Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has moved to tighten subsea cable regulations, adopting rules that both accelerate decision‑making on cable projects and sharply restrict access by ‘foreign adversaries’

Announced on 7 August, the measures create a formal ‘presumption of denial’ for cable‑landing licence applications from entities controlled by designated foreign adversaries and ban the use of equipment listed on the FCC’s Covered List in submarine cable systems that land in or otherwise connect to the United States. According to the agency, the aim is to narrow a strategic vulnerability in global communications infrastructure without imposing an extra‑territorial ban on equipment used entirely outside US jurisdiction.

The new rules tighten and clarify long‑running national‑security concerns about undersea cables. The FCC’s Covered List identifies specific vendors and classes of equipment deemed to pose unacceptable security risks; under the August decision, use of that ‘covered’ kit on US‑connected systems is effectively prohibited. The Commission framed the changes as both a screening mechanism and a deterrent: applications from companies with foreign‑adversary control will now face a default refusal unless they can overcome that presumption.

Work to update the submarine cable regulations had been ongoing since last year, with the FCC formally announcing that it was considering banning equipment from the likes of Huawei, ZTE, China Telecom and China Mobile last month.

“We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a statement on Thursday. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.”

The Commission is also seeking public comment on a set of complementary proposals designed to shore up resilience in practice. These include incentives for the use of US‑flagged repair and maintenance vessels, programmes to promote “trusted technology abroad,” and potentially narrowing the ‘Team Telecom’ review for genuinely low‑risk applications that meet high security standards. Team Telecom is shorthand for the handful of US government agencies that oversee foreign investment into US and advise the FCC on whether investors represent a national security risk; it typically includes representatives from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD).

The agency says the measures will make approval processes for subsea cable landings more efficient while imposing clearer security tests. On the other hand, they trigger reciprocal measures and a new round of geoeconomic competition over who builds and sustains the world’s cables.

Washington’s hardening of policy comes in parallel with a growing Western push to bolster subsea resilience. The European Union in February set out an Action Plan on Cable Security that organises prevention, detection, and response to subarine cable damage by human agents. That plan, the EU says, prioritises ‘smart’ subsea cables equipped with sensors, as well as investing in new systems to increase redundancy and reduce single‑point failures for subsea data traffic.

Also in the news:
US judge rules Huawei must face charges of fraud and racketeering
Optus ditches football rights to focus on telecoms
Nokia launches digital twin platform Enscryb to digitalise energy sector

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

In a somewhat surprising development, mainly because almost everybody assumed it had died a long time ago, AOL (America Online) – one of the very first consumer ISPs in both the USA and UK – recently caused a stir again by announcing that it had “decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet” on 30th September 2025.

According to AOL’s website: “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.” But their email service will continue.

The change appears to have been announced within the past few weeks, although it wasn’t picked up more widely until journalist Ernie Smith noted it in a post on Bluesky. Just to be clear, the announcement above refers to the USA and Canada. However, we’re fairly confident that what remains of AOL UK (aka – TalkTalk) doesn’t have any legacy dial-up customers left, although we would have said the same about the USA and Canada too, until that announcement dropped (dial-up speeds in 2025 would be practically unusable). ISPreview is currently checking, just to be sure.

In case anybody has forgotten. The original AOL UK experience was somewhat of a walled-garden way of accessing the internet, which forced you to use the company’s own software and restricted your ability to access certain internet services. This had the benefit of simplifying the experience, but AOL later fell behind the curve and ended up being overtaken by rivals.

The Carphone Warehouse (CPW) ultimately won the auction to buy AOL UK’s Internet access business in 2006 for £370m (note: AOL’s content division became a separate business). At the time, AOL were the UK’s third-largest ISP with around 2.1 million customers (600,000 on dial-up and 1.5 million with broadband) and were later re-branded to AOL Broadband.

