PRESS RELEASE

Wyyerd Fiber, a fiber-to-the-premise Internet Service Provider (ISP), has completed agreements to expand its 100% fiber network to serve residents and businesses across more than 15 municipalities in the greater Phoenix area. Engineering and construction is underway.

“For years, residents and city leaders have been asking fiber companies to deliver permanent, high-quality infrastructure solutions to enable access to the internet,” said Wyyerd CEO John Scarano. “Our approach is straightforward – to install the best and longest-lasting technology available and to support our customers with local teams who are also members of the communities we serve.”

Wyyerd acquired Zona Communications in 2019, serving Peoria, Buckeye and areas of Maricopa County, and has since expanded rapidly throughout the West Valley, recently opening a new regional headquarters in Surprise. Wyyerd’s near-term plans include launching service in the East Valley in early 2023.

Wyyerd offers a full suite of services for residences, businesses, enterprises, carriers, and non-profit partners, including government and education entities. The experience of serving communities such as Vistancia, Sun City Festival, Festival Foothills, Sun City Grand and Surprise Farms has demonstrated the value customers see in a fiber-based product combined with exceptional customer service.

“Our motto is to do the right thing every time, and that means taking care of our customers like they are family, ” said Travis Nance, Wyyerd President/General Manager in Arizona. “Customers tell us they don’t like things like installation fees, gimmicks, surprises on their bill, and data caps. We don’t like them either, that’s why we don’t have them.”

About Wyyerd

Wyyerd Fiber, via its local operating entities, delivers fast, affordable, fiber-based internet access and related services. At Wyyerd, we believe that each region is unique and should be supported by an equally unique, locally managed organization, led by a local team. Wyyerd’s vision is to become the cornerstone partner for internet connectivity, fiber and facilities interconnection, smart community enablement and sustainable development, one community at a time. Visit wyyerd.com for more information.

Starting a new alternative network provider in today’s overly crowded UK broadband market carries a lot of risk, yet that hasn’t deterred new player Giggle from establishing itself alongside a £100m investment plan to build a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the city of Glasgow in Scotland. At present, Giggle (aka – Giggle Broadband and […]

Press Release

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has successfully completed a trial of 2Gbps residential services in York with its launch partner Vodafone. The trial was made possible by CityFibre’s recent upgrade of its York network to XGS-PON access technology, due to be rolled out as standard across its network from April 2023. The 2Gbps service paves the way for the introduction of residential and business services at symmetrical speeds of up to 10Gbps across its entire footprint in the future.

Working closely with Vodafone, the trial saw selected end-customers in York enjoy symmetrical speeds of up to 2Gbps, twice the speed of the fastest services widely available on CityFibre’s network. The new services were delivered using the Vodafone Pro II Broadband service and the new Vodafone Ultra Hub and Super WiFi6E Booster bundle, highlighting the futureproof technology customers can take advantage of today.

Earlier this summer, CityFibre successfully upgraded its first city network from G-PON to XGS-PON technology. The XGS-PON upgrade radically improves CityFibre’s network performance and service offering, enabling almost ten times the capability of its current G-PON based architecture. XGS-PON also enables CityFibre to continually upgrade its network while also supporting more customers on each OLT port, creating substantial cost savings, optimising power consumption, and improving the efficiency of CityFibre’s network expansion.

Michael Greening, Product Director at CityFibre, said: “After a successful trial, we’re a major step closer to bringing multi-gig full fibre services to millions of homes and business across the country. But at 2Gbps, we’re barely scratching the surface of our network’s capabilities. Thanks to our XGS-PON upgrade programme, we’ll be able to offer symmetrical speeds of up to 10Gbps in the future, further evidence that not all full fibre networks are created equal.”

Max Taylor, Chief Commercial Officer Vodafone UK, said: “We’re the biggest Full Fibre broadband provider in the UK and recording our fastest ever home WiFi speed showcases the true capability of the technology and our Pro II Broadband. With the UK’s fastest router, we’re all set to handle the next exciting developments, so our customers always get the fastest broadband speeds possible, in all corners of their home at a great price.”

How is the UK telecoms landscape changing in 2023? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s upcoming Connected North conference live in Manchester

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News

The Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) will check telco records for illegal surveillance requests made by Greek secret services

Last summer, Greece was rocked by a surveillance scandal, alleging that numerous journalists and politicians had been illegally spied upon by the government.

The issue first came to light when financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis reported that his phone had been hacked using Predator spyware.

Predator spyware requires the target to click a phishing link on their mobile phone, after which all calls, messages, photos, and video can be accessed by the spying party.

Soon afterwards, the issue grew to receive national coverage, as Nikos Androulakis, leader of the PASOK-KINAL opposition party and MEP, announced in June that he too had been a victim of a Predator spyware attack.

Since then, the scandal’s scope has grown ever broader, with a report in November suggesting that up to 33 journalists and politicians may have also been spied upon.

The Greek government has acknowledged a number of these surveillance operations, though insists that they were conducted legally, citing national security. They also deny purchasing Predator spyware.

Now, it seems that Greek telecoms operators are set to be probed in relation to the scandal, with local media reporting that ADAE are set to scrutinise telco records for surveillance requests from Greek intelligence agencies.

ADAE is set to put together a specific taskforce to oversee the investigation, using powers granted to it by the Greek Constitution to inspect the private data.

The ADAE has asked numerous politicians from opposition parties to provide phone numbers that will then be cross-referenced with telco records.

It is unclear when the results of this investigation will be announced but, with a legislative election set for July this year, the timing could not be worse for the incumbent New Democracy party.

