Broadband network builder nexfibre, which shares some of the same parentage as retail UK ISP partner Virgin Media (VMO2), has been hit with fines and charges totalling £11.3k in Somerset and £30k in Devon (England) after the local courts found them guilty of various roadworks offences that “posed a danger to pedestrians“.

Just for 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 full 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.

The operator has so far covered 1 million premises with their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines and are also in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024 to cover another million. But unfortunately, some of their street works (civil engineering), which harnesses Virgin Media’s build engine, has fallen foul of good safety standards.

Firstly, Somerset Council, via the Taunton Magistrates Court, prosecuted the firm (here) following works carried out in Bridgwater. Nexfibre admitted “failing to install proper traffic management to ensure the safety of pedestrians” while working in two of the town’s streets in breach of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991.

The Two Somerset Offences

• On Tuesday 12 September 2023, Nexfibre Ltd carried out street works at Taunton Road, Bridgwater, Somerset, in contravention of S65 of NRSWA 1991 by failing to install traffic management to ensure the safety of pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities and the travelling public affected by the works.

• On Thursday 21 September 2023, Nexfibre Ltd carried out street works at Westonzoyland Road, Bridgwater, Somerset, again in contravention of S65 of NRSWA 1991 by failing to install traffic management to ensure the safety of pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities and the travelling public affected by the works.

Along with the two charges in Somerset, Nexfibre also pleaded guilty to “nine similar charges” in Devon and had to pay a total of £30k in fines and charges.

Richard Wilkins, Somerset Council’s Lead Member for Digital, said:

“We take these sorts of offences very seriously, carrying out works without proper measures is simply unacceptable. We will take action if companies are in breach of their duties. Our message to the public is please report issues to Somerset Council if you see them – help us to make sure companies work in a safe and considerate manner.

The court imposed fines totalling £8,000, costs of £3,325 for the offences in Somerset.”

The Taunton Magistrates Court did, however, give Nexfibre credit for entering guilty pleas “at the earliest opportunity” and accepting the mitigation measures. But they also found “aggravating factors in that the works were deficient in any pedestrian safety and therefore there was a danger to pedestrians and road users alike and that the offences were numerous and committed over two counties“. We have asked Nexfibre to comment.

New customers looking to join either Smarty or iD Mobile, both of which are virtual mobile (MVNO) providers on Three UK’s network, may like to know that they’ve both slightly reduced their top SIM Only 4G and 5G unlimited data (mobile broadband) plans to £15 per month on a 30-day term. Both plans include the usual array of unlimited minutes and calls.

In the case of Smarty, the main differing feature is that you only get EU Roaming with a 12GB (GigaBytes) fair usage limit. By comparison, the special deal (sponsored link) on iD Mobile only limits you to 30GB when roaming across 50 countries, and you also get “up to 3 months free Apple Music and Arcade“, as well as a commitment toward “no annual price rises“.

A number of the smaller and cheaper plans, with capped allowances, for each operator have also seen some small changes. But there are too many to list.

News

The ‘Symbiosis Coalition’ will focus on “next-generation nature restoration projects” that can generate nature-based carbon removal credits 

Tech giants Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce have joined together to form the ‘Symbiosis Coalition’, which pledges to reduce the companies’ carbon footprint by supporting nature restoration projects. 

Together, the companies have committed to contract up to 20 million tons in nature-based carbon removal credits by 2030. Essentially, this equates to paying external companies to conduct carbon-negative “nature-based projects”, such as planting more trees, to cancel out their emissions. 

The deal is the first and largest advance market commitment ever for nature-based carbon removal, according to the press release.  

The partners note that similar projects have often failed due to a “perceived lack of high-quality restoration projects and uncertainty around willingness to pay,” meaning that the public have little faith in them. To make matters worse, results from the projects are typically hard to quantify and are hard to scale. The coalition claims it will change this by bringing in new technology and research to measure the outcomes more effectively. 

“While we’re first and foremost committed to reducing emissions from our operations and value chain, we recognize that won’t be enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability officer at Google. 

“Our work with the Symbiosis Coalition is a key step towards realizing our carbon negative goal by 2030 through a diversified portfolio of carbon removal,” said Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft. 

