News

A report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the Home Office still had no “realistic plan” for the new Emergency Services Network (ESN), with the delay costing the UK’s emergency services millions of pounds every year

The government’s plan to create the new 4G-based ESN was first announced in 2015, initially aiming to launch the system in 2017 and completely replace the existing Airwave network by 2019. At the time, the project was expected to cost around $5 billion.

However, progress on the ESN has been glacial. Eight years have passed, and the government still does not know when the system will be in place, with some reports estimating it will not be operational until 2029.

The government has reportedly spent around £2 billion so far on developing the ESN with no tangible progress, while the initiative’s projected budget has swelled massively to over £11 billion.

Today, the PAC has announced the results of its fourth inquiry into the ESN’s delays, being highly critical of the lack of progress or planning on the part of the Home Office.

“The ESN project is a classic case of optimism bias in Government,” said the committee chair Dame Meg Hillier. “There has never been a realistic plan for ESN and no evidence that it will work as well as the current system.”

“Assertions from the Home Office that it will simply ‘crack on’ with the project are disconnected from the reality, and emergency services cannot be left to pick up the tab for continued delays. With £2 billion already spent on ESN and little to show for it, the Home Office must not simply throw good money after bad,” she added.

The report itself detailed the costs the UK’s emergency services are facing in keeping the existing Airwave system running.

The ambulance service said it had spent £9.5 million towards making the transition, while the fire service had spent £6 million, along with an additional £2 million for early versions of the ESN which had since been replaced.

The police force, meanwhile, estimated that purchasing additional Airwave devices had cost them £125 million since 2018 and would cost them a further £25 million by 2026.

It is worth noting here that Airwave’s parent company, Motorola, was originally contracted to help deliver the ESN itself, but withdrew from the project at the end of last year. The US-based mobile device company seemingly feared that it would be forced to sell Airwave by the UK Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), after a recent CMA consultation estimated that Motorola stood to make excess profits of £1.3 billion from the Airwave system over a decade.

The Home Office is now in the process of finding a new supplier to replace Motorola.

The PAC closed their report by recommending the Home Office appoint an Independent Assurance Panel to oversee progress on ESN. The Home Office has until the end of the year to produce a suitable outline for the ESN project and must create a new business case in Q1 2024.

How is the UK telecoms market evolving in 2023? 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

Since the early 2000s, Bicom Systems has helped businesses, enterprises and governments alike to bridge the gap in communications technology and keep up with technological trends.

One of our most popular products, PBXware, attests to that fact as it currently has well over 3 million extensions worldwide.

But why do so many people prefer PBXware over other solutions on the market? Well, there is a lot of merit to the product which is hard to summarize in a few words, so let us take it from the top, shall we?

You Can Build It Your Way

Scalability

The first major benefit to PBXware is its flexibility.

Many businesses want a long-term solution that will scale to fit their size and scope.

PBXware offers exactly that, eliminating the fuss of having to switch over to a different service and having to negotiate new contracts.

Pick The Edition That Best Suits Your Needs

To that end, PBXware is offered in 4 different editions depending on the needs of your business: Business, Contact Center, Multi-Tenant, and SP.

Business Edition

The first option, as the name suggests, is tailor-made for businesses, offering easy stat tracking thanks to a detailed, yet deceptively simple to read and use, GUI.

It also comes with role overview and management and offers compatibility with all major VOIP phone brands.

On top of that, it serves as a Unified Communications Tool with features like meeting organization, screen sharing, and the like.

Contact Center Edition

The second of the two options, the Contact Center edition, is the ideal choice for call and contact centers, giving you everything you would want in a neat little package with Automatic Call Distribution and Real-Time Agent Monitoring.

It even offers online self-care for your customers to help them customize their PBXware experience, a feature that every edition has apart from SP edition.

Multi-Tenant Edition

Our most popular edition, Multi-Tenant, is used to manage multiple customers (tenants) with a single instance of the software, making it ideal for Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) as it helps cut down on operating costs on top of keeping customer management simple and easy.

However, the Multi-Tenant edition isn’t without its own benefits either.

Being able to host an unlimited number of IP PBX Tenants, LCR, stat tracking, custom development solution options and more, alongside serving as a Unified Communications platform are what make this edition so appealing to our business partners.

SP Edition

SP edition is a bit of a special case.

It is not a standalone PBX system like the others are.

