News

Slim and his family own and manage América Móvil, one Latin America’s largest telcos

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has bought a 3.16% share of BT for roughly £400 million, making him one of the company’s largest shareholders.

The share was purchased through Slim’s financial company, Inbursa, and two other group companies.

Slim is now the third largest shareholder in BT, after fellow billionaire Patrick Drahi, who owns an 24% stake through his subsidiary Altice UK, and Deutsche Telekom with a 12.06% share.

“We have frequent communication with all of our shareholders and meet with major investors on a regular basis,” said a BT spokesperson. “We look forward to engaging with Inbursa, just as we do with all investors.”

Speaking to the Financial Times, director of consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight, Kester Mann, said the investment in BT was “an endorsement” of BT’s latest strategy update and reflected “good recent momentum for BT” under the leadership of new CEO Allison Kirkby.

Kirkby, who joined the company in February from Telia, last month announced that the company had already met its target to save £3 billion in costs by 2025, largely thanks to its ongoing job-cutting programme;   BT is currently aiming to eliminate 55,000 jobs (or 40% of the total workforce) by the end of the decade.

With this target met, Kirkby now says BT will do the same thing again, cutting a further £3 billion in costs by 2029.

Join the conversation around UK telcos at this year’s connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Get half price tickets this week only!

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 

The UK Labour Party has today published their Manifesto for the forthcoming 2024 General Election, which is due to be held on 4th July 2024. As usual, ISPreview has taken a quick dive into the document to see what the party may be planning in terms of their broadband, mobile and internet related policies.

Since the last election, the party appears to have moved away from their heavily nationalisation focused “free full-fibre broadband to all by 2030” pledge of 2019 (here), which raised more than a few questioning glances and a fair bit of scepticism from within the industry, as well as more widely. But today our focus is firmly on 2024 and not 2019.

Until today, we haven’t really been able to gleam much detail about what position the party would take for the election. But Labour has previously signalled that they might continue to support the current Government’s existing £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out programme (i.e. aiming for 85% gigabit coverage by 2025 and “nationwide” [c.99%] by 2030).

The party has also previously spoken of working with Ofcom to try and encourage greater infrastructure sharing or co-operative build between network operators, which would have to be carefully balanced to avoid any unintended damage to competition.

In addition, Labour indicated in 2023 that it would aim to foster an “industry wide social tariff for low-income families” and do more to tackle mid-contract price hikes and loyalty penalties etc.

Labour’s 2024 General Election Manifesto

The good news today is that Labour’s 2024 UK General Election Manifesto (PDF) has now been published. But given all the previous talk above, we were a little bit surprised to find how light it is on matters of broadband and mobile policy. Across the whole document, we could only find one single paragraph on the subject, which makes for quite a stark contrast with the last election:

“In an ever more connected world, Britain’s communication network is also vital. Under the Conservatives, investment in 5G is falling behind other countries and the rollout of gigabit broadband has been slow. Labour will make a renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030,” said page 31 of the document.

On the one hand, that talk of making a “renewed push” sounds positive, but on the other hand they don’t define what this actually means and how it will differ. The approach does at least appear to support the aforementioned idea that they might not be intending to make any major changes to Project Gigabit itself, which is probably a good thing in this case, as that tends to require new reviews and thus delays (i.e. the risk of making that 2030 target even harder to hit).

So far, none of the manifestos we’ve seen being released have included any big surprises or solid new commitments, which is a bit disappointing.

Press Release

Residents, visitors and businesses in Manchester city centre and surrounding areas will soon be enjoying enhanced mobile connectivity from Virgin Media O2 thanks to a new agreement between Freshwave and Manchester City Council.

Connectivity infrastructure-as-a-service provider Freshwave will be deploying more than 20 outdoor small cells on behalf of Virgin Media O2 in busy areas of the city, including outside the Arndale Shopping Centre, Manchester Piccadilly Station and Piccadilly Gardens.

