Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a cheeky email advert from broadband ISP Grain Connect, which headlined with a warning about Virgin Media “taking over YouFibre & BRSK“. But YouFibre successfully complained that the rest of the promotion had made “misleading price rise claims“.

Just for some context. The parents of the Virgin Media and O2 group of companies, including InfraVia Capital via nexfibre, are currently in the process of trying to complete their £2bn deal to acquire alternative broadband operator Netomnia (here) – the parent of YouFibre. Sensing an opportunity, rival altnet Grain Connect recently attempted to key into that with their latest email promotion, as seen in March 2026.

The email was headed: “IMPORTANT NEWS: Virgin Media are taking over YouFibre & BRSK”. Text below stated, “Got friends with YouFibre or BRSK? Help them escape the price rise rip-off and get a month of free broadband, each! What’s happening? YouFibre & BRSK are set to be taken over by Virgin Media. If your friends or neighbours chose them to avoid big-brand pricing and in-contract price rises… then this will feel like they’re being dragged back to square one. How to be a good friend As a Grain customer, your unique referral code is: LGGIBCIY. Share it with your friends and when they switch to Grain, you’ll both get a month of free service, each. And if they’re stuck in a contract? Don’t worry – we can help with that too”.

In response, YouFibre complained to the ASA that the ad had “made misleading price rise claims about an identifiable competitor“. The ASA ultimately felt the claims were likely to be understood as objective claims about the likelihood of in-contract price rises following the takeover, which is a common fear (albeit one that is currently unproven), and upheld the complaint.

ASA Ruling Ref: A26-1333462 Grain Connect Ltd

We acknowledged Grain Connect’s view that the references to “price rise rip-off” and “big-brand pricing and in-contract price rises” were intended as comparative claims about larger providers such as VMO2, rather than direct claims about YouFibre’s existing or future pricing policy. However, we considered that consumers were likely to understand the claims together, rather than as separate statements. We therefore considered that consumers were likely to interpret the ad to mean that, as a result of the takeover, YouFibre customers would face the type of pricing associated with VMO2, including in-contract price rises. We therefore expected to see evidence that YouFibre would, following the takeover, introduce in-contract price rises.

We understood that existing YouFibre customers would not be transferred onto VMO2 contracts. We therefore considered that Grain Connect’s evidence about VMO2’s own published terms and conditions was not relevant to the claim consumers were likely to take from the ad. We also had not seen evidence that, following the acquisition, YouFibre would cease to operate as a brand, or that YouFibre customers, including former BRSK customers, would move off their existing contracts and become subject to in-contract price rises.

Because we had not seen evidence that YouFibre customers would, as a result of the takeover, face price rises, including in-contract price rises, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), and 3.32 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).

As usual the ASA banned the promotion in its current form and told Grain to ensure that any future ads “did not make misleading price rise claims about an identifiable competitor“.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The Thai telco is questioning the validity of a newly reported $1 billion stake in the business

The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is under scrutiny this week after individual investor, identified as Supaporn Pimphong, has reported a trade bringing her ownership of telco True Corporation to 7% – but the telco says it has doubts the trade really took place.

The discrepancy came to light when True asked the SEC to verify a filing showing Supaporn had acquired a roughly a 3.2% stake from UBS Group AG on June 15.

This acquisition would raise Supaporn’s position to around 7.1%, worth around 32.5 billion Baht ($1 billion), making her one of True’s largest stakeholders.

Further confusing matters, Supaporn’s filing claimed the purchase included both ordinary shares and a block of ‘preferred shares’. True Corp, however, says it has never issued preferred shares and have none outstanding in their capital structure.

The SEC has subsequently launched a probe into the matter.

An individual investment of this scale is always noteworthy, but the lack of information surrounding Supaporn’s identity makes the apparent mistakes in this filing particularly concerning.

