News

The chatbot is an upgrade to the pre-existing ‘TOBi’ 

Vodafone has announced the rollout of SuperTOBi, its new virtual assistant powered by Generative AI (GenAI), across Europe. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI, SuperTOBi is designed to handle complex customer inquiries more effectively than traditional chatbots.

After successful launches in Italy and Portugal, SuperTOBi will be available to customers in Germany and Turkey this month, with more countries to follow later in the year. This new service builds on Vodafone’s existing chatbot, TOBi, which already supports customers in 13 countries across Europe and Africa and understands 11 languages.

SuperTOBi is a key part of Vodafone’s broader effort to improve customer experience, supported by a €140 million (£120 million) investment this financial year. Unlike conventional chatbots that rely on keyword recognition, Vodafone says SuperTOBi can understand full sentences and phrases, allowing for more natural and personalised conversations. It can also transfer complex questions to human agents when needed.

In the announcement’s press release, Vodafone provided us with some results. The first-time resolution rate has increased from 15% to 60%, and the online net promoter score (NPS) has risen by 14 points to 64. Additional functions, such as billing inquiries, are also being added to SuperTOBi’s capabilities.

Vodafone has also introduced SuperAgent, a bot assistant for customer care employees, and SuperSearch, an improved search tool on its customer-facing websites. SuperAgent, based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI’s Agent Copilot solution, helps human agents find answers to complex queries more quickly. In Ireland, it summarises online customer conversations for agents, reducing the need for customers to repeat themselves. This tool uses information from Vodafone’s internal knowledge database, ensuring reliability and accuracy.

Join the UK telcos in conversation at this year’s Connected Britain event, 11-12 September in London. Get tickets here!

Also in the news:
Dutch operators finally get their hands on midband 5G spectrum
Virgin Media O2 completes first stage of Shared Rural Network
Xavier Niel’s $4.1 billion bid for Millicom is too low, company says

Press Release

Nokia, BT Group and Qualcomm achieve enhanced 5G SA downlink speeds in European first 5G Carrier Aggregation with Five Component Carriers

BT Group becomes first European operator to achieve 5G 5CC carrier aggregation, boosting 5G standalone (SA) performance ahead of network launch later this year.
Combines three FDD and two TDD carriers with 150 MHz total bandwidth, delivering greater capacity and downlink speeds in areas of high demand.
Follows 5G SA downlink 4CC carrier aggregation breakthrough in 2022, and concurrent two carrier uplink aggregation in 2023.

5 July 2024. Espoo, Finland – Nokia and BT Group today announced that they have successfully aggregated 5G Standalone (SA) spectrum using 5CC Carrier Aggregation (5CC CA), making BT Group the first European operator to achieve this milestone. The achievement uses a device powered by a Snapdragon® 5G Modem-RF system from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a pioneer and global leader in 5G technology.

5CC CA will significantly boost the data rates available to customers in areas of high demand by combining all mid-band radio spectrum when the 5G SA device requires a high-speed connection. Set to launch later this year, EE’s 5G SA network will also have the capability to leverage a low frequency sixth carrier to provide a superior experience in more places, including indoors.

In 2023, BT Group and Nokia successfully demonstrated 4CC CA in 5G SA downlink with concurrent 2CC CA in 5G SA uplink. With today’s announcement, the companies reached the next milestone, achieving further performance uplift in connections from the device to the network by increasing throughput and capacity.

The tests were conducted in the field on live network spectrum at Adastral Park, BT Group’s headquarters for R&D, using Nokia’s 5G AirScale portfolio and a device powered by a Snapdragon® 5G Modem-RF system from Qualcomm Technologies. Downlink speeds of 1.85 Gbps were reached, using three FDD carriers NR2600 (30MHz), NR2100 (20MHz), NR1800 (20MHz) aggregated with two TDD carriers NR3600 (40+40MHz).

Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, said: “This latest milestone achieved with Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies enhances 5G SA performance as we work towards the launch of our network, building further on the benefits of carrier aggregation in delivering greater throughput and speeds to customers. This is particularly important as more and more devices come to market with 5CC CA capabilities. We are focused on maximising our spectrum assets to deliver the very best experience to our customers with that in mind.”

Mark Atkinson, SVP and Head of RAN at Nokia, said: “This successful trial with our long-standing partner, BT is another great example of Nokia’s clear leadership in 5G carrier aggregation technology. Multi-component carrier aggregation helps mobile operators to maximize their radio network assets and provide the highest 5G data rates at more locations to subscribers.”

