The Comms Council UK, which represents the UK’s national Unified Communications and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone industry, has today announced a new “joint information sharing initiative” with National Trading Standards (NTS) that aims to help “crack down on telephone fraud“.

The announcement, which drops on the same day as Ofcom separately introduced new measures to block foreign scam calls from UK landlines (here), will enable CCUK’s members to share information on fraudulent behaviour more easily, both within the CCUK membership and with relevant industry stakeholders.

Members of CCUK are thus being invited to share reports of potential misuse with the NTS Scams Team, which will allow them to take action against such activity and that in turn could potentially save some victims from suffering “substantial financial losses“.

Tracey Wright, Chair of CCUK, said:

“We are delighted to be working with National Trading Standards Scams Team on this initiative, which is both incredibly timely and necessary. There is no single solution to resolve the great challenge which fraud presents to our industry, but it is essential that we take a proactive approach. The telecoms sector has a key role to play in implementing greater reporting and analysis of fraud, which will provide a solid foundation to promptly and effectively reduce criminal behaviour executed through telephone calls.”

Louise Baxter MBE, Head of the NTS Scams Team, said:

“Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and inventive in finding ways to scam or defraud individuals and businesses via calls, messaging and texts. I believe that our experience in managing such scenarios for other industries, combined with the wealth of information held within CCUK’s membership, will stand us in good stead to greatly reduce fraudulent activity in the telecoms sector. We are delighted with this partnership.”

As part of this, CCUK will host its inaugural Fraud Summit on 5th March 2025 at One Birdcage Walk in London, which will be open to both members and non-members alike – bringing together representatives from sectors such as telecoms and banking, as well as regulators, law enforcement bodies, and civil servants to share insights on how to tackle fraud effectively.

The Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) has today appointed Neos Networks to lead their £1.2m D2N2 Gigahubs project, which will work alongside Openreach (BT) and Netomnia to deploy a new full fibre gigabit broadband network to connect “up to” 28 public buildings (schools, NHS sites etc.) across rural parts of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

At present Neos, which runs one of the biggest 34,000km long business fibre networks in the UK – spanning 550 exchanges, 90+ data centres and 676 Points of Presence (PoPs), is already understood to have begun survey work for the new network build and it is expected that the full scheme will be “live by” Spring 2026.

All of the chosen sites are in the public sector and had to pass the scheme’s eligibility criteria, which means they must exist in a rural location, where existing broadband speeds are slower than 100Mbps and no other gigabit capable network is likely to be built commercially, or via another government-funded contract, in the near future.

Based on those criteria, the sites in Nottinghamshire currently include Langar C of E Primary School, near Bingham and Queen Eleanor Primary School, Harby, near Newark, with more eligible sites due to be identified. Meanwhile, 22 sites have been identified across Derbyshire and Derby. The project also aims to enhance digital inclusion and provide essential services in underserved areas.

David Bruce, Chief Revenue Officer at Neos Networks, said:

“We’re delighted to be supporting Nottinghamshire County Council with its project to improve access to better, faster connectivity for local communities in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Drawing on our extensive network reach and partnerships with established market players, the build and deployment of this new infrastructure will provide councils with a cost-effective solution to offer new digital services at local sites. Much of the UK still has to deal with sub-par connectivity.

This new network will ensure the availability of high-speed connectivity for citizens across urban, semi-rural and rural locations, as this project enhances digital and social inclusion across the region. We look forward to working with the county council as it promotes new social and economic opportunities for communities.”

Keith Girling, Nottinghamshire County Councillor, said:

“We are so proud to be leading this project. This appointment is great news as having better broadband in our communities will really help those who can’t afford or access high-speed broadband at home. Whole classrooms in rural areas could be online at once with no interruptions and there will be more options to host virtual field trips, to help broaden pupils’ educational experiences. While face-to-face health advice is always the preference, having the option for a high-quality video call with a doctor could help to reduce waiting times.”

Projects like this typically tend to involve the deployment of a new Dark Fibre style network to public sector sites, which effectively acts as the anchor tenant for the new infrastructure. This could, in theory, later also be harnessed to help extend full fibre broadband to local homes and businesses, but that would require a separate investment from the private sector.

