Rural focused UK ISP Gigaclear, which is working to build their 1Gbps full fibre (FTTP) network across remote parts of England, will today launch a “Bank Holiday Special” offer that discounts the price of their unlimited 400Mbps (symmetric speed) broadband service to just £20 for the first 18 months of service (£49 thereafter). The provider, […]

A recent study by Ookla, which runs the popular Speedtest.net service for benchmarking global internet connection performance, has revealed which of the top big “vacation” cities and towns in the UK and Europe deliver the fastest mobile broadband speeds (4G and 5G). London comes mid-table with a median download of 69.02Mbps. The organisation divided the […]

Rural broadband ISP Gigaclear has announced that 3,000 homes and businesses in the market town and civil parish of Brackley in West Northamptonshire (England) will be the next to benefit from their rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. Locals will soon be able to access speeds of up to 900Mbps. The move makes […]

News

In the memo sent to all Huawei staff, Ren Zhengfei said the company must focus on profit over scale and discard “overly optimistic” expectations

With a global recession looming, this week has seen employees of Chinese vendor giant Huawei issued a stark warning from the company’s founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei.

In a leaked memo delivered to all the company’s 195,000 staff members, Ren was gloomy about the future of the global economy, telling employees that there was a “very painful” decade ahead, citing the long-term effects of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and US sanctions on Huawei.

“Huawei must reduce any overly optimistic expectations for the future and until 2023 or even 2025,” he said in the memo. “We must make survival the most important guideline, and not only to survive but survive with quality”.

Ren said that the company must adapt to these new conditions by refocussing on cash flow and profit, rather than simply growing sales revenue.

“Take surviving as the main program, shrink and close all marginal businesses, and pass the chill to everyone,” Ren said. “The entire company’s business policy should shift from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of profit and cash flow.”

As part of this process, Ren indicated that the company could seek to downsize in overseas markets and reduce spending on R&D in areas not delivering immediate profit, such as electric vehicles.

In fact, Huawei has already begun streamlining its workforce, having already cut roughly 2,000 jobs in 2021, largely due to US sanctions shrinking the company’s annual revenue by over a third. Now, sources are suggesting that the company is preparing to cut 4,000–5,000 additional middle manager jobs.

It appears to be no coincidence that Ren’s memo should come shortly after the Huawei’s H1 financial results, which were quietly announced earlier this month. While the company’s decline in revenues had slowed since Q1, the company still reported their overall revenues as down 5.9% year-on-year, reaching roughly $44.7 billion.

This ongoing slump in revenue is largely attributed to the continued decline of Huawei’s handset business – the business unit worst hit by US sanctions – where sales shrunk by around a quarter compared to 2021.

However, the revenue reduction was also offset somewhat by the company’s carrier and enterprise software units, which continue to grow at a healthy pace.

“While our device business was heavily impacted, our ICT infrastructure business maintained steady growth,” said Ken Hu, Huawei’s rotating chairman at the results announcement. “Moving forward, we will harness trends in digitalization and decarbonization to keep creating value for our customers and partners, and secure quality development.”

“Our strategy for operations in 2022 revolves around surviving and doing so sustainably,” Hu noted.

 

The post Feeling the chill: Huawei founder tells employees to focus on “survival” first appeared on Total Telecom.

Network operator and UK ISP toob, which is building a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of Hampshire and Surrey in England, has today added two new towns to their rollout plan – Yateley and Blackwater. The provider, which is being supported by an investment of £162.5m from the Amber Infrastructure Group and […]

News

Wholesale connectivity provider, Netomnia, has announced further growth plans for its full fibre network in Avon and North Wales.

In a series of news releases the company, who builds infrastructure to enable ISP’s to provide their broadband services, has revealed an initial investment of £47.7 million in Bristol and up to £12 million in Wrexam and the surrounding area.

In Bristol Netomnia is targeting 159,000 premises starting in the suburb of Downend before extending into the communities of Kingswood and Filton, whilst in Wrexam 40,000 premises are targeted via a partnership with GForce.

Wrexham, which will receive city status on 1st September 2022 as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, is Netomnia’s third location in Wales, following on from 29,000 premises in Barry and 55,000 premises in Bridgend.

CEO, Jeremy Chelot, said “Marking our third location in Wales, we know that our network will provide real benefits to the area for generations to come and we look forward to continuing our expansion across the UK.”

