Ofcom has today published new proposals to soften some of the UK’s existing Net Neutrality protection rules, which were established some years ago to ensure no serious blocking or slowing of access to legal websites or other internet services by broadband ISPs and mobile network operators. But there are some positive statements too. Back in […]

Broadband ISP BeFibre, which alongside network partner Digital Infrastructure is building a full fibre (FTTP) network across towns in several counties (e.g. Essex, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire etc.), has signed a 3-year partnership with Linksys to supply customers with MX4200 Wi-Fi 6 routers. Warrington-based BeFibre and Digital Infrastructure began their rollout last year […]

STARTUP STORIES

Moflix provide a white label platform for digital services, that claims to win the new generation of customers – the digital natives – while differentiating from the competition and radically simplifying customer interactions. Their bold claim for telecom operators is “Be Digital in 100 Days”. They will be exhibiting in the Startup Village at the Total Telecom Congress in London this November.

Tell us about your start up
Moflix delivers a future-ready “Telco-in-an-App” solution for Operators and MVNOs. It’s a cloud-native, full end-to-end digital proposition in a lean operating model that can be integrated easily into your existing operation within 100 days.

Your customers can sign up and onboard themselves in minutes and manage their entire relationship with you through an intuitive mobile app. The whole service is managed by Moflix – so you don’t have to disrupt your existing IT roadmap to see the impact on your KPIs in just a few months.

We are proud of our start up already receiving industry allocates with McKinsey & Co’s “A Battle Plan for Telco’s Digital-Attacker Brands” report featuring the Moflix solution for Sunrise (yallo swype in Switzerland) as a best industry practice and our recent win of the “Consumer eSIM Solution of the Year” award with ICE Norway for NiceMobil.

What is your USP?
Moflix provides TelcoTech solutions that digitalize and automate traditional connectivity services and drive wide-scale adoption of digital lifestyle and financial services.

Our Digital Operator in an App solution delivers a sustainable All Digital experience to end-users

Through digital ID verification, we enable Telcos to leverage their Connectivity relationship to accelerate the adoption of services enabled by Web3 – including access to a digital service marketplace and to monetize their existing assets by tapping into new revenue streams.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
Our main customers are Telco Operators and MVNOs.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
We started with investments from our founders. Then continued bootstrapping with two initial operator customers.

Why did you establish the business?
Moflix is the brainchild of an international group of telco veterans who wanted to create game-changing digital solutions designed to fix the most critical challenges that telecom operators face and transform how they do business for digital success today and in the future.

It was clear from conception that the telecom market in Europe needs and wants a light-weight, fully digital, simplified BSS replacement solution.

Who inspired you?
Marc Degen as founder is a motivational mentor for our company. He is an experienced entrepreneur with an unquenchable creative urge and a passion for people and business ventures with multiple exits.

As Board Member, Founder and Co-founder of various businesses in the fields of Digital Services, Telecommunications, and Web3, he focuses on growing ideas into profitable businesses by implementing digital services and maximising opportunities for revenue growth. Marc Degen was consecutively named Digital Shaper by Bilanz Magazine in 2018 and 2019 and won the Digital Innovation of the Year Award by SwissICT in 2018 with modum.io for their Blockchain and ML-based pharma supply chain monitoring solution.

Marc is currently supporting digital scaleups with their technology roadmap, marketing positioning, go-to-market strategies and investment & financial planning in his own venture studio.

We want to make onboarding and use of our products as intuitive, fast, and easy as Netflix, so we are inspired by disruptive digital start ups like Uber, Revolut, and WhatsApp as well as best practices from other brands that pivoted to better serve digital.

What does the future hold for your business
We would like to continue the “Moflix Momentum” and see rapid growth worldwide outside of our initial European focus.

COMPANY CV
HEADQUARTERS: Zurich, Switzerland and Tampere, Finland
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 15
LAST FUNDING TYPE: Pre-Seed (Founders investment)
URL: http://www.moflixgroup.com
FOUNDERS:
Founder, Marc Degen
Moflix CEO, Ryan Gold

MEET MOFLIX AT THE TOTAL TELECOM CONGRESS: London, 1-2 November 2022. Get your pass at www.totaltele.com/congress 

 

Related content: more Startup Stories

The post Startup Stories: delivering on the promise of a digital telco solution first appeared on Total Telecom.