Ofcom has today published their 8th annual (2025) monitoring report of the UK’s Net Neutrality rules (guidelines), which were originally established to prevent unfair blocking or slowing of access to legal websites and internet services by broadband ISPs and mobile operators (with some exceptions). Overall, the report found no major concerns.

The original rules meant that providers couldn’t easily impose excessive restrictions against internet traffic and should treat almost all of it equally (i.e. they should avoid favouring specific services, such as by blocking or slowing access to rivals). However, there were some exceptions to this, such as when providers need to impose general traffic management, court ordered blocks or for security measures etc. (e.g. anti-virus/spam filtering).

However, Ofcom softened these guidelines a bit in 2023 (here), such as by allowing providers to offer premium quality retail packages (e.g. those with tweaks to deliver lower latency) and support for specialised services so that providers can deliver specific content and applications that need to be optimised (e.g. a limited allowance for network slicing on 5G mobile).

The regulator also clarified some previous conflicts around the issue of zero rating (i.e. free mobile data), such as for cases where mobile operators excluded some websites giving a social benefit from being included in a customer’s billed data usage (e.g. those offering public health info. and support during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Suffice to say that today’s report found no significant problems with any of the related monitoring areas. The new report was also the first one to implement Ofcom’s revised approached to monitoring, as set out in the previous 2023 review.

Ofcom’s Statement

In summary, we have found that, so far, ISPs have not made major changes to their approaches to net neutrality based on the additional clarity and flexibility provided in our guidance. They have made only limited use of traffic management during the relevant period.

Mobile ISPs have continued to offer zero-rating. Some have offered commercial zero-rating packages, including open offers that zero-rate a particular class of content, and all have provided zero-rated access to some socially beneficial content to all their customers.

All the ISPs have continued to differentiate their retail offers based on speeds and data allowance. There has been some development of specialised services, with some mobile ISPs using 5G network slicing. In terms of the quality of fixed and mobile internet access services in the UK, these services continue to improve in line with advances in technology, with coverage of gigabit-capable broadband and 5G expanding and take up of packages with higher speeds increasing.

However, the regulator did note that one unnamed ISP “undertook trials over the relevant period which rate limited traffic of certain categories of content delivered over particular routes to its network“. The categories of traffic managed under these trials were “short form video and live TV“, with traffic identification based on identifying specific Internet Protocol (IP) address ranges sending this traffic over the routes in question.

The management actions were imposed, said Ofcom, semi-permanently in the network during these short trials but only impacted traffic under certain circumstances (where congestion was occurring in part of the network or appeared to be imminent). These trials were targeted and of short duration, and the information provided “does not indicate these measures have been implemented on an ongoing basis“.

Sadly, Ofcom drew no firm conclusion on the compatibility of such a trial with their Net Neutrality guidelines. But we think the trial they’re talking about is Vodafone’s work with Meta (Facebook etc.), which deployed a new mobile broadband (4G, 5G) “network optimisation” for “short-form videos” across the UK and other countries (here). This was said to “free up network capacity” for customers and allowed them to “view more high-quality short videos“.

The regulator said they will continue to monitor the market, and so we look forward to their next report in 2026.

Rural network operator and UK ISP Voneus, which aims to cover 370,000 premises via both their gigabit-capable fixed wireless access (FWA) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband networks, has just received a further combined capital investment of £6,198,805 from Global Connectivity plc (GCON).

Just to recap. Last year’s move to merge SWS Broadband (Rural Broadband Solutions), Cadence Networks and Broadway Partners into Voneus caused some big changes on the investment front (here). The deal meant, among other things, that Rural Broadband Solutions Holdings Limited (RBSHL) now held a significant stake in Voneus, while Global Connectivity PLC (G-CON) retained their existing stake in RBSHL.

Since then, GCON has continued to put additional funding into Voneus via RBSHL, which most recently included another capital investment worth £20m during November 2024. The latest development is that GCON has, on 15th January 2025, placed a further combined capital investment of £6,198,805 into Voneus by its shareholders.

GCON Market Statement

Global Connectivity plc (AQSE: GCON), a company focused on communication services and technologies that enhance connectivity, and a shareholder in leading UK broadband provider Voneus Limited through its investment in Rural Broadband Solutions Holdings Limited and a shareholder in PLUG Group Limited, announces that on 15 January, a further combined capital investment of £6,198,805 was made into Voneus by its shareholders.