Initial investigations into her identity by Thai media outlet Khao Hoon uncovered no information regarding her business background, investment track record, or preexisting wealth portfolio. What they did find, however, was that since 2018 Supaporn had filed massive ownership positions in major Thai blue-chip companies, including a 49% stake in GJS Steel and positions over 5% in Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank, an Asia Aviation. Combined, these stakes would be worth around $1.5 billion, not including Supaporn’s supposed $1 billion stake in True.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and the respective companies’ shareholder registries have since confirmed that none of these positions officially exist.

So, what exactly is going on here? It seems highly likely that Supaporn does not really exist, but what is the point of the deception?

One theory is that this is a form of stock market ‘pump and dump’, with the fake positions being filed to artificially inflate stock prices before the sale of the owner’s real shares.

Another theory, proposed by Kasikorn Securities, suggests that the transfer of shares may have indeed taken place, with the Supaporn filing used to conceal the identity of the real final owner and mask financial restructuring.

The report notes that the True transaction perfectly aligns with UBS AG London Branch acquiring shares from Charoen Pokphand Group, a billionaire conglomerate and True Corp’s largest shareholder.

Regardless of the whether the transaction in fact took place here, the finding severely undermines the viability of the SEC’s reporting mechanism. The filing of a Form 246-2 requires encrypted user registration, identity verification against a national database, and validation of the underlying assets being traded by a brokerage; if these guardrails are somehow compromised, the validity of all the SEC’s public financial disclosures could be at risk.

The SEC is currently working with the SET for an emergency overhaul of their combined data infrastructure to address any weaknesses, but it could be some time before the extent of these systemic issues are fully revealed.

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

Also in the news
TELUS and L-SPARK give Canadian startups access to AI supercomputer
Belden to acquire RUCKUS Networks for $1.85bn
VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy

The post ‘Ghost investor’ in True Corp could expose weaknesses within Thailand’s SEC appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The UK telecom regulator’s proposal in their Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR), which sought to adopt a different approach to copper line retirement in favour of full fibre optic (FTTP) broadband lines on Openreach’s national UK network, has, perhaps predictably, attracted criticism from rivals that worry it may hand the incumbent an advantage.

Just to recap. As part of the recent TAR, Ofcom also launched a consultation on changing the thresholds for when certain measures are triggered as part of the gradual move away from legacy copper-based phone and broadband networks, with customers typically then being migrated to either Openreach’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network or to rival networks with similar technology.

The current approach to copper line retirement, which has been largely retained by Ofcom for the 2026 to 2031 period, is based around two key thresholds. The thresholds reflect the point at which Openreach can stop selling new copper lines and the point at which Ofcom’s price controls are removed from copper-based services.

The Two Copper Retirement Thresholds (Current)

• First Threshold:
Openreach can stop selling new copper lines once it has reached 75% FTTP coverage in an exchange area and has provided 12 months’ notice of its intention to stop selling copper.

• Second Threshold:
Openreach is no longer subject to price controls on copper services once (a) it has reached 100% coverage in an exchange area; (b) 24 months have passed since stop sell was introduced; and (c) Openreach has provided 12 months’ notice of its intention to raise prices above the charge controls.

However, the TAR and its related consultation proposed to change the second threshold, such as by allowing Openreach to exclude certain premises from the second threshold’s calculation for reaching 100% coverage. Ofcom’s new proposal for this included setting a fixed percentage approach to excluding premises, set at 10% of premises in an exchange area (i.e. Openreach would only need to reach 90% coverage, rather than 100%). But the exclusions could only be applied from 1st April 2029 onwards, otherwise the 100% target would remain.

The change is designed to reflect the reality that, in some exchange areas, it may be practically impossible to reach a 100% FTTP build due to a very small number of exceptional premises (e.g. apartment blocks that refuse access, difficulties obtaining wayleaves for certain locations, premises like certain farms that may exist too far away from the road, areas already covered by rival full fibre networks etc.).

The favoured proposal reflected a simplistic Fixed Percentage Approach (FPA), but they also proposed a more complex alternative via a Defined Exclusions Approach (DEA). The DEA would define the specific circumstances under which premises could be excluded when assessing whether the second threshold is met (e.g. excluded premises might be those Openreach couldn’t reach or couldn’t afford to reach and those covered by rival networks). Ofcom viewed DEA as being “attractive in theory“, but they feared implementation would result in “practical difficulties” due to its complexities.

