Early adopters of SpaceX’s ultrafast and low-latency Starlink broadband service, which is powered by a mega constellation of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), are starting to be invited to help test out the internet provider’s new WiFi integrate Mini Dish (terminal) hardware and Mini Roaming service add-on. But the kit doesn’t come cheap.

The operator currently has 6,171 LEO satellites in orbit around the Earth (altitudes of c.500-600km) and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ plan, which promises internet latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.

However, this week saw the operator begin to invite some of their early adopters in the USA (UK availability is due to follow soon) to purchase their new Mini Kit (Dish) for $599 (£473), which comes bundled alongside their new Mini Roam service for an additional $30 per month (£24). Just to be clear, this is on top of an existing residential subscription (as above), although the hardware price is expected to drop in the future.

SpaceX said in their customer email: “Starlink Mini is a compact, portable kit that can easily fit in a backpack, designed to provide high-speed, low-latency internet on the go. Starlink Mini includes a built-in WiFi router, lower power consumption, DC power input, and max download speeds over 100Mbps.” See related specifications here and here.

The new Mini Roam service that accompanies this will essentially give customers 50GB (GigaBytes) of “mobile data” that can be used anywhere (currently only in the USA) and if you use more than that then they’ll charge $1 (£0.80p) per GigaByte.

The new dish – sized 298.5mm x 259mm x 38.5mm – is also 63% lighter than the standard Starlink dish, has an operating temperature range of -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F), draws around 25-40 Watts on average and can run directly off 12-48V DC (it comes with a small 110V power supply with 15 metres of cable). The kit is also IP67 Type 4 rated with their DC Power Cable and Starlink Plug/Cable installed (using the Ethernet port drops this rating).

The dish also has a Field of View (FoV) of 110 degrees (a bit better than ‘Standard’), a single Ethernet (LAN) port and is currently software locked to operate only while stationary (being Starlink, they’ll probably charge extra for a moving service in the future).

Clearly, there are some advantages to this new all-in-one approach to terminal hardware, although oddly the built-in WiFi is only dual-band (3×3) 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) instead of Wi-Fi 6 and has a limited radius of coverage (i.e. you’d need to stay close to the dish, but that’s to be expected given the target audience)

“Our goal is to reduce the price of Starlink, especially for those around the world where connectivity has been unaffordable or completely unavailable. But in regions with high usage, where Starlink Mini places additional demand on the satellite network, we are offering a limited number of the Starlink Mini Kits to start for $599,” said Starlink’s email.

The first deliveries of the new kit are due to start in July 2024, but it’s worth remembering that this is currently still somewhat of a trial product and we don’t yet have an exact date for the UK launch / pricing.

News 

A Memorandum of Understanding to form the JV was signed last year 

The founding partners of the Global Telco AI Alliance, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom, e&, Singtel and SoftBank have this week signed a joint venture for telco AI development. 

Specifically, the five companies have agreed to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) that are specifically designed to meet telco needs, in areas such as improving customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots. The LLMs will be tailored to the needs of the five companies in their respective markets, allowing them to reach a combined customer base of around 1.3 billion people in 50 countries. The LLMs will be multilingual in languages such as Korean, English, German, Arabic and Bahasa, among other languages. 

Each company will invest in the JV equally, “to support its initial working capital requirements to develop the Telco LLM” explains the press release. 

The Alliance was established in July last year, with the aim of collaborating on the use of AI to create new customer experiences and business opportunities. At the Alliance’s inaugural meeting at Mobile World Congress Barcelona back in February, the founders announced their intention to establish the JV within the year. 

“Our shared goal is to redefine industry paradigms, establish new growth drivers through AI-powered business models, and pave the way for a new era of strategic cooperation, guiding our industry towards an exciting and prosperous future,” said the companies in the announcement’s press release. 

The second Global Telco AI Roundtable was held this week at DTW 2024 in Copenhagen, where the parties each demonstrated their potential applications of an LLM for telcos, focussing on contact centre and infrastructure use cases. 

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

Also in the news:
Nokia and Google Cloud expand partnership for telco APIs
Telenor teams up with AWS for sovereign cloud service
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution 

Press Release

[Copenhagen, Denmark, June 18, 2024] During the TM Forum Digital Transformation World (DTW) 2024 summit convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, China Mobile and Huawei were awarded the “People and Planet” Excellence Award in recognition of their outstanding innovation and implementation of a Zero Carbon Ocean 5G Coverage and Ocean Care. The awarded project demonstrates how China Mobile and Huawei have deeply integrated 5G, AI, IoT and other technologies with the marine industry, driving the high-quality development of the ocean economy and contributing to the marine ecosystem protection.

The award of the “People and the Planet” Innovation Excellence Practice Project at the TM Forum is a recognition of China Mobile and Huawei ‘s innovation and contribution in the field of marine communications technologies. China is a large maritime nation, with over 32,000 kilometres of coastline, among the world’s top. Its abundant marine resources hold immense potential for local economic advancement. However, the complex and changeable marine environment, high-risk operations and the severe challenges of environmental protection have always been a difficult problem restricting the development of marine economy.