On 21 November 2024, we reported a valuation of £11.7m, which equated to 3.2p per GCON share. With this latest investment, RBSHL’s stake in Voneus remained at 41% after Voneus invested £2,543,236 of the total round of £6,198,805. As in November, Global Connectivity plc again elected not to invest and now owns a 9.0% stake in RBSHL’s common equity.

The intrinsic value of Voneus should be expected to have increased at the point of future investment, which serves to mitigate the effects of dilution for GCON.

The announcement comes at a bit of a difficult period for Voneus, which last month saw them drop out of the Government’s £12m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Mid West Shropshire (here) and suffer a spate of complaints about their legacy network (here).

Telecoms and UK broadband giant BT Group has reportedly proposed to make up to 90 staff redundant from their Belfast office, which is currently home to 2,000 colleagues from across the company, including EE, BT Business and Openreach. The group currently employs a total of 3,400 from across Northern Ireland.

The move is perhaps not all that surprising, particularly since BT has made no secret of the fact that they expect their total labour force to shrink from 130,000 a year ago to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030. But many of those losses are likely to come from Openreach as the operator reaches the conclusion of their £15bn FTTP broadband roll-out, which aims to cover “up to” 30 million premises by 2030 (currently over 17m).

In this case, BT appears to be planning to “transfer some of the work they do” at the Belfast site to other offices, which may on the flip side create some new roles elsewhere. A spokesperson for BT confirmed (BBC News) it was in discussions “with anyone affected by our proposals and, if we go ahead, we have shared other opportunities in the wider Belfast office“.

BT added that their Belfast site is still considered a “strategic location” and that they would continue to invest in the region. The operator only recently completed a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the Riverside Tower office in Belfast.

Mobile operator Vodafone UK today claims to have “beaten Elon Musk in the space race” by making the first mobile-to-mobile video call using a normal (unmodified) Smartphone and special satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) from partner AST SpaceMobile. This is essentially a space-based 4G and 5G mobile broadband service.

Just to recap. AST has spent the past few years developing and trialling the new platform, including via their prototype 1.5-ton BlueWalker 3 satellite (here), which orbits at an altitude of a little over 500km and features a huge 693-square-foot (64.4-square-meter) phased array antenna (here). The satellite was specifically designed for sending and receiving mobile signals between the space-based platform and regular mobile handsets on the ground.

The platform was originally developed with support from Vodafone and the pair recently signed a long-term commercial agreement (here), which will run until at least 2034. This will also support AST’s efforts toward launching a total of 100 similar satellites (BlueBirds) over the next few years (future models will be even larger and more capable).

The aim is to make this service attractive for regular consumers (we suspect this may form part of a ‘global roaming’ style add-on for mobile plans, at extra cost), yet until now most of the real-world tests have been limited to voice calls and text messages.

However, in the latest test, Vodafone roped in UK astronaut, Tim Peake, and Group CEO, Margherita Della Valle – both situated at the mobile operator’s HQ in Newbury – to receive a video call from one of their engineers, Rowan Chesmer, who was standing in a mobile signal dead zone in the middle of Wales.

Margherita Della Valle said:

“Vodafone’s job is to get everyone connected, no matter where they are. Our advanced European 5G network will now be complemented with cutting-edge satellite technology. We are bringing customers the best network and connecting people who have never had access to mobile communications before. This will help to close the digital divide, supporting people from all corners of Europe to keep in touch with family and friends, or work, as well as ensuring reliable rural connectivity in an emergency.”

Abel Avellan, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of AST SpaceMobile, said:

“This historic milestone marks another significant step forward in our partnership with Vodafone, a long-time investor in AST SpaceMobile and a key technology partner. Together, we have achieved several world firsts in space-based broadband connectivity, including the first-ever space-based voice call, the first-ever 4G download speed above 10 Mbps, and the first-ever 5G voice call. This latest achievement using our BlueBird satellites, takes us one step closer to our mission to eliminate connectivity gaps and make cellular broadband accessible to all.”

The UK Telecoms Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, also added that he was “thrilled to see Vodafone leveraging satellite connectivity and 5G to help us plug coverage gaps and improve lives across the country“. But the success of all this may yet depend upon how much the service costs to add and its level of global availability.

