The Milton Keynes-based Complete Technology Group (CTG), which is a UK landlord advisory service that also runs Complete Fibre (i.e. they install full fibre broadband infrastructure into large residential buildings / MDUs), has announced that it will “withdraw its current service offer” from the market over the “coming months“.

Founded in 2020 to raise standards in the safety and quality of digital infrastructure, CTG says it has worked as a bridge for landlords and telecommunications providers, facilitating for both parties so residents living in blocks of flats (Multi-Dwelling Units) can gain access to safe, reliable, gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband connectivity.

The company has so far partnered more than 20 landlords, but they appear to have been hit by the “current slowdown in [the] telecoms customers’ market“, which they say has “meant the company [have] been unable to scale sufficiently to continue its planned growth.” The slowdown being referenced most likely relates to the roll-out of full fibre, which has seen many alternative networks scaling back their plans due to rising build costs, high interest rates and competition.

In response, CTG has this morning informed ISPreview that they have “withdrawn [their] current services and ceased new activity while the Board undertakes a review to determine the future of its brands and assets“. Residents already receiving a service from an ISP connected to the infrastructure that Complete Fibre (CTG’s sister company) has built will NOT be affected, but all new installation activity has been “ceased“.

Chris McLain, CEO at Complete Technology Group, said:

“Our decision to manage a controlled withdrawal of our current services ensures we can honour all of our existing commitments for employees, landlords and telcos.

In the coming weeks, we’re focused on supporting our colleagues, all of whom are affected by the decision, and working with strategic partners to get the best outcomes for all stakeholders.”

Just to be clear, CTG’s sister company, Complete Fibre, installs full fibre infrastructure in MDUs, but this is designed to be harnessed by multiple Internet Service Providers to ‘plug and play’, reducing the need for multiple installations, and maintaining the structural integrity of MDUs.

However, deploying into MDUs like this can be expensive and we know that not every broadband operator always wants to work with this sort of solution, which can sometimes create a point of contention (i.e. some would rather control their own MDU installations, rather than be reliant upon a third-party).

CTG is currently in the process of directly contacting landlords, telcos or suppliers impacted by this decision.

Mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that they’ve deployed “cell sleep” technology across their UK 4G (mobile broadband) network, which they “anticipate” could deliver total energy savings of up to 4.5m KWh per year – reducing both their demand on the local grid and helping to cut costs at a time of high electricity prices.

The announcement, which could be read as somewhat of a response to Three UK’s similar development (here), states that their new “cell sleep” software works by putting certain 4G (LTE) capacity carriers to sleep when the capacity is not needed – based on predicted periods of low traffic which have been established for each site through machine learning.

The system then automatically wakes up during busy periods, and is also configured to react to unexpected surges which might occur during scheduled sleep modes – in which event, the carriers wake up within a matter of seconds to serve demand without any interruption to customers.

The setup also supports an even lower power state, called “deep sleep“, which can be activated if required, such as during overnight periods of extremely low demand. According to BT, the technology is expected to deliver energy savings of up to 2 KWh per site per day, or 4.5m KWh per year across EE’s estate.

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

“There is huge potential for energy savings across our networks by dynamically matching power consumption against network usage. The optimisation and roll-out of cell sleep technology to over 19,500 sites across the UK is a significant milestone in achieving this, and an important development in countering the massive growth in data consumption we’re seeing across our networks.”

The move complements the operator’s recent 3G switch-off, which is claimed to deliver energy savings of 17.44m KWh per year. Not to mention that EE has also been deploying more energy-efficient Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment, such as ultra-lightweight Massive MIMO technology, which they claim uses up to 40% less energy than the previous generation of radio equipment.

News

We sat in on the 5G and Connectivity track at this year’s a tech mobility focussed event MOVE in London, hearing from interesting speakers discussing connectivity in electric vehicle market, and diving into smart city and infrastructure issues that better connectivity can help solve

The first speaker of the day was Marc Sauter, Head of internet of things (IoT) product management at Vodafone, who shared his thoughts on how IoT connectivity can play a critical role in driving innovation and sustainability within the market, and how Vodafone’s IoT solutions are benefitting customers sustainably. 

We are given the example of Leaksafe, a UK-based company providing water leak detection and prevention systems in both commercial and residential buildings. They work with the property owners and managers to detect leaks and shut off the water immediately if one is found. Not detecting a leak quick enough can cause significant damage, which the insurance industry paid out nearly a billion pounds for in 2022. 

