News

The deal was first announced two months ago 

Today, CityFibre has completed its acquisition of Lit Fibre from Newlight Partners, who will remain minority shareholders as per the transaction agreement. 

 Lit Fibre has an existing fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) footprint of over 220,000 premises across more than 20 towns, including Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Essex, and Suffolk. As a vertically integrated altnet, the company sells services directly to customers, having built a subscriber base of approximately 10,000 retail customers since its establishment in 2021. 

CityFibre says it will continue to drive towards Lit Fibre’s strategic goal of passing 300,000 premises with FTTP by 2025. 

Integration efforts between CityFibre and Lit Fibre are already underway to incorporate Lit Fibre’s 10Gbps XGS-PON network infrastructure into CityFibre’s carrier-grade network. This integration will enable CityFibre’s ISP partners to access a broader range of products, pricing, and services across the expanded footprint. Current Lit Fibre customers have been assured that the quality of their broadband services will remain unaffected throughout the integration process.  

Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. 

“We’re delighted to have concluded our acquisition,” said Greg Mesch, CEO at CityFibre. “This is a great opportunity for us to hone our integration capabilities as acquisition becomes an increasing accelerant to our 8m plan.” 

The acquisition is the first of several similar expansions that CityFibre anticipates over the next two years. Alongside its ongoing fibre rollout, the company has chosen to pursue the acquisition of altnets to expand its footprint, aiming to become the UK’s third digital infrastructure platform.  

Currently, the company has passed 3.6 million homes, and is on track to connect another million this year. 

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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

Indigo, a leading provider of engineering and support services for subsea cabling, welcomes EU recommendations for member states to map submarine infrastructure and to assess risks and vulnerabilities as part of a drive to make subsea cables more secure and resilient.

The Commission Recommendation, published in February 2024, is concerned that networks and services are “a prime target for cyberattacks”, something that Indigo has been addressing for some time in partnership with hyperscale subsea infrastructure providers. 

A number of initiatives have already advanced Indigo’s capabilities, including the appointment of William Rendle as Head of Information Security. Rendle’s previous experiences include directing technology GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance), digitisation, cyber and information security change programmes within highly regulated environments globally

Ian Duggan, CEO of Indigo, said, “William brings two decades of experience in technology risk management and delivery to Indigo as we look to build on our leadership position as a network support and security provider. His skills will be particularly relevant for our continued growth in the US and in the subsea market, where cybersecurity is a priority for the hyperscale tech companies we support.”

William Rendle commented, “I’m looking forward to further developing Indigo’s cybersecurity capabilities, building on the great work of a team that has security embedded in its culture.”

Since entering the subsea support market in 2021, Indigo has opened a second Network Operations Centre(NOC) in the States, emulating the original NOC in South Wales in being ‘security aware’, providing clients with a combination of fault and threat identification capabilities.

Duggan said about the strategy, “A modern NOC must be able to cross-reference data when tracking an incident and ascertain if there are any security implications. It is increasingly important that network monitoring capabilities can identify early indicators of a cyberattack.”

Aware that service providers themselves are a potential target for cyber criminals, Indigo has narrowed its own threat surface by ensuring full ownership of all connectivity around its remote monitoring service. Its carrier-grade IP-based Data Communication Network (DCN) has advanced security features for high availability and redundancy. The Indigo NOC teams have a forensic level of understanding of the equipment they use, which is always procured as new, direct from the factory.

A Salesforce-driven system is key to the model, integrating APIs from multiple vendor platforms to capture all events and alerts through a single pane of glass for lightning-fast incident management. At the same time, the Salesforce system is gathering incident data for root cause and trend analysis to inform a more proactive approach to security and maintenance. Indigo ensures its team’s processes conform to  international critical infrastructure requirements by meeting stringent NIST, ISO 27001 and NSA standards.

Eurasian focused network operator RETN, which proclaims itself to be the UK’s number one IP transit provider, has today announced that they’ve expanded their fibre connectivity to Manchester, which they say will bring “lightning-fast, secure, and high-availability internet to ISPs and enterprises in the city“.

The operator has recently made a series of investments into its international backbone, with network deployments in Western, Northern and Central Europe and Asia. The latest development reflects its expansion into two major sites in Manchester – including new Points of Presence (PoPs) in the Equinix and Datum (formerly Teledata) data centres.

As a result, RETN’s updated connectivity ring will better link Manchester with existing networks in London, Slough, Dublin, mainland Europe via the Paris Crosslake subsea cable (a low-latency route opened recently), London-Amsterdam, and London-USA etc. All of this will offer businesses both domestic and international access to their global internet backbone, which stretches as far as Beijing.

