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Nexfibre is a joint venture created between InfraVia Capital Partners, Liberty Global, and Telefonica 

This week, fibre network operator nexfibre has announced the appointment of its new Chief Executive Officer, Rajiv Datta. 

Datta, who has over 25 years’ experience in the telecoms and digital infrastructure industries, replaces interim CEO Bernardo Quinn, who will remain as an advisor to the board until the end of the year..  

Datta will assume the role immediately and will oversee nexfibre’s plans to reach five million homes and businesses UK wide by 2026. 

“With a fully-financed plan to invest £4.5 billion and a set of world-class shareholders and partners, nexfibre is incredibly well-positioned to be impactful at a pivotal time in the UK broadband market,” said Rajiv Datta in a press release. 

“The Board and I are delighted that Rajiv is joining the nexfibre team, and we look forward to working with him and our partners at Virgin Media O2 to create a national scale challenger, boosting wholesale competition, driving consumer choice and providing significant value to the UK economy,” said Andrea Salvato, Chairman of nexfibre. 

nexfibre, who is working in partnership with Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) to roll out FTTP to UK premises, has also announced today that the firm have reached 500,000 premises passed.  

Since its formation last year, the majority of VMO2’s fibre rollout has been via nexfibre’s wholesale network. In July of this year, nexfibre had reached 300,000 premises passed, meaning the company has added 175,000 premises in 2023 Q2 alone. 

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Also in the news:
Stonepeak buys minority stake in Cellnex Nordics
Telefonica Germany partners with Skylo for satellite-supported IoT
Sky Mobile network outages linked to removal of Huawei equipment 

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The letter is signed by 20 CEOs from most of Europe’s largest telecoms companies

Today, the GSMA has published an open letter from 20 European telco CEOs calling on EU policymakers to overhaul the regulatory framework and mandate Big Tech companies to help contribute to telco infrastructure costs.

“A revision of spectrum policy, accepting the need for scale to avoid market fragmentation, and a fair and proportionate contribution from the largest traffic generators towards the costs of network infrastructure should form the basis of a new approach,” reads the letter.

The letter argues that data traffic will continue to grow at 20–30% each year, with this increase “primarily driven by just a handful of large tech companies”, but the operators are failing to see a corresponding return on investment from retail customers.

As a result, the telcos are calling on the EU government to introduce a special mechanism by which these big tech companies can contribute their financial “fair share” to the infrastructure they rely on to deliver their services. The parties suggest this mechanism would only target “the very largest traffic generators” and would include “accountability and transparency on contributions received so that operators invest directly into Europe’s digital infrastructure”.

“This measure would rebalance the market power along the value chain, while addressing the current asymmetries: Big tech companies pay today almost nothing for data transport in our networks, far from covering the costs needed to expand networks and achieve the ambitious EU targets. Telecoms providers cannot negotiate adequate prices for data transport; by contrast, some cloud providers today charge their customers up to 80 times as much for the onward transport of data from the cloud,” said the letter, which also noted that the was currently no economic incentive for Big Tech players to reduce unnecessary data traffic.

The 20 signatories of the letter are below:

Thomas Arnoldner, CEO, A1 Telekom Austria Group
Ana Figueiredo, CEO and Chairwoman, Altice Portugal
Edward Bouygues, Chairman, and Benoit Torloting, CEO, Bouygues Telecom
Philip Jansen, Chief Executive, BT Group
Andreas Neocleous, CEO, CYTA
Timotheus Höttges, CEO, Deutsche Telekom
Oliver Loomes, CEO, eir
Christian Salbaing, Deputy Chairman, Hutchison Europe
Mike Fries, CEO, Liberty Global
Joost Farwerck, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Management, KPN
Christel Heydemann, CEO, Orange Group
Guillaume Boutin, CEO, Proximus Group
Sigve Brekke, President and CEO, Telenor Group
Michel Jumeau, CEO, TDC NET
José María Alvarez-Pallete, Chairman and CEO, Telefónica
Kjell Morten Johnsen, President and CEO, Tele2 Group
Allison Kirkby, President and CEO, Telia Company
Pietro Labriola, CEO and General Manager, TIM
Victoriya Boklag, CEO, United Group
Margherita Della Valle, CEO, Vodafone Group

The so-called ‘fair share’ debate has been raging on for many months now, with the European Commission launching a consultation into the matter back in February that is still ongoing.

As outlined in this letter – as well as numerous calls to action spearheaded by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) over the past year –  the operators argument for enforcing a ‘fair share’ contribution is clear enough: network usage is increasing, largely driven by traffic from a small number of major tech companies, and operators will struggle to keep up with demand without subsidies from these companies.

Detractors, however, suggest that this is merely an attempt by the operators to be paid twice for delivering data – once by the sender (e.g., Netflix or Google), and once by the receiver (the end-user of the content).

“It’s no different to the same nonsense they’ve been peddling about the (un)fair-share concept (aka Internet Traffic Tax) for the last year,” explained industry analyst Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis. “It includes the well-established lie / myth of the “large traffic generators”. As many observers – including various European regulators – have pointed out, most traffic is generated by user request, not by a company “sending” a movie or streamed video.”