The first responses to all this have now come in from broadband ISPs and rival alternative networks, which reveal plenty of disagreement and some wider gripes (usually coloured by vested interests). We’ve attempted to summarise just a few of these below.

Sky Broadband (Read Response)

Sky favoured the DEA approach as “this provides better incentives to maximise FTTP coverage than the alternative“, but failing that they said they’d also support FPA if DEA couldn’t be made to work, albeit with a catch. Sky called for FPA to have a higher baseline threshold (e.g. 95%) as this “mitigates the consumer risk” of higher prices by delaying removal of the charge control on copper products.

“Sky is not convinced that the removal of copper price controls and the resulting scope for higher retail prices will, by itself, be an effective incentive to migrate to FTTP for many customers. That said, Sky considers that allowing Openreach greater wholesale pricing flexibility and new (discounted) full fibre offers are a more effective way of encouraging migration, both before and after April 2029, which avoids the risk of consumer harm from higher retail prices.”

CityFibre (Read Response)

CityFibre favoured DEA too, albeit with tougher requirements for exclusions (e.g. only excluding premises where all avenues have first been exhausted, the cost to serve exceeds £4,500 and publicly funded premises should only be excluded once subsidised premises have actually been built). The operator also made a particularly relevant point:

“All respondents to the TAR Consultation, including Openreach, favoured the Defined Exclusions Approach and CityFibre would therefore have expected any further consultation to have covered the implementation of the Defined Exclusions Approach rather than rejecting it in its entirety.”

CityFibre also questioned Ofcom’s proposal to use a 10% figure for exclusions, which they said lacked any “any meaningful reasoning” to support the figure.

Virgin Media / O2 (Read Response)

VMO2 supported DEA and said that, contrary to Ofcom’s viewpoint, it could be “calibrated by Ofcom in a proportionate and practicable manner” if they so wished. The operator said this would better target the “underlying rationale for exclusions (i.e. genuinely except ional or high – cost premises), avoids the risks associated with blunt, broad – brush thresholds, and provides a clearer basis for monitoring potential impacts on competition and consumers”.

Even if Ofcom were to proceed with a n FPA , VMO2 suggested that a uniform national threshold of 10% is “not appropriate” and that a more granular approach (for example, at exchange level, informed by Openreach’s commercial build plans and subject to appropriate safeguards) “would better reflect underlying conditions and mitigate the risks of distortion by limiting (but not eradicating) the risk of estimation error“.

Independent Networks Co-operative Association (Read Response)

INCA supported DEA and warned the Fixed Percentage Approach (FPA) would be “unnecessarily crude and arbitrary and risks material harm both to consumers and to the viability of network competition“. Instead, the trade body for altnets called for a hybrid DEA/FPA solution, which counts government ratified BDUK-funded Altnet FTTP deployments together with a low FPA (INCA proposes 3%).

“Ofcom’s statutory role is to further the interests of citizens and consumers, including by promoting competition where appropriate. It would be inconsistent with that role for Ofcom to design a Threshold 2 framework that incentivises or effectively compels Openreach to overbuild existing or planned Altnet networks for regulatory reasons rather than because of normal competitive market forces.”

Openreach (Read Response)

The incumbent similarly seemed to support DEA and said that copper retirement should be linked to fibre availability at the premises rather than to exchange -level averages. “Ofcom’s approach risks creating a disconnect with government policy which calls for a more supportive, less cautious approach and for agile, responsive regulation that encourages innovation to support growth“, said the operator.

However, should Ofcom go with the exchange-based approach, they called for thresholds that are “achievable” to be adopted. “The proposals should be refined by recalibrating a realistic threshold, which we consider should be no higher than 80% … and by removing the unnecessary delay to the implementation date. If delay is retained nationally, qualifying exchanges in Northern Ireland should be allowed to progress earlier“.

