UK ISP Hey! Broadband, which caters for homes covered by F&W Networks‘ (Fibre and Wireless) new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – mostly across the South East of England, has today announced that new customers will be able to get 50% off the price of their 900Mbps full fibre packages during the Black Friday period.

Customers of the service typically pay from £43 per month for their top 900Mbps (symmetric) package, which compares with £33 for 400Mbps and then £23 for 150Mbps on a 24-month term (includes a router and free installation). But the new Black Friday deal cuts the price of their 900Mbps plan to just £21.50 for the full term, although this offer is only available to take until 8th December 2024.

F&WN has so far managed to extend their full fibre broadband infrastructure to cover 410,000 UK premises RFS (Feb 2024 data) across various towns in London, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, and West Sussex. The operator’s network has also managed to grow their customer base to over 25,000 (August 2024 data).

The Telcom Group, which operates a mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and gigabit-capable “full fibre” broadband and Ethernet networks across England via its various sub-brands (ClearFibre, WeFibre, HyperCity etc.), has this morning announced that they’re re-branding to Elevate following a year of growth, consolidation and integration.

The group indicates that the change reflects the culmination of their 12-month plan to integrate Telcom Networks, its wholesale initiative GigaBritain and London based ISP Luminet (acquired last October). Not to mention all B2B divisions, which deliver end-to-end network solutions including connectivity, cyber security and wider managed network services.

The result should, they say, be a more streamlined and seamless customer experience that will also benefit from the investments the operator has been making into their internal systems, as well as integrated customer portals. As part of this rebrand and integration, the wholesale division serving 300+ partners will now operate under Elevate Wholesale.

Elliott Mueller, Group CEO, said:

“We have spent the last year listening to our customers, partners & teams. As our business continues to scale at pace underpinned by our total commitment to provide our customers with the best possible service, I am immensely proud of the team that has worked to deliver the Elevate experience which we believe will be the benchmark for direct and channel partners expectations in delivery and after sale service.

Our channel partners are a key component in our growth strategy where the requirements to successfully deliver and support connectivity and aligned components in partner led, mission critical solutions. These partnerships are essential in building long term relationships. Elevate is now fully equipped to deliver our channel proposition under the Elevate Wholesale banner and looks forward to an exciting 2025 for the group.”

News

NASA has collaborated with Microsoft to develop ‘Earth Copilot’, an AI-powered tool designed to make data discovery more straightforward. Built using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, the tool allows users to interact with NASA’s datasets through plain language queries.

For example, instead of navigating technical systems, users can ask questions such as, “How did Hurricane Ian affect Sanibel Island?” and quickly receive relevant information.

NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program collects a vast array of data from satellites, covering everything from atmospheric conditions to ocean temperatures. However, accessing and analysing this complex data has often required technical expertise, creating barriers for many potential users, which has led to the AI partnership.

The project integrates Microsoft’s AI and cloud technologies with NASA’s existing data platform, VEDA. The setup streamlines the search and analysis process, enabling researchers, policymakers, and educators to access insights more efficiently.

“We’ve designed the system to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently, ensuring that users can quickly find the information they need without getting bogged down by technical complexities. Our goal was to create a seamless, scalable solution that could evolve as NASA’s data, tools and applications grow,” said Juan Carlos López, former NASA engineer and current Azure Specialist at Microsoft in a press release.

The broader aim of this partnership is to make NASA’s data accessible to a wider audience. For example, climate scientists can analyse trends more easily, agricultural specialists can monitor soil moisture, and teachers can use the data to engage students in real-world science. Minh Nguyen, a Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect, noted that opening up access to this data can help underserved communities use it to address local challenges.

Currently, Earth Copilot is being tested internally by NASA researchers. Once fully developed, the tool will support NASA’s Open Science initiative, which aims to make scientific research more inclusive and transparent. By simplifying access to Earth Science data, this collaboration has the potential to broaden its impact across various fields.

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter   

Also in the news:
Verizon extends US defence contract in $98m deal
Top 5 stories from Broadband Communities last week
UScellular sells spectrum to AT&T for $1 billion

Infracapital-backed network builder and UK ISP Ogi, which is rolling out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across South Wales (100,000 premises are already covered / RFS), has today introduced Black Friday discounts across their broadband packages and simultaneously launched their new referral programme.

Firstly, in terms of the referral programme, Ogi states that existing customers will be able to earn £40 for each introduction – unlocking up to 10 rewards a year every time a new sign-up is successful.

As for the Black Friday discounts, the provider says that it’s doubling the speed of their £15 a month entry-level package from 200Mbps to 400Mbps on a 12-month term for new customers (setup is also free). Plus, if they sign up through an introduction, they’ll receive a £40 referral voucher too. The “Black Fibre Friday” event package also includes two Amazon eero routers at no extra cost.

