Research Nester’s recent market research analysis on “Data Center Interconnect Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2036” delivers a detailed competitors analysis and a detailed overview of the global data center interconnect market in terms of market segmentation by type, application, end-user, and by region.

Increased Advancements by Data Center Providers to Promote Global Market Share of Data Center Interconnect

Data center providers are improving their cloud and co-location offerings, which is one of the major factors propelling the growth of the market. The public, financial, OTT, and ISP sectors will all be developing use cases for DCI networks as a result of the expansion and dispersion of data centers, increased fiber consumption, and affordable pluggable modules. Product innovation is a crucial way for market players to set themselves apart. Vendors like Ciena, Infinera, Huawei, and Nokia have been pushing the limits of contemporary optics since the beginning of 2020. For instance, in 2022, one of the top digital network integrators in the country, STL unveiled India’s first multicore fiber and cable. This innovative breakthrough will transform India’s optical connection environment.  This has been conceptualized and developed in-house with leading interdisciplinary R&D specialists at STL’s Centre of Excellence in Maharashtra. Using space division multiplexing, STL’s Multiverse increases transmission capacity per fiber by 4X while maintaining the same diameter.

Some of the major growth factors and challenges that are associated with the growth of the global data center interconnect market are:

Growth Drivers:

Increase in the Number of Data Centers
Surge in the Global Demand for 5G Network

Challenges:

Several factors must be considered when preparing for the construction of the data center. Some of these aspects are engineering, authorizations and approvals, power systems, insulated generators, conduits or cables for electrical equipment, data center lighting, illumination protection, air quality control, fire suppression, etc. These expenses may soon be compensated for by capital investments. Consequently, the growth of the data center interconnect market may be hindered by this factor.

Some other factors such as data privacy issues and capacity limitations may impede the growth of the data center interconnect market.

By end-user, the global Data Center Interconnect market is segmented into communication service providers, internet content providers/ carrier-neutral providers, governments, and enterprises. The internet content providers/carrier neutral providers segment is expected to hold a share of 32% during the forecast period. Several of the biggest ICPs, like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook (Meta), are producing enormous amounts of internet traffic. For this reason, to connect their data centers, many ICPs are also choosing to construct fiber networks. Several carrier-neutral colocation facilities are making significant investments in DCI technology since flexibility is crucial for these types of facilities. Therefore, this factor is accelerating the growth of the segment.

By region, the Middle East & Africa data center interconnect market is anticipated to hold a share of 15% by the end of 2036. Major international cloud service providers are present in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) region. These providers include Amazon Web Services, Tencent, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, and Huawei Technologies. Microsoft, for example, plans to set up a cloud region in Saudi Arabia. Operators in several Middle Eastern and African nations are encouraged to build data centers by the availability of industrial parks, land, and government assistance. With the introduction of new submarines, the connectivity of the Middle East and Africa data center interconnect market is continuously expanding. It is anticipated that these factors will bolster the market growth in the region.

Source : https://www.researchnester.com/reports/data-center-interconnect-market/5904

News

BT has now put measures in place to prevent a reoccurrence 

Today, Ofcom has fined BT £17.5 million for technical faults which caused 14,000 emergency calls to be missed over an 11-hour period last summer. 

BT manages the UK’s emergency services call system. When someone dials 999, the call is routed to one of BT’s emergency call centers, where an operator will then transfer the call to the appropriate emergency services branch. 

On 25 June last year, the company experienced a network fault that affected nearly 14,000 attempted emergency calls. After the incident, BT reported the incident to Ofcom, as is required by law. The operator said it had fully cooperated with Ofcom’s subsequent investigation and was “sincerely sorry for the distress caused” by the outage. 

“We found that BT did not have sufficient warning systems in place for when this kind of incident occurs, nor did it have adequate procedures for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions,” confirmed Ofcom in a statement today. 

“We also found that BT’s disaster recovery platform had insufficient capacity and functionality to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected,” it continued. 

Ofcom has therefore fined BT £17.5 million and ordered measures be introduced to prevent reoccurrence. 

The network outage did not result in any serious harm to the pub, which was reflected in the size of the fine. 

“Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms -– if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers,” added Ofcom’s Director of Enforcement, Suzanne Cater. 

Join BT at this year’s Connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Get tickets here!  