Openreach said they were also surprised that Ofcom hadn’t defined a third threshold, albeit without clearly saying what that would look like. The operator added that Ofcom’s “proposed framework provides very limited support for our exchange exit programme“.

Further responses, which were published yesterday, can be found on the consultation page and Ofcom intend to publish their final decisions in Autumn 2026. However, overall, it’s fairly clear that the FPA approach doesn’t have much support and some respondents fear Openreach might be able to “game” the FPA method if adopted, although the incumbent doesn’t want FPA either, it seems.

Several respondents also expressed concern that the second threshold must be set in a way that it does not cause additional overbuild of alternative networks, beyond what Openreach choses to do commercially.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Alternative network operator and UK ISP CommunityFibre, which has built their 5Gbps speed full fibre broadband (FTTP) network to 1.4 million homes (mostly in London and the South East) and rising, has launched a summer sale that offers three months of free service across all packages for new customers and removes their previous mid-contract price hikes.

Prices now start from just £12.50 a month for their basic 35Mbps package and rise through various speed tiers to £39 per month for their top 5,000Mbps (5Gbps) service (most packages are on 24-month terms, but you can get 12-month plans for extra cost). All packages include symmetric speeds, free installation, a wireless router and unlimited usage.

The key change today is that the provider’s broadband prices are now locked for the duration of your contract and will rise by +£4 (monthly) at the end of your full term, rather than mid-contract. The new deals will be available to new customers who join CommunityFibre before 23:59 on 17th August 2026.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has tweaked alternative network ISP Connect Fibre’s (Fibre Assets) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Derbyshire (LOT 3) in England again. The contract now has a reduced “total scope” of reaching 12,876 hard-to-reach premises via a public subsidy £34.64m.

The contract, which was first announced back in December 2023 (here), originally aimed to cover an additional 17,000+ premises and was valued at £33m. But it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular reviews of existing UK deployment plans.

For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas. The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged.

Adjustments like this may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change over time.

The latest contract modification was made after BDUK accounted for one of their recent Open Market Reviews (OMR), which are periodically run every few months in order to assess existing roll-out plans over the next c.3 years.

BDUK description of the modifications

Nature and extent of the modifications (with indication of possible earlier changes to the contract):

Net decrease of £364,100 in subsidy for the removal of:

411 premises from Initial Scope Drawdown 1;

745 premises from Deferred Scope Drawdown 1; and

4,619 premises from Deferred Scope Drawdown 2.

New total scope 12,876 and total subsidy £34,647,455.

According to the latest June 2026 data from BDUK (here), Connect Fibre has so far only managed to complete the build for 1,200 premises in Derbyshire out of 13,290 contracted (not yet updated to reflect the above change), which is fairly slow-going given that the contract was first awarded all the way back at the end of 2023 and this figure hasn’t increased for a few months now.

The usual catch is that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction. So, it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end of the contracted build.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Ookla (Accenture), which operates the popular broadband Speedtest.net benchmarking service, has today published a new report that evaluates metrics like 5G upload capacity, latency under load, and cloud infrastructure pathways across 22 countries in order to identify how well they’ll handle AI workloads.

The first thing to understand here is that AI readiness tenders to favour specific kinds of network performance, such as upload capacity, latency under load, and the path to the cloud. As such the leaderboard for AI is going to be a bit different from those that would otherwise normally be dominated by download performance, and the gap widens as adoption shifts toward heavier use cases like conversational voice and multimodal AI.

Overall, the report finds that existing 5G infrastructure generally supports text-centric AI, yet often falls short of the performance required for emerging modalities. For example, while latency (server response time) targets for text LLMs / Large Language Models (under 50 milliseconds) are achieved in 18 of 22 markets and conversational voice targets (under 40ms) in 13, no market currently reaches the sub-10ms requirement for AR (Alternative Reality).

Latency was also found to generally hold up under normal conditions, but degrades sharply under load, and unevenly. Degradation ratios run from 3.7x to 11.4x across markets, and the gap between operators inside a single market is as wide as the gap between markets.

