News 

The Federal Association of Broadband Communication (BREKO) has released an analysis of the German broadband market showing significant progress 

According to the report from BREKO, at the end of June there was 35.6% fibre coverage in Germany, up from 26% at the same time last year. This puts the country well on track to reach the government’s goals of delivering fibre connectivity to half of Germany by 2025, and the whole of Germany by 2030 

In 2022, companies invested over €13.1 billion in broadband network infrastructure.Of this total, €8.4 billion was invested by companies other than Telekom Deutschland, the country’s largest fixed broadband provider, arguably demonstrating the fibre market’s healthy competition and rapidly increase diversity 

“With investments of more than eight billion euros, Telekom 2022’s competitors have made a clear commitment to nationwide network expansion and to Germany as a business location,”aid Norbert Westfal, Management Spokesman at EWE Tel.  

“Despite numerous challenges, the industry is still well on the way to achieving the federal government’s goals,” s“In order to keep up the current pace, however, we need optimal framework conditions for the strong commercial fiber optic expansion.” 

But despite this booming investment environment, the report notes some significant hurdles that could prevent the achievement of these goals, such as the acute shortage of skilled workers and long approval processes. The report also notes tactical overbuilding in more than 220 municipalities – mostly by Telekom Deutschland – which BREKO argues is stifling competition, leading altnets to slow or even cancel their rollout plans. 

Despite being Europe’s biggest economy, Germany is lagging behind its European neighbours in its fibre rollout. According to a report earlier this year by FTTH Council Europe, Germany had a fibre penetration rate of just 7%, compared to world-leading countries such as the UAE, which already has 98.1%. 

To keep up with the conversation on Germany’s fibre rollout, join us at this year’s Connected Germany, 5-6th December 

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Vodafone to begin UK’s largest Open RAN rollout
Potential ‘remedies’ for Spain’s Orange–MásMóvil merger draw in Digi 

News

Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites will help extend the reach of Vodafone’s 4G and 5G networks to some of the hardest-to-reach areas in Europe and Africa

This week, Vodafone has announced plans to work with Amazon’s burgeoning low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, Project Kuiper.

Amazon’s communications satellites will allow Vodafone to offer 4G and 5G services to consumers in areas currently unserved or underserved by terrestrial networks. This includes areas where geographic features make traditional infrastructure deployment too challenging or too expensive, such as islands, mountains, and other remote areas.

Alongside connecting these hard-to-reach consumers, the constellation will also allow for enterprise-specific connectivity offerings, such as providing an emergency backup connection for mission-critical operations.

“Vodafone’s work with Project Kuiper will provide mobile connectivity to many of the estimated 40% of the global population without internet access, supporting remote communities, their schools and businesses, the emergency services, and disaster relief. These connections will be complemented further through our own work on direct-to-smartphone satellite services,” said Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle (pictured, left).

“Teaming with a leading international service provider like Vodafone allows us to make a bigger impact faster in closing the digital divide in Europe and Africa. Together we’ll explore how we can help our customers get the most value from expanded connectivity, particularly in areas like residential broadband, agriculture, education, healthcare, transportation, and financial services,” added Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices and services (pictured, right).

Amazon has had Project Kuiper in the works for many years, but significant progress has only started to be made in the last few years. Amazon finally received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 3,000 LEO satellites earlier this year and, since then, has laid out plans to launch two prototype satellites in the coming months.

Full scale satellites deployments will begin in earnest in 2024, with the first phase seeing 578 satellites launched into orbit.

Ultimately, the company aims to launch 3,236 satellites. As per its licence with the FCC, 50% of these must be launched by July 30 2026, with the full constellation deployed no later than July 30 2029.

Project Kuiper is not the only major telecommunications satellite operation drawing the attention of the telcos. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, for example, already has over 4,500 LEO satellites in orbit, offering services to customers in numerous global markets, notably playing a significant role in Ukraine since the onset of the war last year.

Last month, Telefonica said they had partnered with Starlink to expand their coverage in rural areas, particularly in the hard-to-reach areas of South America.

UK government-backed OneWeb, meanwhile, has also achieved global coverage with its 648 satellites, snagging connectivity provisioning deals with the likes of BT and AT&T.

Thus, Project Kuiper will be playing catch-up in the telecoms space race – at least for the next couple of years.

Finally, it is worth noting that Vodafone themselves are already involved with another space-based communications project with AST SpaceMobile, whom they partnered with last year.

AST’s SpaceMobile technology is notable for allowing unmodified smartphones to connected directly to the satellite constellation, which Vodafone says will allow them to effectively eliminate coverage gaps in their operating markets.

How exactly the new partnership with Project Kuiper will interact or overlap with the existing deal with AST SpaceMobile is unclear, but Della Valle assured the media that the projects would be complementary.