In busy urban areas such as city centres, the large number of people all using their mobile phones at once can place a high demand on the mobile network. Outdoor small cells help meet some of the demand at street level, relieving the wider network and providing a better mobile service for customers.

Outdoor small cells are often fixed to existing street furniture, such as lampposts, so are ideal for boosting mobile capacity in busy areas without increasing clutter on the streets. They’ll be connected to Virgin Media O2’s fibre network which will carry the data to and from the internet. These small cells will immediately enhance 4G signal and are also 5G ready.

Councillor Rabnawaz Akbar, Executive Member for Finance and Resources at Manchester City Council, said: “Everyone in Manchester deserves to benefit from high quality, reliable digital infrastructure. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Freshwave and Virgin Media O2 to bring convenient, fair, and equitable connectivity to more people in our city. We believe that this agreement is a significant step towards achieving the aims set out in our Digital Strategy for 2021-26, which outlines our ambitious vision to build a more digitally enabled future for Manchester. By enhancing communication, improving access to vital services, and driving economic growth, improved connectivity will make a transformative difference to the lives of businesses, residents, and visitors alike.”

Steven Verigotta, Director of Mobile Delivery at Virgin Media O2, said: “We are committed to bringing the best experience possible to our customers no matter where they are. Small cells are an important part of this strategy, helping to boost capacity for customers in some of the busiest areas.

“With upgrade programmes underway right across our network, we’re working hard to ensure our customers consistently receive an exceptional experience wherever they are and even at the busiest times.”

Nick Wiggin, Freshwave’s Head of Partnerships, said: “This agreement is an exciting step forward in Manchester’s digital ambitions. We want to stay connected no matter where we are, whether at home or on the go in the city centre, and Freshwave are always pleased to work with partners in bringing assured connectivity to where it’s needed.”

Join the connectivity community in discussion around all of the North’s biggest infratructure topics at Connected North live from Manchester

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The Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru) has today become the latest political party to publish a Manifesto for the 4th July 2024 UK General Election, which we’ll take a brief look at below because it includes a couple of commitments related to broadband and mobile connectivity.

The Plaid Cymru Manifesto for the Westminster General Election 2024 (PDF) document, which has just been published this morning, states that it would “seek to invest in our digital infrastructure and guarantee a high-speed connection to every home and business“, albeit without giving a clear timescale or any funding figures (there’s also a question mark over how they define “high-speed“).

However, after digging a bit deeper into the document, we did manage to uncover the following statement: “Plaid Cymru has previously called for the establishment of a Welsh Broadband Infrastructure Company. We have also called for the UK Government to release more Project Gigabit money increasing the investment to tackle the “very hard to reach areas” or the “total not-spots” where there is no fast broadband or 4G signal at all and bring the timescales forward. We will also push for more investment in alternative technology projects especially in the “very hard to reach” areas e.g. small cell projects / Fixed Wireless Access.”

Overall, it’s quite vague, but the important thing is that they’re at least referencing digital infrastructure as an area that needs further improvement, which is always a positive thing. But like so many other election manifestos, we’d really like to see a bit more detail on the delivery, funding and timescale side.

In particular, we’d like to know more about how their Welsh Broadband Infrastructure Company would work and how it would fit in with the country’s existing selection of competitive operators and network build, such as the ongoing projects from Virgin Media / nexfibre, Openreach, Netomnia, Ogi and others.

Mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today continued to boost the provider’s 4G and 5G mobile (mobile broadband) capacity across the UK by expanding their ongoing roll-out of small cells into Manchester city centre, which is being supported by agreements with both Freshwave and Manchester City Council.

Small cells are like mini shoebox sized mobile base stations, which have been designed to deliver limited coverage (usually up to around 80-120 metres) and thus tend to be more focused on busy urban areas and specific sites. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find these sitting on top of lampposts, CCTV poles or old payphone cubicles (i.e. they can be more cost-effective than building new street assets or trying to secure wayleaves on buildings etc.).