Vodafone currently aims to conduct further tests this spring, before offering the first commercial direct-to-smartphone broadband satellite service across Europe from “later in 2025 and 2026” (it will be a gradual roll-out). But we do have to question the press release’s claim of having “beaten Elon Musk in the space race, by making the first mobile to mobile video call using satellites.”

The reason for this is because Starlink’s (SpaceX) rival, Direct to Cell (DtC), service also demoed a live video call over its own LEO satellites and unmodified smartphones back in May 2024 (here), although admittedly both callers were standing right next to each other and that was in the USA, not Europe.

However, both platforms will face similar challenges, such as in terms of the need to deploy enough ground stations and to secure the necessary regulatory approvals, as well as the support of more mobile operators, for related radio spectrum across multiple countries. But the competition should hopefully help to ensure fairer pricing for consumers, governments and businesses.

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, is already in the process of developing a new authorisation regime to support the new services from AST and Starlink, which should be ready during “early 2025“ (here). We should point out that other satellite operators, such as OneWeb (Eutelsat) and Amazon (Project Kuiper), have also been exploring the possibility of providing cellular services for regular smartphones.

Telecoms giant BT Group has today published a brief trading update to the end of 2024, which reveals that Openreach added another 1 million premises in the last quarter (unchanged) to the coverage of their full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network (total 17m) and saw related take-up rise by 472k (net adds) to total 6m (stable at 35%). But total broadband lines fell by 208k as rivals continue to bite.

Take note that, since 2023, the BT Group now only publishes a short trading update in calendar Q1 and Q3, thus we only get a very limited summary this time around – the fuller reports come in Q2 and Q4. As such, we’ve opted to do a similarly brief update on the key details below.

In terms of the other headline changes, we seem to get an even thinner update than usual for this period, with no mention of the FTTP build rate etc. But the operator did say, when reflecting on that loss of 208,000 total broadband lines from their base, that over 80% of those line losses “occur where we have not built FTTP” (underlining their need to build quickly).

Just for a quick comparison, Openreach lost 377k broadband lines in their previous half year results (H1 FY25) to Sept 2024, which suggests a slight acceleration in their losses when looking at this last quarter’s figure of 208k. We also get a limited BT Consumer (retail) specific breakdown below.

However, it’s worth contrasting these results against BT’s future targets for 2030, which among other things have predicted that their total labour force would shrink to between 75,000 and 90,000 (i.e. many of the engineers they have today won’t be needed post-2030) and FTTP coverage would grow to between 25-30 million premises, while delivering take-up of around 40-55% (this will grow even faster once the roll-out pace slows).

BT also holds a target of 13.0-14.5 million retail 5G mobile connections via EE, although for some reason the group never seems to issue much data on 5G specific progress in their smaller trading updates.

BT’s CEO, Allison Kirkby, said:

“Our ongoing modernisation continues at pace, delivering a further step-up in fibre build and take-up, customer satisfaction and EBITDA. Benefits from our cost transformation more than offset lower revenue outside the UK and weak handset sales.

Openreach again performed strongly with the highest ever full fibre build, passing more than 1 million premises for the fourth consecutive quarter, and connecting a new record of nearly half a million customers. Consumer returned to service revenue growth and continued to expand its full fibre and 5G customer bases. In Business, our core UK channels were stable. Cost transformation remains firmly on track, with excellent progress on both energy costs and productivity in the quarter.

We continue to make progress towards becoming fully focused on the UK, with the sale of our data centre business in Ireland. I am also very pleased to welcome Jon James to BT’s Executive Committee as the new CEO of a UK-centric BT Business, effective early March. This appointment enables Bas Burger to dedicate his time to the optimisation of our international business segment, which is progressing to plan.

BT’s continued delivery means we remain on track to deliver our financial outlook for this year and our cash flow inflection to c.£2.0bn in 2027 and c£3.0bn by the end of the decade.”