Dino Flore, Vice President, Technology, Qualcomm Europe, Inc. said: “Qualcomm Technologies is committed to pushing the boundaries of 5G connectivity, and our Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems are designed to unlock the full potential of 5G, delivering unparalleled speed, efficiency and capacity for networks and their users. We are proud to work with Nokia and BT Group to play a key role in bringing this enhanced 5G experience to European consumers.”

Customers of mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) may like to know that the operator has just responded to Hurricane Beryl, which is wreaking havoc across the Caribbean, by crediting back charges on calls and texts from the UK to several of the affected territories from 3rd to 9th July inclusive.

The territories able to benefit from this currently include Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Cayman Islands.

“We’re also crediting roaming charges on mobile calls, texts and data used in the above territories during the same period“, added VMO2 (here).

Mobile operator EE (BT) claims to have achieved a “European first” with Nokia and Qualcomm in the UK by trialling Carrier Aggregation (CA) on 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile technology with Five Component Carriers (i.e. 150MHz total bandwidth), which boosted their mobile broadband download speeds to 1.85Gbps.

The majority of most UK 5G network today are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they’re 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 (here) launching 5G SA services in the UK, initially across the busiest parts of major cities. Meanwhile, the BT Group has said that they intend, via EE, to follow suit during the second half of 2024 (here). As part of that, EE have been trying to find ways of squeezing as much of a performance advantage out of the future upgrade as possible.

One of the ways of achieving this is by harnessing Carrier Aggregation (CA) to combine several radio spectrum bands to support a single extremely fast connection. This is not a new technology (4G used CA too), but applying this many channels (five) – all in mid-band frequencies – to the latest 5G SA technologies is at the cutting edge of commercial mobile networks.

The tests were conducted in the field on live network spectrum at Adastral Park, BT Group’s headquarters for R&D, using Nokia’s 5G AirScale portfolio and a device powered by a Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF system from Qualcomm Technologies. Downlink speeds of 1.85Gbps (Gigabits per second) were reached, using three FDD carriers NR2600 (30MHz), NR2100 (20MHz), NR1800 (20MHz) aggregated with two TDD carriers NR3600 (40+40MHz).

Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, said:

“This latest milestone achieved with Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies enhances 5G SA performance as we work towards the launch of our network, building further on the benefits of carrier aggregation in delivering greater throughput and speeds to customers. This is particularly important as more and more devices come to market with 5CC CA capabilities. We are focused on maximising our spectrum assets to deliver the very best experience to our customers with that in mind.”

The final launch network will “also have the capability to leverage a low frequency sixth carrier” (6 channels), which should provide another boost and aid indoor connectivity too (lower frequencies travel further). Despite being a bit late to the 5G SA party, we’d expect EE to launch the new service with a decent amount of coverage in urban areas, as they usually like to have a good reach before officially going live.

Customers of Three UK’s wireless (4G and 5G) home broadband service in Swindon (South West England), which hails from the old ‘Relish’ wireless service that was acquired from UK Broadband Ltd. in 2017 (here), were recently left in a panic after the operator incorrectly informed them that their service would “no longer be available“.

The confusion stemmed from a letter that was sent out to customers by Three UK last month, which stated: “Due to technical changes in your area, your current Home Broadband service will no longer be available from June. Your existing equipment will need to be removed by a professional. Should you wish to stay with Three we can offer you an alternative Home Broadband service. Visit the coverage checker to see what options are available in your area. We will be in contact with you to discuss.”

The situation prompted local councillors to engage with both Three UK and the government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency over the issue, which revealed that the letter was sent because the mobile operator will be replacing their existing 4G masts in the area with newer 4G / 5G ones in order to provide a better service. The catch is that this may require a change of the end-user’s (mobile) router.

According to the Swindon Advertiser and Cllr Sumner, Three UK has since acknowledged that “their communications could have been better” and they have now paused the terminations, albeit while still intending to contact those affected with an agreed date for the hardware change to occur (the new router kit will be provided for free).

In addition, the operator has said that no new contracts will be required and they’ve pledged to provide those impacted with 3 months of free broadband (the same will also be offered to re-sellers, although it is up to them whether they pass this on). But it sounds like the change won’t be particularly smooth.

Cllr Sumner said:

“I’ll be getting updates in due course on the mast programme and 7 sites will be having the new installation constructed before the old one is terminated, whilst 12 masts are what they call ‘rip and replace’ which will affect the service for customers for 3-5 days.”

Put another way, some customers may experience an outage that lasts up to 5 days, which is not trivial.