Upload allocation also turned out to have the widest and most persistent gap. The typical operator devotes only around 10% of throughput to the uplink, while fewer than half meet the 20Mbps target for AR and multimodal AI, and upload share has declined or held flat in 12 of 22 markets since 2023.

Finally, cloud latency and worst-case jitter vary as much as the operator network does, and within one market the choice of cloud provider can swing latency by nearly 100ms, enough to decide whether real-time AI is viable. The results for just the UK are mixed, which leaves plenty of room for improvement.

Ookla’s UK Findings on 5G for AI Performance

Baseline AI Readiness: The UK records a multi-server latency of 46.4ms. This means the market meets the target for text-based large language models (under 50ms), but misses the target for conversational voice AI (under 40ms).

Resilience Under Stress: The UK shines when the network is fully utilized, tying with Indonesia for the lowest latency degradation ratio in the dataset at just 3.7x.

The Operator Divide: Loaded latency varies sharply within the UK market, a 2.6x gap between the best and worst-performing operators sharing the same market.

Upload Capacity: The UK allocates 9.18% of its 5G throughput to upload, delivering a median absolute upload speed of 10.96Mbps. Furthermore, the UK’s upload share has contracted slightly by 0.26 percentage points between 2023 and 2025.

Path to the Cloud: Europe leads the dataset for low cloud infrastructure latency. The UK records strong routing times across the major hyperscalers: reaching AWS at 44.0ms, Azure at 48ms, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at 48ms, and Google Cloud at 49ms.

We’ll publish a link to the full report once it’s available later this morning, although there’s clearly some work to do in a few areas of the UK’s 5G performance for AI purposes. The rapid roll-out of 5G Standalone (5G+) networks may well help matters, although adoption is currently still quite low and so that may take a bit of time to feed through to studies like this that use crowdsourced data.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

We’ve today published our biannual summary of fixed broadband coverage for the first half (H1) of 2026, which reveals that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have grown to reach 85.05% of UK premises (up from 81.89% in H2 2025) and 91% are within reach of “gigabit” 1000Mbps+ speeds (up from 89.6%). Read on to see details for England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland.

All the new gigabit-capable network coverage added during the first half of 2026 has largely come via Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based networks from Openreach (BT), CityFibre, Quickline, Netomnia (YouFibre), Grain and a few other alternative networks (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds). However, the overall deployment pace has slowed, when compared with prior years, due to wider market pressures.

The reason why “gigabit” coverage is currently still a few points higher than FTTP is down to homes that continue to be covered by some of Virgin Media’s older infrastructure, which uses gigabit-capable DOCSIS 3.1 technology via a Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network (there’s a lot of overbuild with FTTP in urban areas). Virgin is currently upgrading all of that to FTTP, but that’s a very slow multi-year process.

In addition, most of the progress on gigabit-capable builds seen during 2026 is still down to private investment (commercial builds have already delivered the vast majority of deployments), often with only a little support from the Government’s subsidy schemes. But Project Gigabit, and its subsidised rollout contracts with various providers, is having an impact on this, albeit primarily via the hardest to reach rural premises that typically take longer to cover.

H1 2026 Broadband Coverage Figures

Listed below is the latest independent modelling from Thinkbroadband to the end of June 2026 (H1 – 2026). We should point out that the figure for ‘Under 10Mbps‘ doesn’t include any mobile (4G/5G) coverage (we only looked at fixed line services), which plays a part in the official Universal Service Obligation (USO) but isn’t included in TBB’s mapping. Sadly, it’s incredibly difficult to do an accurate model for mobile networks, especially in terms of a specific performance level.

Fixed Broadband Network Availability H1 – 2026

NOTE: It’s very important to remember that Government / political coverage targets, like the current c.99% for gigabit by 2032, reflect a national average – this will of course be better or worse for different regions / areas.

