News

Telcos will not longer be allowed to implement mid-contract price rises linked to unclear metrics like inflation

In December last year, Ofcom proposed the introduction of stricter rules surrounding mid-contract price hikes for mobile, pay-TV, and broadband customers, after an investigation found that many customers were confused

The issue primarily related to inflation-based price increases, where pricing would be linked to indexes like the consumer price index (CPI) or retail price index (RPI) – indices not well understood by consumers, leading to unexpected increases in their bills.

Now, following a consultation, Ofcom has announced that new rules will indeed be introduced, requiring telecoms operators to express mid-contract price rises “prominently and transparently” in pounds and pence.

Providers will also be required to clearly explain when price increases will occur,

“Providers must draw this information to the customer’s attention prominently before they are bound by the contract, in a clear and comprehensible manner (including during a sales call or other verbal sale such as an in-store sale) to enable them to make an informed choice. Providers must also set out when any changes to the monthly price will occur,” said Ofcom in a statement.

“With household budgets squeezed, people need to have certainty about their monthly outgoings. But that’s impossible if you’re tied into a contract where the price could change based on something as hard to predict as future inflation,” said Cristina Luna-Esteban, Ofcom’s Telecoms Policy Director. “We’re stepping in on behalf of phone, broadband and pay TV customers to stamp out this practice, so people can be certain of the price they will pay, compare deals more easily and take advantage of the competitive market we have in the UK.”

The new rules will officially come into effect from 17 January 2025.

Many of the UK’s providers had already made the required changes pre-emptively over the past six months, with BT notably having already announced its revised price increases for 2025.

The UK’s largest digital economy event is just around the corner! Join the telecoms community in discussion on key issues at this year’s Connected Britain conference

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News

The project began in September 2021 

Chinese giant Huawei has completed the construction of its new research and development (R&D) centre in Shanghai, China. 

Officially named the Lianqiu Lake R&D Center, the campus includes offices, R&D, incubation and production services. It is the “largest and most heavily invested R&D base globally,” the company said. In the future, the site will designed to become a core node in Huawei’s global R&D network. 

According to South China Morning Post, approximately 30,000 employees are expected to move into the campus upon completion, with the first number expected in September. Operations are expected to begin later this year, although the company have yet to commented on the project’s completion. A state media report in January confirmed that the site will ‘carry out innovative research and development in the fields of Huawei terminal chips, wireless networks and the Internet of Things’.  

There are currently around 19,000 staff at its research centre in the city’s Pudong district. 

The campus is reportedly comprised of eight blocks and 104 buildings, connected via a railway system. Other amenities, such as the 100 on site cafes, have been included to attract foreign employees.  

“[We aim to] create an atmosphere suitable for foreign scientists to work and live in,” said Huewei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei in an internal meeting in 2021, which was later made public. 

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News 

The dispute relates to major planned job cuts following Vodafone Spain’s acquisition by Zegona last month 

Spanish trade unions have accepted the workforce reduction plans offered to them by Vodafone Spain’s new owner Zegona Communications, who acquired the company back in June. 

The Spanish trade union UGT had scheduled strikes for the 9th and 11th of July – with partial strikes being carried out on various days throughout the month – in protest against a redundancy plan announced by Zegona.  

The new owner had originally planned to cut 1,198 jobs as part of the takeover’s restructuring, with the company citing the “strong financial and commercial deterioration” of the business,, according to local reports. 

Now, following negotiations, it has instead been agreed that only 898 employees will be made redundant, 25% less than the original target.  

“By a very large majority (1,821 votes in favour of the agreement versus 468 votes against) the Vodafone Spain workforce has chosen to accept the latest offer presented and, consequently, tomorrow UGT will sign the agreement that sets the conditions for the collective dismissal process presented by the company,” said UGT sources speaking to Europa Press. 

Zegona spent €5 billion on the purchase of Vodafone Spain, €4.1 billion in cash and €0.9 billion in preference shares. The dismissals come just after Zegona announced its refinancing of the acquisition.  

