FiberLocator, the US’s most prominent fibre data platform, has announced the addition of data on UK fibre providers to its extensive database, which already holds the fibre footprint and route maps of 1000+ carriers, more than 5 million connected buildings, and 6,000 data centres.

FiberLocator provides carriers, mobile operators, towercos and data centre operators with the most comprehensive, accurate, and timely fibre data available. For decades it has been the United States’ leading resource guide for developing a custom fibre network, planning data centre sites, locating on-net buildings and more. The company is constantly researching and integrating new data from providers and third parties to help guide network planners with the fibre data they need.

“FiberLocator users are generating an increasing request volume for UK-based fibre connectivity, and launching in the UK will open up many exciting new opportunities for us,” said Mike Iapalucci, Vice President of FiberLocator. “On the one hand, we see increased US demand for UK fibre. On the other hand, there is a rich and diverse fibre ecosystem in the UK. Our goal is to be the bridge between UK supply and US demand, and we’re already in the process of signing up our first suppliers.”

Fibre providers contribute footprint data onto the FiberLocator platform free of charge, advertising their fibre availability to a wide range of US carriers. This creates an additional wholesale selling channel, without the need for time-consuming framework negotiations.

“With the increased expansion of UK data centres, proximity to fibre is more important than ever for data centre users and operators,” said David Liggitt, President of CCMI. “This represents a fantastic opportunity for UK providers, and we’re thrilled to share our services with the market.”

The company aims to sign up a critical mass of UK fibre suppliers before the end of the year. and will be attending Connected Britain and Capacity Europe in London this fall.

News 

The company says the launch makes it “the only telecom operator in Taiwan with overseas branches and the most comprehensive global network deployment” 

Taiwanese telco Chunghwa Telecom has this week launched its first European subsidiary in Frankfurt, Germany. The expansion marks the company’s first entry into the European market, adding to its existing operations in the US and Asia.  

The company plans to collaborate with local partners and use its telecommunications and ICT expertise to serve businesses in the region. 

The launch event was attended by key figures from Chunghwa Telecom, including Chairman & CEO Harrison Kuo and President Ivan Lin, along with several local and international representatives.  

“The EU market, comprising 27 member states, presents vast business opportunities and diverse industry developments that continue to attract global enterprises. Germany, the largest economy in the EU, serves as a gateway for multinational companies entering the European market,” noted the press release. 

Taiwanese publication Focus Taiwan suggests that the move is related to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC)’s establishment of an advanced fab in Germany, which broke ground last week. Chunghwa Telecom did not mention TSMC in their announcement, but did highlight the importance of supporting Taiwanese businesses abroad.  

“Chunghwa Telecom’s belief is: ‘Wherever Taiwanese businesses go, Chunghwa Telecom will be there for them,’” said Kuo. “Germany, as one of the most important economic centers in Europe, attracts many Taiwanese enterprises seeking to expand their businesses. Chunghwa Telecom is committed to serving our customers anytime, anywhere.”  

The new European subsidiary will use Chunghwa Telecom’s international resources and technical capabilities to offer integrated ICT solutions to both Taiwanese and European businesses. 

Chunghwa Telecom also have an ongoing collaboration with EXATEL, one of the biggest three fibre network operators in Poland,  to strengthen its presence in Eastern Europe. In July last year, the two companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to share knowledge on cybersecurity, R&D projects, and SDN (Software Defined Network) technology development.  

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? 

News 

The guidance warns against children’s extensive use of smartphones 

This week, EE has published age-specific guidelines for smartphone usage, aimed at better protecting children’s digital wellbeing. The move comes in response to growing concerns among parents about the effects of screen time, online safety, and the overall impact of digital devices on children. 

“We have a responsibility with EE as the UK’s best mobile network to respond to concerns about screen time, online safety and how using digital devices can affect children’s wellbeing” said EE CEO Marc Allera in a LinkedIn post. 

The company’s advice is tailored to three age groups: under 11s, 11–13, and 13–16. For children under 11, EE recommends using non-smart devices with limited features, such as calls and texts but limit access to social media and other online content. For those aged 11–13, EE advises that if smartphones are used, parental controls should be enabled, and family-sharing apps like Google Family Link or Apple Family Sharing should be in place. Social media access should remain restricted. 

For teenagers aged 13–16, EE suggests that smartphones are appropriate but recommends that parents use controls to manage and limit access to unsuitable sites. Social media usage is considered suitable for this age group, as long as it is connected to a parent’s account. 

