The Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) in England has been chosen to lead a new £8m “GigaHubs” project that will rollout a gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network to reach a total of more than 350 public buildings (schools, council offices, hospitals etc.) across the Midlands. Some £6.8m of the funding for this – on behalf of […]

CityFibre, which aims to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) with their full fibre broadband ISP network by the end of 2025 (here), has today launched their first ever TV advertising campaign – entitled: “Does your broadband suck?“. The campaign is designed to encourage consumers to […]

Broadband ISP and UK network builder Brsk has today announced their relatively young gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network has managed to sign-up 1,000 customers on their Manchester deployment, which is double the 500 they had in December 2022. The operator’s network in the city is currently live and serving homes across South Manchester, including around Sale, […]

NEWS

The Japanese operator has officially launched its Open RAN customer centre in Weybridge, Surrey

The site, first announced in November last year, and developed with $2.3 million in funding from the Japanese government is designed to “serve as a European hub for interoperability testing around the viability of Open RAN in new and existing networks.” The centre which will test technology from multiple Open RAN vendors for interoperability and conformance to O-RAN Alliance specifications, is currently running Rakuten Symphony software, there is openness having any company’s technology deployed and tested.

However, it was noted by Rabih Dabboussi, Rakuten Symphony’s Chief Business Officer, that while the Symphony team could deploy Open RAN software from alternative suppliers of open distributed unit and centralised software if customers requested it, “at this point we will not be integrating Open RAN software from other vendors” – so while the capability is there, it would presumably take a very specific operator request.

The development and launch of the centre, marks further deepening ties between the UK and Japan on Open RAN development and promotion, and is overall a positive step for Open RAN development which has progressed at a slower pace than perhaps expected. The increasing role of governments within Open RAN points to the geopolitical issues driving its development, and it will certainly be interesting to see how Open RAN continues to develop.

The Scottish Government has published a brief progress update on their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT), which reveals that over 20,000 premises have now been covered by their rollout of a new “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP network (inc. almost 3,000 connections also delivered via vouchers). At present over 95% of premises in […]

Mobile provider Tesco Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on O2’s UK (VMO2) platform, has announced an extension to its free “Home from Home” roaming package. The package will run until the end of 2023 for all customers travelling to any of 48 countries across Europe and beyond “at no additional cost“. […]

News

Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Press Secretary, Paloma Perez, highlighted the progress of a trio of key initiatives: the Affordable Connectivity Programme (ACP), the Broadband Maps, and closing the Homework Gap

Speaking at the first ever edition of Total Telecom’s Connected America conference in Dallas, Texas, FCC Press Secretary Paloma Perez took to the stage for the morning keynote address, shedding light on some of the Commission’s key initiatives for bringing connectivity to every US citizen.

The Affordable Connectivity Programme

In November 2021, the US government signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act) into law, setting aside $65 billion to provide affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet across the country.

For Perez, the IIJA was “a major plot twist” in US broadband history, providing a once in a lifetime opportunity to help ensure that connectivity can reach ‘everyone, everywhere’ in the US.

As part of the IIJA, the government ordered the FCC to create the ACP, helping to subsidise broadband costs for those citizens that need it most. The programme devised by the FCC allows eligible low-income households to receive discounts of up to $30 a month for broadband services, which can increase to $75 if the household is on Tribal lands. In addition, eligible homes may also be able to receive up to $100 dollars to go towards purchasing a computer or tablet.

The ACP has been running since New Year’s Day 2022, with 17 million households having already enrolled nationwide.

“In Texas alone, it’s almost 1.3 million households,” explained Perez. “That’s 1.3 million Texas homes with connections they need for work, school or anything else. That’s 1.3 million Texas homes finding it a little easier to make ends meet each month.”

Perez noted that there are millions more households that are eligible for ACP support and have yet to sign up.

“Earlier this month, we made announcements for the first round of grants, with just about every state and territory receiving funds to support these outreach efforts. And we anticipate having a second, more targeted outreach grant funding opportunity available later this year,” she added.

The FCC’s Broadband Maps

In November 2022, the FCC released new broadband maps, providing a snapshot of infrastructure deployment across the US. Since then, these broadband maps have been open to challenge by stakeholders, allowing the FCC to create a more accurate as more deployment data is assimilated.

“To date, stakeholders – primarily state governments – have stepped up to provide more than 6—bulk challenges covering provider reported availability at several million locations,” explained Perez. “In the past four months, our mapping team has processed challenges to availability data for over four million locations. In other words, we are addressing availability challenges to tens of thousands of locations every single day.”

The broadband maps are currently updated every fortnight to incorporate resolved challenges.

