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This Industry Viewpoint was authored by René d’Avezac de Moran, Fugro Singapore Marine
There’s no denying that the region is undergoing a technological renaissance. There are an estimated 460 million internet users across six markets spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Combined, these markets play an instrumental role in powering Southeast Asia’s digital economy, which is … [visit site to read more]
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Today, UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has announced an investigation into Virgin Media O2 following complaints from customers about the company’s cancellation practices.
Ofcom rules require that VMO2 ensure that the conditions or procedures for contract termination do not act as disincentives for customers against changing their communications provider.
Customer complaints made to the regulator, however, spoke of the difficulty in cancelling their contract, noting trouble connecting to an agent on the phone, calls dropping during conversation staff, and being placed on hold for long periods of time. Others also complained that they had made repeated attempts to cancel after their initial requests were not actioned.
The announced investigation will seek to verify the legitimacy of these complaints, as well as assessing whether VMO2 had made it clear to customers that they could take disputes to an independent ombudsman after eight weeks if their complaints had not been satisfactorily resolved.
If found to be in breach of Ofcom’s rules, VMO2 is likely to face a fine and instructions to change its procedures where appropriate.
“Our rules are there to protect people and make sure consumers can take advantage of cheaper deals that are on offer. That’s particularly important at the moment as households look for ways to keep their bills down,” said Ofcom’s chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive. “We’re taking action today, on behalf of Virgin Media’s customers, to investigate whether the company is putting unnecessary barriers in the way of those who want to switch away.”
In it’s online statement, Ofcom noted that VMO2 scored below average for call waiting times and satisfaction with complaint handling in their annual customer satisfaction report.
In a statement, VMO2 defended itself, said it is “committed to providing our customers with excellent service” and pointing out that complaints related to customers having difficulty leaving their contracts have halved over the past year.
It is worth noting here that the UK’s ISPs are currently wrestling with instructions from Ofcom to implement One Touch Switching (OTS), a system that would theoretically allow customers to jump from one network to another at the click of a button.
Ofcom made the decision to introduce OTS back in September 2021, saying it would to allow customers to switch ISPs quickly and painlessly, as well as helping them avoid paying for two services simultaneously during the transition period between two services.
However, implementing OTS across all of the UK’s broadband networks is a significant technical challenge, hence the regulator gave the nation’s ISPs until 3 April 2023 to make the requisite arrangements.
Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that this deadline was overly ambitious, with estimates suggesting an industry co-developed OTS platform would not be ready for service until 2024. The April deadline came and went without OTS being implemented, with Ofcom subsequently launching an investigation into the industry’s failure.
Once OTS is finally implemented, it is likely that a large portion of the complaints for which VMO2 is currently being investigated will be a thing of the past. How long consumers will have to wait for these capabilities, however, remains to be see.
Will OTS have a major impact on the dynamics of the UK ISP sector? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain conference
Also in the news:
Netomnia passes half a million premises with full fibre
Telefónica sells majority share of Peruvian fibre network to KKR
5G NTN-mobile market revenue to hit $18bn by 2031
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.
Citing the need for Kenya to be an attractive investment digital hub, Kenya is repealing a ruling that would have made meant only companies with at least 30% substantive Kenyan ownership, either corporate or individual, would be licensed to provide ICT services.
The move would have affected foreign companies such as Airtel, Google, Microsoft and Amazon; the requirement has now been removed from the national ICT policy guidelines.
The threat of what news resource ITWeb Africa calls a ‘combative rule’ has been hanging over these companies for some while. They had been given three years from April 2021 to comply with the provision and meet the local equity ownership requirement by March of next year.
In fact, as local press reports indicate, the change of policy was flagged up in late March when President William Ruto decided to drop the foreign ownership rules after reported lobbying from US tech giant Amazon, which apparently highlighted the review of the rule as a prerequisite to setting up shop in the country. It is unlikely it would have been the only multinational to threaten to rethink its plans.
That said, Airtel Africa, already a big player in Kenya, had said it was ready to list its Kenyan operations on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) if the government retained the condition on local ownership as part of licensing requirements.
The government notice, quoted by ITWeb Africa, said: “For Kenya to be an attractive investment digital hub, it is proposed that the equity participation subsection…be deleted from the national ICT policy guidelines, 2020.”
In a reference to Kenya Vision 2030, a long-term development blueprint for the country, the government notice continues: “Kenya has a vision to be a globally competitive knowledge-based economy by the year 2030. One of the government strategies to achieve the vision includes the development and promotion of the ICT sector to spur investments and create employment for Kenyans.”