In the case of central Manchester, O2 and Freshwave plan on deploying “more than 20 outdoor small cells” in busy areas of the city via council-owned assets (lamppost etc.), including outside the Arndale Shopping Centre, Manchester Piccadilly Station and Piccadilly Gardens.

As usual these sites will be connected back to Virgin Media’s fibre optic network for data capacity. We should also add that the small cells are initially only enabled for 4G connectivity, although they are being classed as 5G “ready” for a future upgrade.

Steven Verigotta, Director of Mobile Delivery at VMO2, said:

“We are committed to bringing the best experience possible to our customers no matter where they are. Small cells are an important part of this strategy, helping to boost capacity for customers in some of the busiest areas.

With upgrade programmes underway right across our network, we’re working hard to ensure our customers consistently receive an exceptional experience wherever they are and even at the busiest times.”

As a side note, it’s worth reminding readers that Virgin Media and O2 recently used small cells as part of a trial with parent Liberty Global, which deployed 4G and 5G capable “smart poles” on top of their existing fibre broadband cabinets to help boost mobile network coverage and capacity (here). But there’s no mention of that playing a role in today’s deployment.

Spotlight Series 

by Matt Hatton, Founding Partner at Transforma Insights

The SGP.32 (“IoT”) standard for Remote SIM Provisioning was unveiled in May 2023, promising a more streamlined and user-friendly mechanism for enterprises to manage the connectivity on their cellular devices.

In this article, based on a recently published Transforma Insights Position Paper, sponsored by Eseye, ‘Key considerations for Enterprises looking to adopt SGP.32’ , the report’s author Matt Hatton examines the reality of the availability and ease of deployment of SGP.32, and why it’s not a magic wand for cellular-based IoT.

What is Remote SIM provisioning?

Until 2016, cellular connected devices were authenticated onto a network using a removable plastic SIM card. This wasn’t particularly appropriate for many IoT use cases, which required a more ruggedised form factor. The Machine Form Factor (MFF, now MFF2) or ‘eSIM’ was launched, comprising a chip soldered onto the circuit board of the device. This drove the development of the capability to change the SIM profile through a mechanism other than physically swapping out SIM cards. That mechanism is Remote SIM Provisioning (RSP), i.e. remote over-the-air switching of profiles on the SIM card.

What is SGP.32?

To ensure interoperability of RSP between mobile operators, the GSM Association developed a series of standards. SGP.32 is the third of those standards. Each of the three establish slightly different mechanisms for the user or owner of a device to change the SIM profile while the device is deployed in the field.

The SGP.02 “M2M” format, introduced in 2014, is a ‘push’ model whereby changes of eSIM profiles are taken from the SM-DP (Subscription Manager – Data Preparation), the profile store, and pushed to the SIM by the SM-SR (Subscription Manager – Secure Routing) element that controls the provision of the profile onto the SIM. The challenge with SGP.02 is that it requires cooperation between the subscription management infrastructure of the donor and the recipient networks to handle the hand-over.

In contrast, SGP.22 “Consumer”, which emerged in 2016, uses a ‘pull’ approach with the profile pulled directly from the SM-DP by the user, with the role of the SM-SR split between the SM-DP (or in this approach the ‘SM-DP+’) and the device itself, in the form of a Local Profile Assistant (LPA). In this scenario the ownership of the device is enough to manage the process. This approach, however, requires the device to have a more sophisticated UI and a camera (to photograph QR codes), as well as manual intervention to activate the process. This is fine for smartphones, but most IoT devices do not have any of those characteristics.