Chris Elliott, UK Commercial Director at RETN, said:

“Manchester’s status as a key digital hub aligns with RETN’s mission to improve communication and connectivity, underpinned by our core principles of transparency, flexibility, agility, and responsiveness. By expanding our services in this dynamic city, we’re dedicated to offering secure, private, and reliable connectivity solutions that empower both local and international communities, driving growth and innovation in every market we serve.”

Services offered include Layer 3 IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) and Layer 2 VPN Ethernet Services, to provide redundant access to RETN’s 870+ points of presence across Europe and Asia.

Mobile network operators can now deploy 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) connectivity across more stations and tube lines on the London Underground, which comes after the ongoing network roll-out was extended to include Paddington, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Woolwich on the Elizabeth line.

Just to recap. Boldyn Networks (formerly BAI), using kit from Nokia, currently holds a 20-year concession deal with Transport for London (TfL), which was signed in June 2021 (here) and allows them to build the new 4G infrastructure. This can then be made available via wholesale for Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to harness. The goal of this roll-out is to cover the entire London Underground by late 2024 (ticket halls, platforms and tunnels).

Currently, around 31 out of 121 Tube stations with platforms that are underground, and therefore usually unable to get a mobile signal, as well as connecting tunnels, now have 4G mobile coverage. This is around 25% of stations which are underground, and when combined with Tube stations which are above ground, means that more than two thirds of all stations on the Tube network now have mobile coverage available.

Around 500 people are working overnight across the Tube network to install the new mobile equipment, with all works needed to be tidied away before the network opens for customers every morning. Once fully delivered, more than 2,000 kilometres of fibre optic cabling, as well as thousands of radios (base stations, small cells etc.), are expected to be installed within tunnels and stations – fitted outside of operational hours.

London Underground Stations with 4G Availability

➤ Central line – Holland Park, Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus (Central line only), Tottenham Court Road, Holborn (Central line only), Chancery Lane, St Pauls

➤ Northern line – Belsize Park, Chalk Farm, Archway, Tufnell Park, Kentish Town (station closed from 26 June 2023 due to engineering works, but 4G will still be provided to platforms for passing trains), Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, Euston (Charing Cross Branch), Warren Street (Northern line only), Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road

➤ Elizabeth line – Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street (Elizabeth line only), Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Woolwich

➤ Jubilee line – Westminster, Waterloo (Jubilee line only) Southwark, London Bridge (Jubilee line only), Bermondsey, Canada Water, Canary Wharf, North Greenwich

➤ Piccadilly line – Covent Garden

Next month, coverage will also begin on the Bakerloo line. The southern end of the Northern line from Stockwell to Morden will also start to get mobile coverage shortly, with 4G and 5G coverage due to become available at Clapham Common station next week, and further tunnels and stations going live during the summer.

Shashi Verma, CTO of TfL, said:

“It’s great to see that all Elizabeth line stations, and even more Tube stations, now have high-quality mobile coverage for the first time. This programme is gathering pace and we are working hard to bring the benefits of being able to stay in contact while travelling through our city as quickly as possible.”

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:

“This is yet another step towards ensuring Londoners and visitors can stay connected on our transport network. I promised that customers would be able to access high-speed mobile coverage at all stations and in tunnels, and I’m pleased to see how quickly the team are moving to enable 4G and 5G connectivity.

Now, customers can access the latest travel information, keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family, use social media and stream music at every station along the Elizabeth line. This is just one of the many ways we are supporting Londoners as we build a better, fairer and more prosperous London for everyone.”

The progress means that a significant proportion of the entire Tube network (around 80% of stations across the network), as well as the entire Elizabeth line, remain on track to have mobile coverage by the end of 2024.

News

The wildfires damaged communication infrastructure on May 10, disrupting access to emergency services

Last week, ongoing wildfires in Canada’s Yukon territory severed critical fibre lines, leaving customers in parts of the Yukon, British Columbia, and the Northwestern Territories leaving customers unable to communicate or access emergency services.

Two separate fires damaged cables operated by local telco Northwestel simultaneously, leaving customers without access to mobile, internet, or telephony services.

“This really was a bit of a perfect storm,” said Northwestel’s vice-president of customer experience Tammy April to Global News.

“We had two fires that really went from no fire to incredible blaze within a matter of hours of each other. So we had our east-west (fibre) route fail late afternoon on Friday, and it was within about five hours that we had our north-south route fail.”