BT Group’s Dec 2024 Performance Summary

• Record FTTP build rate of over 1m premises passed in the quarter for a fourth consecutive quarter; FTTP footprint reached 17m premises, more than half of the UK; on track to pass 4.2m in FY25 and reach 25m by December 2026
• Record customer demand for Openreach FTTP with net adds of 472k in the quarter; total premises connected 6.0m with a growing take up rate of over 35%. Openreach total broadband lines fell by 208k, as we continue to see moderately higher competitor losses with a weaker overall broadband and new homes market; over 80% of our line losses occur where we have not built FTTP
• Openreach broadband ARPU in the quarter grew year on year by 6% to £16.1, ahead of the CPI price increases, driven by a greater FTTP take-up and speed mix
• Retail FTTP base grew by 33% year on year to 3.2m of which Consumer 3.0m and Business 0.2m
• Consumer service revenue returned to growth, up 0.4% year on year after a 1.3% decline in H1; service revenue growth was more than offset by a 12% decline in equipment revenue, mainly handset trading
• Consumer customer base relatively stable with broadband base down 40k quarter on quarter (0.5% decline); postpaid mobile base down 4k quarter on quarter (<0.1% decline)
• Consumer broadband ARPU down 1.2% year on year to £40.6; Consumer postpaid mobile ARPU up 5.7% year on year to £20.3
• Consumer fixed and mobile convergence grew in the quarter from 23.1% to 23.4%; 5G standalone launched in a further 16 new locations, bringing 5G standalone to over 30 major UK towns and cities; EE was named the winner of the umlaut connect 2025 Mobile Network Test in the UK for a 10th consecutive year
• Business revenues were stable in our core UK channels; £1.3bn contract signed with the Home Office to continue providing mobile services for the Emergency Services Network over the next seven years
• Cost transformation remains on track as we continue to create a simpler BT Group, delivering efficiencies across all units; energy usage in our networks was down 3% in the year-to-date and total labour resource down 3% year-on-year to 117k; we achieved an 11% reduction in year-to-date Openreach repair volumes
• BT Group NPS of 29.6, up 4.0pts during Q3, reflecting ongoing improvements in customer experience

Excellent cost control continues to deliver EBITDA growth:

• Q3 Adjusted revenue £5.2bn, down 3% year-on-year mainly due to continued challenging non-UK trading conditions in our Global and Portfolio channels and weaker handset trading in Consumer, offsetting the impact of FTTP growth in Openreach and price increases. Reported revenue £5.2bn, down 3%
• Q3 Adjusted EBITDA £2.1bn, up 4% driven by strong cost transformation and one-off other operating income in the low tens of millions which more than offset adverse revenue
• Q3 Reported profit before tax of £427m, up 1% primarily due to EBITDA growth, offset partially by increased net finance costs and increased depreciation and amortisation

News 

T-Mobile had previously only mentioned testing with Samsung devices, with no mention of Apple’s iPhones 

Apple has been “secretly” working with T-Mobile and SpaceX test Starlink’s network using Apple’s latest iPhone software, according to a Bloomberg report.  

The iPhone’s latest software update, which was released this week, will allow selected T-Mobile customers to connect directly to the satellites.   

The test will “begin with select optimised smartphones” and the full launch will “support the vast majority of modern smartphones”. 

The following alert was sent to initial beta users: “You’re in the T-Mobile Starlink beta. You can now stay connected with texting via satellite from virtually anywhere. To start experiencing coverage beyond, please update to iOS 18.3.” 

When an iPhone on the T-Mobile network has no connectivity, the pilot devices will attempt to pair with Starlink satellites. The software is designed to connect automatically, even if the device is not in use. 

Medium resolution images, music & audio podcasts should work with the current generation Starlink direct-to-phone constellation.

Next generation constellation will do medium resolution video. https://t.co/yfDPbkgSJH

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2025

Back in November, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a license for T Mobile and Space X to provide coverage to remote areas, in an effort to eliminate “dead zones”. 

“The FCC is actively promoting competition in the space economy by supporting more partnerships between terrestrial mobile carriers and satellite operators to deliver on a single network future that will put an end to mobile dead zones,” said the FCC Chair at the time, Jessica Rosenworcel. 

It is worth noting that, iPhone (14 or later) users can already connect to satellite for free emergency text messaging, thanks to Apple’s partnership with satellite firm Globalstar, which was agreed in 2022.  

It is unclear what impact these tests with SpaceX will have on Apple’s relationship with Globalstar moving forward. 

Join us at this year’s Connected America, 11-12 March in Dallas. Get discounted tickets here! 

Also in the news: 

News 

The cuts are in line with BT’s wider strategy to reduce its workforce by 40% by 2030. 

BT has proposed cutting 4.5% of the company’s 2,000 person workforce in Belfast, amounting to 90 jobs. 