“With Zegona’s long-term financing now secured, we have a capital structure that is fit-for-purpose and we can now focus on the continued execution of our strategic plans to improve Vodafone Spain, driving growth and creating value for all stakeholders,” said CEO Eamonn O’Hare in a press release. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter   

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News 

The investment is the latest step in SK Telcom (SKT)’s path to becoming global leader in AI 

South Korean telco SKT has announced that it will invest $200 million in California-based Smart Global Holdings (SGH), an AI data centre solutions company.  

Under the terms of the agreement, SKT will invest $200 million in SGH by acquiring 200,000 preferred shares, worth $32.81 each. This will equate to a roughly 10% stake in the business. 

SGH will use the capital to “add to the Company’s financial flexibility as SGH further expands the scope and scale of its Penguin Solutions branded end-to-end AI factory offerings,” as stated in the announcement’s press release.  

The company’s Penguin Solutions designs, builds, deploys, and manages AI and accelerated computing infrastructures at scale using Nvidia Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). 

“SGH and Penguin Solutions have a proven methodology to deploy their AI infrastructure solutions at some of the most innovative and demanding large-scale enterprise customers in the world. We believe that this collaboration leveraging SKT’s vast technology portfolio with Penguin’s AI data center solutions would enhance the reach and capabilities of both companies and position them to continue innovating in their fields,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT. 

Leveraging the strengths of both companies, the partnership will “enhance customer offerings in the development of differentiated global end-to-end AI factory and data center solutions and services, advanced memory market products and services, and NPU-based AI edge servers.”  

SKT has made significant investments in the last few years to “step up on all fronts to transform itself into an AI company,” said the company’s Chief Financial Officer Kim Jin Won.  Last month, for example, the company invested $10 million in a generative AI search engine called Perplexity, which is attempting to disrupt Google’s hegemony over the search engine industry. It has also invested $100 million in AI company Anthropic, to develop a multilingual large language model (LLM) customised for global telcos.   

Last year, the company also joined forces with e&, Deutsche Telekom, and Singtel to form the Global Telco AI  Alliance, aiming to explore the greater integration of AI technologies within the telecoms sector.  

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter  

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News

If given the green light, the deal would be the largest acquisition in Alphabet’s history 

Google’s parent company Alphabet is in late-stage talks to acquire cybersecurity company Wiz for $23 billion, according to a report published on Sunday from The Wall Street Journal. 

If it is completed, the deal would be the group’s largest ever deal, surpassing its previous record purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2012 for $12.5 billion.  

Sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the deal is still “weeks away from completion”, with some details still needing to be worked out.  

Only founded in 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Wiz is a cloud security platform that provides a suite of solutions for securing cloud environments. It has quickly gained prominence in the cybersecurity landscape, with huge name customers such as Salesforce, BMW, and Mars. In May, the company had a valuation of $12 billion. 

If a deal is ultimately agreed, it would face immense scrutiny from antitrust regulators, who have been cracking down on large tech companies buying startups. 

This is not the first cyber security purchase that Google has made in recent years. In 2022, it acquired notably cyber defence company Mandiant for $5.4 billion.  

“Cyber security is a mission, and we believe it’s one of the most important of our generation,” said Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia in March 2022. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said at the time that the deal would “make a profound impact in securing the cloud, accelerating the adoption of cloud computing, and ultimately make the world safer.” 

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

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News

The breach, which occurred in 2022, could affect tens of millions of customers

Today, a regulatory filing from AT&T has revealed a major data breach that occurred in 2022, with hackers able to access call and text message records of “nearly all” of the operator’s wireless customers.

The data was reportedly compromised between April 14 and April 25, 2022, as well as a single day in January 2023.

The breach exposed call and text records, though AT&T says this does not include the content of those calls or texts.

Personal information, such as names or social security numbers, was not accessible by the hackers.

“At this time, we do not believe that the data is publicly available,” AT&T said in a statement. “We sincerely regret this incident occurred and remain committed to protecting the information in our care.”

According to AT&T, the breach impacted “nearly all” of the company’s roughly 100 million wireless customers, as well as those of mobile virtual network operators that provide services to customers using AT&T’s network. A number of AT&T’s landline customers who interacted with affected mobile numbers between May and October 2022 may also have been impacted.

Investigations into the breaches began on April 19, when AT&T says a “threat actor claimed to have unlawfully accessed and copied AT&T call logs.”