Two facility expansion projects, one product launch, and some interesting regional M&A in the managed services world. … [visit site to read more]
Helios Towers is one the biggest towercos in Africa, and since its IPO four years ago the firm has dramatically expanded its footprint and portfolio. It has also strongly pushed a sustainability agenda while continuing to drive increased coverage across some of the most challenging markets in the continent. We caught up with the firm’s CEO Tom Greenwood to discuss how it has achieved this.
Following our IPO in 2019, a key part of our strategy was geographic diversification, and since then we’ve executed that through a number of acquisitions and tower portfolios and new markets. We’ve essentially doubled the size of the business during this time, going from five markets with 7,000 towers to nine markets with 14,000 towers. This included expanding out of Africa into the Middle East; we’re present in Oman.
We were busy through COVID – we provide the telecom infrastructure for networks, allowing people to communicate in our markets, so through COVID we were basically classed as essential service providers in our markets. Since fixed line barely exists in most of our markets, mobile is the main form of communication, so our business performed well during COVID.
In the past year or so, we’ve focused on integrating the new markets gained via our acquisitions and we’re now focusing on organic growth. In all of our markets we’re seeing strong demand for this as mobile operators look to expand their coverage and also upgrade their technology from 2G to 3G, 4G and 5G. Across Africa, penetration is the lowest in the world – about 50% – but this means it also has the highest growth potential. New subscribers create the need for further telecoms infrastructure, which is how we drive our revenues. We’re focused on supporting the growth of networks in order to support the continued subscriber growth happening across our regions.
DRC is probably the least developed out of our eight African markets – there are around 100 million people in the country and the mobile penetration rate is about 35%. Just over half of the people there live in an area where there is cell phone coverage today, so there are almost 50 million people currently living in areas with literally no phone signal. This is actually fairly unique as most of Africa has some form of coverage for most of the population; for that reason we’re seeing huge rollout demand in the market. It’s a country with four mobile operators – Vodacom, Airtel, Orange and Africell – all of which have the opportunity to gain new subscribers for the first time there, so there are major rollouts happening in new areas of the country. We’re helping to connect literally millions of people to cell phone coverage for the first time through our investment in the passive side of the network, as well as building the normal towers. We’re also building tower backbones in the market – while these would often use fibre, in DRC the terrain is so challenging that we’ve opted to build 100-metre towers which rise above the jungle canopy to house huge microwave dishes. These are placed about 20-25 miles apart, and over the past few years this has helped expand coverage to millions of new subscribers, driving investment to deliver services to new parts of the country.
We were the first independent towerco in DRC, we entered in about 2011 and have been there for 12 years now – we are now the largest telco tower operator in the country. There are still mobile operators who own some of their towers and a few smaller tower firms, but we’re helping to drive tower investment in the market. This includes investment in very long-haul backhaul, but also includes densification in the big cities such as Kinshasa, which has around 15 million people. 5G is currently being trialled there, and the experience is actually pretty good; you’ve got the densification as needed in the cities with the data, as well as the widespread coverage needed in the more rural locations for setting up any form of connectivity for the first time, and everything in between – so it’s quite an interesting test.
To some extent you see this everywhere, and I think Africa is not even unique in that sense. In the cities, it’s all about 4G and 5G now, getting denser networks. For this, rather than just the classic 50 metre tall tower, there are other products that can be used, such as in building systems, outdoor desks, street furniture, lampposts with small antenna and things like that. We’re seeing a higher demand for those sorts of products these days as well, and I think that is only going to grow exponentially as we move forward. In the rural locations, we’re still seeing standard rollouts, just getting some form – or an increase form – of coverage to certain locations. We have very good engagement with the regulator and the mobile operators in terms of a clear, coordinated plan for rural rollouts. We’re always looking at ways to expand both densification but also rural rollout so that ultimately we end up with ubiquitous coverage across everywhere.
Sustainability is absolutely core to everything we do. Inherently, in terms of what we facilitate, as an independent tower company, is a sharing of infrastructure; rather than having two or three towers standing next to them next to each other, each with their own steel, their own generator etc. By just having one tower, that immediately cuts carbon emissions by about 50%. That’s how we make our money – getting multiple tenants on the sites. The first tenant basically breaks even, and after that is when tower companies make their profits, and in that sense towercos are linked to being environmentally sustainable. We think about sustainability really in three key areas: digital inclusion, empowerment and development, and carbon. We publicise these goals to our investors and to the market, we have very clear KPIs on them, but we also have non-financial sustainability metrics.
On digital inclusion, as well as more general growth targets around towers and tenancies, we have targets around rural coverage as well. In fact, one of our one of our metrics measures the population covered by our towers, and we have we have three to five year targets for that, so it’s about enabling this through future investment.
