Data centre provider Proximity Data Centres has today announced the launch of the “first regional internet exchange in the heart of the West Midlands” of England – IX Birmingham, which could increase network resilience, reduce latency and long distance IP traffic for those local networks, CDNs and broadband ISPs that harness it. The new exchange, […]

VIEWPOINT

At the 20th Huawei Global Analyst Summit (HAS), the annual Huawei Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) Session was held successfully. Industry analysts, KOLs and media from the world participated the session to witness the latest industry progress of Autonomous Networks (AN) and Huawei ADN updates.

Through the session, audiences gained in-depth knowledge of Huawei’s business advancements and strategic direction within the AN industry. River He, the CTO of Huawei General Development Dept, presented a “three initiatives” approach of achieving AN L4 and shared the outlook of Huawei ADN.

HAS Autonomous Driving Network session

In the era of 5.5G, networks must improve by 10 times in performance and intelligence. Achieving AN L4 by 2025 is one of the core objectives of Huawei’s strategic vision for 5.5G era. By evolving the network from L3 to L4, CSPs will definitely achieve 10 times increase for network O&M efficiency.

River said, “We will continue to increase investment and build our ADN solution featuring full-stack AI at the network element (NE), network, and service layers, which is adhered to the three basic principles — native intelligence, single-domain autonomy, and cross-domain collaboration. Furthermore, we encourage the ICT industry to collaborate in the following three key aspects: defining level characteristics, developing standards for intent APIs, and scenario-based implementation. By doing so, we can accelerate the growth and development of our industry.”

River Huang, CTO of General Development Dept, Huawei

Accelerating the level characteristics definitions of L4/L5: The ICT industry should collaboratively establish the target profile of AN L4/L5, clarifying the level characteristics and effectiveness indicators for each scenario to enhance product and solution capabilities.
Accelerating the standardization of intent APIs: To convert the capability improvements into business achievements and augment NaaS capabilities, the communications industry must develop standardized, large granularity intent APIs based on business value and service requirements.
Accelerating the AN implementation in business scenarios: The ICT industry should reinforce cooperation between CSPs and vendors, focusing on business scenarios and value to facilitate large-scale deployment of L3 AN, thereby laying a solid foundation for achieving L4 by 2025.

As one of the initiators and practitioners of AN, Huawei and its partners have continuously carried out AN practices over the past three years and achieved remarkable results in improving quality and revenue, O&M efficiency, and energy saving for our customers. For example, the Poor-QoE rate of home broadband users has reached 83%; the average recovery time for each fault is shortened by more than 30 minutes, and the average energy saving of a single base station exceeds 10%. Autonomous network is a long journey. Huawei will continue to cooperate with leading partners around the world, deeply integrate digital technologies with application scenarios, and jointly create value for various industries and accelerate the development of L4 autonomous networks.

The Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) in England appears to be making progress on their plans to introduce a series of new digital and broadband grant schemes across the county, which will aim to help connect those who live in areas that currently lack access to “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) connectivity. At present, the Gloucestershire County Council […]

Liverpool-based network builder and UK ISP FACTCO has today confirmed that their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network has completed another rollout, this time for more than 450 properties in the Northumberland (England) village of Darras Hall. Unlike some of FACTCO’s prior builds, which tended to be fully or part funded by the Government’s Gigabit […]

Press Release

The IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with Telefónica, NEC Corporation and BluSpecs, is proud to announce the launch of the ENABLE-6G project. This ambitious initiative aims to address the challenges that will be faced by future 6G networks, such as increased connectivity, higher performance demands, and advanced object and environment detection and communication.This project is funded by the European Union-NextGenerationEU and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, in the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

As 5G technology continues to be the driving force behind edge computing and autonomous vehicles, researchers and industry experts are already looking towards the future and the development of 6G technology. With challenges in capacity, energy efficiency, latency, and data security and privacy, the development of the ENABLE-6G project has become crucial. It’s necessary for 6G networks to become more adaptable and intelligent to enable the realization of a future vision that will contend with greater levels of complexity, contextualization, and data traffic while consuming less energy and offering stronger security and privacy measures. Such advancements are crucial to instil the necessary level of trust required for widespread implementation of next-generation devices and nodes.

One of the main objectives is to ensure advanced privacy protections are built into the architecture, as precise mapping and sensing, data privacy and security have become major concerns, and has also become a major benefit for new use cases. Another strategic objective is the design and implementation of software-defined networks that can operationalise optimized edge-to-cloud
processing to facilitate time-critical and geo-distributed network orchestration (e.g., via the application of control-task algorithms). The ENABLE-6G project represents a major step forward in the
new technologies into 6G to improve wireless communications, provide environmental sensing and significantly reduce the energy footprint per device to avoid a large overall increase in network power consumption. We are excited about the potential impact of this project and look forward to collaborating with our partners to bring it to fruition.

