Nokia has established a 6G Lab at its Global R&D centre in Bangalore, India.

Billing the project as the first of its kind, Nokia claims that it will accelerate the development of fundamental technologies and innovative use cases underpinned by 6G technology. The Lab was inaugurated virtually by the Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics & IT, Government of India, Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw.

Nokia’s 6G lab supports the Government of India’s ‘Bharat 6G Vision,’ introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that envisions a key global role for India in the standardization, development, and implementation of 6G technology. The lab will function as a platform for collaboration for industry stakeholders and facilitate the testing of innovative solutions while establishing their potential for commercialisation.

The lab includes a setup to research ‘Network as a Sensor’ technology that enables the network to sense objects, people and movement without the need for on-board sensors. Sensing will be fully integrated into the wireless network and operate simultaneously with communication services. The lab will also provide an experimental platform for researching algorithms, privacy, and sustainable system design.

The Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics & IT, Government of India, Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw, said: “The inauguration of the Nokia 6G research lab in Bengaluru today is another step towards PM Narendra Modi’s vision of making India an innovation hub. Interesting use cases coming out of this lab will be related to transportation safety, health care and education which will be another big contribution in the entire Digital India suite.”

Nishant Batra, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer of Nokia, said: “We look forward to collaborating with key stakeholders to help India become a major player in 6G technology development and adoption; and take its place in the global arena as a leading developer and supplier of advanced telecom technologies and solutions.” 

Press Release

Altnet Hyperoptic has hit a new customer milestone, now connecting more than 300,000 customers across the UK to gigabit-capable full fibre

The milestone follows Hyperoptic relaunching its brand with a renewed focus on customer experience. Hyperoptic’s ‘In your corner’ campaign presents a welcome alternative to providers that offer poor customer service, lack of transparent pricing and unreliable network connectivity.

Hyperoptic’s network now passes more than 1.4 million homes across 64 towns and cities in the UK. Early deployments, starting with the UK’s first residential gigabit connection in Wandsworth in 2011, were in multi-dwelling units. Since then, continued growth has come from connecting new build developments and residential streets in densely populated areas.

Hyperoptic’s Founder and CEO Dana Tobak said: “The most important job we have is to connect customers – that’s how we show people across the UK that there’s a better way for broadband to be done. We know that broadband users deserve better, and we’re committed to a five-star customer experience.”

Key to Hyperoptic’s success is a focus on delivering a five-star customer experience, as research reveals the poor service that UK broadband users are putting up with. Almost a quarter (23%) of broadband users have never switched, and 30% say they want to but it’s too time consuming or too much hassle. 22% said they would switch, but they know their current provider would make it hard for them to leave.

In 2019, leading global investment firm KKR acquired a majority stake in Hyperoptic.

Hyperoptic is on a mission to reach 500,000 customers and two million homes passed, maintaining market-leading penetration and excellent customer experience as the company scales.

Also in the news:
Stonepeak buys minority stake in Cellnex Nordics
Telefonica Germany partners with Skylo for satellite-supported IoT
Sky Mobile network outages linked to removal of Huawei equipment

News 

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has deployed six new 4G masts on the remote Scottish Island as part of its role in the government’s Shared Rural Network (SRN) project 

This week, VMO2 has revealed it has used helicopters to deliver 4G masts to the island of Islay in Scotland due to its highly rural nature and lack of supportive infrastructure. A total of six masts will be deployed on the island, a move that the operator says will make a dramatic improvement in connectivity for local people and businesses.  

The move is a part of the VMO2’s commitments to the £1 billion SRN programme, a public–private partnership that will see the UK’s operators deliver connectivity to some of the UK’s most hard-to-reach areas. VMO2, EE, Three, and Vodafone are jointly aiming to expand the geographic coverage of 4G to 95% of UK by the end of 2025 as part of the project. This involves upgrading existing infrastructure as well as the deployment of new equipment, all of which will be shared between all four operators. 

The SRN is backed by £500 million of public funding, with an additional £500 million provided by the mobile operators. 

When it comes to Islay, only 60% of the island has 4G coverage from all four mobile network operators. However, after the SRN upgrades have been delivered, this will increase by 20%. 

“Argyll and Bute has languished behind other areas due to our geography and logistical challenges, including 22 inhabited islands,” said Councillor Liz McCabe, Policy Lead for Islands and Business Development. “However, over the last number of years significant investment has been made and we have seen major coverage improvements. The SRN programme will enhance this further with multiple operator coverage improvements to many parts of our remote rural areas.” 

“Many rural parts of Scotland are already benefiting from our rollout of new and upgraded masts, and nowhere will benefit more from our investment than the Argyll and Bute area, where we are working to upgrade more than 60 sites as part of our commitment to the Shared Rural Network programme,” added Paul Kells, Director of Network, Strategy and Engineering at Virgin Media O2. 

