatWest.

Quickline ultimately holds an aspiration to cover around 500,000 premises in rural and semi-rural areas across Northern England and beyond with “ultrafast broadband” – via both FTTP and wireless technologies – “by 2025” (here). Some 200,000 of those rural premises will be tackled by their wireless network, with the rest coming from FTTP.

The main development today is that the provider will be making some updates to their product offerings. For the first 12 months of a 24-month contract, all their packages will be 50% off, with the standard price resuming for the second half of the contract.

For example, customers in FTTP areas can get 200Mbps for £14.50 per month for the first year, while wireless customers can get 100Mbps for £14 per month for the same period. Additionally, they’ve introduced symmetrical upload and download speeds for their full fibre packages and increased the overall speeds available.

Ben O’Leary, Head of Product and Proposition at Quickline, said:

“Quickline is one of the UK’s fastest-growing broadband providers, offering an award-winning service that customers can trust.

At Quickline, we promise faster speeds, reliable connectivity, and year-long broadband savings, as well as our pledge not to hike prices midway through your contract.

Plus, if you’re not completely satisfied within the first 30 days, you can cancel without any hassle, guaranteeing you nothing but satisfaction.

With Quickline, you’re not just getting better internet, you’re getting better value, better service, and a better experience overall.”

Wireless Changes

Package name: airConnect

Download Speed: 100Mbps

Upload Speed: 20Mbps

Intro price: £14 a month for 12 months

After intro: £28 a month

Package Name: airUltra

Download Speed: 200Mbps

Upload Speed: 30Mbps

Intro price: £14.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £29 a month

FTTP Changes

Package Name: Connect

Download Speed: 200Mbps

Upload Speed: 200Mbps

Intro price: £14.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £29 a month

Package Name: Extra

Download Speed: 500Mbps

Upload Speed: 500Mbps

Intro price: £19.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £39 a month

Package Name: Complete

Download Speed: 1000Mbps

Upload Speed: 1000Mbps

Intro price: £24.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £49 a month

Openreach (BT) have restored their broadband and phone services in the Swanscombe and surrounding areas of Kent (England), which follows a major network outage that struck thousands of local premises. This began after damage was caused to the operator’s core fibre optic cables at around midday on Saturday (31st Aug).

The incident caused disruption for customers of both retail broadband ISPs on Openreach’s network and some other network operators that harness the same physical infrastructure (e.g. Netomnia also reported disruption). Some data capacity (backhaul) links to local mobile masts were similarly said to have been impacted, which saw slower than normal 4G and 5G mobile performance from at least O2 and EE.

The exact cause of the damage itself remains unclear, although Kent Online indicated that it was “accidental” and related to ongoing network restoring work that was taking place in the same area following last year’s landslide. The damage is understood to have been quite complex and meant that several fibres needed to be re-spliced.

Sadly, major cable breaks can often take a few short days and, in more extreme cases, a few weeks to fully resolve. But the latest update from Openreach indicates progress.

A Spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview (today):

“We have several engineering teams currently onsite who are working hard to get customers back online after a number of our fibre cables were damaged impacting homes and businesses in the village of Swanscombe and surrounding area.

This is a complex repair job with work already ongoing in the area to restore extensive damage to our network following a cliff collapse under a key road in the village last year, so its going to take us a few days to get it sorted out.

We understand how frustrating this must be for anyone is affected and we thank anyone involved for their patience while we get things fixed. Anyone experiencing any disruption with their phone or broadband service should do their best to report it to their service provider who will then inform us.”

Openreach’s cabling team managed to pull the majority of the cable through on Saturday night. Since then, they’ve had a team of jointers on site working to connect all the cables back up, which is time-consuming due to the size of the cables and amount of work needed. But progress is being made and the team were working throughout Sunday to try and complete the works.

Some customer feedback we’ve seen suggested that the first services finally came back online at around 3-4pm yesterday afternoon, and further restorations have followed.

UPDATE:

A second update came in just as we published this story. A spokesperson for Openreach said: “All works were completed late last night – at around 21:3 0– and all customers should now be back in service.”

Oxfordshire-based alternative full fibre operator Zzoomm, which has deployed their 2Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 202,000 premises (RFS) in England, has reportedly accelerated their plans for an M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) drive with the appointment of Acuity Advisors to help identify prospective deals.

Just to recap. Zzoomm’s network, which is home to 30,000 customers (c.15% take-up), is currently present across around 29 market towns and small urban communities in parts of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. But the provider originally aspired to cover 1 million premises across 85 UK towns by the end of 2025, before the difficulties of raising fresh capital forced their build to stop (here and here).