Technical specifications of a third variant, SGP.32 (“IoT”), were unveiled by the GSMA in May 2023. The SGP.32 “IoT” variant is really an adaptation of the Consumer SM-DP+ approach, allowing a customer to switch its IoT connections (theoretically) to any connectivity provider it chooses without recourse to the operator upon whose SM-SR it currently resides. It has four main relevant features:

Remote UI – The role of the LPA is now partially on the device as the IoT Profile Assistant (IPA) and partially hosted by the network operator or third party, in the form of the eSIM IoT remote Manager (eIM), allowing for the remote control of the IPA without need for manual intervention.
Support for lightweight protocols such as CoAP-based Lightweight M2M (LwM2M) to manage profile downloads and other operations – SGP.32 does not require support for TCP/IP, which is heavier than the UDP used in CoAP, and LwM2M that runs over it. This helps to overcome constraints on latency and bandwidth which are common with newer IoT connectivity technologies, particularly NB-IoT.
No requirement for SMS – NB-IoT devices often don’t support SMS, which was required for SGP.22.
A small footprint – Because much of the functionality of the LPA has been moved into the eIM it reduces the memory and processing requirements on the device itself.

The three approaches are illustrated in the figure below:

Time for a reality check

The capabilities introduced in SGP.32 mark it out as an improvement in many ways on the preceding standards. It also changes the commercial dynamics of how connectivity providers might be selected. Nominally the use of SGP.32 means that every enterprise customer with capable devices is dramatically more footloose than they were previously, with the ability to ‘at the click of a button’ move some or all their connections from one network to another. However, the reality is much more complicated. The focus of the recent Transforma Insights Position Paper is on examining the reality of the availability of SGP.32 and how it will be deployed.

The key considerations include:

Timing – Although the technology itself has been standardised, SGP.32 will not be truly available until 2025. The functional test specification (SGP.33) has only just been unveiled. Furthermore, there is no hardware in production that supports the IPA. We may see a small number of standards-based devices in 2024, but realistically they won’t be in volume until 2025. We should note that there are a number of pre-standard variants of SGP.32, based on an adaptation of SGP.22, but these lack interoperability.
Need for a managed transition – Any company wanting to avail themselves of the superior functionality of SGP.32 will either need to wait or will need to find a connectivity provider that can support their connectivity requirements using an alternative approach (e.g. multi-IMSI or SGP.02) today, with support for transition to SGP.32 at the appropriate time with a common management portal with the same functionality and/or a common set of APIs, so that there is effectively little difference to the experience delivered to the enterprise regardless of which approach is being used.
Willingness and ability to negotiate connectivity contracts – In order to switch connectivity providers, an enterprise will need to have a willing recipient provider, onto whose network it is localising. For that to happen there must be a commercial relationship between the connectivity provider and the SIM owner. This constrains the appeal of the technology to those customers who have relationships with more than one carrier, which might be the case with car makers or other big buyers but less so for most potential users. The other downside is that the negotiating power of that single customer for relatively small numbers of connections in each market will be limited compared to an MNO relying on reciprocal roaming agreements, or MVNOs with much larger volumes of devices within in any given market.
Not as simple as clicking a button – A further major constraint is that, even with SGP.32, it’s not simply a case of switching between providers seamlessly. The way in which connections are supported will vary depending on the network used and many settings will not be specified by the standard and will therefore not automatically carry over from one network to another. There will also be a requirement for back-end integration and other process changes, for instance to change APN settings, set the polling frequency for new eSIM profiles, or manage device security. Any changes to the eSIM profile will need to occur contemporaneously with a switch of those other elements of the deployment. This is a non-trivial task. What is required for SGP.32 to work optimally is a further abstraction and orchestration layer between the networks and the enterprise, handling all those other elements beyond the consideration of which eSIM profile is active on the device.

A useful standard but one to be best delivered as part of a portfolio of managed connectivity

Many enterprises have correctly identified SGP.32 as a potentially highly useful technology, ironing out many of the creases of the previous standards. However it is not a magic wand. Alternative options such as roaming, multi-IMSI or SGP.02 may prove better. Additionally, SGP.32 requires more complexity to realise than many would have expected, as noted above. As such we strongly suggest that SGP.32 will be provided as a managed service by a connectivity provider able to provide the transition, orchestration, and MNO management functions.