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News

Government-run 5G wholesaler Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) says it has exceeded its original plan to cover 40% of the country’s populated areas with 5G

On Monday, DNB kicked off the New Year with an announcement that it’s growing 5G network now covers just under half (47.1%) of Malaysia’s populated areas. The state-operated 5G wholesaler said that it had 3,900 sites operational across the country by the end of last year, serving roughly 15 million people.

This puts DNB somewhat ahead of schedule, having only originally planned to reach 40% coverage by the end of last year.

However, today this claim is being challenged by the Malaysian Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil, who noted that these figures had yet to be independently verified by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.

I think @DNB_Official must explain how they arrived at these figures.@MCMC_RASMI has not yet verified this info.

Next time I don’t think DNB should publish prior to verification. https://t.co/JHjCipq6LJ

— Fahmi Fadzil 🇲🇾 (@fahmi_fadzil) January 3, 2023

Indeed, these figures from DNB do seem somewhat strange. Last year the company said it was aiming to deploy 4,018 5G sites to attain its original target of 40%. However, by December the company said that supply chain issues and difficulties in attaining approvals from local councils meant that it would not be able to deploy all of the planned sites by the end-of-year deadline.

Instead, DNB explained that it would reallocate equipment to other locations originally planned for deployment in 2023, saying they were confident they could still reach their 40% target using 500 fewer 5G sites than originally planned.

Based on the figures DNB announced this week, it would seem that they have managed to achieve 47.1% coverage using over 1,000 fewer sites than anticipated.

DNB says its next target is to expand its 5G coverage to 80% of the country’s populated areas by the end of 2024.

The news comes at a time when DNB is facing significant scrutiny from the new government under Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who was sworn in in November and immediately announced a plan to review the country’s single 5G network model.

The creation of DNB has always been deeply controversial in Malaysia. The country’s mobile operators had long argued that they would be able to rollout their own 5G networks more efficiently than the government wholesaler, which, they say, would make the 5G market competitive and create better value for customers.

They also complained about the business’s lack of transparency, bemoaning possible government corruption.

The government, on the other hand, disagreed, arguing that the single network model would prevent overbuild and allow more rapid deployment.

Over a year after the company’s official launch, none of the country’s mobile operators had signed up for DNB’s 5G services, with the government even threatening to offer its 5G services to foreign companies if the domestic players refused to play ball.

After much negotiating about the prospective ownership structure of DNB, all of Malaysia’s mobile operators – except Maxis – finally agreed to take a stake in DNB in August last year.

Maxis is awaiting shareholder approval for the 5G Access Agreement with DNB, which is expected to be granted later this month.

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Openreach (BT) has revealed that broadband usage across their UK network of ISPs increased by around 2.5% during 2022 to 64,364 PetaBytes (PB) of data, which is up from 62,700 PB being downloaded in 2021, 50,000 PB in 2020 and 22,000 PB in 2019. The latest figures actually represent somewhat of a revision to the […]

UK ISP Zen Internet has put out a short and very simplified summary of broadband traffic across their network during 2022, which among other things reveals that sporting (streaming) and gaming (software) releases contributed to a general 21% increase in “peak” internet traffic in 2022 vs 2021. The figure of 21% was actually hit on […]

Cityfibre has today issued an update on their project to upgrade their entire UK G-PON based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to harness 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (here), which reveals that they’ve successfully completed a trial of 2Gbps home broadband speeds in York with ISP partner Vodafone. At present the network operator aims to cover up […]

The latest independent biannual summary of UK broadband coverage for H2 2022 has estimated that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP network rollouts have surged to reach 45.13% of premises (up from 37.61% in H1 2022) and 72.66% are within reach of “gigabit” speeds (up from 69.24%). Read on for details of England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. […]

Press Release

China Mobile and Ericsson jointly launched energy-efficient 5G sites to accelerate its energy conservation and carbon emission reduction efforts. Ericsson and China Mobile Jiangsu have launched a 5G smart site on 700MHz band that does not produce carbon dioxide. Ericsson has also partnered with China Mobile Guangdong to launch an energy-efficient site on the 2.6GHz band.

For this collaboration, China Mobile has implemented Ericsson’s power system, which enables hybrid energy management. It optimizes use of energy from solar, grid and battery to achieve the most energy-efficient operation. The products come integrated and verified with remote management option via the Ericsson Network Manager.

Liming Tang, Head of RAN HW Solution, Market Area North East Asia, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson is committed to helping customers build and manage high-quality networks with advanced connectivity technologies, products, and solutions. We pursue improved energy usage and management through technological development, and we are pleased to further contribute to a more energy-efficient 5G network with China Mobile.”

As industrialization has posed further challenges of carbon emissions, energy conservation and renewable energy have become the main technology trend for all industries in China. Ericsson has responded to the country’s needs for energy-efficient networks by delivering end-to-end, smart site solutions that not only reduce energy consumption but also carbon and site footprint.

Compared with the current power system management, the new Ericsson Smart Site offers new levels of quality assurance, intelligent administration of various energy sources, full-stack real-time monitoring, plus intelligent energy, and service synergy.

First, the solution connects the mixed energy generated to the Ericsson Site Controller, enabling unified and intelligent management of various energy sources.
Second, by connecting Ericsson Site Controller to the same network management system as that of the base station. On the same ENM (Ericsson Network Management) energy system and the radio access network (RAN) can be managed and supervised. It is also possible to realize synergies between energy system and the base station.
The Ericsson Smart Site can also effectively ensure network security.

The smart site is compatible with Ericsson’s microwave solutions to enable the deployment of wireless base stations for universal telecommunication services across rural areas and other situations where traditional utility power is not accessible. Equally, this solution can be deployed across urban sites with tight power supply, to mitigate power supply challenges and reduce expenses with new energy.

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