In addition to incorporating these latest updates into their broadband map, the FCC is also in the process of updating their version of the Fabric, the Commission’s term for their locations dataset.

Initially developed on more than 200 public and commercial data sources, the first version of the Fabric identified over 113 million locations where fixed broadband could be installed. Now, the second version of the Fabric is almost complete, bringing with it a net increase of 1.04 million serviceable locations.

This net gain is comprised of 2.96 million additional serviceable locations, with major increases recorded in Alaska, US territories, and on Tribal lands, as well as the removal of 1.92 million locations, like garages and sheds, that had been included erroneously.

According to Perez, the FCC is now on track to release the new and improved maps later this Spring.

“And we’ll do it again and again, every six months, constantly strengthening this foundation for smarter broadband policymaking for years to come,” said Perez.

Ending the Homework Gap

Finally, Perez touched on the progress being made in the US to shrink the Homework Gap, a term related to those children who do not have access to broadband connectivity at home, which has become closely associated with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in recent years.

The Emergency Connectivity Fund, launched in June 2021, set aside $7.17 billion to help provide schools and libraries with the connectivity tools and services their communities require to facilitate an remote learning and an improved education. Since then, the programme has connected over 12.5 million students with broadband connections and equipment, having provided over 10 million devices and 5 million broadband connections.

“It’s not just a piece of equipment and a Wi-Fi connection,” said Perez. “It’s a piece of hope. It’s knowing your family now has a much fairer shot at achieving their goals and building a better future for themselves.”

Connected America is taking place right now! Keep up to date with all the latest news from the event using the hashtag #ConnectedAmerica

Also in the news:
Fibre overtakes cable in the Netherlands
Ericsson IoT Accelerator to manage the connectivity for Lyft e-bikes and scooters
Spring Equinox? It seems Ofcom aren’t certain of the balance

Press Release

Faroese Telecom and Ericsson conducted a speed test in a live network showing download peak speeds of up to 6Gbps, using 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. It is the fastest measured speed in a live network in Europe to date. This multi-gigabit mmWave technology will be deployed across all of the self-governing nation’s 18 Islands, delivering high capacity and multi-gigabit, mobile broadband speeds in suburban and rural areas.

In the North Atlantic Ocean, the self-governing Faroe Islands is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The archipelago covers an area of 1,400 square kilometers of land, 300,000 square kilometers of sea and has a population of 54,000. Its 18 islands are mostly connected by bridges, subsea tunnels and ferries.

Since deploying 5G across the Faroe Islands starting 2022, the service provider’s radio access network (RAN) has been built out in the quest for 100 percent geographic coverage in terms of total landmass – in addition to sea coverage reaching 120 km out in all directions.

Jan Ziskasen, CEO of Faroese Telecom Group, says: “Our ambition is to have giga speed everywhere on the islands – in cities as well as in small villages, on roads, in tunnels, on mountaintops and even out to sea. Digital inclusion is a main pillar in our sustainability agenda thus reaching every centimeter and every person located on our 18 islands is paramount. This will bring unprecedented services to our consumers and businesses where world-class 5G gives key infrastructure for developing products and services paving the way for the future.”

Since 2021, Ericsson is the sole provider of 5G RAN and 5G Core, including full modernization of the existing 4G network.

Niclas Backlund, Country Manager of Ericsson Denmark, says: “Faroese Telecom is showing the world how 5G can be deployed on a wide scale during a limited period of time. Rocky volcanic islands and rapidly changing weather is not stopping either them or us from bringing the latest 5G technology to the North Atlantic Sea. I am truly looking forward to continuing to partner with Faroese Telecom with the ambition of building a world class 5G network, with more industry firsts.”

Also in the news:
Fibre overtakes cable in the Netherlands
Ericsson IoT Accelerator to manage the connectivity for Lyft e-bikes and scooters
Spring Equinox? It seems Ofcom aren’t certain of the balance

Broadband ISP and Pay TV provider Octaplus (Octaplus Supercharged), which sells services to consumers over full fibre (FTTP) networks from MS3, CityFibre and FullFibre Limited, has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they’ve acquired the residential customer base from rival provider Legend Fibre. Legend Fibre is a relatively small ISP that operates over CityFibre’s new broadband network. […]

Utility provider Ovo Energy, which only recently sold off SSE’s phone and broadband customers to ISP TalkTalk (here), is reportedly now looking at a deal to acquire Shell’s domestic UK gas, electricity and broadband business (Shell Energy) – home to c. 1.4m energy and 500,000 internet customers. The move is not strictly all that surprising […]