Oxfordshire-based alternative UK broadband network and ISP Zzoomm, which have built their 2Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 190,000 premises (RFS) in England, has revealed that their network has already achieved a take-up rate of 10% in the South Yorkshire town of Penistone – after only going live in March 2024.

The operator, which is being fuelled by an equity investment of £100m from Oaktree Capital (here) and a £100m debt facility via an international banking consortium (here), has typically focused their roll-out on smaller towns in parts Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. But their deployment has recently suffered from a slow-down and job cuts (here and here).

The deployment in Penistone, which has a population of around 25,000, is a fairly recent development and the main reason for the strong take-up can be at least partly attributed to the fact that Zzoomm are likely to be the only gigabit-capable broadband provider available (Openreach only has a tiny bit of FTTP).

On the other hand, it’s currently unclear how much of the town Zzoomm actually covers, although the operator does indicate that the “majority of the build” is now complete (not clear if this covers the “majority” of the town). We should add that Northern Fibre, FullFibre Ltd and Quickline are also known to have plans for parts of the Penistone town or surrounding areas.

Chris Collinson, Chief Commercial Officer at Zzoomm, said:

“We’re excited to see such a significant number of Penistone residents joining Zzoomm in just the few weeks since completing the majority of the build. It’s evident that the residents and businesses of Penistone recognise the advantages of gigafast broadband and are embracing our investment in cutting-edge Full Fibre technology.”

We’re thrilled to foster innovation by providing access to our gigafast Full Fibre network to homes and businesses in Penistone. At Zzoomm, we firmly believe in ensuring that everyone has access to dependable, forward-thinking broadband services.”

Customers who take their residential service typically pay from £29.95 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package on a 12-month term with an included router, which goes up to £54.95 (normally £64.95) if you want their top 2Gbps tier. The ISP is also offering a £100 Amazon gift card to new customers on some plans.

News 

The scheme will allow enterprise customers to trial its underwater data centres before purchasing 

Underwater data centre provider Subsea Cloud (SSC), has announced the launch of ‘Project OTTO’, allowing users the opportunity to trial its solutions before making a permanent commitment. 

The US-based company constructs, deploys, and maintains subsea data centres, which can be deployed at depths of up to 9,500ft. It aims to create clean and scalable cloud infrastructure that can “out-compete rigid and expensive land-based centres” and claims its data centres offer unparalleled physical security compared to land-based ones. 

Data require costly and extensive cooling to ensure they are running at maximum efficiency. This is often achieved through liquid cooling, using water and/or other dielectric fluids to keep hardware cool. By placing the data centres themselves underwater, cool water becomes readily available at all times, dramatically reducing the amount of power used to facilitate the liquid cooling process.  

Additionally, underwater data centres are secure from security threats or natural disasters. 

According to SSC, submerged data centre technology could be a viable solution around the world, with more than half of the world’s population living within 120 miles of the coast. 

SSC has conducted individual trials with clients across various sectors over the last three years, but notes that this process can be prohibitively expensive. As a result, Project OTTO has been launched to enable companies to trial the technology without the need for costly individual deployments. 

“Project OTTO offers a testing platform for companies seeking power and cost reductions, but that remain unfamiliar with the subsea environment,” explained Max Reynolds, the company’s founder and CEO. 

“This project is driven by practical and mutual benefits. It eliminates the opportunity costs and the financial burden associated with the previous one-on-one approach for us and our clients,” she continued. 

Trial participants will receive 30-90 days of testing time in the unit before committing to larger-scale deployments.  

The anticipated benefits of the project are significant power and cost savings. Clients can expect to experience a 100% reduction in water usage and power consumed for cooling, a 40% decrease in carbon emissions, and a 30% reduction in operational costs. 

In addition to its focus on operational efficiency, SSC is actively pursuing opportunities with offshore wind farms as part of its commitment to sustainability. 

“By collocating with offshore wind farms, we not only mitigate challenges related to power transmission attenuation but also enhance the value proposition of aging European offshore wind portfolios,” explained SCC partner Peter Stensgård Hansen. 

Join us at this year’s Submarine Networks EMEA, 29-30 May in London. Get your tickets here! 

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Network operator Freedom Fibre, which has so far built a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 300,000 UK premises (27th Mar 2024) – mostly in the North West of England, has distributed litter picking kits across North Shropshire to both help keep the region tidy and support their social commitment under last year’s Project Gigabit contract.