Also in the news:
Messaging and billing are key to the bottom line
Ofcom clamps down on mid-contract price rises
Global IT outage disrupts the world in “biggest IT fail ever” 

Market regulator Ofcom has proposed to ban UK telecoms operators from leasing Global Titles – numbers like +44 (for the United Kingdom) that support mobile services – to third parties. This is because such leasing can be misused to try and intercept messages and calls, disrupt the operation of networks and track the location of users of other networks.

According to the regulator, a small number of operators have been leasing their Global Title numbers to third parties, which can be done to facilitate the provision of legitimate mobile services. But Ofcom also found that this can make it easier for “bad actors” to abuse the system. As a result, +44 Global Titles are “one of the most significant and persistent sources of malicious signalling traffic affecting mobile networks globally“.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is also aware that +44 Global Titles have been exploited for malicious purposes, such as location tracking and the interception of SMS used for 2-step verification (2SV) to target both UK residents and populations globally. Suffice to say that the regulator is aware of how this “gives rise to reputational risk to the UK as these harms have regularly been facilitated by the misuse of UK mobile numbers.”

Ofcom added that the current measures, such as the GSMA Global Title Leasing Code of Conduct and controls implemented by some Global Title lessors (e.g. signalling firewalls which block unauthorised message types and monitoring tools), have “not been effective at preventing malicious signalling“. As a result, they believe that intervention is now both “necessary and proportionate“.

Ofcom’s Proposal

We are proposing to strengthen our existing rules and introduce new rules to tackle misuse of Global Titles, in particular by:

• banning leasing of Global Titles to third parties by operators that hold UK mobile numbers;

• banning the creation of Global Titles from sub-allocated numbers by third parties;

• strengthening our rules to prohibit the misuse of Global Titles by operators that hold UK mobile numbers; and

• strengthening our rules to prohibit the creation of Global Titles from numbers not allocated for use.

Taken together, these proposals should significantly reduce malicious signalling from UK Global Titles, thereby providing material benefits to UK and international citizens. They should also enhance the transparency and accountability of operators that use Global Titles.

We consider that these proposals are appropriate and proportionate. They will result in a significant reduction in harm to UK and international citizens which we consider outweighs the adverse impacts on lessors and lessees that we have identified. Our assessment suggests that any adverse impacts are likely to be limited, in particular due to the availability of alternative ways of providing legitimate mobile services that are currently facilitated by the leasing of Global Titles.

We propose that the rules to prohibit misuse of Global Tiles by operators that hold UK mobile numbers and the rules to prohibit the creation of Global Titles from numbers not allocated for use should come into force immediately after the publication of our final decision.

Ofcom’s consultation on all this will remain open for feedback until 15th October 2024 and they’ve also provisionally proposed that the ban on leasing, alongside the ban on creating Global Titles from sub-allocated numbers, should then come into force from 1st January 2026. “This should provide the relevant parties with sufficient time to migrate to alternative solutions and dissolve legacy arrangements,” added the regulator.

Just to get a bit technical. The issue above specifically relates to the Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) protocol suite, which is used by 2G and 3G mobile networks (not 4G, which uses the Diameter protocol) to facilitate the provision of mobile services (e.g. authenticating handsets to the network, setting up and terminating calls, sending SMS messages, subscriber profile management and to facilitate roaming).

The above consultation is thus about the security risks arising from SS7 signalling associated with GTs formed from +44 mobile numbers. But users of 4G and 5G networks can also be affected by malicious SS7 signalling because 2G and 3G networks operate alongside 4G and 5G networks, providing fallback coverage in areas where 4G or 5G coverage is not yet available.

Insight

This article was written by Antony Savvas, a global freelance business technology journalist, for VanillaPlus. The article first appeared here.

Customer messaging and billing are key items to get right in the communications ecosystem, but failings still prevail. Business technology journalist, Antony Savvas looks at how both enterprises and telecoms resellers are not coming up to the mark.

Research shows that 89% of consumers want to initiate and reply to two-way conversations with businesses, via multiple mobile and social channels. However, over half (53%) said they were frustrated at the fact that often they cannot reply to a mobile message sent from a business, whether to ask a question, receive an update or complete an action, such as scheduling an appointment.

In all, 3,000 consumers across 15 countries were questioned for the research, which was commissioned by cloud communications firm Sinch.

And this comes after recent research from Mitto, the provider of global omnichannel communications solutions, which found that 87% of US consumers now use social media apps to message with brands, while 80% of consumers in China, Brazil, India, and Nigeria use chat apps for brand engagement.

Boosting sales

Mitto’s research among US consumers, shows increased messaging with brands is driving their purchasing decisions, with 55% reporting a brand’s social media messaging influenced a purchase via the website, 39% in store and 42% via the social media app.