The special offer will be available to order until 2nd December 2024.

ISPreview has long had a social media presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (X), where we engage with readers, industry figures and share our daily news. But this is just a quick note to say that in recent months we’ve expanded and can now also be found on Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads.net. The downside is that a lot of telecoms operators have yet to establish themselves on these new pastures, which we hope will change.

A couple of weeks ago ISPreview reported on how mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) had withdrawn their Pay As You Go (PAYG) Data and iPad SIMs (mobile broadband) from sale to new customers (here). But the big change this week is that they’ve now informing existing customers of their plan to close the service by 31st January 2025.

The Data SIMs allowed customers to choose from a selection of plans, each with a different allowance and expiry period. For example, you could pay £3 for 1GB (GigaByte) but that had to be used within a 24-hour period, or alternatively you’d pay £10 for 2GB lasting 90 days, then £20 for 8GB lasting 90 days or £30 for 12GB that lasted for 12-months.

The plans had some advantages for those who only needed infrequent access to data, and you can still buy preloaded O2 data SIMs via Amazon. But by modern standards they perhaps weren’t particularly good value for money, and these days data-only SIMs can also feel a bit redundant (i.e. it’s often cheaper to simply buy a regular mobile SIM and just not use the calls/texts side).

However, one of our readers, Julian, has now informed us that O2 have just sent the following message to existing users of these plans, which sets a clear end date for the service itself and only a few short months after they withdrew the SIMs from sale to new customers.

Copy of O2’s Customer Email

Closing down our Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband & iPad product

We’re sorry to let you know that we’re removing our Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband & iPad services from our portfolio on 31 January 2025.

Our customer account management portal will be closing on 17 December 2024 so if you want to check your remaining allowances, please do this before 17 December 2024.

You can continue to use your service until 31 January 2025, after which time your service shall cease. As you are a Pay As You Go customer, you’re able to leave your service at any time with no Early Termination Charges. In order to obtain a refund for any data not used on your account, you’ll need to call O2 customer services on 0344 8090222 to provide your contact details so we can process your refund request.

If you’re interested in alternative plans for iPad, tablets and mobile broadband, please click here to discover our great value Pay Monthly SIMs instead.

Thanks,
O2

The move will naturally have the biggest impact upon those who spent more to adopt one of their longest plans, such as the £30 for 12GB plan that lasts for 12-months. But instead of simply allowing existing customers to use up their data by the original expiry date, O2 has decided on a hard deadline and forced those users to phone them in order to get a refund. Not exactly the best approach to customer service, and O2 still hasn’t explained why they’re doing this.

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency made a change this week that has re-opened their Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) for parts of Derbyshire in England, which means that local homes and businesses in poorly served rural areas can apply for grants worth up to £7,500 to help get a much faster broadband ISP network installed.

Just to recap. The GBVS usually only offers grants worth up to £4,500 to help rural premises get a gigabit-capable broadband (1Gbps) ISP service installed, which is available to areas with speeds of “less than 100Mbps” – assuming there are also no near-term plans for a gigabit deployment in the same area (either via private investment or state-aid).

However, the GBVS has been operating with a very low level of UK availability for the past year (i.e. it’s not currently available to most counties), which is largely so that it avoids conflicting (i.e. duplicating / wasting public investment) with Project Gigabit’s larger Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme (i.e. the big build contracts that have been awarded to operators like Fibrus, Openreach, Wessex Internet and many others).

The good news this week is that BDUK updated their GBVS availability page to re-add “Derbyshire (partial areas)” back into the table, which is currently listing two voucher suppliers for that area – Openreach and E-volve (suppliers vary by region). Similarly, Thinkbroadband has spotted a press release from the local authority (here), which confirms that they’ve provided top-up funding to boost the value of local vouchers up to £7.5k, enabling them to reach even deeper into rural areas.

Councillor Carolyn Renwick said:

“We are committed to improving broadband access, speed and reliability for homes and businesses across the county and particularly in rural areas.

Residents and businesses are relying on the internet more than ever before and we’re continuing to play a key role in helping to deliver next-generation broadband to make sure local people can continue to operate and engage in an ever-changing digital world.

A number of Derbyshire communities have already benefitted from the voucher scheme and this new ‘top-up’ funding means more homes and businesses in the hardest to reach locations of Derbyshire can take advantage of the scheme.”

The only uncertainly is around the use of that “partial areas” language, as it’s not immediately clear how BDUK and the local authority are defining the limitations for this. In theory, we should start to see more areas re-opening for vouchers, particularly as it becomes clearer which contracted build areas will be reached via the GIS programme and which will not.

