Mobile operator Vodafone has revealed that they’re working with the Church of England, and using Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) technology, to help extend 4G mobile (mobile broadband) into remote rural communities by deploying small base stations on top of 11 church bell towers across the country. Two of the first locations include the Blessed […]

Ofcom’s latest quarterly (Q1 2023) study of UK consumer complaints has named and shamed TalkTalk for attracting the most consumer gripes about both fixed line broadband and landline phone services (making a change from Shell Energy), while BT did the same for both Pay Monthly Mobile and Pay TV services. The regulator’s report only covers […]

Network builder and UK broadband ISP toob has today announced that they’ve committed £7.5 million to build their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the Hampshire (South England) town of Fleet, which is expected to result in 19,000 local homes gaining access to their network. The operator, which was originally backed by £75m from the Amber […]

Alternative UK network provider Connect Fibre (Fibre Assets Ltd.) has just struck back in the tit-for-tat battle over which broadband ISP can claim to offer the “fastest” or “best” Wi-Fi performance guarantee. The provider has increased the speed promise on their home Wi-Fi guarantee from 30Mbps to 50Mbps minimum in every room. Firstly, let’s recap […]

The BT Group has published a rather limited Q1 FY24 (quarterly) trading update to June 2023, which includes very few of the usual details but does reveal that Openreach’s roll-out of a full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network (coverage) grew by 718,000 UK premises in Q1 to total 11 million (up from 702k last quarter). […]

Infracapital-backed UK ISP Ogi, which is investing £200 million to roll-out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across 150,000 premises in South Wales by 2025, has signed a 10-year deal with Fontygary Leisure Park in the Vale of Glamorgan that will enable around 500 holiday homes to be connected to their full fibre lines. The deal […]

UK ISP Quickline, which is building a gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband infrastructure to 96 rural locations (55,000 premises) across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), has been awarded Safe Contractor accreditation in recognition of their efforts to ensure a high level of health and safety protections for their contractors. The certification was awarded following an […]

A new survey of over 2,000 UK adults, which was carried out four times over the past year by YouGov on behalf of Point Topic, has found that respondents who bundled their broadband ISP connection with a TV product has increased by 8% year-on-year (i.e. starting at 35% in Q2 2022 and rising to 43% […]

Interview

We caught up with Elad Nafshi, EVP and chief network officer at Comcast, to discuss the company’s new 10G network upgrade and the added reliability this brings to customers

Over the past two years, Comcast has made significant advances in 10G network capabilities, building on the latest DOCSIS 4.0 technology. By the end of 2022, in a world-first, the operator was trialling 10G and Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 network technology in a live network, paving the way a commercial rollout of multi-gigabit connectivity over its cable network.

Just a few short months later, in early 2023, the company’s enormous network upgrade had already begun, with around ten million homes targeted to receive the upgrade and become part of Comcast’s Xfinity 10G Network.

At this year’s Connected America conference in Dallas, Texas, we caught up with Comcast’s chief network officer Elad Nafshi to learn more about the impact the company’s Xfinity 10G Network could have for customers.

“Xfinity 10G network is about multi-gigabit symmetrical services with unrivalled reliability, both powered and empowered by real-time telemetry, that offers the lowest latency to all of our subscribers,” explained Nafshi. “Not just the customers on the right side or the left side of the street, but across our entire network. It’s truly transformational and its very, very exciting.”

You can view our full interview with Elad Nafshi from the link above.

Higher speeds are to be expected from a next-generation network upgrade, but perhaps more interesting here is the network’s improved reliability thanks to the incorporation of emergent technologies.

“For the first time, we’re able to see a down-to-the-second view of what customer experience is,” explained Nafshi. “Taking that data, we can start to self-heal. We can start to run AI and machine learning algorithms on top of the network to pinpoint network failures and event to predict them before they ever happen, allowing us to self-heal a lot of these failures before they impact customers.”

The Xfinity 10G Network has already passed ten million homes, with vast majority of Comcast’s network set to be upgraded by 2025.

How is the US broadband market changing in 2023? Join the operators in discussion at the Connected America conference live in Dallas, Texas

Also in the news:
Vodafone warns of investment cuts if Three merger is blocked
Vodafone and Three UK closing in on merger
Dish and EchoStar consider merger

News

The project aims to upgrade Vodafone’s nationwide backbone network and increase its capacity to meet increased demands for a growing customer base 

In the past, Vodafone has managed three separate networks to carry mobile, home broadband, and enterprise customer traffic, respectively. Now, the company’s new Redstream Evolution network will bring together all three services onto a singular Software Defined Networking (SND)-enabled, core Internet Protocol (IP) transport network for UK customers. 

Redstream Evolution consists of 200 core sites throughout country connected by over 11,000km of optical fibre. By adding all customers onto the same network, Vodafone can benefit from economies of scale, resulting in improvements in customer experience as well as cost savings. 

This multi-year backbone network upgrade is now entering its “final phase”, with mobile and broadband customers being moved off the old network in a phased manner. Enterprise customers will be moved “in the near future”, according to the operator. 

The convergence of these three networks will ensure that customers do not experience congestion on the network and ensuring the infrastructure can cope with a future increase in demand. 

According to Vodafone, data consumption across the country is increasing 50% year-on-year. 

“The massive growth in data-hungry consumer apps and business services, alongside ever-increasing internet usage, simply cannot be supported by traditional approaches to network management and capacity expansion” said Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer of Vodafone UK. 

“Redstream Evolution is a significant investment to modernise this critical link in our Vodafone network, creating a new express superhighway bringing more than enough capacity to deliver an amazing network experience for customers today, while also staying well ahead of future data traffic demands. This will be crucial as our home broadband customer base continues to grow, more of our business customers go through digital transformation programmes, and 5G and IoT usage rapidly increases the amount of data we use each day.” 

Vodafone says that UK customers’ mobile data usage has increased 300% since 2019. Simultaneously, businesses have increased consumption of digital and cloud-based services, thus requiring a reliable network. 

How will network improvements affect the the UK’s telecoms industry?  Join the ecosystem in discussion at this year’s live Connected Britain conference 

Also in the news: 
Vodafone UK launches second social tariff offering higher speeds
Enhancing and expanding connectivity with EXA Infrastructure
Why the industry must accelerate the adoption of 5.5G