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%,...
ITS Technology to Build New 50km Newcastle-under-Lyme Fibre Network
The Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council in Staffordshire (England) has recommended that the ITS Technology Group, which operates wholesale full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks (“Faster Britain“) across urban parts of the UK, be appointed to build up to 50km of a new fibre network to help reach poorly served areas. Most of the market town is already reached by Openreach and Virgin Media’s (VMO2) gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks, but some patches in the central area remain poorly...
Openreach UK Discounts 10Gbps Cablelinks for FTTC and FTTP Broadband
Network operator Openreach (BT) has introduced a new special offer for broadband ISPs that discounts the charge on 10Gbps Cablelinks for their FTTP and FTTC lines (GEA), nationwide, to just £399 +vat when taken on Layer 2 Switches (L2S) older than 6 months (the regular connection cost is normally three times higher). The Cablelink (Ethernet) products are how Openreach provide data capacity for their full fibre and other connections (i.e. the connection between their fibre headend and an ISP’s...
Vodafone Idea’s long awaited 5G launch targeted for March 2025
News The operator’s rivals, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, both launched 5G services in 2022 This week, Vodafone Idea (Vi) has announced plans to launch commercial 5G services by March 2025. The operator says its initial rollout will cover all metros and major cities in 17 of India’s 22 telecom circles (essentially licencing regions), beginning with Delhi and Mumbai. Vi estimates the rollout will include the rollout of 5G equipment to 75,000 existing 4G sites over the next three years. The...
UK ISP Plusnet Discounts 900Mbps FTTP Broadband to £39.99
Broadband ISP Plusnet has this week introduced a bunch of new discounts across their home broadband packages for new customers, which for example have reduced the monthly price of their top 900Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) package to just £39.99 per month on a 24-month term. The internet provider’s fibre broadband packages are typically data-only plans (no home phone) that include unlimited usage, a new Hub Two wireless router (re-branded BT SmartHub 2), a 24-month minimum contract term,...