Press Release

Helios Towers and UNICEF have announced a multi-year partnership to expand internet connectivity and digital learning access for children and young people across Africa, supporting two flagship UNICEF initiatives – Giga and Learning Passport.

The partnership will combine Helios Towers’ telecommunications infrastructure expertise with UNICEF’s global leadership in digital inclusion to help connect schools and expand access to quality education in underserved communities.

Through the collaboration, Helios Towers will support efforts to advance school connectivity mapping and infrastructure development through Giga – the joint UNICEF and International Telecommunication Union initiative that aims to support governments in connecting every school to the internet by 2030.

The company will also support expanded access to Learning Passport, a UNICEF programme that delivers high-quality, flexible and portable digital learning that enables children and young people to continue learning anywhere, at any time, both online and offline.

The partnership will initially focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi and Tanzania, with additional support planned for another country in West Africa, where Helios Towers’ established in-market presence and engineering capability will help extend connectivity to communities where access remains limited.

Africa is home to the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population, with an estimated eight out of ten people expected to be born on the continent this century. Expanding reliable internet connectivity for schools is critical to ensuring children and young people can access education, develop digital skills and participate fully in future economies.

Helios Towers’ investment strategy focuses on underserved and high-growth markets, supporting connectivity infrastructure where need and potential impact are greatest. By contributing technical expertise, local operational knowledge and long-term market presence, the company will help strengthen scalable models for digital transformation across Africa.

“Connectivity is a core enabler of education, social inclusion and long-term economic growth. As a mobile tower company operating across Africa and the Middle East, we see first-hand how access to reliable connectivity can transform communities. Our partnership with UNICEF reflects our commitment to expanding digital inclusion and helping connect the next generation to learning, skills and opportunity,” said Tom Greenwood, Chief Executive Officer of Helios Towers. 

“Digital connectivity is increasingly essential for learning, opportunity and helping children reach their full potential,” said Philip Goodwin, Chief Executive Officer of UNICEF UK. “Through partnerships like this, UNICEF is working with governments, communities and the private sector to remove barriers to education and build systems that enable children to learn, grow and thrive. We are grateful to Helios Towers for its commitment to expanding connectivity where the need is greatest, helping bring quality learning opportunities to children and young people in underserved communities and supporting our shared ambition to make childhood unstoppable.”

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Press Release

Investments in MIST, I2SEA and ECHO in line with its Vision 2030 strategy to provide multiple paths for resilient connectivity

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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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.

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News

The decision follows Orange taking full control of the business earlier this year

Orange has wasted no time in dropping the MásOrange brand after taking full control of the business earlier this year.

The unit will now be known as Orange España, bringing the brand in line with Orange’s international portfolio of network operator businesses.

The companies’ commercial brands – Orange, Yoigo, Jazztel, MásMóvil, Pepephone, Simyo, Euskaltel, R, and Telecable – remain unaffected by the move.

“Orange España is one of the most recognised brands in our country and explains in a clear and simple way the company that we are today: the leading operator of the Spanish market by number of customers and by satisfaction with a clear vocation of investment, innovation and commitment to the digital development of our country,” said Meinrad Spenger, CEO of Orange España.

MasOrange was formed by the €22 billion merger of Orange and MasMovil’s Spanish units in 2024. It created the country’s largest telco, with around 1 million mobile and 7 million fixed-broadband subscribers. By the end of 2025, Orange had agreed to acquire full control of the business, buying out its joint venture partner Lorca for €4.25 billion.

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Press Release

Vodafone and Ericsson have successfully demonstrated two AI-powered voice services, real-time noise cancellation and language translation, running directly within the mobile network.

Vodafone Group and Ericsson have successfully trialed two pioneering, network-native AI-powered voice services that will transform the experience of a standard mobile phone call. The trial demonstrated real-time noise cancellation for crystal-clear audio, and in-call language translation to break down communication barriers, all without requiring specialized apps or new phone hardware.

The achievement is a key milestone from the companies’ joint “Core Network of the Future” program, an initiative designed to explore how advanced AI capabilities can be embedded directly into a communications service provider’s network, turning it into an intelligent platform for innovation. Delivering these services from within the network, rather than through individual apps or devices, means they can reach any customer on any handset by default, giving Vodafone a scalable route to introduce new capabilities to consumer and enterprise customers over time.

The technical breakthrough was made possible by integrating Vodafone-developed application server and AI engines with Ericsson’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), using APIs to seamlessly bridge telecom and AI domains. This architecture allows the network to apply AI-driven intelligence to voice calls as they are processed. The two use cases demonstrated were:

• AI-based noise cancellation: This service intelligently identifies and removes background noise in real time, ensuring call clarity for users in loud environments like busy streets, public transport, or construction sites.
• AI-based real-time language translation: This service translates a conversation between two different languages live during the call, enabling seamless communication between people who do not share a common language.

Marco Zangani, Director of Network Strategy and Architecture, Vodafone, said: “AI is giving the mobile network back its voice. More than 50 years after the first mobile call, innovation is accelerating and shifting back into the network. Over the past few years, we have built the infrastructure, data capabilities and safeguards needed to unlock AI for our customers to converse more clearly.”

Nadine Allen, Head of UK and responsible for Vodafone Group at Ericsson, said: “This successful trial with Vodafone is a critical demonstration of how network-native AI can redefine the mobile experience. By integrating Vodafone’s powerful AI capabilities with Ericsson’s core network and media processing technologies, we are proving that sophisticated services like real-time translation and noise cancellation can be delivered seamlessly. This is a crucial step toward creating more intelligent, programmable networks that unlock new value for customers.”

This successful trial reflects a wider industry shift already underway, as operators increasingly explore how to deliver AI-powered services natively through their networks. By moving intelligence from the device to the network, operators can accelerate innovation, ensure quality of service, and deliver new value to both consumers and enterprises.

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With the Pará and Maranhão branching units now on the seabed, both States are one step closer to a major enhancement of their digital infrastructure as future submarine cable branches are developed.

Dublin, Ireland, 16^th September 2026 – EllaLink, the first high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable directly connecting Latin America to Europe, announces the two branching units dedicated to the Brazilian states of Pará and Maranhão have been successfully laid on the seabed as part of the Lum@link marine installation campaign.

The two units are now in place and ready to receive the future submarine branches to Salinópolis, in the State of Pará, and São Luís, in the State of Maranhão. They were laid at water depths of 3,920 metres and 3,690 metres respectively. Manufactured and installed by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the units form part of the Lum@link system, which connects Cayenne, French Guiana, to the main EllaLink system.

A branching unit is a subsea device that enables a new cable branch to be added to an existing submarine system without disrupting the main route. By installing these units during the Lum@link campaign, EllaLink is ensuring that the future Brazilian branches can be deployed and activated without requiring additional deep-water intervention on the main system.  Planned years in advance, this strategic decision transforms a single route into a scalable network.

The branching units were funded by the governments of Pará and Maranhão, with grant support from the European Union as part of a broader Amazon connectivity programme co-financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group.

EllaLink has also completed the Cable Route Study (CRS) for both branches, covering offshore and landing routes, as well as preliminary permitting, environmental assessments and engineering activities.

Bringing the Amazon Basin onto the global submarine network

The branch to São Luís is being developed in partnership with ATI (Agência Estadual de Tecnologia da Informação do Maranhão) on behalf of the State of Maranhão.

The branch to Salinópolis is being developed in partnership with PRODEPA (Empresa de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação do Estado do Pará) on behalf of the State of Pará.

For two states that have historically relied on long terrestrial backhaul routes to reach Brazil’s international communication gateways, the impact will be transformative. Each branch will provide a dedicated submarine landing point and a high-capacity, resilient connection to Fortaleza, Cayenne, and the wider international network. This represents a significant improvement in both network capacity and reliability.