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with UK broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today announced that they’ve added 20,000 additional homes in the Somerset (England) town of Yeovil to the coverage of their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network.

The roll-out should give a boost to the town, but it’s worth noting that Yeovil is already well covered by full fibre lines from Openreach and Jurassic Fibre (All Points Fibre). A little bit of Gigaclear and Wessex Internet can also be found in the area. Confusingly, Virgin’s press release also mentions a figure of both “18,000” and “more than 20,000” homes for Yeovil, so we’ve picked the roundest number.

Nexfibre 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.

London-focused UK business ISP Vorboss, which has already rolled out a 100Gbps capable full fibre network in the city centre, have just opened a new City of London office headquarters at Exchange Square (Liverpool Street) to meet demand and support growth.

Just to recap. Vorboss has spent the past four years deploying 500km of their own dedicated point-to-point fibre across Central London (covering most of zones 1 and 2), which we’re told is enough to potentially connect all commercial buildings in the area to their direct internet access and Ethernet network.

However, with that build completed, they’ve recently been more focused upon growing their customer base and have also created 60 new London-based account management roles to help support customers in key industries, including media, broadcast, finance, healthcare, hospitality, hotels and fitness.

Suffice to say that the provider needed a bit more room to expand and have just moved their HQ into a new 2,700 square metre office at Exchange Square, which will house their 24/7 Network Operations Centre. More than 500 square metres of the new space is also being made available to Vorboss customers and partners for working, meeting and networking.

Tim Creswick, CEO of Vorboss, said:

“This new space – close to our network and our customers – will support our continued growth, meeting the demand that’s out there for high-capacity, reliable internet. We’ll be able to better serve our customers and partners by opening up our office to them – this is a place where London businesses can meet, work and collaborate.”

The new facility was opened with an event hosted by Howard Dawber, London Deputy Mayor for Business and Growth, in collaboration with BusinessLDN.

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Vodafone UK has announced that they’ll invest around £120m (Euros 140m) this year to deploy and upgrade their existing AI chatbot system with SuperTOBi, which will support customers via Generative AI (GenAI) technologies from Microsoft Azure OpenAI.

Vodafone already has an existing chatbot system called TOBi, which is being used in 13 countries across Europe and Africa. But the new SuperTOBi system can “understand and respond faster to complex customer enquiries better than traditional chatbots“. SuperTOBI has already been introduced in Italy and Portugal and will start serving customers in Germany and Turkey from this month, with other markets to follow “later this year“.

SuperTOBi can also interpret entire sentences and phrases, overcoming the limitations of existing chatbot technologies (and some humans ), which typically can answer only simple questions based on a few keywords. “It also engages in more natural conversation with customers for a more personalised experience, rather than one- or two-word answers, and it will automatically transfer a question it can’t answer to a person that can,” said the announcement.

Vodafone claims that the use of SuperTOBi in Portugal is already being used for booking appointments. As a result, the first-time resolution rate has increased from 15% to 60% and Vodafone’s online net promoter scores (where respondents are asked to rate their experience) improved by 14 points to 64 points (above 50 points is considered a strong result), although booking appointments isn’t exactly the hardest of tasks.

However, consumer sentiment toward the use of AI chatbots tends to be quite mixed, with many viewing it as being more of a negative and just a way of reducing the number of actual humans that are available to provide support over the longer term. On the other hand, if systems like this do end up making it quicker and easier for customers to get their issues resolved, then that will be a positive change.

Speaking of staff, Vodafone’s own customer care employees will shortly be “complemented” by an enhanced bot assistant of their own, called SuperAgent, which is based on the same sort of technologies as SuperTOBi (i.e. Microsoft Azure OpenAI’s Agent Copilot solution). This should help human agents to “quickly search and locate answers to complex queries or multiple questions” (remember when humans could do that by themselves?).

In Ireland, SuperAgent is assisting agents by sending a summary of its online customer conversation to the agent, so customers don’t need to repeat themselves. So, it’s probably not going to try and take over the world just yet, while simultaneously settling your billing woes and randomly hunting for people with the name John Conner.

Rural UK ISP Wessex Internet, which is rolling out a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across remote parts of Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset in England, has listed the latest batch of 16 communities to be added to their live network coverage between April and June 2024 (Q2).

The provider’s existing footprint is vaguely said to cover “tens of thousands of homes” (some of this may include their old fixed wireless network), while their current business plan targets an “additional” 150,000 premises by 2027 through a combination of both subsidised and unsubsidised capital investment.

