New customers of BT’s fastest Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based home broadband packages may like to know that the ISP has launched several significant discounts, which drop their Full Fibre 500Mbps plan to just £30.99 and the 900Mbps tier to just £40.99 per month for the first 24-months of service. But there’s more. Customers who take the […]

Credible sources have informed ISPreview.co.uk that ISP Sky Broadband’s annual UK price hikes (here) may also be followed by some changes that could degrade both the “Speed Guarantee” they attach to packages, and the WiFi guarantee that comes attached to their optional ‘Broadband Boost‘ add-on. At present, customers who take one of Sky Broadband’s packages […]

News

With most broadband providers set implement inflation-linked mid-contract price jumps, the regulator is set to investigate whether their customers are being sufficiently informed

Last month, following the publication of Office of National Statistics inflation data, most of the UK’s mobile and broadband operators confirmed that they would, as feared, be increasing their contract prices in line with inflation.

Customers can expect to be hit by an average mid-contract price hike of around 14.4%, most of which will come into effect between March and April this year.

But the question is, do customers know this increase is coming?

The legality of mid-contract price hikes is well established in consumer law, but how these increases are communicated to customers is highly varied. Some communication services providers (CSPs) include planned price increases in the fine print of the contracts themselves, while others typically give customers 30 days’ notice of any incoming increase to their bills.

But at a time when the cost-of-living crisis is piling pressure on consumers, Ofcom is keen to be especially vigilant to ensure customers know what they are getting into when they sign a connectivity contract.

In December last year, the regulator launched an industry-wide enforcement programme, seeking to ensure CSPs are making the pricing terms in their contracts both prominent and transparent.

The programme was built on the results of a preliminary investigation into the matter, which found that that around one in three customers did not realise their CSP could legally increase the price of their contract, with far fewer understanding how these increases would be calculated.

Now, Ofcom has announced that they will take this investigation process one step further, launching an official review into whether customers are given “sufficient certainty and clarity about what they can expect to pay”.

“Customers need certainty and clarity about what they will pay over the course of their contract. But inflation-linked price rises can be unclear and unpredictable. So we’re concerned that providers are making it difficult for customers to know what to expect,” said Cristina Luna-Esteban, Ofcom’s Director of Telecoms Consumer Protection. “We’re taking a thorough look at these types of contract terms, to understand fully the extent to which customers truly know what they’re signing up to, and whether tougher protections are needed.”

The review will particularly explore the ways in which inflation and percentage-linked price rises are communicated to customers.

Initial findings from the probe are expected to be published later in the year.

Are operators doing enough to support their customers during the cost-of-living crisis? Join the discussion with the UK’s telecoms ecosystem at this year’s live Connected North event

Also in the news:
Comcast signs deals worth $50m with State of Indiana for rural fibre expansion
Verizon records 5G upload speeds of over 1Gbps
Yorkshire Water partners with BT for smart water project

Press Release

Samsung Electronics today announced the company has been selected by KDDI to provide its cloud-native 5G Standalone (SA) Core for the operator’s commercial network across Japan. Samsung’s 5G SA Core will deliver a range of advantages for KDDI’s network, including lower latency and high reliability as well as 5G-enhanced capabilities. This ushers in a new generation of services and applications available to KDDI’s consumers and enterprise customers.

Samsung’s 5G Core solution supports both 4G and 5G networks, offering seamless migration from 4G to 5G. The company’s 5G Core is also designed with critical features to ensure the stability and reliability of the network such as an overload control feature to counteract sudden traffic spikes as well as geo-redundancy support. For geographic redundant deployment, Samsung and KDDI are operating multiple cores in various locations, with each core dimensioned to pick up loads in case one of the active cores becomes unavailable due to traffic bursts or natural disasters.

“We strive to provide the best mobile experiences to our customers through network innovation and our advanced 5G SA network will offer immense capabilities,” said Toshikazu Yokai, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of Mobile Network Technical Development Division at KDDI. “With Samsung’s 5G SA Core, we will offer unprecedented speed, instantaneous connectivity and high reliability which could bring numerous new experience value for consumers and enterprises. We look forward to continue advancing 5G networks to stay ahead of our customers’ needs.”

“KDDI has been at the forefront of opening up the next frontier of 5G services and we are proud to see our long-term collaboration deepen with new opportunities as we drive continuous innovation and realize technology vision together,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “We look forward to continuing our collaboration with KDDI to reshape the 5G services landscape in Japan and achieving new 5G milestones.”

The standalone architecture will enable KDDI to create an independent 5G network, enabling lower latency capabilities that are essential to high-performance use cases such as smart factories, automated vehicles, cloud-based online gaming and multi-camera live streaming at sporting events.