Internet traffic across UK broadband ISPs surged last night on the back of several Premier League football matches streamed on Amazon, which resulted in data usage across the London Internet Exchange (LINX) reaching a new record peak of 7.179Tbps (Terabits per second) and TalkTalk hitting 9.105Tbps. The new peak record of 9.105Tbps was set on […]

Scottish ISP Lothian Broadband (LNBL), which is building a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network for 70,000 premises across rural parts of East and Mid Lothian, has today announced that their rollout is being expanded into the Highland region and they’re launching a new sub-brand – Highland Broadband. The provider originally began building a new […]

New customers taking out one of UK ISP Virgin Media’s (VMO2) 350Mbps, 500Mbps or 1Gbps broadband-only packages may be pleased to learn that the provider will now throw in one of their new TV streaming boxes – simply called ‘Stream‘ – for free (i.e. they’ve waived the usual £35 activation fee). Stream itself is available […]

NEWS

Reports suggest the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) is in discussions with Telecom Egypt to acquire 20% of their holdings in Vodafone Egypt

This week, reports suggest that the QIA has entered into discussions with state-run Telecom Egypt to acquire 20% of the latter’s 45% stake in Vodafone Egypt.

The discussions are wider investment by QIA in undisclosed assets owned by the Egyptian state, with a total combined value of around $2.5 billion.

Vodafone Egypt is the largest mobile operator in Egypt with a market share of roughly 43%. Vodafone Group owns a 55% stake in the business, with the remainder held by Telecom Egypt. Telecom Egypt, in turn, is 80% owned by the Egyptian government.

A formal offer has yet to be made, but sources suggest that an agreement could be reached by the end of the year.

Rumours that the QIA was negotiating with Telecom Egypt first began to circulate last month, but the Egyptian operator was quick to deny that discussions were taking place.

The stake sale, if it is agreed, will be the latest step in the thawing of Qatar and Egypt’s frosty relationship. Back in 2017, Egypt, alongside Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, severed diplomatic ties with Qatar due to the latter’s alleged support of terrorist organisations.

Money talks, however, and Qatari investments have continued to trickle into Egypt in the past five years. The QIA, for example, already has various investments in Egypt, much of which is centred around the country’s vital tourist trade, which has been heavily impacted first by the pandemic and today by the war in Ukraine.

In closely related news, Vodafone Group itself currently in the process of selling its 55% stake in Vodafone Egypt to Vodacom Group, with the deal being valued at roughly $2.7 billion.

The deal’s journey through the regulatory process in South Africa, however, is taking some time. Recent reports suggest that the deal has received the green light from the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority but is still awaiting approval from the Financial Supervision Department of the Reserve Bank of South Africa.

Also in the news:
The missing 3.2 billion…
New EXA investment serves customers across the Iberian peninsula
Startup stories: Facing up to cybersecurity risks

The post Qatari sovereign wealth fund mulls taking 20% stake in Vodafone Egypt first appeared on Total Telecom.

A THOUGHTLEADERSHIP ARTICLE BY IAN COWSER, CARRIER NETWORKS APPLICATION ENGINEER, CORNING OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS.

While the UK was once a relative laggard in FTTH compared to its European neighbours, it is now a hive of activity. Digital connectivity has become a cornerstone of the UK’s economic ambitions and the business case for laying down as much full fibre as possible, as fast as possible, grows ever stronger.

It’s a fiercely competitive space and while Openreach continues to lead the charge and build at scale, recent data from INCA indicates that UK alternative operators (altnets) have more than doubled their footprint year on year since 2019 – now reaching 5.5m premises and expected to reach 11.5m premises by the end of this year.

The race to establish a footprint brings a keen focus on the speed of deployment. Success in this modern-day gold rush hinges on the ability to build at speed and meet ambitious targets, while of course retaining the network quality and productivity that will keep local stakeholders and residents happy. With your average homeowner unlikely to see the bigger picture when faced with roadworks and digging outside their homes – the faster build teams can get in and out the better.

