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News  The joint venture will build up to 2,000 new base stations that will then be shared with other mobile operators in the country  Vodacom and Orange have formed a new infrastructure joint venture aimed at improving mobile network coverage in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The business will focus on building solar-powered mobile base stations in underserved regions, helping to extend mobile and financial services to up to 19 million people.  Over the next six years,...

News Two and a half years after acquiring the spectrum at auction, the Indian conglomerate has yet to make use of its airwaves Reports this week suggest that Adani Group is considering surrendering it 5G mmWave spectrum after failing to turn its dream of deploying private 5G networks into reality. According to the reports, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has sent multiple requests to the company asking how it intends to use the currently idle spectrum, as well as penalising it for...

Spiders have an awkward habit of getting pretty much everywhere imaginable, which is probably down to their deep connection to the web. But spare a thought for one of Openreach’s UK broadband engineers in the Staffordshire village of Hixon who, while working on top of a telecoms pole, had to do a bit of extra debugging after opening up a cable box to find this surprise. Over the years we’ve seen plenty of animal and insect related damage occurring on UK broadband networks, from swarms of Bees...

The descriptively named Data Communications Company (DCC), which manages Britain’s national Smart Meter network(s), recently began their first live customer trials that will see existing Smart Meters in UK homes being upgraded to use Toshiba’s new 4G Communication Hub. Several suppliers, such as E.on and British Gas, are taking part. The development was actually announced just before Christmas, so we’re playing catch-up today. At present, existing Smart Meters (SMETS 1 and SMETS 2) use a mix...

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their UK parentage with retail broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today announced that they’ve made their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network available to more than 9,000 additional homes in the city of Bath (Somerset, England). Bath already has a strong level of gigabit broadband coverage, albeit via somewhat of a patchwork of different network operators (not all of which overlap). The latest development means that Virgin...

Mobile network operator Lyca Mobile, which in the UK is a virtual operator (MVNO) on EE’s network, has taken a break from recent troubles (here) by pledging to “transform” the “payment experiences” of its customers through a new partnership with online payment provider Revolut Pay, making it the neobank’s first official MVNO partner in the UK. The partnership promises to introduce “seamless” payment capabilities, including “automated payments for subscriptions and bills, real-time...

The not-for-profit London Internet Exchange (LINX), which handles a large chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via around 900 members (broadband ISPs, mobile operators etc.), has today announced an update to its pricing structure for 2025 – impacting port and service fees – that aims to “deliver greater member value“. The new pricing structure is said to be based on member feedback and an analysis of the wider interconnection market, which LINX said had “resulted in port...

The FTTH Council Europe has published an interesting new report that looks at the progress being made across 27 EU member states (and the United Kingdom) in switching off older copper based broadband networks as part of adopting gigabit full-fibre infrastructure. The report finds a mixed picture, with Portugal, Spain and Sweden leading the way, while others lag far behind. The report largely seems to act has a high-level summary of policies and progress across each country, which unfortunately...

Fibre manufacturer ACOME Group has today announced the introduction of a new platform that they claim could help broadband operators to reduce the amount of expensive optical fibre cable network builders throw away each year. All you need is a QR code and an App that combine to keep a record of each cable drum and its usage. The manufacturer claims that, every day, broadband companies “waste on average 10% of the full fibre cable they deploy” owing to a lack of knowledge of how much cable they...

FTTH network builders can significantly reduce the amount of expensive optical fibre they throw away thanks to a new initiative from French cabling experts, ACOME Group . Every day, broadband companies waste on average 10% of the full fibre cable they deploy owing to a lack of knowledge of how much cable they have available in stock or on the field. ACOME’s QR-Drum assigns a QR code to each cable drum which works as its digital twin, keeping a record of cable lengths, locations and deployment...