Vodafone partnered with the company to create a Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) leak detection solution, to stop the small leaks more quickly. This means that leaks and their exact location can be determined immediately. Once the device gets wet, it immediately sends a message to Leaksafe’s data platform using the NB-IoT. The owner or property manager gets an alert through text or an app, and can view the issue in real time through it. 

There are thousands of use cases for technology like this, which will increase the efficiency of infrastructure within our cities. “With IoT connectivity, you can connect anything, anywhere at any time, securely simply and at scale to transform businesses,” concluded Sauter. 

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

Also in the news:
Freshwave to deploy small cells in Manchester for VMO2
SGP.32: A reality check on the latest remote SIM provisioning standard
Vodafone Germany partners with FlyNex on industrial drone platform   

Today we’re taking our usual biannual look back to see how the average UK broadband download and upload speeds have changed across the fastest nationally available fixed line ISPs, mobile operators and Starlink (satellite) since the end of 2023. Overall, fixed broadband speeds have continued to improve, while mobile remains variable.

As usual the results in this report stem from web-based speed testing by consumers and are thus inevitably impacted by a number of factors, such as the rising coverage of faster networks (e.g. full fibre and 5G) and the associated level of take-up by customers. Due to this, it helps to understand any key changes in network deployments and there have been a few small changes since the last report (Ofcom’s data).

Fixed Connection
Jan 2024 Coverage (Sept 2023)

% Under 10Mbps (USO)
c.1% (c. 1%)

Superfast (30Mbps+)
97% (97%)

Gigabit-capable
80% (78%)

Full Fibre (FTTP)
62% (57%)

The first thing to note is that the roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology has taken a bit of a hit over the past year, with many networks reporting job losses and slowing their builds due to wider market pressures (rising costs, high interest rates, competition etc.). Some have weathered this better than others, although there are still many operators with active builds (Summary of Full Fibre Build Progress) and a few have managed to accelerate their deployments (e.g. Openreach, Netomnia, nexfibre / VMO2).

Most of the gigabit-capable coverage continues to be fuelled by commercial roll-outs in urban areas (already reaching 80% of the UK), while the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme (focuses on the final c.20% of unviable / rural premises) aims to help this reach over 85% by 2025, followed by “at least” 99% by 2030. Ofcom predicts the UK will achieve around 90-94% coverage by May 2026 (here).

In terms of mobile networks, both 4G and 5G coverage hasn’t changed all that much. Commercial 5G deployments showed the biggest rise, while the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project has made a little progress on boosting geographic 4G coverage and aims to cover 95% of the UK – from at least one operator – by the end of 2025.

Mobile Coverage

Jan 2024 Coverage (Sept 2023)

4G Geographic
81-88% (80-87%)

5G Premises (Outdoor) from at least 1 operator
unchanged (85-93%)

Fastest Major Fixed Broadband ISPs (H1 2024 vs H2 2023)

The data in this report has been gathered from Thinkbroadband’s independent speedtest database (inc. ISPreview’s Broadband Speedtest). The table only includes the largest and most established independent ISPs with strong national availability, but there is a separate table for smaller alternative networks on page 2 – these are difficult to include because they aren’t yet available to the majority of premises and don’t produce much test data due to fewer users.

Naturally, there are caveats to consider with speedtest based studies like this, not least because the results tend to be more reflective of take-up than network availability. For example, some ISPs may have a much larger proportion of customers on slower copper-based (ADSL or FTTC) lines, which can weigh against anybody on faster FTTP packages with the same provider (i.e. pulling average speeds down). The opposite can also be true.