However, despite the challenges, the provider’s CEO, Matthew Hare, recently expressed a strong desire to achieve their 1 million premises target via a different approach. “If we can’t build it ourselves then … you have to buy it,” said Matthew in July 2024 (here) before confirming that they “absolutely are” on the acquisition trail as a means of achieving their original coverage aspiration.

Matthew Hare, Zzoomm’s CEO, said:

“Stopping the build is all about availability of capital, it’s not about availability of opportunity or aspiration … 1 million premises is still a good target to get to as a footprint, and probably even a bigger number, but if we can’t build it ourselves then we’ll have to find another way of getting there. The aspiration is absolutely still there”.

The first details of this drive now appear to have surfaced after Sky News reported that Zzoomm had hired Acuity Advisors, a specialist technology firm, to identify prospective acquisitions. The altnet is already said to have engaged in discussions with a number of similar network operators in the same space, although realistically it could be months before we learn whether this effort is going to bear fruit.

Separately, the same article also alleges that CommunityFibre recently made an offer worth around £300m to acquire rival altnet G.Network in London, but were rebuffed. This follows news in July 2024, which suggested that G.Network was once again hunting for a buyer (here). CityFibre is also understood to have been sniffing around both operators and has expressed its own strong desire for M&A activity (here).

Several members of ISPreview’s forum community have spotted that broadband ISP and mobile network operator EE (BT) appears to have quietly introduced new / revamped UK plans, which include the first support for their latest 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile broadband technology. Faster speeds, network prioritisation and other benefits are expected.

The majority of UK 5G mobile networks today are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are still partly reliant on 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 upload speeds, 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.

So far we’ve already seen both Vodafone (here) and O2 / Virgin Media (here) launching 5G SA services in the UK, initially across the busiest parts of several major cities. Meanwhile, the BT Group has previously said that they intended, via EE, to follow suit during the second half of 2024 (here).

However, an interesting thing happened on 29th August 2024 after EE quietly updated their T&Cs (here) and website to include 5G SA on several of their premium plans. This came alongside the option of a ‘Network Boost‘ that may also make it possible to add to other plans, but at present this is restricted to two plans.

Extract from the New Terms & Conditions

5G Standalone
Available to customers on an All Rounder or Full Works plan. Connect in selected 5G Standalone ready locations across the UK using a compatible device. For coverage, see ee.co.uk/why-ee/5g-on-ee

Network Boost
Available to customers on an All Rounder or Full Works plan. Prioritises data coverage to your phone in busy or crowded areas. No prioritisation of calls or texts. Available to customers in selected locations across the UK.

The new plans have some other changes too and also appear to be a bit more expensive, although our main focus today is on the addition of 5G SA. At present, little is known about the initial launch coverage of the new feature or precisely what sort of performance gain can be expected, but that will have to wait for the official announcement. The usual caveats of variable device support may also apply.

Personally speaking, yours truly prefers a more simplistic approach, where enhancements like 5G SA are just included by default and the base plans are kept very simple. I have never been a particularly big fan of making mobile plans too complicated via a myriad of add-ons or extras (upsell), which just makes it harder to compare the value of what you are getting. But each to their own.

We have asked EE to comment.

News 

The rumours come amid financial difficulty in the sector 

Nokia has officially denied rumors that it plans to sell its mobile networks division to Samsung.  

Speculation about a potential sale emerged after a Bloomberg report yesterday suggested that Nokia was considering selling or spinning off its mobile networks business, which could be valued at around $10 billion, with Samsung mentioned as a potential buyer. 

Citing people familiar with the matter, the article explained that the investment interest has come “amid increasing pressure to find new growth in the troubled telecom equipment sector.” 

Nokia swiftly rejected these claims, stating in a regulatory filing that it “is issuing this stock exchange release in response to the recent trading activity of its stock due to a market rumour. Nokia has nothing to announce in relation to the speculations published in an article today, and no related insider project exists.” 

The company emphasised its commitment to its mobile networks division, describing it as a “highly strategic asset critical to both Nokia and its customers”.  

This division remains crucial for Nokia despite recent financial challenges, including a 25% decline in sales and a 32% drop in operating profit in Q2 2024. 

In December last year, Nokia suffered a significant blow after AT&T chose Ericsson to supply the Open RAN equipment that will carry 70% of its wireless traffic by the end of 2026.  The $14 billion deal will result in Nokia equipment in AT&T’s network being replaced with Ericsson tech in certain areas.  

Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark called the news “disappointing” in a statement. 

Want to keep up with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world? Sign up to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter   

Also in the news: 

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has revealed that they will finally withdraw their old Fibre Voice Access (FVA) product from 1st December 2024. The service has long since been superseded by retail broadband ISPs launching their own IP / VoIP based digital phone services.

In case anybody has forgotten, FVA enabled a broadband ISP to offer a public switched telephone network (PSTN) quality voice service to customers over their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines. In order to deliver this, they built an Analogue Terminal Adapter (ATA) into the optical modem (ONT) that goes on your wall, which was able to support two analogue phone ports.

However, FVA was perhaps a bit of an awkward and awkwardly timed product and, as stated earlier, retail ISPs have now largely opted to launch their own IP (Internet Protocol) based voice solutions that connect via your router rather than through the ONT – avoiding the need to take a special service from Openreach.

The FVA service never really took off, and Openreach stopped selling it to new customers on 31st March 2020. The change today is that they’re going to completely withdraw FVA from 1st December 2024, which will of course affect any existing customers that remain (virtually all of those should have already been moved to different products by now).

Press Release

Ericsson and Telstra today announced a groundbreaking, world-first achievement in mobile connectivity with the deployment of Ericsson’s 4th generation of Radio Access Network (RAN) purpose-built compute platform, paving the way  for a consistent 5G Advanced platform for Australia.

With live deployment on August 14, 2024, this technology marks a new era in mobile data and connectivity, setting a new benchmark for speed, reliability, and efficiency.

Telstra deployed Ericsson’s RAN Processor 6672 in a baseband pooling configuration, also called a Centralised RAN (C-RAN) configuration, delivering greater than three times capacity compared to the previous generation. The latest RAN processors are engineered to deliver exceptional data speeds with higher efficiency and reliability. These RAN Compute units handle all the digital signal processing tasks of the RAN including the modulation, demodulation, encoding and decoding and scheduling of a users’ LTE and NR traffic. A more advanced RAN Compute platform allows more data to be processed simultaneously, a better user experience optimised with advanced AI capability all while consuming less energy.

Telstra is the first telco globally to test, validate, and operate commercial traffic on this RAN Compute platform within their C-RAN hubs that service multiple radio sites. In a C-RAN configuration, the new RAN processors offer up to 60 percent lower energy consumption compared to a distributed deployment. This architecture also enables more flexible operations, remove single points of failure and efficient scaling of compute with the use of Ericsson’s packet fronthaul technology.

This deployment is a crucial step toward future-proofing the network and lays the groundwork for forthcoming 5G Advanced and associated technologies. With the latest RAN Compute technology Telstra’s network is set to evolve for the future, offering consumers new and improved features as soon as they are available. The new platform supports advanced automation and AI/ML capabilities, enabling a programmable network that offers enhanced flexibility and responsiveness. Compared to previous generations, the new RAN processors can have up to 20 times more pre-loaded AI models with higher inference capacity enabling superior user experience through AI. This capability will benefit various industries and applications through improved services and innovative network features.

Emilio Romeo, Head of Ericsson, Australia, and New Zealand, says, “The deployment of our latest Generation RAN compute platform with Telstra represents a significant global milestone in mobile technology. This breakthrough not only enhances current services but also prepares the network for future innovations providing a more reliable, sustainable experience.

Telstra’s Executive for Wireless Network Engineering, Sri Amirthalingam added, “We aspire to give our customers a world leading mobile experience and this technology will unlock new capabilities and support increased capacity in the network. With Ericsson’s support, it will help us meet our customers’ data needs more efficiently as they rely on their mobile for day-to day tasks and is an important step in laying the foundations for 6G.”

News 

According to the FCC’s most recent data, over 14 million households and businesses in the US lack 5G access 

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved new rules to provide $9 billion in subsidies to help roll out 5G in rural areas across the US. 

The decision finally progresses the 5G Fund for Rural America, a scheme was first devised in 2020 and aims to bring advanced mobile connectivity to regions less likely to receive 5G service without financial assistance, helping to bridge the US digital divide.   

The 5G Fund for Rural America has faced significant delays, primarily related to outdated coverage maps. This, the FCC feared, could have led to funding being allocated to areas that did not need it, while underserved areas might have been overlooked. The FCC paused implementation until updated maps were curated. 

In a bipartisan vote, the FCC has now agreed to move forward with targeted investments aimed at connecting households and businesses in rural areas.  