In case anybody has forgotten, during May 2023 the company announced that it had secured a £24m state-aid supported Project Gigabit contract to expand their FTTP network to cover 12,000 of the hardest to reach (rural) premises in North Shropshire (England) by around the end of 2026. In addition to this, Freedom Fibre will extend its network to a further c.50,000 premises in the same county via commercial investment.

The build phase recently began and the first properties – in locations such as Cockshutt, Hinstock, High Ercall, Bomere Heath, Hadnall, Cheswardine and Clive – aren’t expected to start going live on the new network until around October 2024. But as part of the operator’s related social value commitments, they’ve now started handing out litter pick kits across North Shropshire.

Every parish in North Shropshire has been invited to apply for a kit, consisting of litter pickers, bin bags and hoop-holders, gloves and ‘Keep Shropshire Tidy’ high-visibility jackets. But it’s unclear precisely how many such kits have been set aside for this.

Marie Danby, Freedom Fibre’s Customer Operations Director, said:

“As we roll-out our full-fibre broadband network across North Shropshire, it is important to us that we invest in and support the communities where we are operating. We’re so happy to distribute these litter pick kit, and we hope that local groups will make good use of them.”

Press Release 

London, UK – Submarine Networks EMEA, the region’s most important subsea connectivity event, is returning to London’s Business Design Centre on 28–29 May. 

Hosted by communications media and events specialist Total Telecom, this year’s event will bring together over 1,000 senior leaders from the global subsea market for two jam-packed days of learning, collaboration, and exclusive networking opportunities. 

The submarine cable industry represents the backbone of the global digital economy and plays an integral role in keeping communities and businesses around the globe connected. Submarine Networks EMEA will feature updates on cable projects from across the region and beyond, including North America and Latin America. 

This year’s event will feature 120 speakers discussing nine carefully selected themes designed to address the current challenges and opportunities within the subsea connectivity arena: 

Commercial Strategy 
Sustainability 
Market Dynamics 
Data Centres 
Technology Innovations 
Security 
The Future of Subsea 
Installation, Maintenance, and Operations 
Regulation 

“As we continue to navigate through a rapidly changing world, the importance of robust, secure, and sustainable subsea connectivity has never been more prominent,” said Rob Chambers, Managing Director of Total Telecom. 

“Submarine Networks EMEA serves as a pivotal gathering point for leading professionals to explore new ideas, share valuable insights, and forge connections that will shape the future of our industry,” he continued. 

Submarine Networks EMEA will also feature a pre-event masterclass, hosted by senior industry experts from Ciena. Covering the exciting topic of the impact of AI on subsea networks, guests will be treated to an afternoon of industry insights, followed by an exclusive evening drinks reception. 

For more information, or to register to attend the event, click here. Please note that you must be registered to attend the main conference to attend the pre-event masterclass. Apply to register here. 

—- 

About Total Telecom
Since 1997, Total Telecom has provided the connection between the buyers and sellers in the global telecom market. We do this through high quality editorial content and events to facilitate discussion on industry issues, and recognise innovation and excellence by companies and individuals.   

Our community of 120,000+ telecom professionals rely on Total Telecom for daily news and regular in-depth insight, delivered through a number of channels including online, video, social media, and at our series of events.  

Our award-winning event portfolio includes, Broadband Communities Summit, the World Communication Awards, Connected North, Connected Germany, and the UK’s largest connectivity event Connected Britain.    

A recent Freedom of Information Request (FoIR) filed by Broadband Genie has revealed that complaints to Ofcom about UK telecoms providers (broadband, mobile etc.) increased by 37% last year to 34,000. In response, the comparison site has published a new survey of customer service, which sees YouFibre, Trooli and Zen Internet top the table.

Consumers typically send their complaints about internet service and phone providers to different places, such as the provider itself, Ofcom, the ISPA or any one of two independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) complaints handlers (i.e. Communications Ombudsman or CISAS).

Ofcom does not typically investigate individual complaints themselves (they normally leave that up to ISPs and the ADR process), but they can use the feedback to help identify wider problems, which may result in larger investigations and possible penalties. For example, the regulator is currently investigating Virgin Media over digital phone migrations (here) and problems with service cancellations (here).

In response to this rise in complaints, the comparison site has today published new research that examines customer care in the broadband industry and ranks providers by their quality of customer service, among other things. But it’s worth noting that the results were based on a fairly small survey of 2,662 broadband bill payers – collected from 28th September 2023 – 8th February 2024.