The types of messaging consumers like to see from brands via social media include promo codes (70%), sales (61%), customer support (54%) and order updates (52%).

It’s clear there’s a big opportunity to generate sales through messaging. But when Sinch asked how long it typically takes to get a response from a brand on social media, nearly one-in-four people said it took a day or longer. Most respondents said they’d be less likely to buy from a brand given these unreasonable wait times.

AI-powered?

The Sinch study found 70% of people had interacted with an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot at least once, but what happens when a live service agent needs to step in? A resounding 95% of respondents wanted to be instantly handed off to a live agent in these situations, but this is a stark contrast to the 35% of businesses currently enabling this, according to a recent IDC white paper.

Sinch said the situation “amplifies the imbalance” between consumers’ desire for more intimate digital brand interactions and the limitations of brands’ current one-way messaging realities.

“Because many brands aren’t yet equipped to provide this enhanced conversational experience, customers are being unintentionally ignored, which can lead them to abandon a business altogether,” says Jonathan Bean, chief marketing officer of Sinch. “Activating omnichannel two-way messaging is a critical way of boosting the customer experience and forging more loyal, satisfied relationships with consumers.”

That said, it’s clear that messaging specialists, and the telcos that carry such messages, have an opportunity to generate more sales, in hopefully helping enterprises meet customer expectations going forward.

Making bills pay

Around 20 years ago, the Telecommunications Managers Association (TMA) in the UK had a number of key issues in its sights, including the high price of leased lines from only a limited number of suppliers, and the lack of a broadband alternative for businesses, as incumbent BT was not unbundling its exchanges, to enable the faster introduction of ADSL and other forms of broadband.

Another key topic was billing, specifically the difficulty in companies actually understanding their telecoms costs, and often being overcharged as a result. Also, it was concerned that alternative service providers were finding it very difficult to resell telco services, because carrier billing systems were too complicated.

While most phone exchanges have now been unbundled as a result of market forces and thanks to government action, and the resulting different broadband services are now widespread, the issue of billing problems has still not gone away.

The TMA became the Communications Management Association (CMA) to reflect the fact its members were no longer just managing telephone call records, but also extensive data ones too, as a result of the convergence of telephone networks and computer networks. And eventually, the CMA was taken over by the British Computer Society (BCS), the IT managers’ association.

This little history perfectly illustrates the extensive problems being faced by those having to manage communications bills, they are big, and growing, as a result of the wider communications services all markets internationally are creating.

Coping

So how to cope at the sharp end? Well, implementing robust revenue assurance protocols before and after each bill run can make a big difference to the bottom line, for one. And checks should also be performed to ensure that buy prices are in accordance with the tariff agreed with the carrier. Assuming the carrier gets it right can be a costly mistake made by many.

These are basics, but without an automated billing platform most end customers and resellers cannot tally up charges as they grow their business, and the bills become a big threat to the bottom line.

I spoke to Gareth Pritchard, marketing manager for Union Street, a provider of billing platforms. He says that while billing automation is key to enable organisations to cope, resellers also shouldn’t lose site of the opportunities.

For instance, in mobile, most users demand unlimited call and data packages, even though most don’t need them for their actual usage. The clever providers, he says, will buy a large bundle from a carrier and then resell pieces of it to end customers using “unlimited” accounts, which they won’t make use of.

This results in bigger profits for the reseller, providing they have a decent automated billing system to carefully manage the operation.

Roaming

For the last three months, I’ve been trialling Vodafone‘s 5G MiFi device, a mobile router that provides either personal communications use or which can be shared with multiple devices. It can be deployed in either a fixed space to support retail use, for instance, or carried on your travels.

I’ve been using it around the UK, in search of those slowly growing 5G signals, and abroad. Where there is a 5G signal to be had, the network performance is solid and the battery is also reliable, sometimes lasting a couple of days without having to re-charge.

Outside the UK, I have also tried to use it in the US, Spain and the Middle East. It didn’t work in California, as a Vodafone bod hadn’t flicked the necessary switch in a data centre. Although I hadn’t warned them of my impending travel, that was part of the trial in my mind.

In Spain’s Canary Islands, I was only able to find a 4G signal, but this was excellent and supported two smartphones and a very happy Mrs Savvas, an F1 nut. While on holiday, she watched the entire Saudi Arabia Grand Prix on her iPad by the pool, with no service drops.