“With the progress we’ve made in mapping broadband service availability, there is no reason to wait to put the 5G Fund to work connecting households and businesses in rural communities across the country,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. 

“We are ready to use every tool available to make sure that those who live, work, and travel in rural America have access to advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband services,” she continued. 

The first phase of the project will allocate up to $9 billion through a reverse auction process, but a date for this process has not yet been set. The FCC has also allocated up to $900 million in incentives for networks that use Open RAN (Open Radio Access Network) technology.  

The new rules also broaden the criteria for areas eligible for support, including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. 

Join the conversation around America’s broadband ecosystem at next year’s Connected America, 11-12 March in Dallas, Texas. Tickets are available here! 

Also in the news:
Coastguard’s emergency network gets an upgrade from Telent
AT&T fined nearly $1m over 911 failings
How will the CityFibre–Sky deal really affect BT? 

News 

China’s objective is to establish a comprehensive computing power infrastructure system by the end of 2025 in the face of US restrictions 

China has invested more than 43.5 billion yuan ($6.1 billion) in data centre investment over the past two years, according to an official statement on Thursday reported by Chinese state publication Xinhua. 

The funds have paid for the construction eight computing hubs as part of China’s “East Data, West Computing” initiative, launched in 2022 by Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). 

The concept involves storing data in the more economically developed eastern regions of China, where digital and industrial activity is concentrated, and processing it in the western regions, which have plenty of land and energy but lower data demand.   

The $6,1 billion investment includes the deployment of three server hubs on China’s populous east coast and five hubs in China’s central/western corridor.  

Speaking at a big data expo in Guiyang, in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, Liu Liehong, the head of the National Data Administration, reported that total investments linked to the hubs deployment had surpassed 200 billion yuan ($28.2 billion). He also mentioned that the number of data center racks now exceeds 1.95 million. 

This project is a critical element of China’s digital infrastructure strategy, aiming to boost the capacity of inland areas to store and manage data. China also has plans to create 10 national data center clusters as part of this broader effort.  

The push comes as the country has faced tight sanctions from the US, which have included exports of some advanced computing products. 

As computing power is emerging as a vital productive force in the digital economy, Liu explained that China will support cities in exploring new approaches over the next few years to determine the most effective solutions for data infrastructure development countrywide. 

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

Also in the news:
Coastguard’s emergency network gets an upgrade from Telent
AT&T fined nearly $1m over 911 failings
How will the CityFibre–Sky deal really affect BT? 

Business broadband ISP, cloud and technology provider Daisy Communications has managed to irritate some of their UK customers after the provider automatically added a new internet security feature – ‘SafeWeb Plus’ – to their accounts, at a cost of £11.99 ex. VAT per month, without first getting consent.

It seems like only last week that we were reporting on how Onestream had attracted the ire from some of their customers for doing something similar with NordVPN (side note: it was literally last week). But while consumers have plenty of laws to defend them against such practices, it can be a bit more of a grey area when it comes to businesses (they don’t enjoy as many protections).

Nevertheless, there is usually a little something called business ethics, even in B2B transactions, which in most cases helps to ensure that companies play fair with each other. However, in this case, the concept of such ethics appears as if it could have been placed under some strain. This occurred after Daisy Communications added the paid SafeWeb Plus add-on to customer bills without first getting their express consent.

In fairness, Daisy did include a link to an opt-out form, but this isn’t a simple ‘click to decline‘ style affair. Instead, you have to actually waste time filling in the full form, and that’s just so you can avoid being billed for something that you probably didn’t ask for in the first place. This is of course assuming you didn’t a) accidentally overlook the email (easily done in today’s land of daily promotional spam), or b) fail to read much further down to where it mentions the service charge, as well as the opt-out.

Extract from Daisy Communications’ Customer Email

Subject: Protect your business with Daisy Communications

That’s why we’re adding SafeWeb Plus, one of our cyber security solutions, designed to help to keep your business data safe and protected, to your account.

… (then much further down the email) …

From 1 September 2024, you will have SafeWeb Plus added to your account. So, you will see a monthly fee of £11.99 (excluding VAT) added to your bill.

To opt out of SafeWeb Plus please fill in the form here: https://daisycomms.co.uk/h2-safeweb-plus-opt-out

None of this is to say that SafeWeb Plus is a bad service, in fact it could be a very useful feature to have. But is it so hard to simply get the customer’s consent first, before adding it to their bills? According to some of the feedback we’ve seen, this might not be the first time that Daisy has done something like this, although that requires further investigation.

We have contacted Daisy Communications for a comment.