A second big change occurred on 29th March 2010, when CPW and TalkTalk separated (demerged) – the latter became a separate business, which included customers from CPW’s prior acquisitions (e.g. AOL Broadband, Tiscali etc.). Several more years passed until May 2014, when TalkTalk confirmed that AOL Broadband (formerly AOL UK) had stopped taking on new internet and phone customers (here), although no mention was made of the dial-up base.

We’re certain that plenty of our readers (those now of a certain age group) will have stories to share of the early AOL UK days. Yours truly only used the original service briefly, before promptly switching away as the UK’s then dialup (narrowband) internet market became more competitive, affordable and less restrictive. It’s a service I was glad to forget, but it played an important role.

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City-focused broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which has spent the past few years rolling out their own full fibre (FTTP/B) network to cover 1.9 million UK premises and is also in the process of onboarding via Openreach’s network (here), this week announced that they had appointed Sam Horrocks to take on the role of Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

The operator, which is currently home to 400,000 active subscribers and recently suffered another round of redundancies, is currently going through somewhat of a strategic shift that has seen their own network build switch to focus more on commercialisation. On top of that, they’re also now working toward reaching the rest of the UK by harnessing Openreach’s growing national FTTP network (due to start becoming available from early 2026).

Suffice to say that there’s a lot of change happening within Hyperoptic right now. As part of that, they’ve appointed a new CFO to replace Richard Woodward, who after 4 years at the provider recently resigned in order to “make a change from a life-long telecom industry career to join the amazing team at Neko Health” as their CFO.

By comparison Sam is said to have a strong track record as a finance leader in telecoms, tech and private equity-backed businesses and brings over 25 years of experience in driving performance and growth at companies including Vodafone, Inmarsat and, most recently, as Deputy CFO of Travelport. One of his longest stints was the nearly 14 years he spent at Virgin Media, occupying various strategy and senior financial roles.

Dana Tobak CBE, CEO and co-founder of Hyperoptic, said:

“This is an exciting time for Hyperoptic as we continue our upward trajectory of growth and innovation. Sam’s strong background in financial planning, business partnerships and commercial and operational delivery makes him the ideal fit for this role.”

Sam will no doubt find quite the challenge in navigating today’s highly competition and consolidation prone broadband market. But being the CFO of a well-established alternative network like Hyperoptic isn’t a bad place to start.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Rochdale-based ISP Zen Internet has today announced that ITS Technology‘s business-focused UK full fibre network is now live on their Fibre Hub, which forms part of their recently agreed partnership (here) and essentially aggregates access to a number of full fibre broadband networks for partner providers. But that’s not the only development that Zen has announced.

The CEO of Zen, Richard Tang, has also announced that they will be launching Sky (Sky Business) based leased lines to their partners from next Wednesday (13th August 2025), Trooli’s FTTP broadband in a couple of weeks (we assume this means online ordering as they’re technically already live), and CityFibre leased lines around mid-September 2025.

In addition, Richard said the ISP had just agreed heads of terms that will onboard two additional alternative networks, and they’re already busy integrating them. The official announcements on both of those should surface within the next 3 months. Finally, Zen said they’d also added Freedom Fibre’s consumer FTTP footprint to their platform, although this was technically also confirmed a month or so ago (here).

None of this came as a big announcement, but rather via a short video summary.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Interview

BMC Helix’s Hector Villena discusses telcos’ autonomous network ambitions and how AI agents are unlocking hands-off Business Support Services (BSS)

As customer expectations rise and switching communication service providers (CSPs) becomes easier than ever, telcos are under intense pressure to differentiate through exceptional service and smarter operations. That pressure is driving a shift toward AI-powered automation, resulting in smoother service for customer and greater efficiency within CSP operations.

This shift is at the heart of BMC Helix ServiceOps, the company’s cloud-native platform for service management, operations, and automation. Launched back in 2020, the platform quickly proved popular, resulting in it being spun off as a separate company earlier this year.