Take note that each region (Scotland, Wales etc.) may also have its own policy and targets, which will feed into the central UK coverage figure. Furthermore, it’s worth highlighting how much of an impact newer alternative networks (altnets) are having on all this – excluding coverage by Openreach, KCOM (Hull) and Virgin Media.

Altnets were found to have covered 46.13% of the UK with FTTP by the end of H1 2026 (up from 44.79% in H2 2025). This breaks down as 48.84% in England (up from 47.36%), just 21.91% in Wales (up from 20.87%), 35.25% in Scotland (up from 34.81%) and 42.42% in Northern Ireland (up from 41.65%). But the overall coverage improvement delivered from this will be reduced due to overbuild between networks, particularly in urban areas.

As stated earlier, this data is a modelled estimate, not least because it won’t always reflect the very latest real-world position of every single network. But it’s still one of the best and most up-to-date gauges that we have for checking against official claims (Ofcom’s own data tends to be many months behind the latest developments, so TBB’s data is usually more current).

Solutions for Slow Broadband Areas

Finally, those still stuck in sub-10Mbps speed areas will, at least for now, be left with little option but to try harnessing the flawed 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) via BT (UK-wide) or KCOM (Hull-only). Many of those who have pursued the USO say they were offered a mobile broadband (4G or 5G) connection via EE, but those considered “delivered” under the USO itself usually get full fibre (FTTP) lines.

However, the reality is that some people will find they live in areas where not even the USO can cover the colossal upgrade costs of getting FTTP (here and here). Ofcom currently puts the figure for those unable to get 10Mbps+ by any terrestrial means at 39,000 premises (here). The previous government was in the process of examining support options for remote premises and had also been preparing to review the broadband USO (here), which may bring some changes in the future (back in 2017 the Labour Party called for a 30Mbps USO). But we haven’t seen any solid updates on this since 2024.

Failing that, consumers could either try waiting to see if the problem gets resolved or consider exploring the option of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based satellite service (Starlink is good, and they will be joined by Amazon’s Leo network this year). We would also recommend that consumers check via the other mobile operators (Vodafone / Three UK and O2) to see if any of those deliver better 4G or 5G mobile coverage than EE in your area (ideally by conducting your own tests, since official coverage maps are fairly useless) – see our guide to external antennas.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

VodafoneThree is trialling a new process to help the banking sector block scams

VodafoneThree has helped develop a proof of concept to help banks tackle fraud and protect their customers.

Created with Barclays, and in partnership with Mobile Ecosystem Forum* and Cyber Defence Alliance, the proof of concept has since expanded to include The Co-operative Bank, now part of the Coventry Building Society, and TSB.

Since August 2025, more than 2 million fraudulent messages have been blocked from reaching participating banks’ customers. This marks an estimated 25% increase in blocked scam messages on VodafoneThree’s network.^[1]As UK banks lose £1.17 billion a year due to fraud^[2], this process helps stop fraudulent SMS messages before they reach banking customers, while ensuring legitimate messages still get through.

Building on the success of VodafoneThree’s existing scam prevention tools, which blocked 139+ million fraudulent SMS in 2025 alone, the process sees VodafoneThree working closely with banks to build bespoke rules to the existing SMS firewall. This intelligence can differentiate between fraudulent SMS content and legitimate communications from banks to their customers.

Recent malicious SMS messages focus on impersonating banks and asking customers to share their personal or financial information urgently via scam phone numbers or phishing links included in the messages.

Rachel Andrews, Director of Corporate Security and Fraud, VodafoneThree, said: “Preventing fraud on our network and protecting trust in the UK’s digital economy is a huge priority. With fraud now accounting for 44% of all crime^[3], no single organisation can tackle it alone. We’re working closely with banks, government, law enforcement, and industry partners to stay ahead, evolving our capabilities as quickly as fraudsters change their tactics. What’s clear is that we need to innovate as well, scaling new solutions like this is crucial in making the UK one of the toughest places in the world for fraudsters to operate.”