AT&T says its delay in informing customers of the data breach relates to instructions from the US Department of Justice, who told the operator in May and June that a delay in public disclosure was “warranted”. No further information was given about the delay.

Exactly how the breach occurred remains unclear, though AT&T reportedly told CNN that customer data was illegally downloaded from its workspace on Snowflake, a third-party cloud platform.

Snowflake rejects this claim, with the company’s chief information and security officer saying no evidence has been found that the breach was caused by a vulnerability, misconfiguration or breach of Snowflake’s platform”.

AT&T is working with police to find those responsible for the breach, with one person reportedly apprehended in connection to the investigation.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news with Total Telecom’s daily newsletter! Sign up here

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Press Release

Vodafone, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Xiaomi continued their innovative streak with the successful test in Germany and Spain of a new 5G technology capable of download speeds close to 1.8 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) using a new smartphone.

Specifically, they tested enhanced technology which improves the way data and video is transmitted from the radio network over 5G to a customer’s mobile device. Called 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), it is a step up from today’s system (256 QAM) since it packs together more data into each transmission, leading to faster download speeds.

This increase in speed and data throughout will ultimately lead to greater network capacity, freeing up additional bandwidth at mobile sites to improve the overall experience for customers.

1.8 Gbps Peak Speed

Using Xiaomi’s smartphone, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, equipped with its latest Snapdragon® X75 5G Modem-RF System, Vodafone engineers recorded excellent results. In Germany, the team measured a throughput improvement on the commercial network of around 20% over a distance of up to 600 meters, and at its 5G test centre in Ciudad Real, Spain, they achieved peak 5G download speed of nearly 1.8 Gbps. Theoretically, 1.8 Gbps could provide a capacity gain of up to 25% in ideal conditions.

The technology, which Vodafone expects to become more widely available during 2025, is suited to supporting multiple customers close to a mobile site in busy areas such as a shopping centre or high street.

Wave of Innovation

Alberto Ripepi, Chief Network Officer of Vodafone, said: “Vodafone is at the forefront of the next wave of innovation in 5G. Our customers will benefit from a head start when the next generation smartphones become more widely available, and we can offer our technical expertise to partners and other providers through our new commercial model.”

Dino Flore, Vice President, Technology of Qualcomm Europe, Inc. added: “The successful trials conducted in Germany and Spain with Vodafone and Xiaomi are proof that we are continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible with 5G technology.”

Guoquan Zhang, General Manager of Xiaomi Software Department, said: “We are honored to have collaborated with Vodafone and Qualcomm on this achievement. It demonstrates how Xiaomi is actively driving and showing innovation in the 5G space.”

This latest technological breakthrough follows news earlier this year that the same three companies achieved upload speeds of up to 273 megabits-per-second (Mbps) using another innovative technology. This is more than double the average uplink speed of today’s smartphones and home broadband services.

Efficiency Gains

Industry body 3GPP has defined the 1024 QAM technology, helping operators make further efficiency gains using existing spectrum whilst providing greater speeds for customers even among bandwidth-hungry digital services.

For the test, Vodafone engineers used 1024 QAM with a Time Division Duplexing (TDD) spectrum band – a way to send and receive data within pre-determined time slots on the same frequency (3.5 GHz in this instance). 3.5 GHz spectrum can benefit from 1024 GAM because it has been widely assigned for 5G and associated mobile broadband applications. Vodafone will continue to test drive 1024 QAM-compatible networking equipment and devices ahead of their commercial deployment later.

Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Germany conference live in Munich

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News

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said earlier this year that AI will be SoftBank’s ‘next big bet’ when it comes to technology

This week, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has announced the acquisition of struggling UK-based AI chipmaker Graphcore.

Official financial details have not been disclosed, but anonymous sources speaking to the Financial Times valued the deal at $600 million.

Graphcore creates specialised AI chips, known as intelligence processing units, which can be used to train and operator AI large language models.

This is the same type of chip technology that has seen rival chip company Nvidia soar to around $3 trillion earlier this year.