To make matters worse, satellite phones – usually a reliable backup to terrestrial networks fail – were also experiencing disruption. April ascribed this disruption to electromagnetic interference resulting from the recent solar storm.

Repairs to the infrastructure have been underway since the weekend, with services already restored in most affected regions.

“We are closely monitoring the active wildfires near critical infrastructure and want to advise the public that conditions can change quickly and services could become impacted,” said Northwestel in a statement.

Natural disasters knocking communications infrastructure offline is a relatively commonplace occurrence worldwide, with telcos adopting various strategies to quickly reestablish communications in the region, from erecting temporary mobile towers to shifting traffic to satellites.

Wildfires of the scale seen in Canada, however, represent a unique challenge, since telcos and their engineers often cannot access the critical locations for days at a time. As a result, telcos are largely reliant on building resiliency into their networks by adding multiple routes for traffic, making it unlikely that areas will be entirely cut off from the network.

As this weekend shows, however, sometimes these measures alone are not enough.

“With wildfires burning sooner, and hotter and more unpredictably, with floods sometime impacting our communications infrastructure as well, it’s so important to be prepared for anything,” said Julia Duchesne, the Yukon’s emergency coordination centre information officer.

Keep up with all the latest telecoms news from around the world with Total Telecom’s 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

Broadband, TV, digital phone and mobile provider Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) look set to expand their existing multi-platform streaming services, which appears set to include a new range of streaming, gaming, health, lifestyle and security services for UK customers.

Virgin Media’s customers can already access a variety of streaming services and features via their existing TV products and platforms, such as Virgin TV 360 and their newest STREAM box. But a new deal with Israeli software company Amdocs will enable VMO2 to deliver an enhanced range of end-to-end digital services, which customers will be able to “seamlessly” manage via a single streaming subscription on their TV, mobile or PC.

The details are currently quite limited, although there’s talk of the collaboration helping to expand VMO2’s offerings to “include new streaming, gaming, health, lifestyle and security services following a rapid, standardized approach.” The focus seems to be on streaming, although the mention of “security services” would appear to indicate that this goes beyond merely TV and video solutions.

David Bouchier, VMO2’s Chief TV and Entertainment Officer, said:

“We’re always looking to enhance our customers’ experience and meet their evolving needs. By broadening our offering with new sources of entertainment across mobile, broadband and TV, our customers will be able to manage their subscriptions and unlock new digital services all in one, convenient place.”

By the sounds of things, Virgin Media will be specifically aiming to integrate Amdocs cloud-native Subscription Marketplace (software as a service – SaaS) solution, which is described as being a scalable platform that enables a frictionless OTT (Over The Air) and digital consumer services experience and monetization.

Hopefully this works out a bit smoother than Virgin Media’s prior Netflix integration, which caused a variety of phantom billing problems (here). Naturally, there’s a promotional video for this new platform, which offers a bit more insight into what it might look like, even if it is steeped in the usual hyper promotional marketing spin:

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of the same parentage as Virgin Media UK (VMO2), has announced that they expect to cover 40,000 premises across Durham during 2024 with their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network – most of which (over 30,000 premises) will be in the Sedgefield constituency.

The company has already covered 1 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises (on top of their existing footprint).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally setup the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

The latest move into Sedgefield makes sense as Virgin Media doesn’t currently have any presence in the town. The investment will also move into other areas of Newton Aycliffe including, Trimdon, Trimdon Grange, Fishburn, Chilton, Ferryhill and Cornforth.

Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre, said:

“We are committed to delivering high quality full-fibre connectivity to communities and business across the UK, including in Sedgefield and the wider county of Durham. By boosting access to broadband, we are enabling access to the tools needed to participate and thrive in a modern, digital society and stoking growth in the local economy.”

Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield (Pictured), said:

“The investment nexfibre is making in Newton Aycliffe, Trimdon, Trimdon Grange, Fishburn, Sedgefield, Chilton, Ferryhill, and Cornforth will create jobs, drive economic growth and help provide better services for people locally. This Conservative government has made boosting access to fibre broadband a priority and we are delivering that for local people and communities here in the North East and across the country.

I welcome the work nexfibre is doing to increase access to quality broadband and provide the national scale competition that will drive the innovation and progress the UK needs in the fibre market.”

Now if they could just add some other ISPs to nexfibre’s network, ideally ones with products that aren’t restricted to mirroring Virgin Media’s pricing. A truly independent wholesale network must be able to offer products that are both fair and competitive for other internet providers.

Gigabit broadband builder CityFibre has today announced the completion of their recent share-based acquisition deal for alternative network provider and UK ISP Lit Fibre (here), which adds another 220,000 premises to their existing full fibre coverage (i.e. a predicted total of c.3.8 million or c.3.5m RFS) – rising to 300k once existing builds complete in 2025.