Together, the two states will benefit from an initial combined capacity of 17 Tbps, with substantial room for future expansion. Beyond increasing bandwidth, the programme aims to extend broadband connectivity to isolated communities and strengthen the resilience of public digital services in healthcare, education, business development  and e-government.

The programme also includes the deployment of SMART sensors capable of collecting environmental and seismic data to support climate and scientific monitoring initiatives, with the support of the European Union.

As with its other dedicated branches, EllaLink acts as an infrastructure operator. The company designs, builds, operates and transfers the ownership of the branch to its customer. The capacity carried on each branch is owned and commercialised directly and fully under the control of the states.

The two branches form the Brazilian component of the “Mais Conectado” project, for the Amazon region,  to be co-financed by the IDB Group and the AFD Group.  This project was showcased during the 2nd EU-Brazil Investment Forum in June 2026. The project is being delivered under the EU Global Gateway strategy and the EU-LAC Digital Alliance with the support of Team Europe.

Lum@link on track for service by the end of 2026

The branching units were installed as part of the Lum@link  marine campaign that began in mid-July 2026, when the cable ship CS Île d’Yeu departed from the ASN manufacturing facility in Calais (France), bound for Cayenne (French Guiana).

Lum@link  is a submarine cable extension of approximately 2,100 km that connects the new cable landing station in Cayenne to the existing EllaLink trunk system off Fortaleza.  The system will provide a direct optical connection between Cayenne, Fortaleza, and Sines (Portugal) and is expected to enter in service by the end of 2026.

Lum@link is being developed by SPLANG, the public company responsible for the digital development in French Guiana. The European Commission is supporting the project with a €29.9 million grant from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital programme, managed by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). The system is also supported by investment from the Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane (CTG – local Government for French Guiana), and financial support from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD).

Carlos Brandão, Governor of the State of Maranhão, commented : “Maranhão is preparing today to take a leading role in the digital economy of the future. We are investing in high-speed connectivity, fibre optic infrastructure, cybersecurity, data centres and digital inclusion. This is a project that modernises the State, strengthens our economy and creates the conditions to attract investment and generate new opportunities. We want a Maranhão that is more connected, more competitive and, above all, one where technology helps reduce inequality and improve the lives of our people.”

Philippe Dumont, CEO at EllaLink Group, added: “Laying these two branching units is one of those milestones that is invisible from the shore but decisive for everything that follows. They are the physical foundation of the future connections to Salinópolis and São Luís, and they are now in place, on the seabed. The design of the branches is well advanced as well: cable route study is finalised, so marine survey can start as soon as Pará and Maranhão states have finalised their funding. Since its inception, the EllaLink system has been designed to welcome new markets step by step, and this is what that design was for.”

Viewpoint Article

Many of the customers who chose Cambium did so for good reason. That’s what makes this sting, says Jack Raynor, president of NetExperience.

Contributed by Jack Raynor, President, NetExperience

This month, Cambium Networks eliminated 53.6% of its global workforce and placed its UK subsidiary into administration, according to the company’s own SEC filing.

Administrators are now searching for buyers for parts of the business, and the company has said it expects the remaining entities to be wound down. For the partners, resellers, and operators who built businesses on Cambium hardware, the practical questions are immediate. Who supports the deployed base? Where do firmware and security patches come from? What happens to margin if a forced re-platform lands on their own timeline and their own budget?

There’s no satisfaction in watching this play out. Many of the customers who chose Cambium did so for good reasons: competitive pricing, solid performance, and a workable margin. That’s what makes this sting: it wasn’t a bad decision. It’s the risk that comes standard with any single-vendor architecture, regardless of which vendor is chosen.