“The landscape is changing very quickly, and flexibility is everything,” explained Hector Villena, Area Vice President for Sales in BMC Helix CSP Go-To-Market. “That’s why we decided to rearchitect the whole platform from the ground up, with a SaaS first mindset, open architecture, AI driven and completely interconnected. This means our customers can deploy on-prem or SaaS with the same capabilities.”

BMC Helix’s goal was to combine the company’s two strengths: Service Management and  Operations Management. Traditionally these two fields have been largely separated in the telco world, with data largely siloed off and unavailable for simple cross-analysis. With the AI powered tools from Helix, however, data from both worlds can be combined, resulting in a higher level of automation and efficiency.

“The biggest CSPs that we deal with have hundreds of thousands of assets, from servers and storage to network devices. Managing all of that is highly complex. We help them to visualise those assets and quickly assess how the components are related to each other. We then add our AI-driven BSS capabilities, analysing data, monitoring events, and providing a better understanding of that environment,” said Villena. “When you combine the ticketing information from the network with the data coming from events, metrics, logs, and telemetry, and use the topology of the services as a common map to link them, you have something really powerful”

Within the network itself, the benefits of these advanced AI tools are already being felt by customers. Using AI and advanced analytics to assess network data, networks can be made to better anticipate and prevent service disruption, improving uptime and avoiding network outages. When an incident does occur, the platform can also use AI to identify and diagnose the issues behind it and even automate remediation.

“You have millions of tickets going through those platforms. We collect data about previous incidents and their solutions, then apply AI to help deliver a resolution,” said Villena. “For starters the platform can quickly correlate and identify those events and incidents that are essentially related, reducing the number of tickets dramatically. Some of those resolutions can be automated, but for those that can’t, it’s still providing a major boost in efficiency. It’s providing the data and instructions so a Level 1 technician can handle the issue much faster. The initial results we are seeing in our customers are outstanding: 70%-86% Qualified event noise reduction within days, MTTD reduction by 90% or MTTR optimisation over 55%. I understand such a range of improvement is hard to believe, but I do invite any CSP struggling with these challenges to give us a call and allow us to understand their process and prove how the platform could deliver these transcendent improvements to them.”

A growing role for AI agents

AI agents – AI algorithms specifically designed to automate workflows through problem solving and decision-making without human intervention – are playing a major role in this digital transformation. CSPs are already beginning to deploy these agents to automate various customer journeys, helping provide support to staff in call centres or create bespoke packages for B2B customers.

But, for Villena, AI agents’ biggest strength could be their use for internal CSP operations. To date, BMC Helix has released 12 agentic AI agents, focussing on areas of telco operations that can provide the biggest gains in efficiency. The ‘Employee Navigator’ agent, for example, serves as the first layer of AI interacting with the user in the Helix platform and can handle simply administration tasks for employees.

“If an employee needs to book annual leave, for example, they can talk to the Employee Navigator prompt in plain language, and the prompt will ask for the data it needs (if any) to clarify the situation, and then it will book the leave automatically. The employee doesn’t need to manually go through a complex HR system,” Villena explained. “We’re trying to stop employee questions from ever reaching a human agent if they don’t have to, so everyone has more time to focus on higher value tasks.”

The agents can also impact event resolution itself.

“A technician can, thanks to HelixGPT, ask an agent for a problem classification synopsis, a brief root cause summary with the contextual information (metrics, events, behaviour of the system, etc.) and actionable insights. Following that, the technician can ask the system to provide step-by-step recommendations guide to solve the issue. Or, if the issue is so complex it requires the involvement of different subject matter experts, it will automatically create a Teams group chat pulling in the right resolution engineers where all relevant stakeholders can ask questions to the agent (to get a full 360º on the situation, or root cause analysis) and can work with each other to solve the ticket. These are just few of the use cases that can be delivered by the BMC Helix platform” said Villena. “It’s optimising not only the Mean Time to Repair, as it brings the resolution to L1, but also reducing the overall cost per ticket”

BMC Helix is planning to expand their roster of AI agents in the coming months to cover even more use cases, helping to empower telco workforces even further.