Nevertheless, the top providers for customer service quality were found to be YouFibre (95%), Trooli (94%) and Zen Internet (89%). By comparison, the worst three providers were named as Onestream (48%), Airband (55%) and Shell Energy (58%). In terms of just the biggest four – BT ranked 11th (70%), Sky Broadband tied with BT’s score, TalkTalk ranked 16th (66%) and Virgin Media was way down in 22nd position (59%).

Survey of Customer Service Quality

1. YouFibre (95%)

2. Trooli (94%)

3. Zen Internet (89%)

4. toob (84%)

5. Plusnet (82%)

6. True Speed (81%)

7. Three (79%)

8. Community Fibre (76%)

9. NOW Broadband (71%)

10. Utility Warehouse (70%)

11. BT (70%)

12. Sky (70%)

13. Lit Fibre (69%)

14. Gigaclear (69%)

15. EE (68%)

16. TalkTalk (66%)

17. KCOM (65%)

18. Vodafone (64%)

19. BRSK (64%)

20. Hyperoptic (62%)

21. SSE (62%)

22. Virgin Media (59%)

23. WeFibre (58%)

24. Shell Energy Broadband (58%)

25. Airband (55%)

26. Onestream (48%)

Broadband, mobile and TV giant Virgin Media O2 has this morning revealed that they reduced their carbon emissions by 23% last year (or 45% since its baseline in 2020). At the same time, they also increased their fleet of Electric Vehicles (EV) to 281 – edging them toward their target to transition to a fully EV fleet by 2030 (c. 4,300 vehicles).

The figures were released as part of VMO2’s update to their sustainability strategy (Better Connections Plan), which among other things aims to achieve Net Zero Carbon (i.e. removing as many emissions as they produce) across their operations, products and supply chain by 2040 – some 10 years ahead of the UK’s goal.

In addition, the company has supported consumers to carry out 4.7 million ‘circular actions’ (e.g. recycling old tech or buying refurbished smartphones), against its 10 million goal by the end of 2025, and the O2 Recycle scheme saw almost 250,000 devices saved from landfill last year.

The operator also claims to have helped improve the digital skills of 2 million people in 2023 and is on track to reach 6 million by 2025. Elsewhere, the National Databank has provided a total of 41,933 O2 SIM cards and 188,149 of O2 data (mobile broadband) vouchers since launch. The company’s workers have also supported more than 100,000 people across the country with their five annual paid volunteering days.

In addition, VMO2 said they’ve removed 65 tonnes of single-use plastic since 2021, while also adding that 11 million routers and set-top boxes have now been refurbished and reused since 2014.

Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media O2, said:

“Our Better Connections Plan makes clear that we are a business that aims to deliver for our customers, for our communities and for our planet, and we made further strong progress across the board last year.

We are on track to meet our targets to cut Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 60% by 2025 and deliver net zero carbon by 2040. We are supporting decarbonisation through the products and services we provide, encouraging circular actions among consumers, cutting our own use of plastic, and stepping up to support the communities we serve through initiatives designed to boost skills, tackle digital exclusion and provide free data and devices to those in need.

As a major UK business, we’re committed to reducing our environmental impact as we continue to provide fast and reliable connectivity to our millions of customers.”

Finally, it’s noted that the take-up of social broadband tariffs – Essential Broadband and Essential Broadband Plus – increased by 285% last year, although that will be starting from a fairly low base given how relatively young they are.

New customers and those migrating from BT, who may be looking to upgrade to broadband ISP EE’s top 1.6Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) plans, may sadly have to keep waiting until later this year. But only if they also intend on bundling it in with the provider’s Pay TV products.

In case anybody has forgotten, EE became the first UK ISP to launch (here) a package based off Openreach’s new 1.8Gbps FTTP tier last year (advertised at an average speed of 1.6Gbps). The move was part of BT’s effort to turn EE into their “flagship brand” for consumer customers, which has so far also meant that existing customers of BT’s own service remain limited to a top speed of c.900Mbps.

The introduction of EE’s new package initially came with some caveats when it was first launched and thus felt a bit more like a beta product, which was quite apt given that Openreach’s underlying products were also still in testing at the time and that only changed on 1st April 2024 (here and here). One of those early caveats was the fact that EE couldn’t bundle their pay TV product with the 1.6Gbps package.