On the people front, we have a huge focus on training and development – local leadership, local empowerment, and female representation. Today around 97% of all of our colleagues across the group are from the markets in which we operate; that largely includes the managing directors of each country, based on the country in which we’re operating. That flows throughout the whole organisation. Over the past 18 months, since we bought in a sort of formal structure around it, we’ve seen a five percentage point increase in female representation within our business – this industry is fairly traditionally male, and we’re doing a bunch of things at grassroots level as well bringing on STEM graduates for graduate programmes within our school of engineering.
To touch on carbon, we have a significant investment in carbon reduction projects. 18 months ago, we launched to the market something called Project 100 – a commitment for us to invest $100 million in renewable energy solutions between that point in time and 2030. This includes things like solar, hybrid batteries, wind power, etc. Alongside this we published carbon targets, which were to reduce carbon per tenant by 46% by 2030, with the condition to be net zero by 2040. This is all reported to the market; these are key aspects to our business. The great thing is they’re all inextricably linked to our financial performance as well, because typically reducing carbon emissions means reducing diesel fuel consumption, which is the most expensive form of fuel. You can map that out to pretty much every line on these non-financial KPIs, and they contribute to the financial KPIs as well – that’s why I believe our business is inherently sustainable, because financial performance and impact are intertwined.
Yes, but it’s most in the initial rollout or pilot stage. There’s 5G in South Africa, which is our smallest market, and it’s prevalent in Oman, where it’s in the second phase of being deployed. Across our footprint 2G, 3G and 4G are more prevalent.
I believe last year was the first time 3G surpassed 2G in terms of number of connections across our markets – but I assume it will be phased out in favour of 4G and 5G, while 2G will be kept for quite a long time. There are still so many handsets that utilise 2G, and there’s still 50% of the population with no handset. If you’re able to build out more advanced coverage, that will attract people to it. For people getting a phone for the first time, 2G is better than nothing, but I think one of the constraining factors across Africa for is not the technology itself but availability and cost of handset. You can pick up an old handset very cheaply, but the lowest-cost smartphone is probably around $30 which is still unaffordable for many.
This week, the UK Space Agency has announced £20 million in funding aimed at supporting the development of aerial connectivity projects.
Companies can submit applications for funding under three categories – drones, HAPS, and High-Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) unmanned air vehicles.
Projects could include, but are not limited to, “aerial platforms with hybrid capabilities that can seamlessly switch between satellite and terrestrial networks, or traffic management for innovative vehicles such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft”.
Possible applications include drones delivering medical supplies, the rapid deployment of dedicated emergency services communications, and delivering broadband connectivity to rural customers.
“From using drones to quickly get medicines to hospitals, through to boosting mobile network access in remote areas, the benefits of aerial connectivity cut through many aspects of our lives,” said UK Technology Secretary Chloe Smith. “The Government’s £20 million investment will further strengthen the UK’s fast-growing satellite communications industry, which already contributes more than £10 billion to our economy and supports over 26,000 jobs. It will improve our health and security, too, and support our plan to level up every part of the UK.
The funding comes as part of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Services (ARTES) programme, in which the UK is a major investor. In November 2022, the UK government committed £190 million to the programme, pledging to further develop the country’s growing satellite industry and promote the creation of new aerial connectivity technologies.
The first £50 million of this funding was made available to applicants by the government earlier in the year, targeting related projects in the satellite communications industry.
The UK is not alone in its interest in non-terrestrial connectivity. In related news, today the GSMA announced a new Memorandum with Understanding (MoU) with the ESA, aiming to explore greater collaboration between the satellite and mobile industries to better develop network technologies. The agreements initial focus will be on accelerating the integration of satellite communications with terrestrial 5G and, in the future, 6G networks.
“By collaborating more closely with the European Space Agency, and its satellite network operator ecosystem, we hope to accelerate the immense potential satellite and terrestrial telecommunications networks can create for consumers and businesses when they are more closely connected,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer at the GSMA. “By working together, we can help the communications industry bring innovative solutions to market, which in turn will create tremendous benefits to society by connecting even more people, wherever they are in the world.”
How is the UK’s growing satellite communications industry reshaping the nation’s telecoms sector? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain conference
Also in the news:
Netomnia passes half a million premises with full fibre
Telefónica sells majority share of Peruvian fibre network to KKR
5G NTN-mobile market revenue to hit $18bn by 2031
A series of FTTH projects worth keeping an eye on, from both sides of the Atlantic. … [visit site to read more]