“This initiative is timely and much needed. Parents want to ensure their children can enjoy the benefits of digital technology while staying safe online. EE’s age-specific advice is a valuable resource to help families navigate these challenges,” said Carolyn Bunting, CEO of Internet Matters, a not-for-profit organisation that helps families keep children safe online. 

Alongside the new guidelines, EE has expanded its existing PhoneSmart educational platform with new content to help parents guide their children on safe behavior online. These new measures include: 

Enhanced in-app controls: Simpler parental control features, allowing parents to better monitor and manage their children’s smartphone use. 

Child-friendly products: The Dash+ feature phone (a very simple handset), developed by Verve Connect, is available to EE customers. The device focuses on basic communication while prioritising safety. 

Educational resources: Offering comprehensive resources for parents, teachers, and children to promote responsible smartphone use and online safety. 

Family online safety hub: Set to launch later this year, this platform will provide product recommendations, guides, and FAQs to help families navigate the digital world safely. 

Volunteering & staff training: EE is improving its retail staff training and launching a staff volunteer program later this year to offer more support to parents and caregivers. 

“While technology and connectivity have the power to transform lives, we know that the growing complexity of smartphones can be challenging for parents and caregivers. They need support, which is why we are launching new guidelines to help them make the best choices for their children during these formative years,” said Mat Sears, EE’s Corporate Affairs Director. 

Catch Marc Allera’s live CXO interview at this year’s Connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Last minute discounted 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? 

Hampshire-based alternative network operator and gigabit broadband ISP toob, which is deploying a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – and also sharing some of CityFibre’s infrastructure – across parts of South England (Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex), has today joined with Buyapowa to launch a new rewards programme.

The new programme is essentially a Refer a Friend scheme, albeit one that will be delivered via the Buyapowa platform and can be “used by anyone to recommend the toob service, even if they are not a customer” of the service (i.e. anyone can now refer a friend to toob’s service as many times as they would like, with both the referrer and the referred friend benefitting from a reward).

According to the provider’s website, if you refer a friend to toob’s service then you’ll get a £25 Amazon shopping voucher to spend, albeit only 14 days after their service has gone live. The friend will also receive the same voucher and within the same timeframe.

This essentially replaces the provider’s old scheme with a smoother experience and one that, in the future, may offer a “choice of reward options to better suit each customers’ preference.”

Nick Parbutt, CEO of toob, said:

“We’re excited to partner with Buyapowa to increase our rewards capabilities and improve the refer a friend process. toob is growing rapidly, and with more than 50,000 connected customers, the power of this platform will accommodate our continued expansion while making our rewards programme accessible to everyone and easier to use.”

Just to recap. Toob was originally backed by £75m from the Amber Infrastructure Group (here) and “up to” £87.5m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (here). During 2023 the operator also secured £160m of additional funding (debt financing) from Ares Management‘s Infrastructure Debt strategy (here), which we were told could be upsized to £300m over time to support growth.

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with UK broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), have announced that they’ve added 11,000 more homes in the large West Yorkshire (England) town of Huddersfield to the coverage of their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network.

As indicated above, Huddersfield was already well covered by Virgin Media’s existing gigabit-capable broadband network, although this previously excluded a big chunk on the far wester side of the town that has now been tackled via nexfibre. The town is also home to significant full fibre coverage from Openreach and CityFibre, as well as some small deployments by Hyperoptic and the odd other alternative network.

Nexfibre itself has already covered over 1 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises (on top of their existing footprint).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally setup 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.

Edinburgh-based UK alternative network ISP GoFibre (BorderLink) has revealed that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network now covers 115,000 rural premises (RFS) across the North of England and Scotland, which is up from 105,600 premises on 17th June 2024. One of the latest locations to benefit from this is the Angus town of Forfar.

The news was revealed as GoFibre welcomed the MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens, Dave Doogan, to witness the “near completion” of its full fibre broadband network in Forfar. With build in the area set to wrap up by September 2024, over 6,000 homes and businesses will soon have access to their new gigabit speed broadband network.

Customers of the GoFibre’s network can expect to pay from £36 per month (currently discounted to £29) for a 135Mbps (25Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £69 per month (currently discounted to £49) for their top 900Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).