Unlike Nvidia, however, Graphcore has struggled significantly to commercialise its technology. Valued at $2.8 billion back in 2020, Graphcore has since failed to sell its products at scale, noting “lower hardware sales to key strategic customers”. In 2022, the company recorded just $2.7 million in sales, 46% lower than in 2021, and booking a pre-tax loss for the year of $205 million.

As a result, 2023 saw Graphcore undertake cost cutting measures, cutting 20% of its workforce and closing its operations in Norway, Japan, and South Korea. At the time, the company said there was ‘material uncertainty’ over the company’s survival and called for fresh funding.

Now, as part of SoftBank, Graphcore will reportedly have all the resources it needs to return to full force.

“Demand for AI compute is vast and continues to grow,” said Graphcore’s co-founder and chief executive, Nigel Toon. “There remains much to do to improve efficiency, resilience, and computational power to unlock the full potential of AI. In SoftBank, we have a partner that can enable the Graphcore team to redefine the landscape for AI technology.”

SoftBank itself has been stepping up its focus on AI for over a year now, with Son saying earlier this year that “realising ASI (Artificial Superintelligence)” was “his only focus”. He has also said the company is ready to invest roughly $9 billion a year in AI and is prepared for largescale dealmaking in the future.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news with Total Telecom’s daily newsletter! Sign up here

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Rome, 10 July 2024

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, and Aruba S.p.A, Italy’s leading provider of cloud, data centre, hosting, e-mail, domain registration and PEC (certified email) services, announce the activation of the new Sparkle’s Point of Presence (PoP) at the Hyper Cloud Data Centre of Aruba, the largest data centre campus in Rome, to be inaugurated soon. 

The agreement between Aruba and Sparkle reinforces Rome as a global connectivity hub between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia thanks to the connection with BlueMed, Sparkle’s new cable that increases connectivity in the Mediterranean basin by linking various countries – including France, Greece, Israel and Italy – with landings in Rome, Genoa, Palermo and Golfo Aranci. BlueMed is an integral part of the Blue & Raman Submarine Cable Systems project. In partnership with Google and other operators, the project is set to establish a new digital infrastructure between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia with extension as far as India, and is among the first projects being implemented on the IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) set up at the G20 summit in September 2023.

Designed with an “open cable system” and “open landing station” architecture, BlueMed ensures maximum openness to other operators and the development of internet traffic interconnection ecosystems. With four fibre pairs and a capacity of over 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per pair, BlueMed offers operators and businesses high-speed, high-performance international connections from Rome to all of Sparkle’s destinations worldwide.

Sparkle’s new PoP was activated at Aruba’s Hyper Cloud Data Centre (IT4), a technology campus located at the Tecnopolo Tiburtino, a district where more than 150 companies operate, ranging from aerospace to ICT, in an environment designed also to support the growth and development of new companies and start-ups. The data centre campus covers an area of 74,000 m² and, when fully operational, will include five independent data centres for a total of 30 MW of IT power, the first of which (DC-A) is already ANSI/TIA Rating 4 certified. Designed to the highest standards of resilience and infrastructure quality, the new hub will use renewable energy, cooling systems and highly efficient equipment.

“With the activation of the new PoP integrated with BlueMed, we intend to respond to the needs of companies and operators that require large international interconnection capacities,” said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “We bring Rome closer to the world’s major connectivity exchange points thanks to a unique, low-latency route to Marseille and Palermo, integrated with the main submarine cables crossing the Mediterranean and other destinations in Sparkle’s global network.”

Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba commented: “We share with Sparkle the aim of serving companies and operators, that need large capacities, with not only connectivity but also space and power within state-of-the-art data centres that are large enough to support even the most ambitious growth plans. Being able to host a Sparkle PoP, with the availability of BlueMed, is an important building block in the consolidation of our data centres as strategic assets at a national and European level, and is perfectly in line with our carrier neutral philosophy. This approach is designed to allow customers to enjoy, in maximum autonomy, extremely reliable and high-performance internet connection solutions, and to foster the development of interconnections that benefit the entire ecosystem, making Rome an additional connectivity hub and an IT and cloud service delivery centre for the capital and all Central and Southern Italy.”