As I write this, I’m on a business trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. I can’t find a 5G signal in the centre of town at the moment, but the 4G signal, and even the 3G one that occasional pops up, is good enough for the basics. The networks that appear through this device while abroad are often Vodafone’s interconnectivity partners, and that’s why Vodafone has always been a reliable operator to use while travelling.

Network operator and ISP Brsk, which now covers 573,050 UK premises (RFS) with their full fibre network and is in the process of being merged into Netomnia (here), has today announced that they’ve added the industrial port town of Runcorn in Cheshire (England) to their roll-out plan. A total of around 30,000 homes and businesses are expected to benefit.

The addition of the town to their roll-out will see brsk pass almost 45,000 homes across the whole of Cheshire (i.e. they can also be found in parts of Wilmslow, Handforth and Poynton). But the announcement doesn’t say how long the local roll-out will take or how much investment is involved, although we can see that engineering work has already begun.

Naturally, brsk won’t have a busy area like Runcorn all to itself, with both Virgin Media and Openreach having already deployed wide coverage via their own gigabit-capable broadband networks. In addition, Hyperoptic covers a few local MDUs, while ITS Technology have deployed fibre to the Astmoor Industrial Estate and Manor Park areas.

Brsk’s network can also be found in parts of West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, The Black Country and South Birmingham.

Regional Head, Gareth Cornelius, said:

“Having expanded our network across Greater Manchester, Cheshire and recently St Helens, we are delighted to now be expanding further across the North West and bring our award-winning broadband services to Runcorn. For too long the town has been overlooked by the major incumbents, and we feel it’s borderline criminal that the people of Runcorn have so little choice when it comes to good quality and affordable broadband options. By bringing our full fibre services to the town, we look forward to establishing ourselves as the broadband provider of choice for the people of Runcorn.”

Residential customers typically pay from £23 per month for a 100Mbps (symmetric) package and this rises up to £32 for their top 900Mbps tier on a 24-month term, which includes a router and free installation.

The Preston City Council (PCC) in Lancashire (England) recently announced that it will be the founding member of a new Preston Digital Cooperative (PDC) organisation, which seeks to promote digital inclusion across communities in the city through the deployment of new digital infrastructure (e.g. free broadband WiFi) and enhancing digital skills.

The cooperative is being set up as a way to “bring together public, voluntary and private organisations” working to improve access to connectivity, devices and skills across the city for digitally excluded people and communities. It will use UK Shared Prosperity Funding (UKSPF) to help provide “free [internet] connectivity in some areas, refurbished devices for residents that need them, and free digital skills training“.

The Community Broadband Network (CBN), which works with local authorities, businesses and NGOs – both in the UK and internationally – to help develop transformational and sustainable digital infrastructure, is also supporting the new organisation.

Councillor Matthew Brown, Leader at Preston City Council, said:

“As a growing number of its own services are now digitally based, it is important that the Council leads by example. The work of the Preston Digital Cooperative will help to tackle the digital divide and improve digital inclusion, ensuring that our residents have equal access. It also fits with our Community Wealth Building principles of anchor collaboration and democratic ownership.

In the longer term we will explore how Preston Digital Cooperative can be an alternative, ethical provider in the market working with and supporting our local communities and businesses.”

Shaun Fensom, Chair at Community Broadband Network, added:

“We are excited to be working with Preston City Council and other organisations across the city to set up and be involved with Preston Digital Cooperative. It is an opportunity to develop and build on our work in other regions across the UK for more than 20 years.

The cooperative will work on innovative ways to source and distribute devices and enable free wireless broadband connectivity in selected places across the city.”

We should highlight that CBN is also a founding member of the Cooperative Network Infrastructure (CNI) scheme in Tameside, Blackpool, Manchester and Sussex, which has done a reasonable job of enabling the commercial re-use of existing local authority owned cable ducts and fibre to aid the roll-out of gigabit-capable broadband.

Various network operators like Virgin Media, CityFibre, Telcom, ITS Technology, F&W Networks and others have benefitted from that and it’s possible we may see something similar emerge in the Preston area.

In terms of gigabit-capable broadband coverage, Preston is already well covered by Virgin Media’s network and there’s significant FTTP coverage from Openreach, CityFibre, ITS Technology and Netomnia, albeit still a bit patchy in places. Some smaller deployments also exist or were being planned by Grain, Hyperoptic and MS3.

The national regulator, Ofcom, has this morning hit BT with a fine of £17.5m for being “ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call handling service last summer” (here), which readers may recall occurred after a technical fault (“complex software issue”) resulted in 14,000 emergency calls being disrupted. The disruption lasted for 10.5 hours.