The group, YouFibre and Netomnia, have secured £418 million in funding since 2020. The majority – £295 million – has been raised via a funding round led by DigitalBridge Investment Management (DigitalBridge). Earlier this year, DigitalBridge principal Manjari Govada said of “We have been highly impressed with the growth of the business and the best-in-class team he [Jeremy Chelot] has assembled.”

Jeremy Chelot will join a panel discussion on building future-ready 5G and advanced FTTH networks in the UK at Connected Britain on the 20 September. To secure your seat visit the website totaltele.com/connectedbritain

The post Go West, young man – Netomnia announces growth plans first appeared on Total Telecom.

Press Release

All of Viettel’s companies in Asian markets (Metfone, Unitel, Mytel, Telemor) still maintain the No. 1 market share in terms of subscribers, in which Mytel has the highest service revenue growth among markets (nearly 80%).

Companies in Africa markets (Halotel, Lumitel, Movitel…) continue to develop e-wallet subscribers. Movitel is the company with the highest service revenue growth in the African markets, 38.6%, thanks to strong growth in terms of 4G subscribers and new services.

In Americas, Natcom maintained double-digit growth for 5 consecutive years and enjoyed the highest growth rate in 9 years from 2014, reaching: 28.6%. Bitel’s Super app (Mi Bitel) reached 1 million users and ranked No. 1 among the apps developed by network providers in Peru. Viettel’s telecommunications sector in foreign market reached the total revenue in the first 6 months of 2022 to 755.5 million USD, up 9.7% over the same period.

Currently, markets with a high rate of 4G subscribers (over 75%) have planned and implemented projects to turn off 3G stations. All markets promote the development of e-wallet subscribers (to date, Viettel owns 7.4 million e-wallet subscribers in foreign markets). The strategy of developing digital transformation solutions to meet the needs of e-government, digital economy and digital culture is promoted by Viettel on a global scale.

 

The post Viettel posts two-digit growth in many overseas markets first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

The Singaporean operator says it will sell a 3.3% direct stake in the Indian telco to Bharti Telecom, a joint venture (JV) between Bharti Enterprises and Singtel

This week, Singtel have announced that it is selling a 3.3% direct stake in Bharti Airtel, raising $1.6 billion.

The sale to Bharti Telecom will take place through Singtel’s subsidiaries, Pastel Ltd and Viridian Ltd, leaving Singtel with a 29.7% total stake in Airtel, 19.2% of which is indirect via Bharti Telecom.

Bharti Telecom is co-owned by both Bharti Enterprises and Singtel, which own 50.56% and 49.44%, respectively. In turn, Bharti Telecom holds a 35.8% stake in Bharti Airtel.

“Bharti Enterprises and Singtel have agreed to work towards equalising their effective stake in Airtel over time,” noted Sunil Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Enterprises.

Singtel says the funds raised will be used to reduce the Group’s debt, as well as further enhance their 5G rollout.

“As long-term strategic investors and partners, the value of our stakes in our regional associates has risen substantially over the years but has not been properly reflected in our share price,” said Singtel’s Group CFO, Arthur Lang. “This sale in Airtel will be our first ever and seeks to address this gap by illuminating the sizeable value of our holdings in Airtel. It is also part of our capital management approach to take monetisation opportunities that allow us to increase our return on invested capital and enhance total shareholder returns.”

The stake sale is expected to close in the next three months.

Singtel has been divesting of numerous assets in recent months, seeking to streamline its operations and focus on new revenue streams. Late last year, Singtel announced they would sell a majority stake in the tower unit of their Australian operator subsidiary, Optus, raising $1.3 billion. More recently, the company has sold its underperforming digital marketing company Amobee for $239 million, with rumours last week suggesting that Singtel’s cybersecurity unit Trustwave could soon follow.

In contrast, however, the company is still investing heavily in the next generation of telecoms technology, earlier this month pumping a fresh $100 million into its tech start-up investment arm, Innov8, a company that has already produced four ‘unicorns’ in the past decade.

The post Singtel offload 3.3% Bharti Airtel stake for $1.6 billion first appeared on Total Telecom.

Broadband ISP Truespeed, which is building a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across rural parts of South West England and beyond, has today announced that they’re adopting ADTRAN’s XGS-PON hardware to power their ongoing deployments. The technology is capable of delivering symmetric speeds up to 10Gbps. The provider, which has so far covered 40,000 rural premises […]

SpaceX’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based Starlink ultrafast broadband satellite service has been in the news a few times this week as they tweak their packages across the world, and today it’s the UK’s turn. Residential customers have been informed of a significant price cut from £89 to £75 per month. But there’s more. The […]