Instead, it was specifically designed for managing and accessing data from multiple PBXware systems in a centralized location, and, to simplify administration, making it easier to keep track of configurations and to edit specific settings.

What makes PBXware’s SP edition unique are some of its standout features like SSO functionality and its advanced search capabilities.

Your (Company’s) Name Here

Depending on your preferences, you can either opt for the default Bicom Systems branded variant or the white label option where we tailor it to fit with your company’s name and color scheme, a particularly popular option for resellers.

Your Data: Your Choice

When it comes to hosting your network and your data, Bicom Systems offers two server options.

You can either opt for cloud hosting on our own servers or on-site installation on your own company’s servers.

Both of these options come with different benefits and drawbacks, so, in the end, the choice between the two comes down to preference.

The Cloud

The cloud-hosted option relieves you of purchase and maintenance costs for the servers and the rest of the hardware, leaving those tasks to us.

It is definitely the more affordable and convenient option of the two, and thus, more popular among our business partners.

On-site Installation

If, however, you prefer to have your data on-hand and like having your teams handle server maintenance and data management internally, then the on-premise solution is the better one for you.

Apart from having the data reside on your premises, you will be able to enjoy decreased server latency and more overall flexibility in developing safety measures and other plans revolving around the use of the product.

Whatever your choice ends up being, we are always ready to jump in to provide you with a pleasant and favorable experience.

Seamless CRM Integration

If you have a preferred CRM platform and are worried about having to swap should you choose PBXware as your telephony platform, do not be. PBXware pairs itself well with a number of the most used CRMs on the market, integrating itself seamlessly into it.

How Is Such Flexibility Possible?

When someone lists so many incredible features, one would often wonder how one platform could manage so much.

The answer is hidden in PBXware’s API which is used when your (external) systems need to fetch data or change a configuration in PBXware, allowing them to work in tandem with one another. 

Master It In Hours

Intuitive GUI Design

When users initially see pictures of PBXware’s features, they may think that our product is hard to manage and use due to the many features that it has.

However, that could not be further from the truth. The UI itself is deceptively simple and easy to read and navigate for new users and veterans alike.

Everything is plainly presented and easy to read so the learning curve tends to be rather short on average.

If, however, users still find it somewhat challenging to master and piece together, the “Embedded documentation” feature can help remind them of a specific element’s function with an example.

This is equally useful to new users who need to be brought up to speed at a relatively quick pace, or for more experienced users who just want to get a slight refresher course on a specific element’s use that they may have forgotten.

Easy To Install

So, the use of the product is easy and intuitive, but what about the installation process? Well, that is relatively easy too as everything is done by the Setup Wizard.

All you need is a single mouse click and your PBXware extension will start installing and be ready for use in no time at all.

Keep Your Business Safe

One of the key aspects of any modern business is security, whether it is safeguarding their data from unforeseen circumstances like natural disasters or power outages, or keeping service uninterrupted as bad actors can strike at any time.

Thankfully, we have you covered in several different ways, the two main ones being sipPROT and SERVERware.

Stay Safe With sipPROT

SIP attacks are becoming more and more common in our modern world, particularly DDOS-ing, so it is important to have a system in place to protect your infrastructure from getting affected by it.

Our own defense system, sipPROT, helps safeguard your VoIP network against these types of attacks, preventing issues like losing call quality, general service interruptions or having the whole network go offline.

And, to top it all off, it is super easy to install through a simple toggle option from the Setup Wizard if you have opted to add sipPROT to your package.

System Safeguarding With SERVERware

Another product that will greatly improve your network uptime and helps protect data is SERVERware.

It offers numerous network safety features like multiple VPSes, geo-redundancy, backup hosts and hotsparing.

It easily integrates itself with PBXware and allows for added data tracking and VPS management.

SERVERware comes in 3 different editions: the standalone, the mirror, and the cluster, each bringing their own set of benefits to cater to all sorts of business needs, so the choice ultimately comes down to your preferences.

Store Your Data With Any Of The Popular Data Storage Providers

If, however, you are more used to entrusting your data to another popular provider like AWS, Google Drive, Dropbox or an FTP server, do not worry because PBXware has you covered there too.

PBXware integrates with the storage provider of your choice, allowing you to store valuable data from your system, be it voice call recordings, SMS or fax messages and similar.

It also has the ability to play the archived call recordings (which are located in the cloud).

Is PBXware a STIR/SHAKEN Compliant?