The SRN programme was launched in 2020 and has made relatively slow progress due to the vast amount of planning and research into new sites for deployment. However, this has improved in recent months, with VMO2 announcing in May that their SRN rollout had reached 50 sites, covering an additional 2,200km2 of land with 4G connectivity. In March, Vodafone also announced that they had reached 57 sites. Other Operators have also made significant progress in their rollout. As of August this year, Three UK had completed the construction of its 100th site, and EE became the first mobile operator to reach the milestone of building or upgrading 1,500 remote sites across the UK. 

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscriber to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here   

Also in the news:
TDC mulls its options in rapidly shifting Danish market
Singtel to sell cybersecurity firm Trustwave for $205 million
Reliance Jio secures $2 billion 5G loan 

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Thailand’s PROEN Corp has deployed Qwilt and Cisco’s Open Edge Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution to improve the quality and delivery capacity of its digital content and applications.

The deployment sees PROEN embed Qwilt’s Open Caching-based architecture deeply into its network edge, enabling the delivery of increased data volumes across its network and improving the quality of experience for end users throughout Thailand. The partnership equips PROEN with next-generation content delivery infrastructure and provides open APIs to content publishers looking to deliver content. With full-country coverage, the deployment will include activating Open Caching services at multiple distributed PROEN sites across Thailand.

Naris Ratyiam, Chief Commercial Officer, PROEN, said: “By building Qwilt’s Open Edge solution into our infrastructure, we’re creating an open and unified content delivery solution that will bring numerous benefits to content publishers when they utilise the service, including current PROEN partners such as MCOT, Channel 3, and Buga Boo. This deployment enables us to tackle the rapidly growing demands for live streaming, video-on-demand, and application services head-on while ensuring these experiences are delivered consistently in the highest quality.”

Theodore Tzevelekis, VP, Cisco, said: “By deploying our joint Open Edge solution with Qwilt, PROEN gains access to a platform that meets the needs for high-quality streaming experiences while opening the door to exciting future edge computing use cases.”

Alon Maor, CEO, Qwilt, added: “Embedded at the edge of PROEN’s network, closest to users, our Open Edge CDN goes beyond offering traditional CDN functionality – it ensures users across Thailand experience the highest quality and fastest delivery, whether they’re consuming streaming video, playing online games, or downloading massive files.”

Today, 150+ service providers have partnered with Qwilt to enable the Open Edge in their networks, together serving over one billion unique subscribers globally. They include Verizon in North America; TIM Brazil and Telecom Argentina in Latin America; Airtel in India; J:COM in Asia-Pacific; BT in the UK; and Telefónica and Vodafone in EMEA.

News

According to reports, Danish telco TDC has hired investment firm LionTree to help them consider their strategic options as a business, which could seemingly include a partial or complete sale

Anonymous sources speaking to Reuters have revealed that TDC is currently undergoing an internal review, noting that high leverage and weak cash flow were affecting the company’s credit rating.

The report notes that discussions are still in an early stage, with no certainty that any transactions will take place.

TDC was taken private back in 2018 by a consortium led by Australian investor Macquarie. Today, Macquarie remains TDC’s largest shareholder, owning 50% of the business, with the rest of the company’s shares held by a number of Danish pension and investment funds.

In 2021, the company was carved up into two separate businesses in an attempt to unlock value for shareholders and encourage investment: TDC NET, which operates the company’s mobile and fixed broadband infrastructure, and Nuuday, the company’s consumer branch.

Since then, both TDC NET and Nuuday have reported mixed financial results, with the companies’ sluggish growth largely attributed to the highly competitive Danish market. Indeed, this environment is seemingly driving the country’s telecoms market towards consolidation, with rival telco Telia announcing earlier this year that it would sell its Danish unit to local utility giant Norlys for roughly $920 million. This deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.

LionTree, meanwhile, is perhaps best known in the telecoms world as having advised Verizon on the acquisition of AOL for $4.4 billion in 2015 and later Yahoo for $4.5 billion in 2017. Verizon would go on to combine these two companies into a single business group dubbed Oath.

The ill-fated Oath would write down $4.6 billion in 2018 following the merger and, following a rebrand to Verizon Media Group, would itself be sold to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion in 2021. LionTree advised on this acquisition as well.

How are telco business models evolving in 2023? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live in Amsterdam

Also in the news:
Stonepeak buys minority stake in Cellnex Nordics
Telefonica Germany partners with Skylo for satellite-supported IoT
Sky Mobile network outages linked to removal of Huawei equipment 

Over in Europe, the nascent technology of quantum communication has crossed another threshold, or more precisely the Irish Sea. A recent set of experiments established a quantum link between two countries and spanning some 224km under the water. … [visit site to read more]

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