Average Download Speeds – Top 8

No.
Operator
H1 – 2024 (Top 10%)
H2 – 2023 (Top 10%)
Change %

1.
Virgin Media
280Mbps (675.4Mbps)
264.5Mbps (626.6Mbps)
5.86%

2.
Zen Internet
199.1Mbps (607.1Mbps)
165.4Mbps (506.3Mbps)
20.37%

3.
Vodafone
179.7Mbps (545.2Mbps)
134.8Mbps (430.3Mbps)
33.31%

4.
BT
116.8Mbps (313Mbps)
93.7Mbps (231.5Mbps)
24.65%

5.
Sky Broadband
74.3Mbps (142.6Mbps)
61Mbps (127.5Mbps)
21.8%

6.
Plusnet
71.5Mbps (147.7Mbps)
58.5Mbps (103.6Mbps)
22.22%

7.
EE
68.3Mbps (103.8Mbps)
72.1Mbps (108.5Mbps)
-5.27%

8.
TalkTalk
64Mbps (114.2Mbps)
64.8Mbps (107.8Mbps)
-1.23%

Average Upload Speeds – Top 8

No.
Operator
H1 – 2024
H2 – 2023
Change %

1.
Zen Internet
106.2Mbps
58.3Mbps
82.16%

2.
Vodafone
73.1Mbps
55.5Mbps
31.71%

3.
Virgin Media
39.2Mbps
34.4Mbps
13.95%

4.
BT
24Mbps
20.7Mbps
15.94%

5.
Sky Broadband
16.7Mbps
14.9Mbps
12.08%

6.
EE
16.4Mbps
19.5Mbps
-15.9%

7.
TalkTalk
15.7Mbps
17.6Mbps
-10.8%

8.
Plusnet
15.4Mbps
13.1Mbps
17.56%

Overall, the average download speed of the top national providers was 131.7Mbps (up from 114.35Mbps) and the average upload speed hit 38.3Mbps (up from 29.25Mbps). Vodafone delivered the biggest (33%) uplift in download performance over the first half of the year, while Zen Internet saw a massive (82%) increase in upload speed. But otherwise most of the changes were in positive territory and about what we’d normally expect.

The exceptions to the rule this time around were EE and TalkTalk, both of quick recorded an unexpected fall in download performance, which seemed to get even worse for uploads. At the time of writing we couldn’t point to any particular reason for why this occurred and it will be interesting to see if they recover for the end of this year.

Finally, Virgin Media launched their new 2Gbps plan earlier this year and a symmetric speed add-on, but we weren’t expecting much of an impact from those changes as they currently only impact people covered by the new nexfibre network (1 million premises).

Satellites

We’ve also been keeping track of the results for SpaceX’s satellite based Starlink broadband service. Sadly, not enough data exists to include other satellite platforms or providers, but that may change in the future. Otherwise, Starlink’s download performance appears to have declined during the first six months of 2024, while their upload speeds have increased.

 
H1 – 2024 (Top 10%)
H2 – 2023 (Top 10%)

Download
90.7Mbps (156.9Mbps)
105.2Mbps (171.3Mbps)

Upload
11.2Mbps (16.4Mbps)
8.8Mbps (13.3Mbps)

Now flick over to page 2 to see how the fastest full fibre alternative network (altnet) ISPs and mobile operators performed.

Some of Vodafone’s UK customers have questioned the mobile network operator’s claim that their inclusive roaming feature comes at “no extra cost”, particularly after a stealthy 22p call connection fee was introduced. But you’d have to dig deeper into their website to find it and the charge doesn’t apply to everybody.

A number of Vodafone’s mobile plans currently come with roaming equipped – usually “Xtra: Inclusive roaming in 83 worldwide destinations” or “Inclusive roaming in 51 European destinations“. Both of which are promoted as allowing customers in related countries to “use your UK allowance of data, minutes and texts at no extra cost“.

However, following recent holiday periods (e.g. Easter and Spring Half Term), we’ve had a small number of conflicting complaints from Vodafone customers about their call charges. A couple of which complained that they’d been hit with an unexpected call connection charge (22p) while abroad in one of the supported countries (e.g. when calling a local French number from inside France).

The good news is that this charge appears to have been levelled in error and has since been corrected for one of those affected (example). The operator confirmed that the aforementioned plans do, in fact, allow customers to “call and text back to the UK and within the country you’re roaming in at no extra cost.”

On the other hand, Vodafone does state that a new 22p charge was still introduced during February 2024, albeit only for when making calls from one EU country to another when roaming (this should only impact new customers after that date).

A Vodafone spokesperson told ISPreview:

“If you’re a Vodafone customer on a plan that includes 51 European destinations or 83 worldwide destinations, and you’re roaming in one of these destinations, your plan allows you to:

– Call and text back the UK and within the country you’re roaming in at no extra cost
– Use the data in your plan – up to our fair use policy limit of 25GB
– Receive calls and texts at no extra cost

These are genuine ‘roam like at home plans’ so, mimic the behaviour of being in the UK, which means calls to countries other than the UK or the one you’re roaming in are charged at international rates. If you have one of our International calls Extras, these also work when roaming in one of these destinations, just as they do when you’re in the UK.

We introduced a change in February of this year to charge for calls from one EU country to another when roaming. This only impacts new customers, so customers on plans before this date are unaffected by this change.”