The operator said it had already contacted those potential affected, aiming to “transfer some of the work they do to other BT office locations”. 

“We are [in] discussions with anyone affected by our proposals and, if we go ahead, we have shared other opportunities in the wider Belfast office. There is no impact to customers,” a BT spokesperson said. 

The cuts are necessary to “reduce costs to support investments in tools designed to increase BT’s business share,” according to information shared with The Communications Workers Union (CWU). 

Sinn Féin MP John Finucane called the cuts “a devastating blow” and has said he is writing to the company in an attempt to preserve as many jobs as possible. 

BT has been implementing major cost cutting measures since 2022, with now ex-CEO Phillip Jansen’s outlining plans  to reduce expenses by £3 billion by 2025. To reach this target, the company announced plans to cut around 55,000 jobs across the company – roughly 40% of BT’s total workforce – by the 2030 deadline.  

New CEO Allison Kirkby, who took over the role in 2024, has since confirmed that the company has already hit that £3 billion cost reduction target, but is now looking to cut a further £3 billion by 2029. 

The company is due to announce its Q3 results tomorrow. 

Join us at Connected North, 23-24 April in Manchester. Get discounted tickets here! 

Also in the news:
Launch of China’s DeepSeek shakes up global AI industry 
Trump targets TSMC with Taiwan chip tariffs
Tim Höttges to remain at the helm of Deutsche Telekom until 2028 

Feature Week: Trump on telecoms

The tariffs on semiconductors could reportedly reach as high as 100%

In a speech to fellow Republicans this week, newly reinstated US President Donald Trump said that the government would be targeting the Taiwanese semiconductor industry with major tariffs in a bid to boost the US chip ecosystem.

“In the very near future, we’re going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States,” said Trump in a speech on Monday. “They left us and went to Taiwan. We want them to come back.”

Trumps focus on helping build a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry is one shared by the previous Biden administration. The Biden government’s approach centred around the $280 billion CHIPS Act, signed into law in 2022, which provides up to $50 billion in subsidies for chip companies operating on US soil.

This subsidy programme has seen sign significant success – companies including Intel, Samsung, Micro, and TSMC have all received billions in funding to help develop new facilities on US soil.

In TSMC’s case, this is in the form of a $12 billion semiconductor factor in Arizona, supporting by a $6.6 billion CHIPS Act subsidy won last year. Since then, the semiconductor giant has pledged to build two more facilities in Arizona, bringing the company’s total planned investment to around $65 billion.

TSMC’s first Arizona plant has reportedly already begun production, but its two additional sites – planned for 2028 and 2030 – could face delays due to supply chain issues and the US’s more complex regulatory processes.

Despite this progress, Trump has argued for years that the CHIPS Act is a waste of public funds, something he reiterate in his speech this week.

“We don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous programme that Biden has given everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars,” he said. “They’ve got nothing but money Joe. They didn’t need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is gonna be they’re not gonna wanna pay a 25, 50 or even a 100 % tax.”

It’s worth noting of course, that the CHIPS Act is supporting US companies too; the programmes’ biggest winner is Intel, which has received $7.9 billion in subsidies for chip projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Ohio.

In response to Trump’s rhetoric, the Taiwanese government was quick to release a statement saying it will consider measures to help its domestic semiconductor industry in the face of US tariffs.

“In a day or two we will urgently look at whether we need to make more cooperative plans and future assistance programs for the industrial sector,” he added. “I would like to reassure our compatriots that Taiwan’s position in the world’s industrial chain is not to be ignored, and that we will continue to maintain such an advantage,” said Cho Jung-tai, the premier of Taiwan.

In a seemingly unrelated statement earlier this month, TSMC has notes that it will be unlikely to equip its Arizona plant with the most advanced chip technology ahead of its Taiwanese facilities. This suggests that the US tech industry’s reliance on Taiwan will remain significant for the next few years, even if TSMC’s US-based facilities open on schedule.

Rapidly building a domestic and largely self-sufficient domestic semiconductor industry is no easy task, and it remains to be seen whether the Biden subsidy-based approach or Trump’s treat of tariffs will prove more effective.

The US telecoms sector is changing dramatically in 2025. Join the industry in discussion live in Dallas, Texas, at Connected America 2025

Also in Feature Week:
Trump on telecoms: The story so far
Telecom policy objectives come into focus in Trump’s first days