The new PoP – which already hosts important international players – adds to the four existing points of presence in Rome, increasing the capillarity of the metropolitan ring, a protected and redundant system fully integrated with Sparkle’s Tier-1 global IP network “Seabone”. Network operators, ISPs, OTTs, content and application providers can benefit from the range of IP and data services offered by Sparkle, including DDoS Protection – that gives customers the option to self-protect their networks from attacks – and Virtual NAP – which provides virtual access to leading Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) without the need to build proprietary infrastructure.

About Sparkle

Sparkle is TIM Group’s Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice – to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises. A major player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 33 countries.

Find out more about Sparkle following its X and LinkedIn profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com

About Aruba S.p.A.  

Aruba S.p.A. (http://www.aruba.it), founded in 1994, is Italy’s leading provider of cloud, data centre, hosting, e-mail, domain registration and PEC (certified email) services. The company, with wholly Italian capital, has 16 million users and manages a vast infrastructure distributed on 7 data centres that includes 2.7 million registered domains, 9.8 million e-mail accounts, 9 million PEC accounts and thousands of customer IT infrastructures. Aruba PEC and Actalis are the group’s two Certification Authorities, accredited with AgID (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) for the provision of qualified services. Aruba’s infrastructure is also qualified by ACN (National Cybersecurity Authority) to handle ordinary, critical and also strategic PA data. In 30 years of activity, Aruba has developed extensive experience in the design and management of high-tech data centres, owned and distributed throughout Italy. The largest is located in Ponte San Pietro (BG) and features green-by-design infrastructure and facilities that comply with the highest security standards in the industry (Rating 4 ANSI/TIA-942, ISO 22237), to which is added the Hyper Cloud Data Centre in Rome, which covers 74,000 m² in the area of the Tecnopolo Tiburtino and at full capacity will include 5 independent data centres. Aruba implements energy-efficient solutions in its data centres, demonstrating its commitment to sustainability and, in addition, produces clean energy through photovoltaic plants and hydroelectric power plants. The infrastructure network also extends across Europe, with a proprietary data centre in the Czech Republic and partner facilities located in France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

For further information, please visit https://www.aruba.it/and social networks Facebook, X and LinkedIn 

Sparkle Media Contacts

sparkle.communication@tisparkle.com

X: @TISparkle

Aruba Media Contacts

Megan Cowlbeck/Lorna Miller 

aruba@rlyl.com

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry for Aruba   

News

Article by Bradford Randall, originally published on Total Telecom’ sister site, Broadband Communities

Viavi Solutions Inc., also known as VIAVI, has announced a strategic partnership with the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to expand Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) testing capabilities for VIAVI’s Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN, also known as VALOR.

The efforts, according to VIAVI, were made possible by a $21.7 million grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund.

According to the company’s July 8 release, the money helped fund the creation of VALOR, which “provides a pathway to certification in the U.S. for new entrants, startups, and academia.”

“By bringing VALOR’s test-as-a-service capabilities to TIP, VIAVI advances the mission of TIP’s OpenRAN Project Group and enhances the broader industry’s ability to implement and certify Open RAN technologies,” the release stated.

As part of the partnership, VALOR, which “offers cloud-based and virtual testing capabilities critical for modern, scalable network performance assessments,” will be incorporated into TIP’s system performance certification program.

Dr. Sameh Yamany, the chief technology officer at VIAVI, said the partnership addresses deployment challenges faced by vendors.

“This initiative aims to reduce market fragmentation, create supply chain efficiencies, and build marketplace confidence through standardized testing and certification processes​,” Yamany said.

With the announcement, VALOR has become the first of TIP’s authorized test labs, according to VIAVI’s release.

Kristian Toivo, TIP’s executive director, said end-to-end testing, like that provided by VALOR, “ensures that Open RAN systems meet high-performance standards and are robust enough to handle real-world network complexities, thereby maintaining service quality and reducing downtime.”

Toivo said VALOR’s Open RAN virtual testing environment bring new capabilities to TIP’s community.

“This strategic engagement fosters innovation, improves supply chain resilience, and accelerates the global adoption of Open RAN technologies, offering operators more flexible, cost-effective, and high-performance network solutions​,” Toivo said.

As a result of the partnership, TIP plans to leverage VALOR’s capabilities to help build a performance certification framework to promote industry alignment, according to VIAVI’s release.

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