Spectrum spat over? Starting gun looms for India’s satellite space race
News The latest clash revolves around whether the government should auction off satellite spectrum or simply allocate it arbitrarily Recent months have seen tensions flare between Elon Musk and Indian telecoms moguls Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal continue, with the trio clashing over the nation’s satellite spectrum policy. Back in 2021, India’s Department of Telecoms (DoT) announced that it was considering auctioning spectrum for satellite broadband players, going against the industry...
Nokia slashes over 2,000 jobs in China and Europe
News The job cuts are wider restructuring to cut up to 14,000 roles by 2026 Nokia has laid off nearly 2,000 employees in China, about 20% of its workforce in the country, with plans to cut an additional 350 jobs in Europe, according to a Reuters report citing two sources familiar with the matter. Speaking to Reuters, a Nokia spokesperson confirmed that discussions are underway regarding the European layoffs but declined to comment on the situation in China. As of December 2023, Nokia...
Vantage considers selling Spanish towers amid row with Vodafone Spain
News Vantage Towers owns and operates around 8,300 towers across the country Vantage Towers is considering the sale of its Spanish assets, according to a Bloomberg article published today, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the article, the company is working with Morgan Stanley to assess the interest of potential buyers. If successful, the TowerCo’s Spanish infrastructure assets could fetch around €1 billion at sale, although discussions are still at a very early stage,...
One Week Left Until New UK Broadband ISP Switching System Fully Takes Over
The industry has just one week left to iron out the key bugs in their implementation of Ofcom’s new One Touch Switching (OTS) system before it takes full control of switching between fixed broadband and phone providers. But the latest update from the industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) suggests that there are still some problems left to tackle. Just to recap. The heavily delayed launch of OTS, which aims to make it both quicker and easier for consumers to switch between broadband...
Acrimony as UK Parliament Debate Use of Telegraph Poles for Broadband
The vexed question of whether it’s always right to use “telegraph poles“, which are far from popular with many UK communities, when deploying the new generation of gigabit broadband ISP networks came up for debate in parliament yesterday. MPs broadly called for change and stronger rules are coming “early” in 2025, but whether they will be enough remains to be seen. First things first. The United Kingdom, not unlike many other countries, is already home to millions of poles (both wood and...
Ofcom UK Investigate Tismi Over Possible Misuse of Phone Numbers
The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today opened a new investigation into communications provider, Tismi, which will assess whether the company has failed in its duty to ensure that phone numbers allocated to it are not being misused, including to perpetrate scams. In case anybody has forgotten, the regulator recently launched an enforcement programme to ensure that UK telephone and text companies are using phone numbers efficiently and effectively. This formed a complementary part of...
Synnefo partners with Aprecomm for customer experience management ‘super-stack’
Press Release Aprecomm (www.aprecomm.ai), the intuitive network and customer experience platform provider, announced today that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Synnefo (www.synnefoims.com), an OSS, BSS, IMS, SMS supplier to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Multi-System Operators (MSOs) in India and across the globe. The move combines both companies’ market-leading solutions, enabling Synnefo to offer a customer experience ‘super-stack’ that brings service providers an...
KT announces restructuring, cuts jobs
News The move is part of a new strategic direction devised by the company’s new CEO, Kim Young-seop, who has been in the role since August South Korean telco Korea Telecom (KT) has announced a major restructuring programme as part of an increased focus on AI and cloud services. This strategic shift involves the establishment of two new subsidiaries and significant changes to the company’s workforce. According to the newspaper Business Korea, the company will create two new subsidiaries –...
Virgin Media UK Rename Stream TV Box and Add £5 Monthly Fee
Customers of UK ISP Virgin Media’s (O2) and certain pay TV, broadband, phone and or mobile bundles, primarily those that usually add their ‘Stream’ box, may have noticed that the provider renamed this from ‘Stream‘ to ‘Flex‘ this week. The change is partly cosmetic, but for new customers there’s now an extra £5 monthly charge. Until now if a customer wanted to add Virgin Media’s Stream TV box to their package then there was just a single one-off £35 activation fee to pay and no additional...
Addressing the growth imperative: Pressure building on EMEA telcos
Contributed Article By Angel Dobardziev, Senior Director, European Consulting at IDC and Chris Barnard, Vice President, European Telecoms and Infrastructure, at IDC Telcos in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) are coming under increasing investor pressure to deliver stronger growth. The average year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth rate among the “Big 5” European telcos — BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone — in 2023 and the first half of 2024 was 0% and 1%,...