Just to recap. BT previously revealed that a software bug had caused a “caching issue“, which resulted in impacted calls (i.e. those made to both 999 and 112) not being routed correctly and the user’s call being disconnected. At the time, a “robust temporary fix” was put in place to rectify this, and they’ve since implemented something more permanent.

The incident, the first in nearly 90 years, has already sparked the introduction of further safeguards to help “bolster the resilience” of the 999 emergency call handling system (here). But Ofcom has also continued to conduct its own investigation, which has now concluded.

According to the regulator, on Sunday 25th June 2023, BT experienced a network fault that affected its ability to connect calls to emergency services between 06:24 and 16:56. During the incident, nearly 14,000 call attempts – from 12,392 different callers – were unsuccessful.

The Three Stages of BT’s 999 Fault

Phase 1, from 06:24 to 07:33
During the first hour, BT’s emergency call handling system was disrupted by what was later found to be a configuration error in a file on its server. This resulted in call handling agents’ systems restarting as soon as a call was received; agents being logged out of the system; calls being disconnected or dropped upon transfer to the emergency authorities; and calls being put back in the queue. BT was initially unable to determine the cause of the issue and attempted to switch to its disaster recovery platform.

Phase 2, from 07:33 to 08:50
The first attempt to switch to the disaster recovery platform was unsuccessful due to human error. This was a result of instructions being poorly documented, and the team being unfamiliar with the process. The incident grew from affecting some calls to a total outage of the system.

Phase 3, from 08:50 to 16:56
The rate of unsuccessful calls decreased once traffic was migrated successfully to the disaster recovery platform. However, usual service was not fully restored initially as the disaster recovery platform struggled with demand.

Ofcom’s investigation found that BT “did not have sufficient warning systems in place” for such incidents, “nor did it have adequate procedures for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions“. The regulator also found that BT’s “disaster recovery platform had insufficient capacity and functionality” to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected.

The incident also caused disruption to text relay calls, which meant people with hearing and speech difficulties were unable to make any calls, including to friends, family, businesses and services. This left deaf and speech-impaired users at increased risk of harm.

Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s Director of Enforcement, said:

“Being able to contact the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.

In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk.

Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms -– if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.”

Despite the fact that no confirmed cases of “serious harm” have been identified as a result of the incident, Ofcom correctly makes clear that the potential degree of harm was still “extremely significant” and hence the large fine. The fine includes a 30% reduction as a result of BT’s admission of liability, full cooperation, willingness to engage, system improvements, regular updates and agreement to settle the case.

BT now has two months to pay the fine, which will then be passed on to HM Treasury. But the hope is that something like this will never happen again. We have contacted BT for a comment.

The States of Guernsey, which is the government for the English Channel Island of Guernsey, have moved to improve and simplify the handling of consumer broadband, phone and mobile complaints by adjusting their rules to make clear that the States of Guernsey’s Trading Standards Service (TSS) will be the main body for handling such things.

Just to recap. The local government gave telecoms consumers new rights last year, which formally recognised TSS as the body responsible for consumer protection (ombudsman). But there was still somewhat of a legacy division of legal responsibility between the TSS and the Guernsey Competition & Regulatory Authority (GCRA), which had been confusing matters.

The government has now made some changes and fostered a co-operation agreement (MOU) between the two organisations, which should avoid the overlapping of statutory functions that might have risked creating uncertainty for consumers and licensees alike.

Michael Byrne, CEO f the GCRA, said (BBC News):

“While no telecoms provider wants to fall out with its customers, situations do arise that cannot be resolved directly. Having an independent third party to turn to is an asset for consumers and this MOU plugs a gap in the complaints process.”

Time will tell whether the new approach works as intended.

Some of BT’s broadband ISP, phone, TV and mobile customers, specifically a proportion of those who have been or are in the process of being migrated to EE, appear to be experiencing a variety of problems with the process that is causing headaches. Missing services, trouble accessing accounts and general admin errors are just some of the issues being reported.

As most readers will hopefully recall, BT has spent the past couple of years gradually working on a big branding change (here and here) that will – over time – gradually turn EE into their “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (i.e. converged broadband ISP and mobile plans etc.). But history tends to show that such major changes and migrations rarely go as smoothly as providers would like.