Check out the Position Paper to learn more

The article above is a short summary of some of the key messages from the report. In the full Position Paper ‘Key considerations for Enterprises looking to adopt SGP.32’, sponsored by Eseye, we explore in more depth the characteristics and capabilities of SGP.32, further expand on the reality of how it can be used, and identify the key capabilities of a provider of SGP.32 services.

Comparison site Broadband Genie has today published the results of a new study, which analysed 113 business broadband ISPs to find which one delivered the fastest speeds. The results found that Telcom is the UK’s “fastest business broadband provider” – averaging a download speed of 391Mbps and an upload of 357Mbps.

The study also found that business services offered faster internet speeds than UK home broadband products. By comparison, households recorded an average download speed of 137Mbps and uploads of 96Mbps – 11% slower than the business-specific connections for download speed and 14% slower for upload speeds. This is perhaps unsurprising, as some business packages move into leased line territory and will often also include higher standards of service.

Otherwise, the results below are based on an analysis of 307,828 web-based speed tests – run between 1st January 2023 and 31st January 2024, which were conducted by users of the various providers. But studies like this can of course also be influenced by other factors, such the user’s choice of package (e.g. 10Gbps could be available, but people may pick a slower tier), local (office) network congestion, any limitations of the remote speed tester itself and slow WiFi etc.

In addition, many of the ISPs listed also sell residential broadband packages, and this kind of study is usually unable to accurately distinguish between all of those and the pure business connections. In short, take these results with a big pinch of salt. Otherwise, the fastest provider was Telcom (391Mbps download / 357Mbps upload), while the slowest came out as Uno (7Mbps download / 1Mpsb upload).

The Fastest 113 Business Broadband ISPs for 2024

1. Telcom (391Mb download / 357Mb upload)

2. Triangle Networks Limited (400Mb download / 286Mb upload)

3. Southern Communications (389Mb download / 357Mb upload)

4. Fibrecast (403Mb download / 246Mb upload)

5. Baltic Broadband Limited (417Mb download / 189Mb upload)

6. Gigabit Networks (375Mb download / 307Mb upload)

7. toob (349Mb download / 259Mb upload)