Is the ‘Dark NOC’ within reach?  

With more and more AI agents within the telco network, just how far can telcos take automation within the Network Operations Centre (NOC)?

The NOC serves as the nerve centre of the network, the physical location from which network activity is monitored and managed. Currently, most NOCs are highly manual, with network engineers overseeing data traffic and the status of the networks vast physical and digital assets.

As AI and automation becomes more sophisticated, however, the need for manual, human intervention in the network is decreasing. This naturally leads us to the concept of a ‘dark NOC’, a fully autonomous NOC that leverages AI and machine learning to manage the network without the need for any human oversight at all. This, says Villena, is the end-goal for most CSPs.

“CSPs are trying to work smarter and as a result automate as many operations as they can. A consistent objective for many of them is to reach ‘zero touch’ operations, where the operator does not interact manually with the network at all. Network incidents come into this big AI brain and then get identified, triaged, root caused, and resolved automatically. That’s the aspiration of all CSPs.”

But just how far are we on this journey towards fully automated NOCs?

“We’re still a long way from [the dark NOC]. But each part of the network will have a different level of automation, with some already being highly automated,” said Villena. “There’s a big difference between the level of autonomy telcos have in their network functions and their wider IT architecture.”

“In terms of their IT architecture, most telcos I talk to categorise themselves as between Level 0 and Level 1,” he added, referencing TM Forum’s framework of Autonomous Networks Levels, with Level 0 being fully manual and Level 5 being fully autonomous. “Our aspiration is to enable these telcos to get to Level 4 within a short period of time”

But rapid advances with AI and related technology means progress towards greater automation has been fast.

“Some CSPs are aiming to have 80% of network incidents automated by the end of 2026, and to achieve full autonomy by 2030. That’s a very aggressive timeline, but the aspiration is clearly there,” said Villena. “AI has really enabled that transformation. We’re seeing some incredible results in our platform which really show this could be achieved in the next years. The level of improvement is enormous.”

Part of this acceleration relates to the increasing convergence of IT and telco functions.

“As networks are becoming more virtualised and cloudified, the division between telco and IT systems is becoming blurred,” said Villena. “Part of our ‘Operations in the future’ strategy is to enable and integrate with those systems that exist on telco and in IT. With this, we’ll be able to help our customers move from Level 0 and Level 1 to Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy very quickly.”

The building blocks for even greater autonomy

While for now achieving the dream of a Dark NOC remains tantalisingly out of reach, there is little denying that the convergence of CSP systems and the introduction of more sophisticated AI is making rapid progress towards this goal. AI-driven platforms like BMC Helix are proving critical in bridging the gap between legacy complexity and autonomous efficiency, helping to deliver better experiences for consumers and major cost savings for operators.

Also in the news:
US judge rules Huawei must face charges of fraud and racketeering
Optus ditches football rights to focus on telecoms
Nokia launches digital twin platform Enscryb to digitalise energy sector

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The debt riddled TalkTalk Group has issued an additional update this afternoon on their recent £100m funding deal (here), which reveals that the funding level has been increased by £20m to total £120m. The modest boost came other existing financial stakeholders agreed to participate.

According to the statement: “The new funding facilities will be used to strengthen the group’s working capital position and support new product and other investment across its two businesses – PXC and TalkTalk. The Group also confirms that more than 90% of its first lien creditors and approximately 87% of its second lien creditors have signed up to a support agreement to implement the transaction announced on 25th July.”

The news follows shortly after the provider published its annual accounts (here), which among other things revealed that they made a statutory loss before tax of £465m for the year ended 28th February 2025 (up from £153m last year). The group’s overall level of net debt (excluding leases) has now risen from £985m last year to £1.2bn this year, or from £1.78bn to £1.96bn if you include leases.

