Some 85,000 homes and businesses across the Hertfordshire (England) town of Hitchin will soon benefit after Netomnia, supported by UK ISP YouFibre, started a significant £25.5 million project to deploy their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network across the area. The operator has once again contracted civil engineering firm GNS Communications to […]

News

After receiving complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told the ISP that its adverts were “misleadingly implying that a sixth-generation mobile network existed and was able to be used by consumers”

This week, the ASA has announced that it has banned a number of adverts from UK ISP 6G Internet, after receiving a complaint that the company’s name could lead consumers to believe the company was offering non-existent 6G mobile services.

After an assessment, the ASA ruled that 6G Internet may no longer use its adverts in their current form, saying customers could easily be confused into believing 6G mobile services were being offered.

6G Internet said they were not aware of any complaints from consumers or regulatory bodies about the confusion, arguing that their adverts made clear that the service being offered was home internet, not mobile services.

Regardless, the company has agreed to comply with the ASA’s decision regarding their adverts and has made minor changes on their website to hopefully clarify their service offerings.

“We make clear in all of our advertising the download speeds of our services and that we provide home broadband, as opposed to mobile broadband delivered using generations of cellular technologies,” explained 6G Internet in a statement. “Whilst we have not found, or been presented with, any evidence that our advertising has caused confusion, it is never our intention to mislead customers.”

6G Internet, which provides home broadband services using fixed wireless technology connected to local wholesale fibre networks, was founded back in 2013, at a time when even 5G mobile services were still but a glimmer in the wireless industry’s eye.

Nonetheless, the company’s brand name was always going to draw comparisons to the future mobile technology 6G, which is gradually growing more prominent in the public consciousness despite being unlikely to mature until 2028 at the earliest.

For now, 6G Internet has not indicated any intention of changing its brand name but, when the 6G mobile era arrives towards the end of the decade, further confusion on the part of consumers seems inevitable.

Ultimately, UK broadband consumers still have a very poor understanding of what technologies are being used to provide services. Earlier this year, for example, Ofcom found that only 46% of customers who believed they were receiving ‘full fibre broadband’ actually had fibre-to-the-home available to them. As a result, the regulator is currently pressing operators to clarify their broadband offerings and be more careful with the terminology used in advertising.

Are the UK’s ISPs doing enough to ensure customers understand what they are paying for? Join the network operators, regulators, and the wider telecoms industry in discussion at this year’s upcoming Connected Britain conference   

Also in the news:
Sky Business considers buying up TalkTalk B2B unit
Australian govt launches Telecommunications Disaster Resilience Innovation programme
SK Telecom to invest $100m in AI firm Anthropic  

Interview

We caught up with William Oliver, Senior Director of Product Management at Syniverse, to discuss the evolution of the wholesale roaming market and how operators can better manage their cashflow

Today, mobile operators are handling more roaming traffic than ever before, necessitating wholesale roaming agreements with hundreds of partners all over the world. These agreements carry varying degrees of complexity and regularly require massive manual calculations, particularly when it comes to discounts.

“You’re typically doing monthly billing to each other on wholesale roaming price. But if you’ve agreed a discount then after a year the operators need to calculate how much of a discount they need to give each other on that roaming traffic. That takes a long time – it may even be the quarter after the end-of-year period before you get the settlement for that discounted traffic. If you think of multiplying that by 500 or 600 roaming relationships, that’s a significant amount of work!” explained William Oliver, Senior Director of Product Management at Syniverse.

Not only is this process inefficient, it can also produce a major strain on an operator’s cash flow. To help reduce this impact, most operators use a technique known as ‘netting’, whereby the difference between two parties’ roaming bills is calculated and only this net value is paid. This cuts the number of transactions in half and reduces their size.

But Oliver notes that this concept can be taken even further, with Syniverse using ‘multilateral netting’ to calculate the net fees owed across a larger pool of operators that all have customers roaming on each other’s networks.

“We’re able to calculate quite accurately how much they are each going to pay each other at the end of the settlement cycle. We can take the receivable funds coming into an operator and use them to reduce their outgoings. That’s a really good way of optimising cash flow,” explained Oliver. “It’s the roaming departments obligation to protect those crown jewels – company cash flow.”

In fact, multilateral netting can even be made more efficient by expanding the process beyond just roaming bills to also incorporate additional payments between operators, including SMS interworking, IoT discounting, application-to-person (A2P) messaging, Rich Communication Services, and Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE).

The amount of transactions being handled here should not be underestimated. Indeed, aggregating all of these different forms of payment, Syniverse’s platform is clearing and settling around $4 billion a year and processing roughly 140,000 invoices monthly.