8. Lightspeed Broadband (350Mb download / 224Mb upload)

9. Squirrel Internet (331Mb download / 260Mb upload)

10. Giganet (304Mb download / 264Mb upload)

11. YouFibre (298Mb download / 257Mb upload)

12. Digital Infrastructure (277Mb download / 317Mb upload)

13. No One Internet (293Mb download / 249Mb upload)

14. Community Fibre (287Mb download / 244Mb upload)

15. Box Broadband (291Mb download / 233Mb upload)

16. MS3 Networks (280Mb download / 218Mb upload)

17. Broadband for the Rural North (270Mb download / 211Mb upload)

18. Equiinet (257Mb download / 258Mb upload)

19. Zzoomm (266Mb download / 213Mb upload)

20. BRSK (269Mb download / 201Mb upload)

21. Upp (250Mb download / 231Mb upload)

22. Internetty (261Mb download / 199Mb upload)

23. Hey Broadband (260Mb download / 188Mb upload)

24. Cadence Networks (245Mb download / 210Mb upload)

25. Grain (233Mb download / 182Mb upload)

26. Octaplus Networks (231Mb download / 190Mb upload)

27. F & W Networks (233Mb download / 163Mb upload)

28. Boundless Networks (257Mb download / 78Mb upload)

29. Hyperoptic (207Mb download / 196Mb upload)

30. Broadband for Surrey Hills (222Mb download / 154Mb upload)

31. Cogent Communications (220Mb download / 141Mb upload)

32. Lightning Fibre (204Mb download / 174Mb upload)

33. G.Network (206Mb download / 144Mb upload)

34. Trooli (217Mb download / 120Mb upload)

35. Jurassic Fibre (232Mb download / 83Mb upload)

36. TrueSpeed (181Mb download / 213Mb upload)

37. Voneus (189Mb download / 161Mb upload)

38. Gigaclear (172Mb download / 158Mb upload)

39. Cityfibre (186Mb download / 94Mb upload)

40. Wessex Internet (175Mb download / 107Mb upload)

41. Swish Fibre (166Mb download / 156Mb upload)

42. Wildanet (167Mb download / 110Mb upload)

43. Gigaloch (172Mb download / 101Mb upload)

44. Virgin Media Business (198Mb download / 39Mb upload)

45. County Broadband (142Mb download / 140Mb upload)

46. GoFibre (180Mb download / 61Mb upload)

47. TxRx Communications (144Mb download / 130Mb upload)

48. Exa Networks Limited (159Mb download / 106Mb upload)

49. Aspire Technology Solutions (150Mb download / 107Mb upload)

50. NYnet (134Mb download / 137Mb upload)

51. Link broadbands (142Mb download / 108Mb upload)

52. Cambridge Fibre (136Mb download / 113Mb upload)

53. Zen Internet (144Mb download / 87Mb upload)

54. VeloxServ Communications (128Mb download / 117Mb upload)

55. Rocket Fibre (131Mb download / 73Mb upload)

56. Luminet Data Limited (126Mb download / 91Mb upload)

57. COLT Technology Services Group (113Mb download / 104Mb upload)

58. Fibrus Networks (121Mb download / 67Mb upload)

59. Talk Straight (110Mb download / 91Mb upload)

60. Daisy Communications Ltd (113Mb download / 54Mb upload)

61. Zoom Internet Ltd (104Mb download / 95Mb upload)

62. Zayo (105Mb download / 73Mb upload)

63. Vodafone (105Mb download / 56Mb upload)

64. Cerberus Networks (106Mb download / 42Mb upload)

65. Razorblue Ltd (96Mb download / 73Mb upload)

66. Ogi (106Mb download / 31Mb upload)

67. The Networking People (TNP) Limited (89Mb download / 92Mb upload)

68. Merula Limited (107Mb download / 27Mb upload)

69. M247 (100Mb download / 37Mb upload)

70. Vaioni Group (84Mb download / 76Mb upload)

71. Alnwick Computerware (82Mb download / 74Mb upload)

72. Airband (96Mb download / 39Mb upload)

73. BT (104Mb download / 29Mb upload)

74. KCOM (94Mb download / 39Mb upload)

75. Fastnet (81Mb download / 53Mb upload)

76. Claranet (73Mb download / 65Mb upload)

77. Clouvider (95Mb download / 34Mb upload)

78. Bridge Fibre Limited (70Mb download / 65Mb upload)

79. Zscaler (79Mb download / 51Mb upload)

80. Wifinity Networks (66Mb download / 71Mb upload)

81. Choopa, LLC (79Mb download / 46Mb upload)

82. Connexin (73Mb download / 55Mb upload)

83. Netcalibre Ltd (74Mb download / 26Mb upload)

84. Starlink (80Mb download / 12Mb upload)

85. Andrews & Arnold (73Mb download / 27Mb upload)

86. GTT Communications (69Mb download / 36Mb upload)

87. Challenger Technology Ltd (62Mb download / 66Mb upload)

88. Orbital Net (69Mb download / 28Mb upload)

89. Evolving Networks Limited (64Mb download / 34Mb upload)

90. Sky (69Mb download / 20Mb upload)

91. Sprint (63Mb download / 22Mb upload)

92. Gamma (55Mb download / 31Mb upload)

93. hso (47Mb download / 42Mb upload)