“The €174 billion investment figure [‘the EU estimated that at least €174 billion of new investment will be needed by 2030 to deliver the connectivity targets’] is also irrelevant – it’s almost entirely about building out network coverage, plus upgrading to FTTH & 5G, not adding incremental capacity. Almost all the investment would still be needed even if resultant data traffic was zero,” he added.

Critics have also suggested that implementing such a tax could infringe on the Net Neutrality principles held by the EU, which ensure that all data traffic is treated equally regardless of content or origin. Today’s open letter does briefly touch upon this topic, noting that any payment mechanism would need to be “implemented in full compliance with Net Neutrality rules”.

Ultimately, this open letter does not really add anything new to the debate that has not already been said. Lobbying on the topic will no doubt continue for many months – perhaps even years – both by those for and against the introduction of such a tax. For now, there appears to be no sign of a conclusion from the European Commission.

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscriber to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here     

Also in the news:
Stonepeak buys minority stake in Cellnex Nordics
Telefonica Germany partners with Skylo for satellite-supported IoT
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The UK Government has today launched two interesting new consultations, including one that is seeking views on a looming review of the legally-binding 10Mbps+ Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband and another that will help better understand how to improve broadband for “Very Hard to Reach” areas. We’ll start with the somewhat maligned USO. The […]

On Day One of this year’s Connected Britain conference, we had the pleasure of speaking with Catherine Colloms, Director of Corporate Affairs and Brand at Openreach, to discuss creating a competitive UK fibre market and the UK’s rollout journey so far.

One of the hottest topics at this year’s Connected Britian conference was altnet consolidation, with rumours of M&A activity beginning to circulate in the broadband market.

For Colloms, the UK’s fibre market is highly competitive and will continue to be so, provided the regulatory environment remains stable and supportive.

“If you think about the way that the economy and the way that we live and work is developing, it all is fundamentally based on connectivity, and as a result, I think the market can grow and grow,” said Colloms.

Collom’s explains that the UK’s  fibre coverage currently stands at around 50%, noting that the rollouts are now progressing to harder-to-reach areas that are supported by projects such as the R100 and Project Gigabit.

“We need certainty and consistency in the regulatory and policy regime to ensure that we can continue to invest,” concluded Catherine.

You can watch the full Connected Britain interview from the link below:

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscriber to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here     

Also in the news:
Stonepeak buys minority stake in Cellnex Nordics
Telefonica Germany partners with Skylo for satellite-supported IoT
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The consolidation train has started to pick up speed today after two UK builders of FTTP based broadband ISP networks – FullFibre Limited (Fibre Heroes) and Digital Infrastructure (BeFibre) – announced their intention to create a single wholesale company and a single wholesale platform, which will be a bigger, more ambitious single entity. Until today […]

Network access provider CityFibre has revealed that its roll-out of a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the city of Glasgow in Scotland, which started in 2021 and is costing c. £270m, is now “expected to reach completion in 2029” (the original goal was to be “substantially completed by 2025“). The operator’s […]

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The UK government has mandated all UK operators to remove Huawei equipment from the core of their networks by the end of this year

Customers of UK mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Sky Mobile have reportedly suffered from signal outages, seemingly leaving some without mobile internet access and others without any signal at all.

According to anonymous sources speaking to The Financial Times, the outages are linked to the removal of Huawei equipment from the core of Sky’s network, a process mandated by the government to be completed this year.

The outages seemingly occurred in May and June this year.

Back in 2020, the UK government made the decision to ban Huawei equipment from the country’s mobile networks, following in the footsteps of the US in arguing that the Chinese equipment provider represented a risk to national security.

The decision was initially met by a level of incredulity from the UK’s mobile network operators, who said that removing all of the equipment and replacing it would cause significant disruption, costing them millions of pounds and potentially slowing down their rollout of 5G infrastructure.

Indeed, BT initially said complying with the government’s orders could cost the operator up to £500 million over five years, though they later reduced this figure due to the government extending the deadline to remove the equipment.

After numerous revisions, last year the government finally issued the operators with a formal notice that they must remove Huawei technology from the entirety of their networks by the end of 2027 and from the more vulnerable core of their networks by the end of 2023.

Sky Mobile, as an MVNO, provides mobile services over O2’s infrastructure, but also use their own networking equipment.

“Sky is fully complying with government requirements on our mobile network, whilst making every effort to ensure we limit any potential impact on customers,” said the company in a statement to the FT.

Sky, of course, is not the only UK operator still removing Huawei equipment from its network. BT (EE) notably began the process back in 2021, with Vodafone more recently suggesting that at least some of its removed Huawei equipment would be replaced with Open RAN alternatives.

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Ofcom unveils plan for mmWave spectrum auction 

Some customers of Lyca Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on EE’s (BT) national platform (previously O2), have – since Friday – been reporting that they’ve been unable to make any mobile calls or send text (SMS) messages. Most customers also report that they’ve been unable to get through to Lyca’s support. […]

Customers of broadband ISP Virgin Media’s (VMO2) Pay TV services may like to know that, from today until 6am on 31st October 2023, they will all be given access to additional premium kids TV channels “at no extra cost“, including Sky Kids, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Cartoonito, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr and Nicktoons. All shows will also […]

Reports coming in from Germany over the past couple of weeks appear to suggest that AVM, which manufactures the popular FRITZ!Box range of broadband ISP routers and smart home devices (these are widely used in the UK too), could be sold on to new owners as a way of preserving the company’s future. The company […]