News

The regulator fears the offer would squeeze the already struggling altnets out of the market, making Openreach an even more dominant player

Today, Ofcom has a released a statement banning Openreach from implementing a proposed wholesale deal that would cut prices for retail ISPs.

The deal would have given broadband ISPs and new customers a £35 connection rebate and a £9.50 monthly rental rebate (for 18, 24 or 30 months depending on performance).

In a statement, Ofcom said the offer was “not fair and reasonable”, suggesting it was primarily aimed at drawing away customers from alternative network operators that could not hope to match those rates.

“We consider that, because of its SMP (Significant Market Power), Openreach is uniquely able to make such a targeted low-price offer. The discounts are targeted at customers which are important to altnets’ ability to maintain and grow their customer base, while leaving prices for other customers unchanged,” explained Ofcom in a statement. “Matching these significant targeted discounts may not allow competing networks to recover their costs, particularly given the low prices they are already offering across their customers, as they seek to grow take-up and overcome Openreach’s incumbency advantages. As such, there is a risk that the level of the offer prices could harm the development of network competition, to the detriment of consumers in the long term. We are therefore directing Openreach to withdraw this offer.”

Openreach announced its intention to introduce a range of broadband price cuts aimed at new customers joining their network in June last year. The following month, Ofcom delivered its initial ruling on the proposed offers, giving most of Openreach’s deals the green light but proposing a ban on the rebate offer detailed above.

While it might seem counterintuitive for the regulator to take action to prevent prices being lowered for retailers – and therefore potentially passing on savings for consumers – Ofcom’s concern is around ensuring long term competition for the sector. The highly fragmented altnet ecosystem is already beginning to implode and consolidate, with Ofcom wary that Openreach’s ‘unfair’ offer will drive these smaller players from the market.

“Consumers rely on real market choice. Independent providers operating outside the Openreach footprint frequently lead the way on speed, pricing, and customer service compared to well-known providers,” noted Alex Tofts, strategist at Broadband Genie. “The key challenge now, is ensuring this intervention doesn’t inadvertently drive up bills during a cost-of-living squeeze. History shows that Ofcom’s interventions can easily backfire on the very customers they’re meant to protect.”

The decision is also good news for Openreach’s larger rivals, such as Virgin Media O2, CityFibre, and Nexfibre, all of whom expressed their approval.

“Ofcom’s decision today is a positive step towards protecting competition in the UK fibre market, although we would have liked to see the regulator go further,” said Nexfibre in a statement. “Openreach’s tactic of drip-feeding price changes via special offers needs to stop at a time when competition remains nascent. Ensuring alternative networks have the incentives to invest, grow and achieve scale will be critical to creating credible, sustainable competition.”

Nexfibre also took the opportunity to plug their proposed acquisition of Netomnia, currently under review by the CMA, saying it would help “drive competition, investment and greater choice for consumers.”

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Humanitarian charity Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation, the philanthropic arm of multinational telecommunications company Vodafone, have formed a new global humanitarian partnership.

Announced recently at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), it brings together the partners’ humanitarian expertise, technology and global reach to better support children and communities before, during and after emergencies.

The partnership will strengthen emergency preparedness and humanitarian response and expand access to Vodafone Foundation’s technology and connectivity solutions in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

A key element of the partnership is Vodafone Foundation’s donation of six Instant Network kits — portable communications systems that can rapidly restore connectivity when conventional networks are disrupted by disasters or conflict.

Pre-positioned at humanitarian hubs around the world and deployed by Save the Children during emergencies, the kits will help response teams coordinate operations, assess needs and deliver life-saving assistance more quickly. Vodafone Foundation will provide the technology, training and technical support for the kits, while Save the Children will oversee secure routine testing and deployment.

Instant Network has already been used by Save the Children during emergency responses, including in Mozambique, where the technology helped improve operational coordination.

Vodafone Foundation will also support Save the Children’s Emergency Fund, enabling rapid response when crises occur and investment in action before disaster strikes, and will join Save the Children’s Humanitarian Network, a community of partners committed to faster, more effective humanitarian action for children.

In addition, the partnership will explore how Vodafone Foundation’s TerraGuard software (a disaster risk monitoring platform) and Vodacom’s M-Pesa cash-transfer payments could strengthen humanitarian response. Integrating these technologies into Save the Children’s systems, Vodafone says, could help teams anticipate risks and enable assistance to reach families faster and more efficiently.

As the two groups point out, their collaboration was announced as recent climate-linked emergencies around the world – including flash floods in Nepal, heatwaves and forest fires globally – as well as ongoing conflict and displacement, continue to put millions of children at risk.