The group will share its project criteria to help other companies adopt sustainable best practices. It expects more companies to join the Coalition over time. 

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

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

News

The data breach was one of the country’s biggest ever cyber attacks 

Australia’s Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has begun legal action against Optus, the country’s second largest telco, over a data breach it suffered in 2022. 

The watchdog has filed legal proceedings to the Federal Court, alleging that Optus “failed to protect the confidentiality of its customers’ personal information from unauthorised interference or unauthorised access,” and was therefore in breach of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act of 1979. 

Between 17–20  September 2022, Optus suffered a data breach that affected up to 10 million current and former customers, comprising a third of Australia’s population. The breach resulted in the illegal acquisition of sensitive information, including names, dates of birth, addresses, and contact details.  

The then CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was widely criticised for her handling of this situation, with the matter made worse by a major network outage in October last year that left nearly half of Australia’s population of 26 million without mobile or internets services for over 12 hours. Bayer Rosmarin resigned in November, saying that her resignation “is in the best interest of Optus moving forward.” 

Optus’s parent company Singtel said in a statement to investors that it intends to defend the legal challenge from the ACMA, adding that “Optus Mobile is not able to determine the quantum of penalties, if any, that could arise.” 

The company is already battling another lawsuit relating to the cyber-attack. After the event occurred, Optus hired Deloitte to conduct an assessment into the attack’s causes. Since then, those affected by the attack have hired law firm Slater and Gordon to initiate legal action, aiming to get the results of Deloitte’s investigation published.  

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

Also in the news: 
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

News

The event, co-hosted with the Republic of Korea, saw the UK government pledge new funding to researching AI safety measures, as well as convincing major tech firms to shore up their safety measures

The AI Seoul Summit took place this week, bringing together the UK and South Korean governments to discuss AI safety alongside some of the biggest companies in the AI industry.

The meeting saw 16 global AI companies commit to a set of safety outcomes building on those set out by the ‘Bletchley Declaration’.

The UK published the ‘Bletchley Declaration’, signed by 28 countries and the European Union, at the AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park in November last year. The document has the companies pledge to develop AI responsibly and responsibly, as well as collaborating on further AI safety and research measures.

The new commitments on AI safety, agreed by major tech firms from around the world, includes a promise not to develop or deploy AI models if associated risks cannot be mitigated. They must also display an increased level of transparency, publishing safety frameworks measuring the risks of their frontier models

The signatories of this “Frontier AI Safety Commitments” document are:

Amazon
Anthropic
Cohere
Google / Google DeepMind
G42
IBM
Inflection AI
Meta
Microsoft
Mistral AI
Naver
OpenAI
Samsung Electronics
Technology Innovation Institute
xAI
Zhipu.ai

“The true potential of AI will only be unleashed if we’re able to grip the risks. It is on all of us to make sure AI is developed safely and today’s agreement means we now have bolstered commitments from AI companies and better representation across the globe,” said Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan.

“The UK is a world leader when it comes to AI safety, and I am continuing to galvanise other nations as we place it firmly on the global agenda and capitalise on the Bletchley Effect.”

Alongside these pledges, the UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan has also announced £8.5 million in grant funding for AI safety research projects back in the UK.

The programme will be overseen by Shahar Avin, a researcher from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) in Cambridge, and Christopher Summerfield, Research Director at UK’s AI Safety Institute (AISI), which was launched by the government at the start of this year.

“We expect to offer around 20 exploratory or proof-of-concept grants and will invite future bids for more substantial proposals to develop research programmes further,” reads the AISI website. “AISI will collaborate on this work with UKRI, The Alan Turing Institute and other AI Safety Institutes worldwide for this programme.”

Initiatives being considered will include, but are not limited to, those challenging the malicious use of deepfakes and AI-related misinformation. Importantly, these solutions would ideally intervene on the relevant platforms themselves, rather than modifying the AI models that generated the content.

“With evaluation systems for AI models now in place, Phase 2 of my plan to safely harness the opportunities of AI needs to be about making AI safe across the whole of society,” said Donelan.

“This is exactly what we are making possible with this funding which will allow our Institute to partner with academia and industry to ensure we continue to be proactive in developing new approaches that can help us ensure AI continues to be a transformative force for good.”