The latest update names the 16 villages and other rural communities in Dorset, Somerset and Hampshire that were connected to their new full fibre network between April and June 2024. During this period, the Dorset-based rural ISP has grown to more than 300 employees and was also named the ‘Best Rural Enterprise’ in the UK at the annual 2024 Countryside Alliance Awards.

Wessex Internet’s 16 New Fibre Locations (Live)

In Dorset:

Child Okeford
Gussage St Michael
Hazelbury Bryan
Holwell
Mappowder & Pleck Hill
Marnhull
Stourton Caundle
Tadnoll

In Somerset:

Dimmer & Blackworthy
Lovington
Lytes Cary
Podimore
Somerton
Yeovilton
Welham

In Hampshire:

Damerham

Gavin Davies, Chief Operations Officer at Wessex Internet, said:

“Our network build has continued apace, as we bring reliable, ultrafast broadband to even more rural communities. We’ve reached an important milestone in now employing 300 staff to help reach homes and businesses in the countryside as efficiently as possible, but we’re not stopping here!

We will be continuing to grow our teams over the next few months, including at our new base in Codford, as we fulfil our plans to deliver full fibre internet to rural areas across Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.”

Prices for their full fibre packages start at £29 per month for a 100Mbps (15Mbps upload) tier on a 12-month term, but this only comes with a meagre 100GB data allowance (£44 for unlimited), and you’ll have to pay £49 (one-off) for activation. By comparison, their top unlimited usage plan will give 900Mbps (450Mbps upload) for £79 per month, which isn’t cheap but then they’re often the only FTTP choice in a lot of their locations (rural areas cost a lot more to serve too).

Low-cost focused UK broadband ISP Plusnet, which is a BT Group (EE) sibling, is to follow their parents by introducing a new pricing model, which moves away from the old percentage (%) figures and inflation (CPI) approach to annual price hikes. Instead, from 9th July 2024, they’ll introduce a “clear and simple” view of future price rises, expressed in “pounds and pence“.

The change is designed to reflect Ofcom’s recent move to BAN broadband ISPs and mobile operators from doing mid-contract price hikes that are linked to confusing inflation and percentage-based changes (here). But the regulator’s change was never designed to stop mid-contract hikes (i.e. it’s more about making future package pricing clearer and simpler), which means that providers must now tell customers precisely what any future price increases will be when they sign up (“in pounds and pence“).

The first broadband and mobile providers to announce their intention to adopt this approach became BT and EE during April 2024 (here), although at the time it was stated that sibling broadband ISP Plusnet would, for whatever reason, “follow later this summer.” As expected, Plusnet has now revealed when they’ll introduce the same change.

For all new contracts signed up on or after 9th July 2024, a price rise of +£3 per month will be effective each March from 2025 onwards. Existing customers who want to re-contract their package will also become subject to the same change of terms / pricing policy (if you don’t re-contract and joined before this date, then the old CPI + 3.9% terms will still apply). Finally, out of bundle services will increase by 5% on 31st March each year (these aren’t covered by Ofcom’s policy).

A Plusnet spokesperson told ISPreview:

“Our focus is to provide Plusnet customers straightforward broadband at straightforward prices. From the 9th July 2024, we will be introducing a pricing model aligned with Ofcom’s approach, offering our customers a predictable long-term view of their contract terms. These new contracts will make it simpler for our customers and provide more certainty on what annual price changes will be.”

We are very supportive of Ofcom’s recommendation to show upfront pounds and pence amounts for price change and remain committed to supporting all our customers, especially those who are financially vulnerable.”

On the one hand this approach, which other providers will have to adopt too, is clearer. But on the other hand, it does still continue an approach that will most likely see new and re-contracting customers being hit with an above inflation increase in their monthly prices (i.e. given how quickly inflation has fallen in the past year and the presumption of it staying low by March 2025).

In addition, the £3 increase seems to apply no matter how much you’re paying today (i.e. it doesn’t scale with different monthly rentals), which effectively means that it will hit those on the cheapest and often slowest packages the most.

Admittedly, this does help to protect ISPs from the inherent difficulty of trying to balance mid-term price rises against unknown increases in future network costs and inflation, but it’s also unlikely to damped calls from those who believe there should be an outright ban on mid-contract hikes – something we’d support. Speaking of which, if broadband ISPs can now predict this, then it arguably increases the case for just baking the hikes into a fixed price contract.

However, it’s worth remembering that not all providers adopt the same approach as the biggest players and many smaller ISPs, particularly newer alternative networks, often already promote packages with simple fixed price terms.