Related news
Sept. 17: Cambium Networks enters administration

That’s the part worth sitting with. This isn’t really a story about one company’s balance sheet. It’s a recurring pattern. In 2020, pandemic-era supply shocks stranded operators standardized on hardware from vendors with concentrated manufacturing. Today, AI-driven demand for memory is pushing component costs and lead times up industry-wide, squeezing margins operators thought they’d locked in. A vendor’s financial distress is just the latest variant of a risk that has always been present: when a network depends entirely on one company’s continuity, one company’s roadmap, and one company’s supply chain, risk management has effectively been outsourced to someone else’s balance sheet.

The instinctive response is to migrate to another proprietary platform. That’s understandable, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying problem: it relocates the same single point of failure to a different vendor’s name. The network is still betting on one company’s solvency, one company’s release calendar, one company’s supply relationships. If this year has proven anything, it’s that “established vendor” is not the same as “safe vendor.”

This is precisely the scenario the OpenWiFi Project was built to address. Rather than bundling hardware, firmware, and controller into one vendor’s decision, OpenWiFi decouples them: certified white-box access points validated across multiple ODMs and silicon vendors, an open, community-governed management protocol (uCentral), and a choice of commercial or private-cloud controllers that can be swapped without touching a single access point. If one hardware supplier exits the market, tightens supply, or runs into financial trouble, the fleet isn’t stranded, because no single company was ever the whole architecture.

For Cambium’s current customers, that flexibility may run deeper than a future buying decision. It’s worth examining, pending the necessary technical and legal groundwork, whether currently deployed Cambium access points could run OpenWiFi firmware. If so, and with Cambium’s cooperation, affected operators would only need to choose an OpenWiFi-compatible controller, not replace hardware already sitting in their sites. That path isn’t confirmed, but it deserves a look before anyone assumes a full rebuild is the only option.

That’s a materially different risk profile than choosing between competing closed platforms. It doesn’t eliminate business risk; it distributes it, the way any resilient supply chain distributes single points of failure, so one company’s setback doesn’t become every customer’s unplanned capital expense.

None of this is said with any pleasure about what Cambium’s employees and partners are going through. Job losses and forced re-platforming decisions are genuinely hard, and they deserve real support, not a sales pitch dressed up as sympathy. But the industry has now watched this pattern repeat across a pandemic, a component shortage, and now a vendor’s insolvency. Each time, the operators most exposed were the ones with the least architectural flexibility.

As the industry absorbs this news, the more useful question isn’t which vendor to move to next. It’s whether that next platform decision recreates the same dependency or removes it. Open, disaggregated architectures like OpenWiFi won’t prevent the next disruption; nothing can promise that. But they change what a disruption costs: a supplier swap, not a forced, unplanned rebuild.

Jack Raynor served as chair of the TIP OpenWiFi Project and currently sits on the OpenLAN Project Steering Committee. He is president of NetExperience, a founding member of the OpenWiFi community. He welcomes questions and discussion at Jack.Raynor@NetExperience.com.

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News

The UK’s largest fibre network operator is using AI tools to prevent thousands of full fibre broadband cancellations each month

Broadband engineers fast a myriad of obstacles when deploying fibre to customers’ homes, some of which can result in significant delays. When these issues occur, customers can feel left in the dark, unsure about the specific problems or when installation will ultimately be competed.

Now, Openreach says it is using two new AI services – Crystal Ball and Ask Me Anything (AMA) – to help keep customers better informed and improve satisfaction.

When an issue occurs during complex fibre installation, the AI-powered Crystal Ball pulls information from various sources, including notes from engineers, delay codes, survey outputs, and network topology, to predict the work required and whether it will take more or less than 10 days to complete.

This information is then communicated via text messages within 24 hours of an engineer’s visit, helping ISPs to keep their customers informed and manage expectations.

In tandem, Openreach’s generative AI AMA allows affected customers to ask questions about their installation processes and receive detailed information in response.

Combined, these tools help to prevent more than 3,000 cancellations every month, according to Openreach.