How is AI changing the UK’s connectivity landscape? Join the discussion at Connected Britain 2024

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

Merseyside-based ISP BeFibre, which is powered by FullFibre Ltd’s national FTTP network, has discounted some of their packages and moved to a fixed 12-month and 24-month pricing strategy in order to “give our customers much better value & assurance of what they will be paying for that fixed period” (i.e. the Be-Guarantee assures they won’t increase prices mid-contract).

In terms of the new pricing, BeFibre’s entry-level 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package on a 24-month term with free installation now costs just £19 per month (£25 thereafter), while 500Mbps is £24 per month (£40 thereafter) and 900Mbps comes out as £29 per month (£40 thereafter). This is a few pounds lower than the previous pricing and is expected to stay at this level until 31st July 2024.

The network, which as of January 2024 could be reached by about 300,000 premises across England (here), can be found in parts of Derbyshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

Network operator nexfibre has just expanded their 2Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network, alongside partner UK ISP Virgin Media (VMO2), to cover an additional 24,000 premises in the Merseyside (England) borough of Wirral.

Nexfibre has already covered 1 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing a further £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises on top of that. Both Virgin Media and nexfibre share some of the same parentage in Telefónica and Liberty Global, while nexfibre also harnesses Virgin’s existing build engine to aid their roll-out.

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally set up 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 separate network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

The result of all this is that both nexfibre and VMO2 combined should cover up to 23 million premises, or around 80% of the UK, by around the end of 2028.

Insight

We caught up with Ian Fogg, Research Director – Network Innovation at CCS Insight, to discuss some of the exciting infrastructure solutions on show at Mobile World Congress as the industry readies itself for 5.5G  

It is well understood that 5G is evolving far faster than previous generations of mobile technology, with infrastructure innovation happening at a similarly blistering pace. With 3GPP’s Release 18 being frozen later this year, operators are already preparing for the next systemic shift: 5.5G.  

For CCS Insight’s Ian Fogg, one interesting trend already underway in 5G is the increasing support being provided for additional spectrum bands in radio products.  

“When we look at the actual product lineup, one of the things that really stands out is the shift towards having greater band support on the FDD (frequency division duplexing) product range,” said Fogg. “That’s really important because those bands tend to be the lower frequencies, the ones that get inside buildings, and they’re the ones most commonly used for 5G.” 

The shift to 5.5G will notably coincide with the switch off of 2G and 3G networks in many markets, meaning operators will have additional spectrum to use for 4G and 5G, thereby making these FDD advances all the more important.  

While these advancements in spectrum efficiency will help develop far more effective networks, 5.5G’s real promise lies in its ability to help develop smarter networks, incorporating AI and automation at scale. In turn, this will offer up new use cases for operators and new paths to monetisation.  

“Better network performance and machine learning in the RAN gives you that bread-and-butter piece to deliver a better quality network experience that you can then monetise,” explained Fogg. 

Indeed, when it comes to monetisation, one of the biggest opportunities on show at Mobile World Congress was a renewed interest in mmWave, particularly for fixed wireless access (FWA).  

“There’s a big second push for mmWave in many markets, such as India and China,” he explained, noting that the spectrums high capacity makes it ideal for FWA. “If service providers just use their traditional, smartphone-based bands for FWA, they will clog up. This means they have to make a decision between high ARPU per gigabyte for a smartphone user or low ARPU per gigabyte for a FWA user. But mmWave has so much capacity […] you can fully support a FWA business line and all the new revenues that they support without damaging the smartphone business.” 

But perhaps the most exciting aspect of 5G’s ongoing evolution will be the new use cases 5.5G will enable.   

“With [3GPP’s] Release 18 we’ll finally have robust network slicing,” said Fogg, noting that this has long been a target of.  

In addition, 5G Reduced Capabilities (RedCap) will allow 5G to be used far more widely for more low-powered devices, making the technology even more versatile. 

“This offers the ability to connect 5G to many more devices, opening up opportunities with the IoT, as well as some fixed wireless use cases,” said Fogg.   