Telefónica is one of the leading private R&D centers in Spain, aiming to explore and develop new technologies and solutions that can improve the company’s existing products and services, as well as identify and create new business opportunities in the telecommunications and technology sectors. One of the big companies joining this project is NEC Corporation, with a great capacity has a strong commitment to research and development and invests heavily in new technologies and innovative solutions. ENABLE-6G counts on the excellent IMDEA Networks scientists, one of the best innovation and development centres in Spain, with a variety of experts from all over the world. Finally, this project will count on the consultancy of BluSpecs, facilitating the digital transformation of private and public organisations through the application of knowledge, data, and methodologies in the field of strategy, implementation of new technologies and innovation.

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News

According to figures from Ofcom, only 220,000 households are taking advantage of social tariffs, despite over four million homes being eligible for the discounts

With the cost-of-living crisis continuing to strike the most vulnerable people in the UK the hardest, Ofcom is this week once again calling on operators to do more to promote their discounted service offers, known as social tariffs.

For years now, the regulator has been pushing providers to offer more low-cost connectivity packages to households receiving state benefits. In fact, these efforts have been largely successful, with many broadband providers, including major players like BT, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone, and Sky, now offering discounted packages to customers claiming Universal Credit and other benefits.

Take-up of these offers, however, remains low. Last year, research from Ofcom showed that 4.2 million households in the UK were eligible to participate in social tariff offers, but only 55,000 (1.2%) homes were signed up to these packages.

Much of the issue here is visibility, with social tariffs typically being poorly advertised and misunderstood. According to Ofcom’s 2022 study, 84% of benefits recipients did not know they were eligible for social tariffs, despite over 1.1 million homes claiming to struggle with connectivity bills.

Now, more than one year on since this study was released, and Ofcom’s latest figures are beginning to show progress but only on a small scale. Compared to 2022, uptake has increased roughly four-fold, rising to 220,000 homes across the UK.

However, this figure still represents just a tiny fraction – 5.1% – of the 4.3 million households that are eligible to participate in these deals.

“We’re urging anyone who thinks they could be eligible for a discount deal to contact their provider today and potentially save hundreds of pounds. Providers should also do much more to help these customers find and access these deals, at a time when these savings could make a massive difference,” said Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s director for network and communications.

While welcoming the increase in people taking advantage of social tariffs, Ofcom continued to be critical of providers’ efforts to inform customers that these deals were available.

Of those households that were aware of social tariffs, 26% said they had learned about them from social media and 21% from watching television.

Just 9% said they had been informed about them from their broadband provider.

In total, 53% of eligible households were still unaware of social tariffs as of February 2023.

Are operators doing enough to support vulnerable customers during the cost-of-living crisis? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain

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Internet service provider iTalk has recently become the latest broadband ISP to raise prices across their range of ADSL, FTTC and FTTP based internet and phone packages for consumers, which are all powered via Openreach’s national network. The change applies to their standard monthly prices and doesn’t impact existing first-term discounts. For example, iTalk’s basic […]

Mobile operator Three UK appears to have been one of the worst affected yesterday after many of their customers (including yours truly) did NOT receive a notification during the Government’s nationwide test of their new Emergency Alerts service, despite using supported kit. A smaller portion of users on Vodafone, O2 and EE also had problems. […]

The Scottish Government (SG) and NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) have today awarded BT (EE) with a contract worth up to £350m over the next 6-years, which will see the UK telecoms giant become the sole provider to deliver public sector connectivity across Scotland via the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN). The move will complement […]

News

The deal comes as part of the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN) programme and will impact over 6,000 public sector sites

Today, BT has secured a £350 million contract that will see the operator upgrade connectivity for schools, hospitals, and other public sector sites across Scotland as part of the SWAN programme.

Scotland’s SWAN project was first imagined back in 2012, with a partnership between Capita and Updata Infrastructure being awarded the contract to build and operate the network in 2014 after a contentious tender process.

Since then, SWAN has gradually grown to provide connectivity services and support to over 6,000 public sector sites, including schools, hospitals, GP surgeries, pharmacists and local council offices. According to BT, this includes 22 NHS Scotland boards, 278 general and community hospitals, and more than 900 GP practices.

The new contract will see BT take over as the network’s sole provider, with the operator aiming to “accelerate the digital transformation of Scotland’s public sector including to some of the most rural areas across the country”.

“This major investment from the Scottish Government, and our public sector partners, will make sure that staff across our public services have access to rapid and reliable connections with a greater capacity and bandwidth,” said Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care. “The SWAN programme will drive benefits for communities across Scotland, making sure that no one is left behind and can access the benefits of technology.”

According to BT, the use of their fibre and wireless networks will help to bridge the gap between urban and rural areas, allowing for the provisioning of more remote services, like telemedicine, as well as supporting essential public health services.

BT will invest up to £350 million over the next six years to expand and upgrade SWAN.

How can improved connectivity solutions transform the public sector? Join the ecosystem in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain conference

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