The issue recently came to the fore again after some of ISPreview’s BT using readers contacted us to complain that they still couldn’t switch their broadband and TV bundle to EE’s top 1.6Gbps package. ISPreview queried this with EE and the provider confirmed that EE TV is currently only available with their Full Fibre plans up to download speeds of 900Mbps.

The provider did confirm that they do aim to introduce 1.6Gbps plans with EE TV, but sadly not until later this year sometime. Quite why this is proving to be such a problem remains unclear, particularly since EE’s TV box only needs a fraction of the 1.6Gbps package’s top speed to function at its best. But it could possibly be related to their plans for a new Wi-Fi 7 capable router, which is also due to launch later in 2024 (here).

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has formally served a statutory information request to check up on UK ISPs and progress in the One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which is responsible for implementing the regulator’s heavily delayed One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for faster consumer broadband ISP switching.

The new approach expands the existing Gaining Provider Led (GPL) migration system to work across alternative networks (the old system was mostly only focused on Openreach based providers) and to action switches within just 1 day instead of 10 days “where technically possible“. But that has required masses of internet providers to work together, and the development process has been a bit rocky.

TOTSCo are currently aiming for the new OTS system to go live on 12th September 2024 (here), which is over a year past its original launch date of April 2023. Ofcom have naturally made no secret of their frustration with the delays and previously singled out BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media (VMO2) for not being able to complete the necessary testing and trials in a timely fashion (here).

Suffice to say that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that the regulator has now served a statutory information request upon TOTSCo, which requires them to provide specified information pursuant to section 135 of the Communications Act 2003.

The exact details of this notice are confidential, but it is known that it “requires TOTSCo to provide Ofcom with information on the progress of [OTS] implementation, including measures of individual and aggregate [Communication Provider] activity in both the test and live hub environments” (i.e. roughly, how much progress is being made and who is playing catch-up).

The CEO of TOTSCo, Paul Bradbury, briefly acknowledged that the notice had been received during Friday’s blog post (here), while also highlighting a “significant milestone” after their “Industry Trial participants … successfully executed the first end-to-end One Touch Switches in the live environment. This achievement marks a crucial step forward in validating the OTS process as we prepare for go-live on 12 September.”

Spotlight Series

In a rapidly evolving technological landscape, it’s crucial for local authorities to pivot from a technology-centric approach to one that prioritises outcomes.

This was the central theme of a discussion panel that I chaired at the Connected North conference in April 2024, where the panel underscored the need for technology to serve as a tool to achieve specific, community-oriented goals rather than being an end in itself.

News

The move marks Oracle second cloud region in Italy, aiming to meet the rapid growth in demand for cloud computing services

This week, cloud giant Oracle has announced a new deal with TIM Enterprise, the B2B unit of Italian incumbent operator Telecom Italia (TIM), to form a cloud region centred around TIM’s data centre in Turin.

The Oracle Cloud Turin Region will see private companies and public sector bodies access to a wide variety of cloud services, as well as leveraging big data, analytics, and AI.

Apps being made available to customers include Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.

In addition to hosting Oracle’s cloud infrastructure (OCI) for third party usage, TIM Enterprise will also incorporate OCI into its own operations, migrating some of the Group’s internal applications to the cloud.

“We are pleased to be working with Italy’s leading telecommunications provider to bring OCI to public and private sector organizations and support their migration to the cloud,” said Richard Smith, Oracle’s EVP and general manage of EMEA cloud infrastructure. “By adding OCI to its robust cloud service offerings, TIM Enterprise will be able to provide a cloud platform used by customers all over the world to run their most mission-critical workloads in the cloud.”

He continued: “With the upcoming second cloud region in Italy, we are reaffirming our commitment to helping Italian organizations of all sizes and industries accelerate the adoption of AI and other innovative technologies.”

Specific timelines related to deployment have not been announced.

This is the second cloud region Oracle has opened in Italy, having launched its first Milan back in 2021.

The data centre industry is seeing an enormous surge of investment in recent months, driven largely by the hype surrounding data-hungry generative AI technology. Just yesterday, Microsoft signed a new deal with Brookfield Asset Management, estimated to be worth around $10 billion, for the procurement of 10.5 gigawatts of renewable energy to power their rapidly expanding data centre presence around the world.

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Also in the news:
T-Mobile and EQT form JV to buy Lumos
Korean Air shows off comprehensive urban air mobility system backed by 5G
Virgin Media O2 reaches plastic waste milestone