You can watch our full interview with Ian Fogg, Research Director – Network Innovation at CCS Insight, below:

Press Release

With the landing in Chania, the company strengthens Greece’s position as a digital hub for Internet traffic between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, announced this morning the landing of the BlueMed submarine cable in Chania (Greece) during a press conference hosted at the Residence of the Ambassador of Italy in Athens and attended by Paolo Cuculi, Ambassador of Italy, Dimitris Papastergiou, Minister of Digital Governance, Alessandro Pansa, Chairman of Sparkle, Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle, Daniele Mancuso, CEO of Sparkle Greece, Nikos Konstantinidis, Head of Open Hub at Sparkle and moderated by Stella Tsitsoula, Communication Consultant for ICT and CEO of RED.comm.

BlueMed is Sparkle’s new cable connecting Italy with France, Greece and several countries bordering the Mediterranean. It is part of the Blue & Raman Submarine Cable Systems built in partnership with Google and other operators that stretch further in the Middle East up to Mumbai, India.

With four fibre pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per pair, BlueMed offers high-speed Internet connections and high-performance solutions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), carriers, telecom operators, content providers, enterprises, and institutions to support the growing needs and digital evolution of the connected countries.

Laying began in 2023 with the main Tyrrhenian trunk from Genoa to Palermo and with branches to Marseille and Bastia (France), Golfo Aranci (Sardinia), Pomezia (Rome). From Palermo, the cable crossed the Strait of Messina to reach the Greek island of Crete from where it will continue with further branches in the Mediterranean up to Aqaba in Jordan. The Tyrrhenian and the Middle Eastern terrestrial sections are in full operation, while further Mediterranean landings and the full operation from Genoa to Aqaba are expected by this year.

In Crete, BlueMed reaches Sparkle’s data centre in Chania, a cable landing station interconnected with the island’s terrestrial networks and Sparkle’s MedNautilus network (with connections to mainland Greece, Turkey, and Italy). Sparkle is further developing the hub to accommodate other submarine cable projects including GreenMed that will cross the Adriatic Sea connecting Italy to Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and Turkey, thus creating a diversified, low latency route between Central Europe, the Balkans and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean countries.

Paolo Cuculi, Ambassador of Italy, commented: “The arrival in Greece of the BlueMed submarine cable represents a fundamental step in the process of digital connectivity between Italy and its partners in the Mediterranean Basin, with the island of Crete as an important strategic hub. Sparkle confirms itself as an absolute Italian excellence and a leading global player in fostering the digital transition, fundamental for the sustainable development of our two countries.”

The Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, declared: “This is an important milestone that marks a new era in connectivity and highlights the central role of Greece in the Mediterranean Sea, placing Greece at the heart of a digital route that bridges Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It is a critical infrastructure, which will significantly enhance the capacity and resilience of digital data traffic, while underlining our commitment to the European Union’s strategic autonomy objective. Advanced infrastructures such as BlueMed will also support other important developments like “Daedalus” Hyper Performance Computer that promotes Greece to the forefront of computing innovation and research, supporting technologies such as AI and big data. The landing of the BlueMed cable reflects all that we can achieve when we commit together to an important goal.“

“With the landing of BlueMed in Crete, Greece is enabling a new digital route for Internet traffic between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia,” said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “We have been operating in Greece for more than 20 years and here we have the skills and infrastructures needed to develop it as a new Internet hub of the Mediterranean, a role destined to grow further in the future thanks to the landing of new submarine cables.”

“With BlueMed, we strengthen our longstanding presence in Greece and reaffirm our commitment to fostering the development of a digital ecosystem increasingly connected to the world,” added Daniele Mancuso, Chief Marketing & Product Management at Sparkle and CEO of Sparkle Greece. “With four data centers in the country and a wide portfolio of digital services including IoT and networking solutions, we ensure Greek enterprises and institutions efficient communications both within their sites and with their external ecosystems.”

How is the submarine cable landscape changing in 2024? Join Sparkle and the subsea industry in discussion at Submarine Networks EMEA next week! Get your tickets now

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

The UK government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme has today awarded the £43 million (state aid) regional contract for Cheshire (Lot 17) in England to alternative network provider Freedom Fibre. The deal aims to extend their gigabit capable full fibre (FTTP) network to 15,000 additional premises in hard to reach rural areas.

Just to recap. Project Gigabit is working to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025, before aiming to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by 2030 (here). Commercial investment is expected to deliver more than 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the rest (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails.