94. Mythic Beasts (62Mb download / 17Mb upload)

95. Verizon Business (44Mb download / 45Mb upload)

96. Quickline (51Mb download / 34Mb upload)

97. TalkTalk (52Mb download / 19Mb upload)

98. Plusnet (53Mb download / 15Mb upload)

99. Internet Central (43Mb download / 32Mb upload)

100. VoiceHost Limited (47Mb download / 23Mb upload)

101. Redcentric Solutions (36Mb download / 38Mb upload)

102. EE (46Mb download / 14Mb upload)

103. Spitfire Network Services (39Mb download / 18Mb upload)

104. Node4 Limited (32Mb download / 27Mb upload)

105. Comms West (33Mb download / 10Mb upload)

106. Voxility LLP (27Mb download / 25Mb upload)

107. Atlas Communications (NI) (26Mb download / 21Mb upload)

108. Digital Space Group (28Mb download / 14Mb upload)

109. GCI Network Solutions (33Mb download / 9Mb upload)

110. Converged Communication Solutions Limited (23Mb download / 19Mb upload)

111. Signal Telecom (23Mb download / 9Mb upload)

112. Cloudnet IT Solutions Ltd (20Mb download / 7Mb upload)

113. uno Communications (7Mb download / 1Mb upload)

The richest man in Latin America, Carlos Slim (worth around £72bn), has just become one of the largest shareholders in UK telecoms and broadband giant BT Group. The telecoms billionaire has taken out a 3.2% stake in the company, which is said to be worth around £400 million, but his intentions remain unclear.

At present BT’s biggest shareholder is still French billionaire Patrick Drahi via Altice UK, which holds a 24.5% stake in the business. After that it’s T-Mobile Holdings Ltd. (aka – Deutsche Telekom) on 12%, BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA on 10.8% and, until today, it then dropped all the way down to Schroder Investment Management Ltd. on just 2.12% and so forth.

Until now most of the speculation around a possible takeover of the business has tended to focus on Altice UK, but their stake currently sits just below the important 25% threshold for marking out a person with significant control (PSC) of a company.

German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) is another company that has often – for as long as we can remember – been speculated to hold a wider interest BT (here), which may yet conceivably involve doing a deal with one of BT’s other shareholders. But so far nothing has ever come of that.

A spokesman for Mr Slim’s conglomerate, Grupo Carso, told the FT (paywall) that this move was merely a “financial investment, like many the group makes“. Meanwhile a spokesperson for the BT Group welcomed “any investor who recognises the long-term value of our business. We have frequent communication with all of our shareholders and meet with major investors on a regular basis. We look forward to engaging with Inbursa, just as we do with all investors.”

The move comes after BT’s new CEO, Allison Kirkby, updated the operator’s business strategy with plans to double cash flow over the next five years, slash around £3bn of costs and boost the dividend. The changes have helped to give BT Group’s share price a much-needed boost.

However, it remains unclear whether the Mexican billionaire’s move is part of a grander plan or merely a long-term strategy to pick up assets that may be viewed as undervalued today, but which could pay back much more in the future (this is currently the most likely scenario).

As for BT itself, they could be said to have overcome some of the obstacles and uncertainties that often-discouraged potential bidders in the past, although there are still plenty of hurdles for a suitor to consider (e.g. the increasingly competitive full fibre market, the high level of debt, political opposition and so forth). But to do anything serious here would require a green light from the UK Government, which has already shown investors like Altice UK that they can act if needed (here).

Some customers of Sky Broadband have noticed, via our forum (here), that the ISP has quietly deployed a modern type of Internet Protocol (IP) address sharing called MAP-T that seems to be a notable improvement on other sharing solutions, like the often maligned Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT).

Let’s start with a little context. The reason why some ISPs adopt IP address sharing is to help balance against dwindling stocks of older IPv4 addresses (e.g. 123.45.76.200), which are hard (expensive) to expand now that spare address space has run dry. So, while a provider like Sky Broadband may have no shortage of newer IPv6 addresses, they still need to work with v4s in order to ensure that customers can enjoy full access to the internet.