The partnership builds on a longstanding relationship between Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation, including collaboration on Skills Upload Junior, part of Vodafone Foundation’s wider work supporting young people’s digital wellbeing, skills and resilience. The new global partnership extends this relationship into humanitarian preparedness and response.

India’s three largest operators – Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea – will be required to offer affordable voice & SMS-only tariffs from next month, following a mandate from regulator TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).

As reported by Times of India, TRAI has ordered that the new plans be made available from 21^st October 2026. The tariffs are intended for low-income users who require short-term, flexible plans for calling and messaging but have less use for bundled data services.

Under TRAI’s mandate, operators must offer Special Tariff Vouchers (STVs) for voice and SMS with shorter validity periods of up to 30 days, with the option to renew monthly. Operators are also obliged to offer at least one longer validity plan solely for voice and SMS.

This is not the first time that TRAI has tried to address this issue; in December 2024, the regulator mandated that all operators must offer at least one voice and SMS-only STV, but this effectively resulted in lower availability of voice and SMS plans as operators offered limited validity options while failing to reduce prices to reflect the removal of data. To resolve this, the new mandate requires parity across validity periods.

For their part, all three operators formally opposed TRAI’s mandate, arguing that it was anti-consumer.  In particular, Jio claimed that voice now functions as an application on an underlying data network, making voice-only plans technically infeasible, and highlighting that 88% of its subscribers are active data users.

While TRAI has noted these objections, it has nonetheless pressed ahead with the mandate in the interests of consumer protection, arguing that users who do not require data will benefit from plans with the same validity period as data tariffs, but with proportionally lower prices.

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Pino G. Dicorato, Solution Marketing for Nokia’s Network Infrastructure optical network automation environment portfolio at Nokia.

By: Pino G. Dicorato Optical networks are carrying higher volumes of AI traffic and facing stricter demand around service availability, time-to-market pressure, and operational cost control expectations. Providers are also pushing optical infrastructure deeper into metro locations to support optimized performance and lower latencies for the rich data traffic associated with AI inferencing. … [visit site to read more]

PLDT’s wireless arm Smart Communications launched a new one-stop AI workspace service on Thursday that it says will give users in the Philippines easier access to multiple advanced AI models and tools.

The new service, AI.Smart, gives Smart and TNT subscribers access to AWS Nova, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, and Thinking Machines through a single interface that can be accessed on any browser.

Based on the user’s prompt, AI.Smart automatically selects the appropriate AI model to deliver the desired output, whether generating content and images, creating documents and presentations, and analyzing data in English, Filipino, or Taglish.

Users can pay for the service using prepaid load, postpaid billing, credit or debit cards, and select e-wallets. Credit packages start as low as PHP49 (US$0.78) for seven days, while a P499 plan offers access for 30 days and supports up to ten users sharing a pool of credits, making it suitable for small businesses and teams, said Lloyd R. Manaloto, first VP and OIC for Smart.

“AI should be for everyone, not just for those who can afford premium AI services,” he said in a statement. “With AI.Smart, we are making AI more inclusive by bringing powerful AI models and tools together in one affordable platform, giving more Filipinos the opportunity to use AI to learn, create, work smarter, and achieve more.”

The AI.Smart service is powered by Avtica, a local enterprise AI company that builds localized AI products that can be delivered in partnership with telcos and cloud providers.

Smart said that everything subscribers upload to the platform stays private to their own workspace and is never used to train AI models, and is never retained.

Their data is also encrypted and handled in line with the Philippine Data Privacy Act, the operator added.

News

The technology has already helped to save more than 4 million litres of water per day over 650km of the UK’s water network

Southern Water, which provides drinking water for millions of customers across the South of England, has announced a new partnership with Lightsonic, aiming to use the company’s sensing technology to help identify their leaking pipes.

The UK’s aging pipe network leaks roughly 2.6 billion litres of water every day but identifying the specific locations of these leaks is a major challenge.

Lightsonic’s solution works by adding acoustic sensing units to Openreach’s fibre network, which often runs parallel to subterranean pipelines. If a leak is present in a nearby pipe, the resulting vibrations shake the fibre cable, delivering a small but measurable impact to the optical signal within. By measuring these signals, Lightsonic can locate and prioritise repairs for the water company.

According to Lightsonic, the solution typically detects 1.2 million litres of water leaks per day per 100km of network covered annually.