Dave Doogan, MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens, said:

“It was great to see the progress that GoFibre have made with their full fibre broadband network in Forfar. Many communities here in Angus and Perthshire Glens have been overlooked by traditional broadband companies leaving them with poor connections that are a pain for households and a real problem for local businesses trying to compete.

The work that GoFibre are doing will provide thousands of homes and businesses with hugely improved broadband and will make a meaningful difference to so many people’s lives here locally.”

GoFibre said their expansion in Forfar, alongside its expansion in Montrose and Kirriemuir, will mark a significant stride in improving coverage for the Angus community.

Press Release

A £175 million communications network connecting 163 remote radio sites across 11,000 miles of UK coastline is now operational ensuring His Majesty’s (HM) Coastguard’s effective frontline emergency response continues for thousands of distress calls from the UK’s waters. 

Stretching from the Shetland Islands to the Isles of Scilly, it is one of the UK’s largest private broadband networks, with technology partner Telent helping to install 1,220km of new infrastructure. 

The first installations of the new network, combining full-fibre and microwave technology, began in December 2020, as Telent secured a new ten-year contract earlier that year with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to design, build and operate the upgraded network for HM Coastguard. This is part of the MCA’s investment in the Radio Network Infrastructure Replacement Programme (RNIR). 

“The reliable digital connection and the improved resilience provided by the new network will aid HM Coastguard’s life-saving search and rescue operations for years to come with Telent on hand to provide its critical expertise,” said Telent CEO Jo Gretton. “Having first begun working together in 2010, maintaining radio equipment at the remote radio sites and delivering additional support services, Telent and MCA’s relationship has moved from strength to strength.” 

“The new network provides a firm foundation for the MCA’s potential future and new technology services and projects that only the high performance of a full-fibre network can support,” Gretton continued. 

Lee-on-the-Solent, Crystal Palace, Humber, Bridlington and Brighton Marina were among the first sites switched to the new search and rescue radio network. The remote radio sites cover the whole of the UK coastline, spanning Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. 

“The national radio network is integral in supporting our mission of preventing the loss of life on the coast and at sea, enhancing our ability to respond to emergencies across the UK,” said HM Coastguard Assistant Chief Coastguard Matthew Leat. 

The upgraded full-fibre connectivity is set to deliver improvements, such as greater bandwidth and security, along with enhanced performance and improved reliability. Now that all 163 remote radio sites have been connected, Telent is providing a fully managed service. As part of this, Telent is monitoring and managing the end-to-end performance, undertaking maintenance activities and implementing technical updates.  

To read the full case study, please visit: https://telent.com/assets/uploads/docs/MCA_Casestudy_v1.0_Aug24.pdf.  

Join discussions about every aspect of the UK’s connectivity landscape at Connected Britain 2024. Get your tickets today

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Network analyst firm Streetwave is working with the River Severn Partnership Advanced Wireless Innovation Region (RSPAWIR) to conduct what they’re called the “largest mobile coverage survey ever conducted in the UK“. This uses bin lorries to survey the coverage and speed of 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) networks across 33 West Midlands (England) and Wales councils.

The use of bin collections to map mobile network coverage and data performance recently become quite popular (here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse collection vehicles are installed with four off-the-shelf Smartphones using software from Streetwave on top, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go about their routes.

The data this creates is typically more detailed and accurate than the flaky estimates of mobile network coverage that are so often produced by mobile operators and Ofcom, which is because bin lorries need to go down almost every single road in order to conduct their collections and do so on a regular basis. Suffice to say that this makes them a uniquely useful and cost-effective resource for conducting this sort of study.

In addition, portable data collection units will be made available to residents to test coverage along “off-road locations including farms and walking paths“. The new survey will then go a step further by surveying the coverage of Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN) too, which harness a small slice of lower frequency radio spectrum (usually bands like 868MHz or 915MHz) to support relatively slow and low power data connections.

LoRaWAN networks tend to run at sub-Megabit broadband speeds (some variants can handle several Megabits per second), which makes them ideal for linking Internet of Things (IoT) style sensors. Several operators have deployed these (e.g. UK ISP Connexin), but there have been few detailed studies of their actual reach.

Professor Mark Barrow, Joint Chair of the River Severn Partnership, said:

“This survey represents a landmark effort to transform connectivity across the River Severn region. Once collected, we are making this data accessible to the region’s 3.5 million residents through Streetwave’s coverage checker. This solution will allow residents to easily check network coverage at specific addresses, empowering them to find the best possible connectivity solutions for their needs.”