The telecoms satellite space race is heating up in 2023. Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live in Amsterdam

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A team of researchers from Edge Hill University’s Engineering Department and Sichuan University’s College of Electronics and Information Engineering – led by Professor Ray Sheriff – have joined forces to “pave the way for ultra-5G and 6G networks by investigating how Versatile Video Coding (VVC)” can be enhanced and optimised. The collaborative project is being […]

Space broadband provider OneWeb, which is part-owned by the UK government and typically offers its services to organisations rather than individuals (e.g. ISPs, businesses, governments, shipping etc.), has begun testing a new foldable, person portable User Terminal (UT) in London today. Just to recap. OneWeb has already launched 634 of their small (c.150kg) first generation […]

Leicester-based broadband ISP Gigabit Networks, which previously focused on connecting premises across the Midlands of England via CityFibre’s full fibre network (they also work with FullFibre Limited), has today announced the expansion of their service availability to encompass CityFibre’s national footprint. At present CityFibre’s 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network covers 3 million premises (up from […]

News

Digi Communications have expressed interest in taking ownership of MásMóvil’s mobile assets if the European Commission (EC) mandates their divestment as part of merger conditions

Earlier this summer, the EC extended its investigation into the potential $19 billion merger of Orange and MásMóvil in Spain, saying they needed more time to assess the true impact of reducing the country’s mobile market from four players to three.

Since then, speculation around the kinds of conditions that the EC may attach to the deal has been rife, with reports suggesting that the EC was preparing a ‘statement of objections’ to present to the operators.

Against the backdrop of these rumours, numerous smaller companies have begun to voice their interest in purchasing the operators’ assets, should they be forced to offload them as part of the EC’s merger stipulations.

These companies include Spanish national mobile and broadband providers Finetwork, Avatel, and Adamo, who have all sought to position themselves as the ideal third party for such dealmaking over the past few months.

More recently, this group of communications service providers have been joined by Romanian telecoms group Digi Communications, whose CEO Serghei Bulgac last month suggested the merger presented a huge opportunity.

“This an important transformative moment for the Spanish market, with the market possibly going from four large players to three large players, and if there is an opportunity… for us to play a part in this process, we will certainly be interested,” he told journalists on an earnings call.

This week, in fact, the company’s interest has been taken one step further, with Digi Spain’s CEO Marius Varzaru saying the company would invest €2 billion if it were to receive MásMóvil’s spectrum and mobile network as part of the merger.

Varzaru told Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the company’s investment in rolling out 5G and fibre networks strengthen the national economy, as well as generating roughly 1,500 jobs. He further argued that Spain needed “four strong mobile operators”, saying that Digi was well positioned to fill that role.

For now, it remains unclear exactly what remedies will be offered by the EC to facilitate the merger, but the wider industry’s interest in MásMóvil’s assets could not be more obvious.

How is the European Commission’s attitude towards telecoms consolidation shifting in 2023? Join the operators in discussion with regulators at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live in Amsterdam

Also in the news:
Altafiber raises $600m in funding for fibre expansion
CityFibre’s network rollout passes 3 million UK premises
Vodafone to begin UK’s largest Open RAN rollout 

Mobile operator Vodafone and Vodacom have today announced that they’ve agreed a “strategic collaboration” deal to harness Amazon’s future Project Kuiper constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband satellites, which will be used to help extend the reach of their 4G and 5G networks across Europe and Africa. At present Amazon hasn’t actually launched their […]

Some customers of mobile network operators EE (BT), Vodafone and O2 (Virgin Media) are this morning continuing to report problems with making and receiving calls between the aforementioned networks (this also impacted some landline calls), which is an issue that first began around midday on Monday (4th Sept). Just to recap. Yesterday afternoon quickly turned […]

Openreach (BT) has this morning confirmed that they’ve formally introduced their long-planned UK wide “stop sell” on sales of new Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and related broadband ISP products, which is part of their aim to completely withdraw the old copper-based Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) by December 2025. As we’ve said before, this does […]

News 

The two deals will make France the largest market in which Phoenix Tower International (PTI) operators 

PTI, based in Florida, has closed two deals allowing it to acquire 1,978 cell sites located in urban areas across France. 

These sites will be added to the more than 1,600 sites PTI already owns in France, with the firm aiming to increase the total number of sites it owns in the country to 5,000 sites  within the next two years. 

 The site acquisitions took the form of two separate deals, with1,226 sites hosting French operator SFR acquired through a wholly owned subsidiary of PTI, and the expansion of Phoenix France Infrastructures 2, a subsidiary of PTI, through the addition of 752 sites hosting Bouygues Telecom. 

“With these transactions, PTI diversifies its portfolio across France with sites located all over the country, including major cities to better serve the populations with strong wireless connectivity,” said Dagan Kasavana, CEO of PTI. 

“France is one of the most dynamic telecom markets in Europe and PTI’s growth will continue facilitating coverage deployments for all French wireless operators across the country. We are pleased to have collaborated with the professionals at Cellnex, Bouygues Telecom, and SFR on these transactions.” 

Following the transaction, France is now the largest market of the 21 in which PTI operate. The firm operate more than 22,000 towers across Europe and the Americas. 

In 2020, PTI partnered with Bouygues Telecom to develop 4,000 new wireless towers in rural areas over the next 12 years. 

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