An illustration of how Lightsonic’s technology senses leaks

“Ageing infrastructure, leaking networks and mounting climate pressure are converging, causing major water stress,” says Tommy Langnes, CEO Lightsonic. “By utilising existing fibre optic infrastructure, we have a solution that can be quickly and effectively scaled across the UK to help utility companies get a handle on leaks, secure supply and generate savings that can be reinvested to upgrade our aging network. The industry needs a quick and comprehensive response and that is what we offer.”

For Openreach, this deployment marks a deepening of their partnership with Lightsonic, with who they ran initial trials alongside Affinity Water in March this year.

“The results of our existing pilots with Lightsonic show that our new full fibre infrastructure can deliver value far beyond broadband – and could prove to be a real game changer in solving real-world challenges like water conservation,” said Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology at Openreach. “Combining Lightsonic’s technology with the reach of Openreach’s Full Fibre network makes continuous utility monitoring genuinely scalable, without the cost and disruption of building a separate sensor network.”

The UK’s water supply is facing immense pressure. The country is currently experiencing the hottest summer on record, with hosepipe bans in place across much of the country. Plans for a new reservoir to alleviate water stress have this week been delayed by 5 years and, with more global temperature records predicted, the UK’s water security is more precarious than ever.

Turning the country’s fibre networks into passive sensing frameworks represents a cost-effective and efficient way to begin to tackle the nation’s water challenges.

Keep up to date with all the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news
Shared Rural Network rollout extends to UK national parks with over 150 4G masts live
Vodafone touts latest attempt to bridge the UK’s digital divide
Virgin Media O2 cuts 5,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions

Cybastion, a US company that delivers digital and infrastructure solutions in Africa, has signed an agreement with Liberia’s Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to develop women’s technology and business innovation hubs with child care centres across the country.

The project, Liberia Women’s Digital and Economic Empowerment Programme, will expand women’s access to digital skills, entrepreneurship training and business development opportunities.

Cybastion’s philanthropic organisation Theya Foundation, in partnership with Cisco, say they will deliver digital skills and entrepreneurship training for women and young people through the Cisco Networking Academy, an educational initiative.

Cybastion CEO Dr Thierry Wandji explains: “Liberian women are a vital force in the country’s economic and social development. By bringing digital skills, entrepreneurship support and modern child care together in one place, these technology innovation hubs will create pathways for women to build stronger businesses and participate more fully in Liberia’s digital economy.”

A flagship campus will be established in the capital, Monrovia, and four regional sites in Voinjama, Gbarnga, Kakata and Buchanan. The campuses will provide business development support, as well as mentorship.

The tech innovation hubs are designed to help women scale their business management skills, reach new markets, connect with financial services and participate in broader supply chains.

Each campus will include a modern child care centre, allowing mothers of young children to participate in training, mentorship and business development activities. The centres are intended to address child care as a barrier to women’s participation in education and entrepreneurship programmes.

Cybastion has been in the news a number of times this month, most recently due to plans to mobilise about US$300 million for several projects supporting Senegal’s digital transformation. We have also reported that it plans to invest US$75 million in an AI-powered data centre and power plant in Cameroon, expanding the company’s digital infrastructure projects across Africa.

Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, has announced a partnership with Malaysian fintech and digital bank Boost to support the fintech’s digital transformation and innovation initiatives across Malaysia and Indonesia.

Under the agreement, Tencent Cloud and Boost have entered into a partnership spanning AI innovation, cloud infrastructure modernisation and super app development.

Tencent explains that as fintech companies across Southeast Asia scale their operations and expand service offerings, organisations are increasingly seeking strategic cloud partners that can provide integrated solutions spanning infrastructure, AI and platform technologies.

To support its next phase of growth, Boost has selected Tencent Cloud as a strategic technology partner to consolidate infrastructure, accelerate AI adoption, and drive innovation across its digital ecosystem.

The collaboration encompasses three key pillars. First, Tencent Cloud will provide its scalable infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) capabilities to Boost across Malaysia and Indonesia. This will enable Boost to streamline infrastructure management, improve operational agility, and support future business expansion with scalable cloud resources.

Second, Boost will leverage Tencent Cloud Super App as a Service (TCSAS) to augment existing customer experiences, drawing on Tencent Cloud’s expertise in building large-scale super app ecosystems. The platform will integrate multiple financial services into a unified user experience, enabling consumers and businesses to access a wider range of digital financial solutions through a single application.

Additionally, Boost will partner with Tencent Cloud on its AI development roadmap to co-create products and leverage the existing off-the-shelf products offered by Tencent Cloud.