The Welsh Government (WG) has today announced that the Michaelston-y-Fedw Internet CIC (Community Interest Company), which a few years ago deployed a 1Gbps full fibre (FTTP) network to reach 240 premises in a rural village between Cardiff and Newport, has been extended into neighbouring communities. Just to recap. The original scheme, which was funded by […]

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The joint venture (JV) would potentially threaten the advertising hegemony of existing tech giants like Google and Meta

On Friday, European antitrust regulators gave unconditional approval for Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone to create a new advertising JV.

In a statement, the European Commission said that the deal “would not significantly reduce competition in French, German, Italian and Spanish markets”.

Each of the four operators will hold a 25% stake in the business, which will be headquartered in Belgium and run by an independent management team.

The deal marks the first major attempt from the telecoms industry to curtail the dominance of Big Tech in the advertising sphere.

The telcos first announced their intention to the form the JV at the start of the year, saying they would offer “a privacy-led, digital identification solution to support the digital marketing and advertising activities of brands and publishers”.

The platform works by creating a unique digital tag that tracks the app and browser usage for each of the operators’ subscribers. This tag can then be shared with advertisers and publishers, leaving the customer themselves ‘pseudo-anonymous’.

Users must opt-in to the sharing of their tag with each individual third party, thereby giving them increased control over which companies have access to their data.

“Users will have access to a user-friendly privacy portal. They can review which brands and publishers they have given consent to, and withdraw their consent,” explained the telcos in a statement.

The operators say that this JV will be entirely compliant with European privacy regulations, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy directive.

A trial of the platform has already been initiated in Germany, with additional tests expected to take place in France and Spain as the platform develops.

Ultimately, the operators hope to make their advertising platform available to any operator in Europe.

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With President Biden doubling down on the need for the private sector to purchase equipment domestically, rolling out broadband in the US could be more costly than anticipated

Back in 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law, providing for $1.2 trillion in spending on infrastructure projects, from roads to rural broadband.

Within the IIJA, around $42.5 billion was set aside for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) programme, which seeks to subsidise planning, infrastructure deployment, and adoption programmes for high-speed broadband across the nation.

The BEAD programme, overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), is currently taking industry applications for funding, with allocations expected to be made by June 30.

Naturally, this programme has been seen as a huge boon to the US fibre industry, with the funding potentially making it far more cost effective to deploy network infrastructure to underserved areas and thereby shrink the digital divide.

However, actually being allocated the funds may not be as smooth sailing as previously thought, with President Biden last week doubling down on his insistence that companies ‘Buy American’ when using federal funding.

“Buy American has been the law since 1933, but for too long past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have fought to get around it. Not anymore. Tonight, I’m announcing new standards to require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America. Lumber, glass, drywall, fibre optic cable,” said President Biden in his State of the Union address on Thursday.

The speech was followed by the release of a new update to the Build America, Buy America Act provisions within the IIJA, tightening restrictions on which products can be purchased with government funding.

The IIJA currently requires at least 55% of the products purchased using government subsidies to be made domestically – a measure that has proven somewhat painful for fibre optic companies, who claim they can purchase the products from foreign firms at a cheaper rate. As such, many of these companies have been applying for exemptions to these ‘Buy American’ requirements.

The NTIA has already demonstrated a willingness to acquiesce to similar requests for other programmes, with waivers already in place for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program. They are also considering allowing waivers for the $1 billion Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program.

Now, however, following President Biden’s speech, the NTIA has reaffirmed their commitment to enforce the ‘Buy American’ stipulations for BEAD, arguing that the US fibre industry has the time necessary to scale their operations to meet the programme’s needs.

“NTIA has done considerable research and does not currently see any need for waivers for fibre optic glass or cable. Our expectation is that industry will be able to produce enough quantity [of fibre] to satisfy the demand from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program over the coming years,” said the NTIA in a statement.

“The BEAD Program has different requirements, and manufacturers have time to re-shore or expand their operations. Moving forward, NTIA will work with these businesses to ensure that they can produce the relevant products for the BEAD program domestically,” it added.

At a time when the global economy is already strained and supply chain crises are rife, the NTIA’s insistence that US companies buy fibre and equipment domestically will surely be a blow to the nation’s fixed line operators.

How will the US government’s insistence that the private sector ‘Buy American’ impact the provision of telecoms services? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s live Connected America conference

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