Nick Gliddon, Business Director, VodafoneThree, said: “Banks sit at the frontline of the UK’s fight against fraud, and their role has never been more critical. Together, we’re leading the way by stepping up our work with banks to strengthen protections and accelerate new solutions. And we’re challenging partners across the sector to match that ambition by working with us to raise the bar and better protect customers at scale.”

Paul Davis, Head of Economic Crime, Barclays, said: “Protecting our customers’ money and data is our highest priority. With reports of APP scams originating via SMS increasing by around 40% in 2025 compared with 2024, it is essential that we continue to work together to stay ahead of new threats. By sharing intelligence across banks, telecoms providers and industry bodies, we can help stop suspicious messages before they reach customers, while ensuring our customers still receive genuine messages from us. VodafoneThree’s work is a strong example of how collective action can help tackle fraud at source and better protect consumers.”

Garry Lilburn, Operations Director, Cyber Defence Alliance, said: “At the CDA, we seek to bring our banking members, Telecommunication, Law Enforcement and Tech partners together to problem solve on cross-sector problems. This project, initiated at such a cross-sector meeting, with MEF, Vodafone Three and Barclays bank, is an excellent example of cross-sector collaboration. Working with MEF, collectively, we will scale this project and its success to protect a wider number of banking and telecom customers.”

Dario Betti, CEO, Mobile Ecosystem Forum, said: “For many years, MEF has been at the forefront of the fight against smishing, continuously evolving our strategy to keep pace with the changing tactics used by fraudsters. We are very pleased to have supported VodafoneThree in this successful initiative, which shows what can be achieved when industry partners work together in a practical and targeted way to tackle fraud. The results are significant, and we look forward to seeing this approach adopted more broadly across the industry.”

Chris Gray, CISO, The Co-operative Bank, said: “Our customers’ safety is our top priority. Alongside our Cyber Fraud Fusion Cell – where we bring together expertise to spot and stop scams fast – this initiative helps tackle fraud at source. By partnering across sectors to block fraudulent messages before they reach customers, together, we’re strengthening everyday banking security and keeping people’s money safe.”

George Hulland, Fraud Prevention Manager, TSB, said: “For too long, UK households have lost life-changing sums to cruel fraudsters posing as their bank, so this much-needed intervention with Vodafone should help cut scams off at source. Fraud can only be tackled with different businesses coming together, and this is a great example of cross-sector collaboration to protect consumers. Banks will never ask you for personal information, or to transfer money to them – so if you’re ever asked, hang up, it’s fraud.”

VodafoneThree urges customers and members of the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious messages or voice calls to our dedicated 7726 SPAM reporting link, either by clicking on the SPAM icon or forwarding to 7726 at no extra cost. This valuable intelligence is then shared with other mobile network providers and anti-scam organisations, helping to protect customers.

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

Also in the news
TELUS and L-SPARK give Canadian startups access to AI supercomputer
Belden to acquire RUCKUS Networks for $1.85bn
VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy

The post VodafoneThree blocks over 2 million fraud attempts for banking sector appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The South Korean giant is betting heavily on both chip production and data centre growth

South Korean conglomerate SK Group has announced a massive 2,100 trillion won ($1.36 trillion) investment roadmap targeted at domestic semiconductor manufacturing and AI data centre deployments.

The strategic push focuses heavily on securing upstream supply chain dominance and scaling computing infrastructure to reposition South Korea on the global AI stage.

“We should not simply export AI products. We need to export intelligence itself while building a domestic market for AI-driven intelligence,” said SK Group’s chairman Chey Tae-won, as reported by Yonhap News Agency.. “To achieve that, we will rapidly build AI factories in the form of large-scale AI data centers.”

SK Hynix plots memory chip production expansion

The group’s semiconductor division, SK Hynix, is spearheading the hardware allocation by committing 1,100 trillion won ($706 billion) to scale production capacity for High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and next-generation DRAM and NAND flash components critical for AI workloads.