When it comes to the most popular network architecture choices, since the earliest days of FTTH there has been much discussion about the relative merits of passive optical network (PON) versus Point to Point and Centralised versus Distributed Split architectures. The capability to speed up deployment however is mainly influenced by the configuration of network terminals – the point at which customer drops are connected into the network – and the method by which customers are connected.

The most efficient solution for speed of deployment both from the perspective of Homes Passed and Homes Connected Homes Connected is using hardened connectors and stubbed terminals. At Corning, we developed a solution nearly 20 years ago that reduced splicing in the field and moved that work to our own factories – creating the industry’s first pre-connectorised solution for fibre to the premises. Terminals using this interface can be deployed without any fibre handling work, which means that more skilled resource can be deployed further back in the network where splicing is a necessity.

In response to today’s network challenges, we’ve taken this approach even further with Evolv™ Terminals and Drops with Pushlok™ Technology, our newest hardened connectorised terminal and drop solution. The terminals are less than half the size of previous solutions and the “Stick&Click” one handed mating makes the connection process quick and easy.

This also helps to solve another principal challenge for our UK altnets – securing permissions (known as wayleave agreements) which can significantly stall even the best laid build plans. The INCA data referenced earlier also found that for 57% of respondents, their average wait time in securing wayleaves is 6 to 12 months.

Securing permissions is particularly difficult in historical areas. The local authorities, building owners and landlords, quite rightly, have a responsibility to ensure that the character and appearance of these areas is preserved, and conspicuous networking equipment is rarely welcomed. By minimising the size of the terminal in multiple planes, the product can be installed on buildings discretely and with an overall aesthetic look.

There’s also a variety of ways that money can be saved in the placement of these terminals and their connection to the device, which helps build the business case. In particular, smaller terminals can be installed on congested poles and chambers where conventional terminals won’t fit which can significantly reduce the need for expensive network adjustment upgrades.

While there will be winners and losers in the fibre gold rush, the main beneficiaries will ultimately be you and me. Ubiquitous full fibre coverage, from a choice of ISPs, will lay a critical foundation for all manner of public services, boost productivity, enable next-generation entertainment and services, and support an increasingly hybrid workforce. For the altnets themselves, maintaining a keen focus on the speed and scalability of their builds will be the key to success. https://www.corning.com/emea/altnets

 

About Ian Cowser:

Ian Cowser is an application engineer, advising and supporting on optical fibre networks to leading operators and builders for Corning Optical Communications. He has nearly 30 years’ experience working within the Fibre to the Home industry, with extensive experience in FTTH deployments throughout Europe.

During 29 years within Corning, Ian has held a variety of roles, including Technical & System Manager, Sales Manager and Sales Executive as well as the Chair of the Corning European Employee Committee. He has consistently promoted FTTH with major operators in EMEA. Ian is a highly structured mechanical engineer with a degree from the University of Central Lancashire in Lancashire, UK.

 

The post The FTTH Gold Rush – How to Get Ahead in the Rollout Race first appeared on Total Telecom.

Founded in 1978 and acquired by ETC Group in 2020, Comtec is one of the UK’s largest value-added distributors of telecom and IP equipment to both the carrier and enterprise markets. With offices in the UK, Far East and Middle East, it operate two divisions. A product distribution solution offering the same or next day delivery service to installation contractors and a specialist supply chain management solution for telecommunications operators and large systems integrators.

At our recent #ConnectedBritain event, we caught up with Bruno Poisson, Group Managing Director – Europe for ETC where he explained how Comtec is contributing to accelerating fibre rollouts in the UK.

Watch the interview here:

Get in touch to find out how Comtec can help with your requirements and alleviate any potential stock issues you may be facing.

See their full range here www.comtecdirect.co.uk
Speak to the Comtec team – 01480 405414
Email at fttxsales@comtec-comms.com

 

The post Comtec (Part of ETC Group) helping to resolve supply issues with huge stockholdings in the UK first appeared on Total Telecom.

Technology development group ETSI, which is a European Standards Organization (ESO), has this week released a new e-SIM related specification that will enable multiple accounts and identities to exist inside the same Smartphone (mobile) handset without needing any physical SIMs to be within the device. Just to recap. The GSMA’s eSIM standard is an alternative […]