The data collected is said to “serve a dual purpose“. Firstly, it will help businesses identify the most effective connectivity solutions for their operations, empowering them to make informed decisions that enhance their productivity and competitiveness.

Secondly, it will enable the River Severn Partnership to lobby mobile operators more effectively, advocating for necessary improvements in digitally excluded communities to benefit residents and businesses alike. Assuming, that is, the residents are happy for new masts to be built or even upgraded with more kit. People often want the service, but not always the new infrastructure that it requires, which can be tricky to resolve.

In addition, similar surveys have often enabled Streetwave to make an address-based coverage checker available so that people can see how specific locations perform (it’s unclear if the same will apply above), although in an ideal world they’d also be complementing this with a visualisation of that coverage (e.g. interactive map) to make surveying local connectivity a lot easier for people. But we’ve yet to see anything like that.

List of the 33 UK Council Areas Being Surveyed

Shropshire Council
Telford & Wrekin Council
Herefordshire Council
Monmouthshire County Council
Worcestershire County Council

Bromsgrove District Council
Malvern Hills District Council
Redditch Borough Council
Worcester City Council
Wychavon District Council
Wyre Forest District Council

Warwickshire County Council

North Warwickshire Borough Council
Nuneaton & Bedworth Council
Rugby Borough Council
Stratford District Council
Warwick District Council

Gloucestershire County Council

Cheltenham Borough Council
Cotswold District Council
Forest of Dean District Council
Gloucester City Council
Stroud District Council
Tewskesbury Borough Council

Staffordshire County Council

Cannock Chase District Council
East Staffordshire Borough Council
Lichfield District Council
Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council
South Staffordshire District Council
Stafford Borough Council
Staffordshire Moorlands District Council
Tamworth Borough Council

Sky UK (Sky Broadband, Sky TV etc.) has warned customers of their services to be aware of “scam” websites that operate by “manipulating Google results or using deceptive ads” to target people looking for Sky’s support. Such sites are designed to “mislead customers” into calling premium rate numbers instead of the correct ones.

According to Sky, these “fraudulent sites“, some of which may adopt a similar style to Sky’s own website in an effort to “pose as Sky customer service“, direct users to phone premium rate numbers that “charge exorbitant rates” (sometimes up to more than £10 per minute!). Savvy consumers who know to check for the legitimate Sky domain will quickly spot these, but others can still be tricked.

Sky themselves say they “never use premium rate numbers” for support, although consumers who aren’t using either their Sky Mobile or Sky Talk service (i.e. support calls are usually free on those) may find that calls to their 03 numbers do still attract a cost (this can vary depending on where you’re calling from and what service you’re using).

Sky asks that anybody who encounters any suspicious websites or phone numbers like this should report them to the operator immediately so that they can take action to get them removed. The provider also provided a screenshot of a dodgy support site below, which appears to have been shut down some time ago.

Example of a Fake Sky Support Site

London focused UK broadband ISP G.Network, which is building a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of the city centre, has recently announced another change of Chairman as Ian Gray, who only took on the role in August 2023 after Sean Williams resigned (here), steps down to be replaced by Steve Andrews.

According to a Linkedin post by the operator, Ian’s departure is said to be because he has “achieved his goals” following the “successful refinancing and transformation of the business to enable commercial growth“. The operator is currently still building, albeit seemingly at a slower pace, and they’re now focusing a lot more on building customer take-up.

The news follows shortly after the operator secured an additional investment of £85m from long term equity investor USS to support their “next phase of growth“ (here), which was on top of last year’s commitment by the same investor for “up to an additional” £150m (here).

Meanwhile, Steve Andrews is an experienced TMT industry leader and current Non-Executive Director of the company, who will now assume the role of Chairman to “lead the business through its next phase“. In addition, the former CEO of Jersey Telecom (JT), Graeme Millar, will be joining the Board as a Non-Executive Director.

Bob Hewson (USS) and Aurelien Roelens (Cube) said:

“We would both like to personally thank Ian for his significant contribution as Chairman. He played a critical role in the transformation and refinancing of the company.”

Residential customers of the service typically pay from £17 per month for a 150Mbps (50Mbps upload) service on a 24-month term with free installation (£22 thereafter), which rises to £30 for their top 900Mbps plan (£35 thereafter). Shorter 12 and 1 month contracts are also available, albeit at extra cost, and a symmetric speed 900Mbps plan does exist too.