Key capital projects within the chip investment include:

• Cheongju: 100 trillion won ($65 billion) allocated for site expansion.
• Southwest Cluster: 400 trillion won ($261 billion) earmarked to construct an entirely new semiconductor production hub.
• Yongin Mega-Cluster: 600 trillion won ($392 billion USD) dedicated to fast-tracking the deployment of its primary semiconductor hub. The group has pulled forward the completion timeline for this project to 2033, moving it 12 years ahead of its original 2045 deadline.

The broader long-term vision outlines a sustained capital expenditure of approximately 100 trillion won ($65.3 billion) annually in South Korea over the next decade, according to Chairman Chey.

SK Telecom pivots to GPUaaS and regional infrastructure

In tandem, telecom unit SK Telecom will deploy 1,000 trillion won ($642 billion) to build out physical AI data centres. The operator intends to establish 15 GW of AI data centre capacity across South Korea by 2035, with an interim target of 5 GW operational by 2029.

The initial phase involves a 140 trillion won ($91.5 billion) investment targeting the southeastern Yeongnam region to create a localised AI hub. This rollout begins with a 100MW hyperscale AI data centre in Ulsan, scheduled to begin operations in Q4 2027. SKT plans to expand this site by an additional 900MW, alongside another 1GW deployment elsewhere in the region.

“The massive AI data centers could transform the region into a hub for the verification and expansion of manufacturing AI, when combined with the manufacturing capabilities in the region,” SK Telecom’s CEO Jung Jai-hun announced during a public briefing with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung last week.

SK Group’s multi-year investment plans arrive amid unprecedented infrastructure spend across the global technology landscape; US hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle, are forecast to spend a combined $600 billion to $750 billion USD in 2026 alone. While SK Group’s investments pale in comparison to these true giants, it nonetheless places the organisation firmly as a regional competitor.

For a telco, on the other hand, the scale of these AI investments is broadly unrivalled. SK Telecom has long signalled its intent to shake off its role as a traditional telco and embracing a new persona as an ‘AI factory’. Backed by architectural alignment with NVIDIA, the operator aims to leverage this massive footprint to position itself as a major GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) provider in the Asia-Pacific region.

SK Group has interntional AI ambitions too.  Last month, SK Telecom said it would invest 738 billion won ($480 million) into the newly formed ‘AI Co.’, a US-based subsidiary of memory giant SK Hynix created in January by repurposing its US flash memory firm Solidigm. The business, which is intended to operate as a strategic investment and ecosystem vehicle, is backd $10 billion from SK Hynix and a further $250 million and $380 million from SK Inc. and SK Innovation, respectively. 

By unifying upstream chip manufacturing via SK Hynix with mega-scale data center infrastructure from SK Telecom, SK Group is establishing a strong foundation for global AI development. This multi-trillion-won capital strategy effectively shifts the conglomerate from a regional component supplier into a high-margin, full-stack intelligence powerhouse capable of reshaping the Asia-Pacific tech landscape.

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Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Global internet connection benchmarking firm Ookla (Accenture), which operates the popular broadband Speedtest.net tool and Downdetector service (among other things), has decided to publish their own ranking of the last 32 countries participating in the FIFA World Cup 2026 – but it’s based on fixed broadband speeds rather than football.

The data, which is based on speed tests recorded across each country during May 2026, provides another way to compare the countries that reached football’s biggest stage. But how much you can really gleam from this that’s useful, when compared with a general country comparison, is likely to be a matter of some debate. So we’ll skip the usual context setting and get right to the results.

Overall, France recorded the fastest median average download speed (352.77Mbps) and median upload speed (276.67Mbps) among the 32 knockout-stage countries. At the other end of the table, Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) had the slowest downloads of 39.57Mbps and poor uploads of 15.15Mbps. Finally, England (United Kingdom) sits in the upper middle of the table with downloads of 181.59Mbps, uploads of 56.57Mbps and median latency times of 12ms (milliseconds).

Scotland isn’t included because Ookla has only considered the 32 knock-out stage countries and not the total of 48 from the initial group stages. Make of all this what you will (here).

32 Knock Out Stage FIFA World Cup 2026 Countries Ranked by Broadband Speed