“When an installation hits a snag, the worst thing we can do is leave people guessing. Crystal Ball helps us explain what’s happened, what needs to happen next, and when we expect the job to be done. And we’re going a step further with Ask Me Anything, giving customers the opportunity to ask questions in their own words and get the information and reassurance they need,” explained Chris Herbert, Director of Customer Service at Openreach. “That makes life easier for customers and for the providers we work with. It means fewer people have to chase for updates, and more orders stay on track.”

Both Crystal Ball and AMA are part of Openreach’s wider CXone Proactive AI Agent platform, which it says is designed to make customer communications “more proactive, predictive and conversational”.

AI is increasing becoming a key part of the customer journey throughout the telecoms industry. In a recent survey of telco leaders across the UK and US, 64% said their organisation was already using AI to steer customer journeys.

In future, customer experience will continue to shift from reactive support towards proactive, predictive, and personalised customer journeys that address problems before customers need to chase them.

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Press Release

First transatlantic cable built by a single operator in a decade expands EXA Infrastructure’s transatlantic core as demand for fibre-pair capacity accelerates

EXA Infrastructure, one of the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platforms throughout Europe, today announced the launch of EXA Meridian, a new 6,552 km transatlantic subsea cable between New Jersey, U.S., and Brean, UK. Scheduled to be ready for service in 2029, EXA Meridian will become the ninth transatlantic cable in EXA Infrastructure’s portfolio, adding significant new capacity and route diversity between North America and Europe, two of the world’s largest digital markets. It will also be the first transatlantic cable built by a single operator in a decade.

Demand for transatlantic infrastructure is growing as AI, cloud, and distributed data centre architectures generate more traffic between North America and Europe. At the same time, the largest capacity buyers are increasingly procuring spectrum and complete fibre pairs rather than individual wavelengths. EXA Meridian is purpose-built for this market shift. Designed with 24 fibre pairs, EXA Meridian delivers over 500 Tbps of scalable, long-term capacity for Hyperscalers, Neoclouds, financial institutions, government and research organisations.

The project has now reached Contract in Force (CIF) with subsea telecommunications specialist Xtera, marking a significant milestone in its development. The agreement follows extensive planning and early engagement with the supply chain, drawing on EXA Infrastructure’s team experience in delivering complex subsea systems. Xtera will act as a key supplier to the project, which is being led and delivered by EXA Infrastructure, a leader in delivery of wholesale transatlantic capacity.

Unlike a standalone subsea cable, EXA Meridian will connect directly into EXA Infrastructure’s existing owned network. A new cable landing station in Brean will connect the system through diverse terrestrial routes to Slough and EXA Infrastructure’s pan-European backbone. This integration into the wider platform will give customers an enhanced network mesh with multiple options for moving large volumes of data between North America and European regions, with greater choice over routes, resilience, and geographic diversity.

“Demand across the Atlantic is changing quickly. The largest customers are increasingly planning in spectrum and fibre pairs, and the capacity they will need towards the end of the decade has to be built now,” said Jim Fagan, CEO at EXA Infrastructure. “With a Ready For Service (RFS) date set for 2029, EXA Meridian will be the only cable with sufficient capacity to satisfy these large-scale demands.

“We have consistently committed to investing to meet strong demand. That means understanding where the market is going, securing the capital to act early and having the experience to execute when the opportunity arrives.

By integrating EXA Meridian directly into infrastructure that we own and operate across Europe, we can give customers greater route choice, resilience and accountability. It demonstrates the discipline behind our investment strategy and our confidence in continuing to build as commercial demand requires.”

EXA Meridian is already supported by significant anchor customer commitments, including leading Neocloud and Hyperscale players, providing strong commercial backing for the investment alongside tier-one suppliers secured to support project delivery. The system is targeted to be ready for service in Q4 2029.

How is the global submarine cable sector changing? Join industry leaders in discussion at Submarine Networks EMEA 2027, the world’s largest subsea conference

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