However, one way of stretching the life out of v4s is by sharing each address between multiple users, which is not universally popular as it tends to raise security concerns (i.e. some services partly manage or block access at specific IP level) and may cause connectivity problems under certain circumstances (e.g. port forwarding can be “fun“).

Admittedly, the chances are fairly good that most people might not care about changes like this, particularly as for the bulk of online tasks they’re often seamless to end-users. But if you work in IT / Networking or understand the significance, then you’re probably much more interested in what this means and also more likely to be impacted.

The above is particularly true when it comes to methods like CGNAT, which has become about as popular with some users as Hannibal Lecter at a school meeting. But there are other approaches that can achieve a better outcome, although some caveats will always remain with any approach to IP sharing.

Sky’s MAP-T

The latest development is that users of Sky Broadband’s latest Wi-Fi 6 capable Sky Max Hub router have noticed that their IP address is being shared by MAP-T (Mapping of Address and Port using Translation). The router launched a year ago as part of a paid WiFi booster add-on (here), although Sky do now appear to be shipping it to customers alongside their top FTTP broadband packages by default too (based on customer feedback to ISPreview).

Unlike CGNAT, which is more of a stateful solution (i.e. it has to track the state of every single lease, session, IP address assignment and more), MAP-T is primarily stateless. Put another way, it can do what CGNAT does (sharing addresses), albeit without the costly overheads (CPU, database and memory requirements) because it doesn’t have to keep track of every single lease, session etc. This provides v4-v4 connectivity over a v6 domain (explained more below).

Sky Italia has already deployed MAP-T in a forceful way (see this document for the technical details) and now Sky UK are doing the same, albeit via a more opportunistic approach. Crucially this is friendlier to things like port forwarding than CGNAT and in fact Sky UK’s approach adopts a degree of automated opt-out, which dynamically moves customers to a 1:1 (unshared) IP profile to allow for port forwarding and DMZ etc. (this is a difficult thing to do, especially at scale, so hats off to Sky’s network team). So far as we can tell, Sky appears to have two MAP-T profiles, either an 8:1 or 1:1 IPv4 address sharing ratio.

As one of our readers (hants) said: “Interestingly, I can affect the sharing ratio by defining port-forwarding configuration (via MySky) — if you pick a large range of ports, your sharing ratio reduces (which makes sense). However, even when configuring a DMZ, I still end up on MAP-T albeit with a sharing ratio of 1:1 — even in that scenario, the IPv4 address isn’t really terminated on my router.”

Sky’s approach to MAP-T seems to be trading a bit of IPv4 usage efficiency for a better customer experience, which is fine by us. But as we understand it, Sky has not yet announced any plans to introduce MAP-T on to their older routers, which may be because their latest kit (only the Sky Hub Max / Hub 6) and MAP-T is built on top of RDK-Broadband. Future routers will be the same too, but this is difficult to put on their older routers.

However, just to be clear, customers don’t strictly need the Sky Hub Max in order to harness MAP-T. The network itself is not restricting MAP-T support, so if, for example, someone were to connect an OpenWRT router (and install the required map package with opkg install map) then they will also get MAP-T.

At present, Sky is still believed to be in the middle of deploying this change, although we understand this should complete by the end of June 2024. We have asked Sky for a comment and hope to have something soon. In addition, we recently learnt that both Sky Stream and Sky Glass TV will start using IPv6 very soon (until now they’ve been limited to v4).

Sky is the first of the major UK ISPs to do this. In fact, so far as we can tell, they’re among the first of all home broadband providers – at any scale – to do it, with many others still focused on CGNAT for IP address sharing. Granted, for some people even MAP-T will still have its caveats and for that you’ll probably seek a Static IP (Sky don’t sell this to homes), but MAP-T is a nice improvement and Sky’s approach seems innovative.