Contributed Article

At this year’s GITEX conference in Dubai, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President Li Peng discussed how enterprises are embracing technologies like AI to revolutionise their business models

The term ‘digital transformation’ has been at the heart of conversations at GITEX for over a decade. This year, however, the rapid development of disruptive technologies like AI saw discussions move beyond how to simply connect and digitalise business functions, instead focusing on how to analyse, interpret, and automate them.

This was the key theme in the opening speech of Huawei’s Li Peng at this year’ GITEX conference, who called this emerging ‘intelligent economy’ the “main engine of global economic growth”.

“More and more enterprises are using AI to boost productivity and reduce operating costs. This opens the doors for more innovate business models and a better customer experience,” he explained.

Game-changing AI is already making an impact

The extent to which AI is already being used by enterprises should not be underestimated. A recent study from IBM found that 42% of enterprise companies are already actively deploying AI in their business, with a further 40% saying they are currently exploring the new technology.

From the manufacturing sector to the finance industry, the use of AI is helping enterprises to leverage more data points than ever before, driving efficiencies through automation and generating novel – and more personalised – services and revenue streams.

Huawei’s All Intelligence strategy

Of course, fully embracing AI and the benefits of more intelligent operations requires high quality digital infrastructure. To this end, last year Huawei launched its ‘All Intelligence’ strategy, aimed at providing the technological backbone behind this enterprise transformation. This strategy focusses not only on further developing technology, such as compute power, AI-ready cloud solutions, AI chips, and autonomous driving technology, but also expanding collaboration with the wider ecosystem.

According to Li, this strategy is already bearing fruit.

“We also released a reference architecture for the intelligent transformation of industries. It is collaborative, open, agile, and trustworthy, and can help to guide the transformation process,” explained Li. “In practice, the architecture is already producing results. Over the past year, we’ve used it to develop many industry-specific solutions. We have also published over 100 case studies for different organizations to use during their transformation process.”

For Li, one of the keys to success here is understanding that each partner enterprise is unique, with specific requirements and challenges to overcome. Whether helping Cote d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Transportation build a traffic analysis platform or improving connectivity for over 1,000 government agencies in 33 Middle Eastern and African countries, effective collaboration between partners has been key to success.

“Our partnerships are growing fast in the enterprise market. To date, more than 47,000 partners have joined us. This year alone, our partnerships have grown by more than 18%,” said Li. “We have also built 14 OpenLabs worldwide to support joint innovation with local solution partners.

Big or small, intelligence for all

It is worth noting here that Huawei is not only working with largescale enterprises when it comes to intelligent transformation.

“There are so many SMEs that want to go digital and intelligent too,” says Li, noting that Huawei is “doing everything we can to help our partners serve them more independently, easily, and effectively”.

“We provide our partners with scenario-based, lightweight solutions, more marketable products, and efficient digital platforms. We also provide support in R&D, sales, marketing, supply, and services, giving our partners end-to-end business enablement,” he added.

In one example, Huawei and South African IT company BCX built a cloud management platform to serve more than 100 SMEs, allowing them to lease or buy network services, supporting their operations and management while reducing CAPEX by over 20%.

Finally, Li highlighted the importance of nurturing the digital skills that will allow the next generation to leverage intelligent digital technology effectively. Working alongside universities, Huawei has set up numerous ICT Academies in partner markets. So far, these academies have trained more than 36,000 ICT engineers and 1,000 developers in Egypt, while in Saudi Arabia, over 32,000 students have received ICT training, and 6,500 professionals have obtained Huawei ICT certification.

“Digital and intelligent transformation should not be a privilege for the few. It should be a benefit for all,” Li concluded.

Also in the news:
Mobily and Telecom Egypt to deploy Red Sea submarine cable 
CMA set to approve Vodafone–Three merger
SK Telecom announces “AI Infrastructure Superhighway”

News 

“It’s a bad day to be a scammer,” said VMO2 in its announcement

O2 has unveiled its new, unique weapon in its fight against scammers: Daisy, an AI-powered assistant designed to keep fraudsters talking and waste their time. As part of Virgin Media O2’s “Swerve the Scammers” campaign, Daisy’s mission is to distract scammers with realistic, rambling conversations, helping protect potential victims while raising awareness about fraud.

Developed with the help of popular YouTube scambaiter Jim Browning, Daisy can independently handle scam calls. Her lifelike conversations, peppered with stories about family or hobbies like knitting, have kept fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes. By doing so, she prevents scammers from targeting real people and highlights common tactics used in fraud.

