News

News  The talks come as MasOrange are forced to sell its excess spectrum under European Union law  Telefonica has entered into talks with the newly merged telco MasOrange over spectrum ownership, according to a report from Spanish news source Expansión.   The merger of Orange Spain and MasMovil, worth €18.6 billion, was approved by the European Commission (EC) in February this year, following a long regulatory investigation.  Last month, Spanish business newspaper El Economista first reported...

News Anonymous sources speaking to ISPreview say the two altnets are considering combining their operations “in the next 4–6 weeks” This week, a new report says that two the UK’s major altnets could be set to merge, in a move that would create a combined company covering over 1 million premises with fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP). According to anonymous industry insiders, discussions are currently underway that could result in the companies combining their networks “in the next 4–6 weeks”. The...

News Telecoms companies and industry associations have submitted recommendations for how the FCC should allocate spectrum, despite losing their auction authority. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking ways to circumvent its lack of spectrum auction authority. Some of the nation’s largest telecom companies have offered recommendations, but there is plenty of disagreement on how the FCC should utilize loopholes to award spectrum. In March 2023, Congress declined to renew the...

New data from Ookla‘s popular broadband connection testing service, Speedtest.net, has revealed how well Samsung’s Galaxy S24, S23 and S22 family perform for 5G based UK mobile broadband speeds vs Apple’s latest iPhone 15 family. Overall, the S24 comes out as the fastest, but experiences may vary. Naturally, there can be caveats with internet speed testing services like this, since we don’t know anything about the locations of different users, what mobile spectrum bands they were being used,...

News The concerns follow an initial report on AI Foundation Models published in September last year  The UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has expressed concerns over the growing power of big tech companies in the AI Foundation Models (FMs) market.   Speaking at a conference in Washington DC last week, the CMA’s CEO Sarah Cardell explained that the concentration of power amongst Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia gives them “the ability...

News  The Spanish Ministry of Defence has awarded Telefonica the majority of a tender to provide them with a secure private telecommunications network services  According to Spanish news source Expansión, the company has won three out of four lots of the I3D (Comprehensive Information Infrastructure for Defence) contract for a total of €80.3 million.   The I3D is the new communications and information network for senior government officials and the Armed Forces, hence requiring the highest...

Equitix-backed network operator Freedom Fibre, which has already deployed their full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 300,000 UK premises and aspires to cover 2 million premises, has today announced that they’ve secured their fifth ISO certification with ISO9001 for quality management standards. For those who many not know, ISO certifications are somewhat of a seal of approval from a third-party body, which represents a series of global standards developed and published by the...

News According to the latest data from IDC, Samsung has once again overtaken Apple as the largest smartphone manufacturer in the market, with China’s smartphone players also noting strong growth The smartphone market itself took a noticeable decline during the coronavirus pandemic, but is now climbing steadily once again, increasing 7.8% to 289.4 million units in Q1 2024. Of these new sales, Samsung had a 20.8% market share, while Apple accounted for 17.3% and China’s Xiaomi had 14.1%. Apple...

The UK telecoms, internet and media regulator, Ofcom, has recently increased the payment amounts issued to consumers under their automatic compensation system, which requires some broadband ISPs to compensate customers (cash or bill credits) for internet connectivity mishaps and installation delays. The voluntary system, which first launched all the way back in April 2019 (full summary), was until last month designed to compensate consumers by £9.33 per day for delayed repairs following a loss...

Industry sources have indicated to ISPreview that two prominent alternative network operators, Netomnia (YouFibre) and Brsk, both of which have deployed a significant amount of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband infrastructure to cover UK homes and businesses, could be set to merge their networks in the near future. Netomnia is currently the largest of the two operators, having already covered 850,000 premises and raising £795.5m of investment in the space of just three years (primarily...