At present CityFibre’s wider ambition remains to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK subsidy) – or around 30% of the UK (here), although it’s unclear precisely when that will now be achieved (it was originally a goal for the end of 2025). But as previously reported, the operator is currently also aspiring to add up to another 1.5-3 million premises through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the next couple of years, with Lit Fibre being one of their first targets.

CityFibre typically sells packages via various broadband ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen Internet etc.) and will now, as a result of the Lit Fibre deal (estimated to be valued at around £80m), also be able to cater for premises across 20 towns in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Essex and Suffolk.

CityFibre now intends to complete Lit’s work-in-progress deployment, as well as the majority of its planned network rollouts. In total, the network is expected to reach up to 300,000 premises by “early” 2025, which will then be added to CityFibre’s total coverage footprint.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:

“We’re delighted to have concluded our acquisition and we’d like to welcome everyone at Lit to the CityFibre team. We’re also pleased to welcome Newlight Partners, with their deep understanding of the fibre infrastructure market, as our newest CityFibre shareholders.

“We’ve already been working hard with the great team at Lit to ensure that its network is integrated quickly as our partners are excited to begin marketing over the new footprint. This is a great opportunity for us to hone our integration capabilities as acquisition becomes an increasing accelerant to our 8m plan.”

Joshua Ho-Walker, Partner at Newlight Partners, said:

“We are excited to be CityFibre’s newest shareholder and we look forward to helping bring CityFibre’s market-leading, full-fibre platform to 8m homes in the UK. This acquisition is important recognition for the high-quality business that Lit Fibre built and we are grateful for the Lit Fibre team’s hard work and dedication over the past few years.”

The remaining challenge is in the issue of separating Lit Fibre’s retail ISP business (10,000 customers) from their network side (vertical integration), since CityFibre is normally a wholesale-only provider and won’t want to be competing with their existing retail partners. But for now, Lit Fibre’s brand will be retained, although CityFibre have said that they will “explore options for the retail ISP following the integration of the network.”

Fully integrating Lit Fibre’s network into CityFibre’s is expected to take about 6 months, and officially they probably won’t be able to count this as part of their total coverage until this phase completes. But after that it’s plausible that we may see some divestment of Lit Fibre’s customer base or retail brand to a new owner on the same network.

Newlight Partners has also become a minority shareholder in CityFibre, where they will join major shareholders such as Antin Infrastructure Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mubadala Investment Company and Interogo Holding.

Several thousand of 1p Mobile’s customers in the UK are currently suffering from network connectivity problems, which appears to have started yesterday morning and remains ongoing today. At the same time, the operator’s website reports that they’re also having “issues with our customer service telephone system” (probably due to high demand).

The issue initially only affected a small portion of 1p Mobile’s customer base, hence why we didn’t cover this yesterday. But we’ve observed that this seems to have increased over the past 24 hours, and our inbox has been getting quite a few gripes about it, including from many customers who are frustrated at 1p’s lack of updates (or any semblance of a service status page).

According to the complaints, customer affected by the issue have been finding that the network’s data (mobile broadband), calling and text (SMS) connectivity hasn’t been working since yesterday morning. The only indication we could find about this on 1p Mobile’s website was on their contact page, which didn’t address the issue itself and highlighted how their support lines aren’t working correctly.

“We are currently experiencing issues with our customer service telephone system and some calls are not connecting correctly or are being cut-off mid call. We apologies for any inconvenience caused and our phone engineers are working on the issue currently,” states 1p’s contact page.

However, after a bit of digging, we also found this support post buried in a customer reply on X (here): “The issue has been linked with the renewal of Boosts, top-ups and account changes that have been applied since the morning of the 12th of May.” Given that the provider works by monthly top-ups, rather than direct debits, this could help to explain why the complaints seem to be growing with each passing day.

What’s not so clear is why 1p Mobile aren’t currently able to highlight the issue with a proper service status update, which is particularly relevant given the state of their support lines. Sadly, we don’t have a press contact for 1p Mobile and couldn’t find one on their website.

Future wireless broadband and home networks, using technologies such as 6G or WiFi in the higher frequency mmW and sub-TeraHertz (THz) bands (i.e. between around 24GHz and 300GHz), could be set for a significant speed boost after researchers discovered a way to curve light beams around objects.