Research from O2 shows that 67% of Brits are worried about being targeted by scammers, with one in five experiencing fraud attempts weekly. While 71% would like to fight back, over half (53%) said they wouldn’t engage directly due to the time it takes. Daisy bridges that gap, acting as a tireless scambaiter on behalf of consumers.

“The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers – outsmarting and outmanoeuvring them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line,” said Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud at Virgin Media O2 in a press release.

“But crucially, Daisy is also a reminder that no matter how persuasive someone on the other end of the phone may be, they aren’t always who you think they are. With scammers operating fulltime call centres specifically to target Brits, we’re urging everyone to remain vigilant and help play their part in stopping fraud by forwarding on dodgy calls and texts to 7726 for free.”

—- 

Below are O2’s tips to stay vigilant and safe from scammers: 

‘STOP: If you receive a call out of the blue for someone claiming to be from O2, think about what you’re being asked to do. Does it feel right? Are you being asked for personal data or a code over the phone? If you have any suspicion that you might be speaking to a scammer, the best thing to do is hang up and call us back by dialling 202 from your O2 phone.

SEND to 7726: Worked out you might have spoken to or received a text from a scammer? Don’t just ignore it, take a few seconds to forward on to 7726. It spells SPAM on your phone’s keypad and is the free number to use to report to us so we can investigate. It helps keep you safe and allows us to block fraudsters numbers and prevent or shut down similar scams faster in future.

SPEAK OUT: Let your friends and family know about the scam. By telling others, you can help keep them safe and ensure they’re never caught off guard.’

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter   

Also in the news:
Verizon extends US defence contract in $98m deal
Top 5 stories from Broadband Communities last week
UScellular sells spectrum to AT&T for $1 billion

Alternative broadband network builders Freedom Fibre and Zzoomm, both of which have been rolling out 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks across different parts of the country, are reportedly holding “detailed discussions” about a possible future merger, which could create a network that covers over 500,000 premises.

At present Zzoomm’s network, which is home to over 30,000 customers (15%+ take-up) and covers 202,000 premises (RFS), is currently available across parts of around 29 market towns and small urban communities in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. The provider is primarily a vertically integrated operator, which acts as both the network operator and a retail ISP.

The operator originally planned to cover 1 million premises, yet the difficulties of raising fresh capital recently forced their roll-out to stop (here and here) and they’ve instead been focusing on growing take-up. But growth via mergers and acquisitions are something that Zzoomm’s CEO, Matthew Hare, is known to have been actively exploring (here).

Meanwhile, Freedom Fibre, which is backed by InfraBridge (DigitalBridge) and Equitix, is a wholesale-only network that primarily covers 315,000 premises across parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester and Shropshire in England. The operator previously aspired to cover 2 million premises and also holds the Government’s Project Gigabit contracts for 12,000 premises in rural parts of Shropshire (here), as well as 15,000 in Cheshire (here). But recently they also appeared to be focusing more on growing take-up (commercialisation) than network builds (here).

According to a new report on Sky News (credits to Nick for spotting), merger talks between Zzoomm and Freedom Fibre are said to have “progressed to a detailed stage,” although officially Zzoomm would only confirm that they were in negotiations with “numerous” parties and declined to comment specifically on Freedom Fibre (the latter has yet to comment).

Regular readers will know that a growing number of network operators, both big and small alike, have over the past couple of years moved to slow their network deployments (resulting in job losses) and switched their focus toward growing take-up to ensure some future stability. Such moves are a prudent course of action in the current climate of rising build costs and high interest rates, which makes it harder to raise fresh investment.

One other way to tackle these challenges is through consolidation, which is something that we’ve already seen happening quite a bit. But getting such deals and network integrations right can be a costly and expensive process. In this case there’s very little network overlap between Freedom Fibre and Zzoomm, except perhaps around Northwich where some overbuild does exist, yet otherwise a deal between the pair does look plausible.

Such a merger might well value the combined company at around £500m, although there’s currently no certainty that the pair will actually be able to reach a final agreement. Time will tell. We should point out that merger agreements like this take a long time to go through the motions, so we might not learn the outcome for a few more months.

UPDATE 15th Nov 2024 @ 7am

One curious aspect of Sky’s coverage is that they name Freedom Fibre’s investor as Basalt (aka – Basalt Infrastructure Partners LLP), which had us scratching our heads because Basalt backs FullFibre Limited (Fibre Heroes) and not Freedom Fibre. So it’s possible Sky may have confused either their investors or the operators themselves. But we can’t blame Sky, there are now so many providers with “fibre” in the name that it can be brain melting.

FullFibre Ltd covers 380,000 UK premises and has zero overbuild with Zzoomm. Both operators also have a similar sort of approach to build and might actually be a better fit.