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UK ISP Plusnet has refreshed the discounts they offer across their home broadband plans for new customers, which for example has cut the monthly price of their top 900Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) package to just £36.99 per month on a 24-month term (mid-contract price hikes apply). Some packages also now include reward cards worth up to £100.

The internet provider’s fibre broadband packages are typically data-only plans (no home phone) that include unlimited usage, a Hub Two wireless router (re-branded BT Smart Hub 2), UK based support, a 24-month minimum contract term, Plusnet SafeGuard and Protect – both powered by Norton – and free activation.

But take note that on 31st March each year the monthly package price will now increase by £4 for broadband. We’ve summarised what this means and the latest deals below.

Plusnet’s August 2025 Broadband Discounts

Full Fibre 145Mbps (30Mbps upload)
£65 Reward Card (pre-paid Mastercard)
Price: £26.99 per month

Price increases to £30.99pm on 1st April 2026 and £34.99pm on 1st April 2027

Full Fibre 300Mbps (50Mbps)
Price: £29.99

Price increases to £33.99pm on 1st April 2026 and £37.99pm on 1st April 2027

Full Fibre 500Mbps (75Mbps)
£75 Reward Card (pre-paid Mastercard)
Price: £31.99

Price increases to £35.99pm on 1st April 2026 and £39.99pm on 1st April 2027

Full Fibre 900Mbps (115Mbps)
£100 Reward Card (pre-paid Mastercard)
Price: £36.99

Price increases to £40.99pm on 1st April 2026 and £44.99pm on 1st April 2027

The provider also sells a 74Mbps FTTP or SOGEA (FTTC) based home broadband package that starts at £25.99 per month, which currently also comes with a £75 Reward Card.

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Some homes and businesses in the Hampshire (South Coast of England) town of Bishops Waltham have been left with poor 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) reception from EE for around six weeks. This appears to have occurred after one of the few primary shared masts in the area went partly offline during stormy weather.

The town, which is home to over 6,000 people, is technically within reach of two or three masts that sit just outside the community – varying a bit depending on network operator. One of the main masts is a shared site in the SO32 area, which has a good view over the town but has also been struggling, at least for EE’s customers, since stormy weather in June 2025.

A number of other mobile operators in the area have also been experiencing issues, although it’s unclear if those relate to the same site or issue. For example, both O2 and Three UK are reporting that local network congestion “means your data could be slower than normal … our team is aware and working to make it better” (O2’s status). Three UK also recently had a service outage in part of the town, but they’ve since told ISPreview that “these issues should now be fixed“.

However, the problems for EE’s customers appear to be more complex, with some locals reporting a protracted period of lost service lasting nearly seven weeks and others highlighting issues with weak 4G and 5G signals (likely due to roaming on to a different cell site). Some limited information via EE’s forum also suggested that there had been a delay in being able to access the site, and that engineers have since found they needed to carry out a treeline survey due to a site-to-site Microwave capacity (backhaul) link possibly being blocked.

An EE spokesperson told ISPreview:

“We’re sorry that customers are experiencing issues with their service and we’re currently addressing this. We encourage any EE customers in the area who might be experiencing issues to contact our customer service team so we can support them directly”.

Sadly, EE didn’t confirm what the cause of the issue was, although ISPreview understands that the operator has ordered replacement parts and are continuing to work with the landowner in order to access the site. The plan is then to carry out the work as soon as possible. In the meantime, impacted customers are being encouraged to use WiFi Calling, where possible, and they should still be able to make 999 (emergency calls) as these get routed via any available network.

The complexity of some sites, as well as any safety considerations and problems with existing access (wayleave) agreements, can sometimes mean that it ends up taking longer than usual to resolve such problems. The exact issues in this case remain unclear, but in the absence of a solid fix time, we can only hope that EE are able to resolve the problems sooner rather than later.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

Edited by Harry Baldock, Total Telecom

The move reflects an accelerated response to the rapidly increasing demand for artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and hyperscaler services across the region.