Confronting these challenges, China Mobile and its Jiangsu Provincial Branch, with Huawei’s support have actively explored the application of mobile communication technology in the marine domain, providing innovative solutions to the digital transformation for the maritime industry.

Through the pioneering solution of “Land/Sea/Windmill Site + Resources Sharing + Intelligent Platform”, the joint team successfully constructed offshore 5G base stations, overcoming the obstacles of site selection, power supply, and backhaul in the offshore scenarios. By leveraging renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and AI-based power storage optimization solution, the joint team achieved Zero Carbon 5G coverage across the maritime expanse. Furthermore, they have actively explored collaboration with satellite companies, creating an integrated “Space-Sky-Sea” network to provide full wireless coverage to boats and people off the coastline. This innovative initiative not only furnishes basic communication, social entertainment, and entrepreneurial opportunities for offshore workers, tourists, and fishermen, but also supports the deployment of a series of B2B innovative applications such as marine IoT, smart waterways, and intelligent patrols, while also constructing a marine emergency communication lifeline.

The “People and the Planet” Excellence Award at the TM Forum is a recognition of the innovation and contribution of China Mobile and Huawei in the field of marine communications technologies. It further demonstrates that China Mobile, as the industry leader, has made great achievements in the following aspects under the sustainable development strategy of “Three Energy and Six Green.” Drive the global communications industry to upgrade towards green, digital, and intelligent innovation.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened a Phase 1 investigation into the recently announced deal by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to acquire Juniper Networks for an all-cash transaction for $40.00 per share (here), which represented an equity value of approximately $14 billion (£11bn).

Network operators across the United Kingdom, and elsewhere around the world, have been watching the agreement very closely to see how the change might impact the vital kit and services they buy and use, particularly in terms of its cost, quality and performance.

This is because Juniper’s networking kit (routers, SDN, WiFi etc.) and related services are used by telecoms operators and IT companies across the world – of various difference sizes (e.g. UK broadband ISPs, data centres etc.) – and so any change on this front has the capacity to touch a lot of different players.

Despite this, the newly combined company has pledged to “provide customers of all sizes” with a complete, secure portfolio that enables the networking architecture necessary to manage and simplify their expanding and increasingly complex connectivity needs. Nevertheless, some still fear that HPE might attempt to re-focus the network biz to cater for more lucrative clients and thus cast aside the Service Provider (SP) market etc.

The CMA has now opened a Phase 1 investigation of the merger, which will assess whether the new deal may “result in a substantial lessening of competition” within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services. Feedback on the deal is being invited until 3rd July 2024 and the CMA will then announce whether or not it will refer the Merger for a deeper phase 2 investigation by 14th August 2024.

Shropshire-based UK ISP Aquiss has this morning announced a number of “summer specials” (discounts) on their various Openreach (FTTC / SOGEA) and CityFibre (FTTP) based broadband packages, which are due to run until July 14th 2024.

All packages include unlimited usage, a 12-month minimum contract term, a pledge of no mid-contract price rises, free activation, a static IPv4 address and static IPv6 addresses (/56). The only issue is that new customers are expected to supply their own broadband router, which is not included.

Otherwise, the main discounts are as follows:

HYBRID FIBRE 80 (SoGEA) – £18 per month, for 6 months, then £36.00 per month

CITYFIBRE 160 (FTTP GPON) – £19 per month, for 6 months, then £38.00 per month

CITYFIBRE 1000 (FTTP GPON) – £21 per month, for 6 months, then £42.00 per month

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today announced that they expect to cover 13,000 premises across the Kent (England) city of Canterbury via their new wholesale accessible 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.

The Canterbury deployment represents an interesting development, not least because Virgin Media hasn’t previously had any significant presence in the city. At present, the main gigabit-capable operators in the city are Openreach and Netomnia (YouFibre), along with some smaller roll-outs from OFNL and others.

Nexfibre has already covered over 1 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises (on top of their existing footprint).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally setup the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

Low-cost UK mobile operator iD Mobile (Currys), which harnesses Three UK’s national 4G and 5G network via a virtual operator (MVNO) agreement, has announced that they’re offering sports fans heading to the Euros in Germany, and the Olympics in Paris, unlimited free roaming data (mobile broadband) for the duration of the events this summer.

The operator’s announcement estimates that some 49,000 of the Football fans travelling to Euro 2024 could be unknowingly incurring roaming costs, which they claim equates to an eye watering £105,350 per day in unnecessary mobile charges for England fans as a whole.

In response, iD Mobile said they’re offering some “much-needed guarantees and peace of mind” by providing “all customers” travelling to Germany with the benefit of unlimited roaming usage of minutes, texts and data for the duration of the tournament (14th June to 14th July).

iD is also extending this offer for fans soon-to-be en route to Paris to get behind Team GB, which will run for the duration of the Paris 2024 Olympics (25th June to 12th August).

Lewis Henry, Customer and Marketing Director, iD Mobile:

“We’re excited to support all sports fans who’ll be cheering on the players and athletes competing in the Euros and Olympics this summer.