The 6G standard is currently still in the early R&D phase, and the first commercial builds aren’t due until around 2028/30. But it is roughly aiming for theoretical peak data rates of up to 1Tbps (Terabits per second) – or 1000Gbps if you prefer – and may be able to harness radio spectrum up to the TeraHertz (THz) bands, while also using AI optimisations, new antenna designs and other changes to improve network efficiency.

At present, most mobile networks tend to work within the lower and mid-frequency mobile bands, such as between 700MHz and 3.8GHz, which enables their signals to travel further (more cost-effective). But this sacrifices some data speed due to limitations on the available spectrum amounts. One way around that is to push mobile and WiFi networks to harness much higher frequency bands, where there’s plenty of extra spectrum frequency.

The problem is that much higher mobile frequencies, like the 24-60GHz range for 5G (Ofcom has yet to auction off any of this in the UK for mobile) or 100GHz+ (THz) for future 6G networks, make for extremely weak signals that don’t travel very far and are very easily disrupted (i.e. weather, buildings, trees and device choice etc. all impact signal quality).

Consequently, mobile operators typically only deploy such solutions within the busiest urban areas (e.g. shopping centres) or for fixed-wireless links (e.g. to served individual homes/businesses), but even this would be a challenge once we get into the extremely challenging THz bands.

A New Approach

One possible solution to the aforementioned problem may now have come from a team of researchers at Brown University and Rice University in the USA, which published a report in Nature that, in simple terms, found a way of “curving” light beams mid-air to help them get around physical obstacles (e.g. buildings) – reducing the need for a line-of-sight connection.

Light in the THz band normally prefers to travel in straight lines, unless warped by the curvature of spacetime (e.g. around the edges of stars or black holes), but the team found a rather more accessible approach to achieve a similar sort of outcome.

Extract from the Research Paper

A key challenge in millimetre-wave and terahertz wireless networks is blockage of the line-of-sight path between a base station and a user. User and environmental mobility can lead to blockage of highly directional beams by intervening people or objects, yielding link disruptions and poor quality of service. Here, we propose a solution to this problem which leverages the fact that, in such scenarios, users are likely to be located within the electromagnetic near field of the base station, which opens the possibility to engineer wave fronts for link maintenance.

We show that curved beams, carrying data at high bit rates, can realize a link by curving around an intervening obstacle. We develop a model to analyse and experimentally evaluate the bandwidth limitations imposed by the use of self-accelerating beams. We also demonstrate that such links employ the full aperture of the transmitter, even those portions which have no direct line of sight to the receiver, emphasizing that ray optics fails to capture the behaviour of these near-field wave fronts.

This approach, which is ideally suited for use at millimetre-wave and terahertz frequencies, opens vast new possibilities for wave front management in directional wireless networks.

In the study, the team introduce the concept of self-accelerating beams. The beams are special configurations of electromagnetic waves that naturally bend or curve to one side as they move through space. The beams have been studied at optical frequencies but are now explored for terahertz communication. So, the actual photons still travel in a straight line, but the THz signal effectively bends around the object.

Fig. 5: Communicating around a semi-infinite obstacle

Naturally, there are some caveats with this, such as the fact that you’re going to suffer a fair bit of performance loss for receivers positioned behind the object. Not to mention that the lab test was conducted over very short distances inside a single room, while 6G signals in the wild would need to go much further. At present, the team still hasn’t fully quantified how much it will be possible to curve a signal and how far away it will work.

“Curving a beam doesn’t solve all possible blockage problems, but what it does is solve some of them and it solves them in a way that’s better than what others have tried,” said Hichem Guerboukha, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and is now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.

The development follows shortly after a separate team of Japanese researchers demonstrated a prototype 6G technology reaching a mobile broadband speed of 100Gbps (Gigabits per second) over a distance of 328 feet or 100 meters (here). The indoor test harnessed spectrum in the 100GHz band, while the outdoor test used the 300GHz band. The distance is impressive, given the bands being harnessed.

A different team of scientists in Japan similarly demonstrated (here) 6G speeds of up to 240Gbps, albeit over a shorter distance of only 66 feet (20 metres) – using 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (64QAM) at a single carrier frequency of 275GHz. We should point out that 6G, much like 4G and 5G before it, will also be able to harness all the existing mobile bands – at lower or mid-band frequencies.

As a side note, Ofcom are due to auction off their first 26GHz and 40GHz bands for mobile network operators in the near future (here), although the exact timeline remains somewhat dependent upon the outcome of Three UK and Vodafone’s proposed mega-merger. This is because that deal, if approved, would change the competitive landscape of UK spectrum ownership and thus needs to be settled before any auction can proceed (estimated for late 2024 or early 2025).