At the time of writing, the “new” calling charge doesn’t get mentioned if you follow the “See plan details ->” link on their mobile plan summaries, which will in turn only take you through to their Global Roaming page that also makes no mention of the 22p “international” call connection charge. But it does show up if you dig deeper into their site and find the Travelling Abroad page, which highlights it for international calls to Zones A and B (Europe).

News 

The acquisition was first announced last January 

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has opened an inquiry to investigate whether Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s commencing acquisition of Juniper Networks for $14 billion would cause competition concerns in the market. 

The CMA “is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction, if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services,” read the official statement. It invites any interested parties to submit comments on the transaction. 

Back in January, HPE announced that it would acquire Juniper Networks in an all-cash deal of approximately $14 billion, equating to $40 per share. After the acquisition, HPE estimates that its networking business will double, as the “explosion of AI and hybrid cloud-driven business is accelerating demand for secure, unified technology solutions that connect, protect, and analyse companies’ data from edge to cloud,” the companies said. 

“HPE’s acquisition of Juniper represents an important inflection point in the industry and will change the dynamics in the networking market and provide customers and partners with a new alternative that meets their toughest demands,” said HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri in a press release. 

If approved, the combined entity will be run Juniper CEO Rami Rahim who will report to Neri. 

In a statement, the CMA confirmed that phase one of the investigation would begin on 20 June. The investigation will run until 14 August, when the CMA will decide if moving to a second phase if necessary. 

Investigations by the CMA into such large transactions are not unexpected. Back when the deal was announced, the two companies expected the deal to close by early 2025 at the latest, pending regulatory approval. 

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

Also in the news: 

Global Telco AI Alliance sign LLM JV
Telenor teams up with AWS for sovereign cloud service
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution

The mobile operator division of supermarket chain ASDA, which is powered by a virtual operator (MVNO) agreement with Vodafone, has just introduced a new promotion that cuts the price of their 10GB and 25GB Pay As You Go (PAYG) mobile plans in half for the first 6 months of service. But only if you set it to auto-renew.

The move means that new customers of their 10GB’s (mobile broadband data) plan will now pay just £8 £4 per month, while their 25GB plan is £15 £7.50. Both plans include unlimited minutes and calls, a 30-day term and inclusive roaming in 46 European destinations.

The new promotion is set to run until 31st August 2024.

Early adopters of SpaceX’s ultrafast and low-latency Starlink broadband service, which is powered by a mega constellation of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), are starting to be invited to help test out the internet provider’s new WiFi integrate Mini Dish (terminal) hardware and Mini Roaming service add-on. But the kit doesn’t come cheap.

The operator currently has 6,171 LEO satellites in orbit around the Earth (altitudes of c.500-600km) and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ plan, which promises internet latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.

However, this week saw the operator begin to invite some of their early adopters in the USA (UK availability is due to follow soon) to purchase their new Mini Kit (Dish) for $599 (£473), which comes bundled alongside their new Mini Roam service for an additional $30 per month (£24). Just to be clear, this is on top of an existing residential subscription (as above), although the hardware price is expected to drop in the future.

SpaceX said in their customer email: “Starlink Mini is a compact, portable kit that can easily fit in a backpack, designed to provide high-speed, low-latency internet on the go. Starlink Mini includes a built-in WiFi router, lower power consumption, DC power input, and max download speeds over 100Mbps.” See related specifications here and here.

The new Mini Roam service that accompanies this will essentially give customers 50GB (GigaBytes) of “mobile data” that can be used anywhere (currently only in the USA) and if you use more than that then they’ll charge $1 (£0.80p) per GigaByte.

The new dish – sized 298.5mm x 259mm x 38.5mm – is also 63% lighter than the standard Starlink dish, has an operating temperature range of -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F), draws around 25-40 Watts on average and can run directly off 12-48V DC (it comes with a small 110V power supply with 15 metres of cable). The kit is also IP67 Type 4 rated with their DC Power Cable and Starlink Plug/Cable installed (using the Ethernet port drops this rating).

The dish also has a Field of View (FoV) of 110 degrees (a bit better than ‘Standard’), a single Ethernet (LAN) port and is currently software locked to operate only while stationary (being Starlink, they’ll probably charge extra for a moving service in the future).