The project uses a number of different methods to tackle this challenge (e.g. vouches and investment in dark fibre builds), but the largest part of the scheme involves a gap-funded subsidy approach – the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS). This is where smaller local, larger regional or major cross-regional contracts are awarded to network operators who can help to build their gigabit-capable infrastructure into the most challenging areas (final 20%).

The Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, which manages Project Gigabit, has already awarded a sizeable number of deployment contracts to various network providers and the latest one – Cheshire (Lot 17) – has today gone to Freedom Fibre, which will expand their network to cover over 15,000 additional premises in poorly served areas.

Freedom Fibre will now undertake a period of detailed design and survey work, with building work expected to commence during “early 2025“. The rollout will cover several remote villages, such as Kingswood, Allostock, Minshull Vernon and beyond.

The provider will also invest thousands of pounds in a broad range of socio-economic projects across the county, including running its ‘Freedom Fund’ that will offer grants to support people in Cheshire attend training courses or help them back into employment. As part of this, Freedom Fibre will offer apprenticeship opportunities to Cheshire based candidates to strengthen employment opportunities and bridge the skill shortage.

Neil McArthur MBE, Founder and CEO of Freedom Fibre, said:

“We’re delighted to have been awarded this contract, increasing full-fibre coverage across Cheshire and further strengthening our relationship with Building Digital UK and local authorities across the county.

This investment in full-fibre will end over 100 years of copper-based services and unleash untold potential for homes and businesses across Cheshire.”

Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure, Julia Lopez, said:

“Homes and businesses in rural Cheshire not covered by broadband suppliers’ plans will get access to the fastest internet speeds available, thanks to this latest contract under the government’s Project Gigabit.

This government’s investment in lightning-fast upgrades will benefit hard-to-reach communities all over the county, boosting productivity in local industries and helping households to stream, work and play without a hitch.”

The deal represents Freedom Fibre’s second contract under the national broadband project, which comes after they were awarded the £24m contract to cover around 12,000 premises in North Shropshire (Lot 25.02) – this one recently entered the deployment phase (here).

Equitix-backed Freedom Fibre currently covers 300,000 premises with their 10Gbps capable XGS-PON powered Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. Consumers are able to access this via a variety of different ISPs, including TalkTalk, Yayzi, Squirrel, Fusion Fibre, MTH, Octaplus, Link and Beebu alongside LilaConnect.

Project Gigabit GIS Contract Awards History
➤ Wessex Internet for North Dorset (Lot 14.01) in August 2022 (here)
➤ GoFibre for Teesdale (Lot 4.01) in September 2022 (here)
➤ GoFibre for North Northumberland (Lot 34.01) in October 2022 (here)
➤ Fibrus for Cumbria (Lot 28) in November 2022 (here)
➤ Wildanet for Central Cornwall (Lot 32.03) and South West Cornwall (Lot 32.02) in January 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Cambridgeshire (Lot 5) in March 2023 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for the New Forest (Lot 27.01) in April 2023 (here)
➤ Freedom Fibre for North Shropshire (Lot 25.02) in May 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Norfolk (Lot 7), Suffolk (Lot 2) and Hampshire (Lot 27) in July 2023 (here)
➤ Gigaclear for South Oxfordshire (Lot 13.01) and North Oxfordshire (Lot 13.02) in Nov 2023 (here)
➤ Connect Fibre for North East Staffordshire (Lot 19.01) in Nov 2023 (here)
➤ Connect Fibre for Derbyshire (Lot 3) in Dec 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire (Lot 26), Leicestershire & Warwickshire (Lot 11), West & East Sussex (Lot 16 & 1), Kent (Lot 29) and Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes (Lot 12) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Connexin for Nottinghamshire & West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Quickline for West Yorkshire and York Area (Lot 8) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Gigaclear for East Gloucestershire (Lot 18) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for South Wiltshire (Lot 30) in Mar 2024 (here)
➤ Quickline for South Yorkshire (Lot 20) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ FullFibre for West Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean (Lot 15) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ FullFibre for Peak District (Lot 3.01) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for Dorset and South Somerset (Lot 14) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Wildanet for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (Lot 32) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Voneus for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Freedom Fibre for Cheshire (Lot 17) in May 2024