At iD Mobile, we care about doing the things that really matter to customers. We know how much this summer’s big sporting events mean to people, so we wanted to get behind them and support iD subscribers on their travels in the best way we can.”

All iD plans come with roaming enabled as standard, and customers can set a bill cap before roaming to limit any out-of-plan charges if they exceed their inclusive allowances or the 30GB roaming cap.

A relatively new alternative broadband network and ISP called Pulse Fibre, which is focused upon tackling UK new build homes, has revealed that they’re aiming to complete over 250,000 unique “full fibre” (FTTP) connections into new build dwellings. As part of this, they’ve just joined the Fibre Cafe connectivity aggregation platform.

Fibre Cafe’s platform is essentially designed to tackle the significant integration and automation challenges for broadband ISPs when onboarding new networks (e.g. common processes, a national availability checker, alternative network agnostic order journeys and a unified interface etc.), whilst enabling such operators to more easily bring their own wholesale propositions to market.

Reece Dopson, Finance Director at Pulse Fibre, said: “The partnership with The Fibre Cafe, marks a significant milestone in our journey. The collaboration reinforces the vision we have for the market, and focus on bringing value added services to customers via their choice of ISP.”

At present we still know very little about Pulse Fibre’s efforts to implement their own 10Gbps capable “end-to-end dedicated fibre optic network” to residential properties. But customers of the service can expect to pay from £30 per month for a 100Mbps (symmetric) broadband package (plus £29.99 one-off for setup), which rises to £60 for their top 1Gbps tier with free setup. All packages attract a 12-month minimum contract term.

Mobile operator Three UK has revealed that they’re preparing to launch a new “Go Roam Around the World Extra” service, which will enable customers to access their UK allowances (Fair Usage Policy applicable) in “92 new destinations” and all for an additional daily roaming charge of £7.

At present Three UK offers two roaming add-ons – £2 per day for Go Roam in Europe or £5 for the Go Roam Around the World destinations. Customers who take one of their ‘Value‘ or ‘Complete‘ plans benefit from the inclusion of up to 28 or 56 days worth of roaming passes, respectively (currently valid in at least 71 of their worldwide Go Roam destinations).

The good news, as spotted by one of ISPreview’s readers (credits to Ai.123), is that the operator will be introducing a new Go Roam Around the World Extra service from 26th June 2024, which adds “92 new destinations” to their world roaming add-on. “And if you joined or upgraded to a Pay Monthly plan on or after 1 October 2021, you’ll be able to use your UK allowances in any of those destinations,” says Three (applicable to those who have inclusive world roaming on their plans).

Naturally, there’s also a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) involved with the new roaming tier, which limits customers to using up to 12GB (GigaBytes) of mobile broadband data (3G, 4G and 5G), 3,000 minutes and 5,000 texts per billing month. But when you run out of passes, the usual daily roaming charge will normally apply.

Three UK Statement

Go Roam Around the World Extra launches on 26 June! This new band in our Go Roam product allows you to access your UK allowance* in 92 new destinations for a daily roaming charge of £7. If you are travelling before 26 June in an affected destination, you will be notified via the text you receive when you land. If you joined/upgraded before 1.10.21 we won’t apply this daily roaming charge and you will continue to pay the £/p per MB, minute, text rates.

The new feature makes for a useful safety net, particularly if you already have one of the relevant plans and do a fair bit of travelling outside the UK, although occasional travellers may find that picking a destination specific plan from one of the many travel SIM / eSIM companies (Holafly, Airalo etc.), or even buying a local SIM when you arrive at your destination, is likely to be both much more flexible (allowances) and cost-effective – particularly if you plan to use a lot of data.

The 92 New Destinations
Albania
Andorra
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba (Netherlands Antilles)
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bermuda
Bonaire (Netherlands Antilles)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Burkina Faso
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cayman Islands
China
Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Curacao (Netherlands Antilles)
Cyprus, North (Turkey)
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
Faroe Islands
Gabon
Georgia
Ghana
Greenland
Grenada
Guinea
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
India
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Mexico
Moldova
Montenegro
Montserrat
Morocco
Myanmar
Niger
Nigeria
North Macedonia
Oman
Pakistan
Paraguay
Qatar
Rwanda
Saba (Netherlands Antilles)
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sint Eustatius (Netherlands Antilles)
Sint Maarten (Netherlands Antilles)
South Africa
South Korea
Suriname
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turks and Caicos Islands
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Uzbekistan
Zambia

New customers of UK ISP Sky Broadband, including NOW Broadband (NOW TV), should be aware that the provider(s) will today be changing from 18-month terms and adopting longer 24-month minimum contract terms across all of their broadband, TV and triple play packages.

According to Sky, the move is intended to more closely align them with competing providers (24-month terms are now much more common) and to “continue offering our customers brilliant value, improved technology and deeper pricing.”

Longer contracts typically save new customers more money, at least during your first term, albeit with the caveat that they also lock you in for longer (i.e. the end-user takes on more risk, which can be a problem if things go wrong).