This week, STC subsidiary center3 has unveiled a plans to expand its data centre infrastructure to reach a total capacity of 1 Gigawatt by 2030.

The company, which has already invested approximately $3 billion in its existing infrastructure, plans to inject an additional $10 billion into developing new, high-density, hyperscaler-ready data centres by the end of the decade. These facilities, designed to support AI workloads and high-performance computing (HPC), will be strategically located throughout Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other international markets.

The expansion aligns closely with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 digital transformation objectives, aiming to establish the Kingdom as a major digital hub that localizes digital content and services within the region.

“We are not just expanding data centers, we are enabling the future digital economy. With 1 Gigawatt as our target, we are laying the foundation for AI, cloud, and hyperscale workloads, ensuring that Saudi Arabia and the region have the world-class infrastructure to lead in the next wave of global innovation,” said Fahad AlHajeri, CEO of center3.

center3 aims to reach a significant milestone of 300 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity by 2027 with these next-generation facilities.

The expansion is also underscored by a strong commitment to sustainability. center3 is incorporating renewable energy sources, energy-efficient cooling technologies, and responsible resource management practices into its data center operations. Given the global push for sustainable digital infrastructure, this approach positions center3 as a frontrunner in marrying technological advancement with environmental stewardship.

This strategic expansion effort is situated within a broader growth context for the Saudi Arabian data center market, which is projected to rise from $1.33 billion in 2024 to $3.9 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.6%. This market surge is driven by substantial investments from global hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle, alongside large-scale infrastructure projects like NEOM and LEAP Riyadh 2025.

center3, which was established as a subsidiary of the STC in late 2022, already operates more than 25 data centers across Saudi Arabia. Its recent expansion of the Khurais data center in Riyadh, adding 9.6 MW of capacity, is part of an ongoing strategy to quadruple its data center capacity within the region over the coming years. This expansion not only supports hyperscaler and cloud growth but also meets the increasing requirements of enterprise and governmental digital operations demanding ultra-low-latency and secure infrastructure.

This article was partially generated by AI and edited by a journalist

Also in the news:
US judge rules Huawei must face charges of fraud and racketeering
Optus ditches football rights to focus on telecoms
Nokia launches digital twin platform Enscryb to digitalise energy sector

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today continued to boost the provider’s 4G and 5G mobile (mobile broadband) capacity and coverage by deploying Freshwave’s small cells across 13 holiday resort locations in Cornwall (South West England). Most of these are being deployed across the towns of St Ives and Newquay.

Small cells are akin to small shoebox sized mobile (radio) base stations, which are designed to deliver limited coverage (usually up to around 100 metres) and thus tend to be more focused on busy areas and specific sites – it’s not uncommon to find these sitting on top of lampposts, CCTV poles or old payphone cubicles (i.e. this can be more cost-effective than building new street assets or trying to secure wayleaves on buildings etc.).

The latest batch of small cells have already been deployed at key points in both towns, including at the Porthminster and Porthmeor beaches in St Ives, and Tolcarne beach and the train station in Newquay, but more will shortly be added. O2 currently has the largest small cell deployment of any operator in the UK, recently installing its 2,000^th site, although EE have also deployed quite a few.

Dr Rob Joyce, Director of Mobile Access Engineering at O2, said:

“Cornwall is a beautiful part of the country and an extremely popular tourist destination in the summer. These new small cells serve some of the busiest areas in Cornwall and will ensure that O2 customers have a reliable mobile experience whether they’re streaming on the beach, having a pasty, or eating an ice cream.

Our Mobile Transformation Plan will see us invest around £700m into our mobile network this year to ensure our customers consistently receive an exceptional network experience wherever they are and even at the busiest times.”