For all of our US partners, rest assured that PBXware is fully STIR/SHAKEN compliant.

This is done via our custom in-house Caller ID authentication solution which allows our users to avoid fees for an extra STIR/SHAKEN extension and having to deal with third-party providers which could pose a network security risk.

We make sure to provide optimal service for our business partners and to make our present and future collaborations as smooth and as simple as possible.

Do note, however, that you will still need to get an SS certificate as we are not licensed to provide those of our own accord.

Keep Your Team Connected

Regardless of which PBXware edition you choose, you will always be able to maintain quick and efficient communication within your business through a few different means.

IP Phone Compatible

Bicom Systems’ PBXware is compatible with most popular IP phone brands and integrates itself with them quite well.

This leads to benefits like hot desking, BLF and automated provisioning, making the workplace more efficient and easier to manage, eliminating some of the busywork needed.

This feature is particularly useful for multi-shift offices, remote work, and places like hospitals and similar.

SMS And MMS Support

With PBXware, you are able to send both SMS and MMS messages to anyone within your organization for a quick and easy transfer of information without being in near proximity to that person.

PBXWare even offers the option of bulk SMS messaging which lets you send out important information to large groups of people on the network all at once, removing the need for individual calls in such cases.

Make Communication Even Easier With The Addition Of gloCOM And gloCOM GO

As previously stated, our Unified Communications apps, gloCOM and gloCOM GO, seamlessly integrate into PBXware and allow for an even easier way to communicate and collaborate between all your employees.

It makes chatting easy and makes remote work even easier by giving users access to anyone in the workplace over their mobile phones, even external participants, and adding a file transfer option.

gloCOM has a filtered view option of employees based on department and lets you set up meetings with ease, video conferencing as well as screen sharing.

And yes, as long as you have a stable internet connection, you can join these meetings from your phone too!

A Truly Unified Communications Solution

PBXware serves as an excellent telephony platform and a perfect foundation which expands its functionality when all of our other products are added onto it.

All put together, this forms a truly ideal and unified solution that covers almost every possible communications need a business could have.

We Are At Your Disposal

All of these features are well and good, but what about installation and setup, or support in case something goes wrong? Do you have to handle all of this yourself?

Absolutely not.

As hiccups in the system or random malfunctions with a piece of hardware are bound to happen at some point, we have made sure to set our support team up so that you can get help 24/7, regardless of timezone.

Feel free to contact us if you have further questions or if something still needs clarification.

Our support team would love to talk to you about your business and your needs.

And, as previously mentioned, our teams will handle installation and setup by default with respect to any special guidelines required by your business, if there are any.

A Long List Of Satisfied Business Partners

Of course, all of these claims may feel empty without something to back it up. Thankfully, we have plenty of satisfied customers and long lasting partners under our belt.

Some of the more notable ones being Dell, KFC, and even NASA.

All of them have been great business partners and have had nothing but positive experiences using PBXware to improve their business communication and management capabilities.

Experience PBXware For Yourself

As you can see, PBXware has a lot to offer. It is flexible and can scale with your business needs, easily integrating with your existing systems.

PBXware is tailor made to your specifications, easy to use, and comes with built-in service and data protection if you opt for some of our other products.

This gives you maximum server uptime and security, regardless of your circumstances.

Our solutions are guaranteed to improve communication levels within your workforce and help ease some of the more mundane busywork.

If you are interested in trying PBXware before buying or have any other questions that may not have been answered in this article, feel free to contact us or request a demo of the product.

We are always ready to showcase the best that our products have to offer and hope that you see the potential that we do.

Until then.

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
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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]

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
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News

The regulator is aims to ensure that Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) customers are not being disincentivised from changing to another service provider due to onerous termination procedures

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.

How has Helios grown since its IPO?

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.

How challenging is it to be operating across a range of markets in various stages of development?

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.

The DRC is obviously a challenging market in terms of politics and terrain. Is that deployment strategy something you have had to pioneer in this market?

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.

And is that pattern similar in other markets that you are active in, in terms of deployments being generally focused on urban population centres?

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.

Connecting remote communities is always important to governments, obviously on the agenda for most authorities in these regions. What about sustainability? What is your focus in this area and how are governments pushing it?

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.

Finally, a little bit about 5G in Africa, because obviously that is very new and it’s very much in the trial stages. Are there any full scale commercial deployments of 5G within your footprint?

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.

You’re not seeing 3G ‘sunsets’?

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.