Clearly, there are some advantages to this new all-in-one approach to terminal hardware, although oddly the built-in WiFi is only dual-band (3×3) 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) instead of Wi-Fi 6 and has a limited radius of coverage (i.e. you’d need to stay close to the dish, but that’s to be expected given the target audience)

“Our goal is to reduce the price of Starlink, especially for those around the world where connectivity has been unaffordable or completely unavailable. But in regions with high usage, where Starlink Mini places additional demand on the satellite network, we are offering a limited number of the Starlink Mini Kits to start for $599,” said Starlink’s email.

The first deliveries of the new kit are due to start in July 2024, but it’s worth remembering that this is currently still somewhat of a trial product and we don’t yet have an exact date for the UK launch / pricing.

News 

A Memorandum of Understanding to form the JV was signed last year 

The founding partners of the Global Telco AI Alliance, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom, e&, Singtel and SoftBank have this week signed a joint venture for telco AI development. 

Specifically, the five companies have agreed to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) that are specifically designed to meet telco needs, in areas such as improving customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots. The LLMs will be tailored to the needs of the five companies in their respective markets, allowing them to reach a combined customer base of around 1.3 billion people in 50 countries. The LLMs will be multilingual in languages such as Korean, English, German, Arabic and Bahasa, among other languages. 

Each company will invest in the JV equally, “to support its initial working capital requirements to develop the Telco LLM” explains the press release. 

The Alliance was established in July last year, with the aim of collaborating on the use of AI to create new customer experiences and business opportunities. At the Alliance’s inaugural meeting at Mobile World Congress Barcelona back in February, the founders announced their intention to establish the JV within the year. 

“Our shared goal is to redefine industry paradigms, establish new growth drivers through AI-powered business models, and pave the way for a new era of strategic cooperation, guiding our industry towards an exciting and prosperous future,” said the companies in the announcement’s press release. 

The second Global Telco AI Roundtable was held this week at DTW 2024 in Copenhagen, where the parties each demonstrated their potential applications of an LLM for telcos, focussing on contact centre and infrastructure use cases. 

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

Also in the news:
Nokia and Google Cloud expand partnership for telco APIs
Telenor teams up with AWS for sovereign cloud service
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution 

Press Release

[Copenhagen, Denmark, June 18, 2024] During the TM Forum Digital Transformation World (DTW) 2024 summit convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, China Mobile and Huawei were awarded the “People and Planet” Excellence Award in recognition of their outstanding innovation and implementation of a Zero Carbon Ocean 5G Coverage and Ocean Care. The awarded project demonstrates how China Mobile and Huawei have deeply integrated 5G, AI, IoT and other technologies with the marine industry, driving the high-quality development of the ocean economy and contributing to the marine ecosystem protection.

The award of the “People and the Planet” Innovation Excellence Practice Project at the TM Forum is a recognition of China Mobile and Huawei ‘s innovation and contribution in the field of marine communications technologies. China is a large maritime nation, with over 32,000 kilometres of coastline, among the world’s top. Its abundant marine resources hold immense potential for local economic advancement. However, the complex and changeable marine environment, high-risk operations and the severe challenges of environmental protection have always been a difficult problem restricting the development of marine economy.

Confronting these challenges, China Mobile and its Jiangsu Provincial Branch, with Huawei’s support have actively explored the application of mobile communication technology in the marine domain, providing innovative solutions to the digital transformation for the maritime industry.

Through the pioneering solution of “Land/Sea/Windmill Site + Resources Sharing + Intelligent Platform”, the joint team successfully constructed offshore 5G base stations, overcoming the obstacles of site selection, power supply, and backhaul in the offshore scenarios. By leveraging renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and AI-based power storage optimization solution, the joint team achieved Zero Carbon 5G coverage across the maritime expanse. Furthermore, they have actively explored collaboration with satellite companies, creating an integrated “Space-Sky-Sea” network to provide full wireless coverage to boats and people off the coastline. This innovative initiative not only furnishes basic communication, social entertainment, and entrepreneurial opportunities for offshore workers, tourists, and fishermen, but also supports the deployment of a series of B2B innovative applications such as marine IoT, smart waterways, and intelligent patrols, while also constructing a marine emergency communication lifeline.

The “People and the Planet” Excellence Award at the TM Forum is a recognition of the innovation and contribution of China Mobile and Huawei in the field of marine communications technologies. It further demonstrates that China Mobile, as the industry leader, has made great achievements in the following aspects under the sustainable development strategy of “Three Energy and Six Green.” Drive the global communications industry to upgrade towards green, digital, and intelligent innovation.