Since then there have been a series of gradual moves (e.g. product changes and withdrawals) to help facilitate this transition, such as the decision to withdraw BT Mobile and the offering of special discounts to help encourage BT’s customers to migrate over to an equivalent EE package. The latter has been going on for a little while now, albeit seemingly not without causing some headaches.

Over the past few months we’ve received and seen a steady stream of complaints about BT to EE migrations that have hit difficulties. The complaints vary, but some people say that not all of their bundled services were successfully migrated or that their attempts to migrate have been rejected multiple times, while others found problems with account and device access post-migration (i.e. being unable to manage accounts post-switch, via either EE’s website or the app, seems to be a particularly common complaint).

In the odd other example, EE’s staff have occasionally appeared to setup a broadband or other service order at the same address, creating two accounts for the same customer that has then taken a long time to correctly merge and resolve. Some of these issues have also caused knock-on effects, such as by preventing customers from being able to pair their EE router to the broadband account or to see/manage bills on the My EE App.

After receiving a few complaints about this we went hunting to see if any other gripes could be found and, suffice to say, there are plenty of related issues cropping up on BT and EE’s respective community forums (examples from the EE forum here, here, here, here and here etc.).

Sample Complaint 1

“Don’t know if it’s of interest but EE are having major problems migrating people off BT over to EE when it’s time to renew their contract. Personally I’ve had over 8 hours on numerous phone calls trying to sort out problems which started on Friday 31 May.

Basically someone in EE or BT had set up a broadband order at the same address creating 2 accounts, 1 account I did order and a different account and email address. Sent a new EE router and can’t pair it to the broadband account so cannot see bills on the My EE app.”

Sample Complaint 2

“I switched over from BT start of March and still can’t access my BB account despite multiple calls and confirmations that it would be fixed.”

Sample Complaint 3

“I renewed my contract for Broadband, Mobile and TV – with the understanding that the account would be migrated to EE – back on the 16th of May. Currently my Mobile and Broadband are on the new EE account but the TV order is lost in the system and I haven’t been able to watch Netflix, Now or TNT since the beginning of June plus I can’t see my account on My EE. I have spoke to a multitude of support people in trying to get this resolved but currently without any joy and I’m beginning to get fed up with having to chase EE.”

Sample Complaint 4

“Switched my BT broadband and TV 4 months ago, despite numerous calls to EE I can’t manage broadband or TV on either the website or the app. Have been told it’s a BT to EE migration issue, but no sign of it being fixed. Pretty poor, especially as I can’t manage my TV package – I wonder if it give me grounds to cancel?”

Naturally, we asked EE (BT) if they were aware of these issues and what, if anything, was being done to resolve them. The provider didn’t give us a comment but reiterated that they were committed to keeping their customers connected and providing good customer service.

However, EE did acknowledge that a small proportion of customers had been impacted by the issues we mentioned (the term ‘small’ is often relative when talking about a provider with c.9-10 million customers), and they are currently prioritising resources to provide solutions to these customers as soon as possible.

As we say, large and complex bulk customer migrations – between platforms or providers – can be fraught with difficulties and unexpected complications. But the hope is that BT and EE will be learning from these early problems in order to ensure that the majority of customers get a smoother ride.

Alternative UK network operators Trooli and OFNL, which are in the process of rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTT) groadband network across various parts of the United Kingdom, have today become the latest providers to join the Fibre Cafe connectivity aggregation platform.

Fibre Cafe’s platform is essentially designed to tackle the significant integration and automation challenges for broadband ISPs when onboarding new networks (e.g. common processes, a national availability checker, alternative network agnostic order journeys and a unified interface etc.), whilst enabling such operators to more easily bring their own wholesale propositions to market.

Together, Trooli and OFNL collectively bring an “additional 500,000 premises” to The Fibre Café platform. Joining The Fibre Café is also said to mark the “first step in Trooli’s wholesale strategy headed up by Wholesale Director, Rhiannon O’Neill, following her appointment to the role last year.”

Wail Sabbagh, Managing Director at Strategic Imperatives, said:

“We are thrilled to welcome Trooli and OFNL to The Fibre Café and look forward to supporting their wholesale growth as a key partner. By joining the platform, both network owners gain a significant competitive advantage through streamlined onboarding, enhanced automation, and direct access to a rapidly expanding pool of service providers.”

The announcement also reveals that Trooli’s FTTP network has now covered 370,000 premises (Ready for Service), which is the first update we’ve had since January 2024 when the figure was 334,000 premises. We suspect they may also now be including their Axione UK base from Scotland into that total. This in turn suggests that OFNL now have 130,000 premises.