You can view our full interview with William Oliver from the link below

Want to learn more about maximising your roaming potential? Join Syniverse on their webinar ‘The five secrets to scaling wholesale roaming profitability’ on September 14 at 3pm. Register here

Also in the news:
Verizon strikes $2.1bn Managed Network Services deal with HCLTech
Cisco to buy-out Telenor from Working Group Two JV
Poland’s ‘largest ever’ broadband subsidy draws 300 applications

Telecoms giant BT has announced that, ahead of its iconic red phone box turning 100 years of age next year, around 1,000 of its 20,000 remaining kiosks (payphone boxes) are currently up for grabs across the United Kingdom (down from a historic peak of 92,000). Some 7,200 have already been adopted by communities across the […]

Budget focused broadband ISP TalkTalk has “suspended all door-to-door sales activity” in the Newcastle area after residents complained about cold calling occurring in parts of the city designated as a No Cold Calling Zone (NCCZ), which should be fairly self-explanatory to everybody, if not so much the sellers themselves, apparently. Almost nobody likes door-to-door sales, […]

Customers of UK broadband ISP BT and EE, specifically those taking their pay TV platform, may be unhappy to learn that the provider will be removing the premium AMC channel, and all catch up content, from all BT TV platforms from 28th September 2023 next month. The TV and video-on-demand channel itself is best known […]

The latest independent data from Thinkbroadband‘s database has revealed that alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP networks (AltNets) now cover over a quarter (25.14%) of the UK, which is up from 23.64% at the end of June 2023. In terms of the top 10 locations where such networks dominate, Peterborough (84%) comes first. Just to […]

Mobile network operator Lyca Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that runs off EE’s (BT) national platform, has today launched a new range of mobile “Fan Plans” that are specially tailored toward supporters of West Ham United Football Club. The West Ham United Fan Plan is the first bespoke commercial initiative launched […]

News 

The deal, announced in February this year, had a deadline of 15th August 

Intel has mutually agreed to terminate its $5.4 billion deal to acquire Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor after being unable to get timely regulatory approval, the companies said today. 

Reports suggest that the termination of the deal has come after failure to get regulatory approval from the Chinese authorities (namely The State Administration for Market Regulation).  

Due to the size and significance of this potential acquisition to the global semiconductor supply chain, regulatory bodies worldwide must give their approval. According to reports from the FT, sources close to the deal noted the extreme difficulty in obtaining Chinese approval for a US company to acquire a chip fabrication plant because of the strong export rules placed on Chinese firms, as well as the sour geopolitical relationship between the two countries.  

“After careful consideration and thorough discussions and having received no indications regarding certain required regulatory approval, both parties have agreed to terminate their merger agreement having passed the August 15, 2023 outside date,” said Tower Semiconductor in a statement.  

The two companies had a deadline of 15th August by which to complete the takeover; now this deadline has passed, Intel will be forced to pay Tower Semiconductor a termination fee of $353 million, as per the terms of their initial agreement. 

Intel first announced its intentions to acquire Tower Semiconductor back in February 2022.  The deal would see Intel use Tower Semiconductor’s technology to grow its own portfolio, global footprint, and manufacturing capabilities in an attempt to combat rising demand.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said his respect for Tower Semiconductor “has only grown through this process and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future.” 

As regulatory blockages in such situations are not uncommon, the outcome is not totally unexpected. US listed shares in Tower Semiconductor have been trading below the proposed purchasing price of $53 for some time as confidence the companies would complete the deal began to dwindle. Shares of Tower Semiconductor fell around 9% in both the US and Israel this week. 

Join the discussion on the global semiconductor industry at this year’s Total Telecom Congress – book your tickets here! 

Also in the news: 
Liberty Global and Infosys sign $1.64bn Horizon deal
Poland’s ‘largest ever’ broadband subsidy draws 300 applications
Italian government signs MoU to take minority stake in TIM’s NetCo  

News 

The company say move will create up to 300 ‘high quality, good paying jobs’, which will be added to the firm’s current workforce of 1,400 people 

This week, US Adtran announced the expansion of its telecommunications equipment manufacturing plant in Huntsville, Alabama, aimed at supporting the domestic production of fibre equipment.  

The company will invest up to $5 million in the project, which will include the scaling up of its production of optical line termination equipment and onshoring the manufacturing of optical network terminals.  

The move is heavily motivated by the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) programme, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which dedicates $42.45 billion in public funds to expanding internet access in America. In a recent allocation announcement, the Federal Communications Commission state of Alabama, for example, is set to receive $1.4 billion in funding to expand broadband access across the state.  

However, to make use of these funds, successful applicants must pledge to only purchase equipment produced in the US, part of Biden’s ‘Made in America’ drive for domestic manufacturing after years of offshoring. 

As a result, companies seeking to benefit from BEAD-funded manufacturing contracts will need to expand their domestic production capabilities, hence this latest move by Adtran.  

“The Internet for All initiative is not just a connectivity program, it’s a jobs program – for the people who build the networks and for the people who make the equipment those networks need,” said Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Administrator. “If network equipment can be made in America, it should be made in America. Companies like Adtran are stepping up and answering that call.” 

The news comes just days after Nokia announced that it will partner with manufacturing firm Sanmina Corporation to produce fibre optic network equipment at the latter’s factory in Wisconsin, with the company also seeking a slice of the lucrative BEAD funding. 

How is the US broadband market evolving? Join the operators in discussion at next year’s Connected America conference live in Dallas, Texas 

Also in the news:
Russia’s 2035 telecoms strategy seeks to tackle 5G spectrum woes
Australian govt launches Telecommunications Disaster Resilience Innovation programme
SK Telecom to invest $100m in AI firm Anthropic