Samsung’s 5G Core will also enable KDDI to optimize network slicing — a feature that requires a full 5G SA Core. Network slicing divides a single physical network infrastructure into multiple virtual slices, where each slice is dedicated for a specific user case or application. With this feature, a single network can dynamically support multiple 5G use cases and applications at once, accelerating the delivery of new services and meeting the tailored demands of enterprises and consumers. For instance, operators can create a low latency slice for automated vehicles, an IoT slice for smart factories and a high bandwidth slice for live video streaming — all within the same network.

With the deployment of 5G SA Core, Samsung is providing a wide portfolio of its 5G solutions to KDDI — ranging from RAN to Core. In their collaboration, Samsung has been providing its 5G network solutions which support the operator’s low-, mid- and mmWave spectrum bands — including Massive MIMO radios.

For more than a decade, the two companies have been working together, hitting major 5G networks milestones including KDDI’s selection of Samsung as a 5G network solutions provider and 5G network rollout on 700MHz. Recently, KDDI and Samsung announced the industry’s first demonstration of Service Level Agreements (SLA) assurance network slicing using a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) on a live 5G SA network and the initiation of the commercial deployment of Open virtualized RAN (vRAN) sites in Osaka, which is also the world’s first commercial MU-MIMO implementation with O-RAN compliant multivendor interoperability.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions including chipsets, radios and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from virtualized RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company is currently providing network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users around the world.

Keep up to date with all the latest telecoms news with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news:
Comcast signs deals worth $50m with State of Indiana for rural fibre expansion
Verizon records 5G upload speeds of over 1Gbps
Yorkshire Water partners with BT for smart water project

The Scottish Government has released a small update on the progress of their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT). This confirms that a total of 16,600 rural properties have so far been covered by a fixed “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP network under the scheme (inc. 2,800 connections via R100 vouchers). At present more […]

Consumer broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that their ultrafast 5G based (mobile broadband) network is expanding into more rural parts of the UK, reaching national parks, seasonal hotspots and over 500 smaller towns and villages. They’re also testing new technologies, such as mobile via LEO satellites. At present EE’s 5G […]

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today officially launched a new review that will finally examine whether inflation-linked mid-contract price rises give phone and broadband ISP customers “sufficient certainty and clarity about what they can expect to pay.” In an ideal world, the price you pay when you first join a new provider or package […]

Customers of Sky Broadband’s (Sky plc) various UK broadband, phone and Pay TV products are being told to brace for an average annual price hike of 8.1% (£5.60), which is to be introduced from 1st April 2023. But crucially, this is less than the 14-15% of their main competitors and below the current level of […]

Startup Story

Whilst new to the telecom sector, Pilot Round believes it can make a difference in the startup space for the sector. They will be joining Total Telecom at Connected North in Manchester in April.

Tell us about your start up
Pilot Round is a new, powerful FounderTech platform built to bridge the gap between pre-product founders and appropriate early-stage investors. Through an intuitive mobile application, founders can quickly onboard and provide details on how much of their Pilot Round they are looking to secure in order to fund their next 3-6 months. They then use the seamlessly integrated AI of ChatGPT to help prepare a compelling script around their founder’s journey, which they then can rehearse, present and record via the camera on their phone.

What is your USP, how do you stand out from your competition?
Unlike other founder investor platforms we powerfully enable pre-product founders in their early stage to leverage their Founder Market Fit to find aligned investors that are interested in funding and fuelling their next 3-6 months

Why did you establish the business?
After being a founder myself, I have spent over a decade pioneering how Founder Market Fit can be modelled, analysed and evaluated in early stage conversations

Who inspired you / who is your mentor or motivation?
Chamath Palihapitiya {a Silicon Valley venture capital investor described by Forbes as a tech firebrand.}

What does the future hold for your business?
We hope to make Pilot Round the go-to market pre-seed platform, format and standard in the early stage space.

COMPANY CV

HEADQUARTERS – LONDON
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES – 3
LAST FUNDING TYPE – PRE-SEED
WEBSITE URL – www.pilotround.com
FOUNDER: Dan Simmons

If you want to showcase your startup at Connected North, apply on the website or email startup manager *********@*******le.com“>Amie Tucker

 

Mobile network operator Smarty has quietly added the ‘SMARTY Social Tariff‘ to their website, which as the name suggests is a low-cost unlimited data (mobile broadband), calls and texts (SMS) plan that is only available to those on eligible state benefits and costs just £12 per month. Smarty, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator […]