Connexin joins prestigious roster of B Corp Certified Companies

UK-based smart technology and digital provider Connexin is pleased to announce it has earned B Corp™ Certification following a rigorous social and environmental impact evaluation, a rarity for technology and service-led providers. The certification places the business amongst some of the most respected B Corp brands globally, including Patagonia, Divine Chocolate, Octopus Energy and Innocent Smoothies.

Businesses certified by B Lab™, a third-party non-profit, are leaders in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. B Lab measures a company’s entire social and environmental impact and attaining B Corp Certification means a company meets high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

“Becoming a B Corp is further validation of our sustainable practices and our ongoing commitment to create positive social impact,” says Furqan Alamgir, CEO at Connexin. “We have always lived by the principle that businesses should be a force for good, and we practice this belief through everything we do, from our business strategy, product sets, to our operational practices. We are honoured to be recognised for this and become part of a global community that is championing change.”

The B Corp Certification follows in line with Connexin’s commitment to become Net Zero by 2040 and achieving a 5-Star ESG rating awarded by the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB).

Founded in 2006, Connexin offers services across three areas: broadband, smart solutions and digital training. Its mission is to connect the real world to the digital world to improve the way people live. The commitment to use technology to create positive and long-lasting social impact is rooted firmly in the business’s DNA.

Connexin’s smart water metering services enable its utility customers including Essex and Suffolk Water, Yorkshire Water and Severn Trent Water to rapidly detect water leaks across the UK. This helps reduce water wastage and carbon emissions from manual meter readings. Working with city councils, Connexin’s Smart City solutions help to build more efficient, sustainable and better connected communities.

Its education and training division, Connexin Academy, consistently demonstrates its dedication to narrowing the growing gap in tech skills across the nation. By offering training bootcamps ranging from Cybersecurity, IT Skills, and Advanced Fibre Engineering, Connexin Academy upskills individuals and businesses with a constantly updated curriculum and new courses for emerging markets.

Through its Connexin Cares scheme, the company donates up to £20 to a local charity for each new customer that signs up to its fast full-fibre broadband deals.

Notes to editors:

Connexin is a UK-based digital service and smart technology provider with an industry-leading offer across three areas: broadband, smart solutions and digital training.  

From day one we’ve been on a mission to connect the digital world to the real world to improve the way we live. We’re passionate about ending the digital inequalities that exist within society which prevent people and businesses from accessing the benefits of technological advancement.  

By connecting people, places and things to smart technologies we’re changing lives and communities for the better. 

Connexin recently ranked 2nd in the Top 100 league table at the annual Northern Tech Awards, a remarkable 14 place jump from 2023 (16th) and a staggering 28 places from 2022 (30th).

Earlier this year, Connexin was selected by Essex & Suffolk Water for the UK’s largest IoT advanced water metering infrastructure (AMI) framework contract, to manage the rollout of up to one million smart meters across the Essex and Suffolk supply regions. 

Connexin was also awarded £58.6 million in government funding by Building Digital UK, as part of Project Gigabit, to rollout lightning-fast fibre broadband to over 30,000 rural homes in Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire.

News

The German mobile operator says it had built 1,334 Open RAN sites by the end of Q1

Alongside the company’s Q1 financial results this week, Germany’s newest mobile operator, 1&1, has revealed that 700,000 customers are making use of its newly built Open RAN network.

1&1 launched commercial services over its new network in December last year, though at the time the company only had around three active mobile sites of its own. In the last five months, the number of sites has increased dramatically, with 1&1 saying that it now has 1,334 sites deployed.

1&1 won 5G spectrum at auction back in 2019, announcing its intention to become the country’s fourth national mobile network operator. Since then, the company has been slowly working to develop its own mobile network, as well as striking 5G roaming deals with rivals Telefonica and Vodafone to provide services in the meantime.

The company already serves over 12 million mobile customers as a mobile virtual network operator (i.e., using infrastructure from other mobile operators), all of which it says will gradually be migrated to its Open RAN infrastructure as its rollout continues.

“The smooth functioning of the new Open-RAN technology is evidenced by initial network tests conducted by connect, teltarif and Inside Digital, which have given positive ratings to the 1&1 O-RAN,” reads the company’s  Q1 report.

“Following the launch of our mobile services at the end of 2023, the first three months of financial year 2024 were focused on expanding our mobile network and starting the migration of our more than 12 million mobile customers from external networks to the new 1&1 mobile network,” the company added in a statement.

1&1 aims to expand its 5G coverage to a quarter of the German population by the end of 2025 and half the population by the end of 2030.

How is the German connectivity landscape changing in 2024? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Germany conference live in Munich

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

News

The deal was first announced two months ago 

Today, CityFibre has completed its acquisition of Lit Fibre from Newlight Partners, who will remain minority shareholders as per the transaction agreement. 

 Lit Fibre has an existing fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) footprint of over 220,000 premises across more than 20 towns, including Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Essex, and Suffolk. As a vertically integrated altnet, the company sells services directly to customers, having built a subscriber base of approximately 10,000 retail customers since its establishment in 2021. 

CityFibre says it will continue to drive towards Lit Fibre’s strategic goal of passing 300,000 premises with FTTP by 2025. 

Integration efforts between CityFibre and Lit Fibre are already underway to incorporate Lit Fibre’s 10Gbps XGS-PON network infrastructure into CityFibre’s carrier-grade network. This integration will enable CityFibre’s ISP partners to access a broader range of products, pricing, and services across the expanded footprint. Current Lit Fibre customers have been assured that the quality of their broadband services will remain unaffected throughout the integration process.  

Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. 

“We’re delighted to have concluded our acquisition,” said Greg Mesch, CEO at CityFibre. “This is a great opportunity for us to hone our integration capabilities as acquisition becomes an increasing accelerant to our 8m plan.” 

The acquisition is the first of several similar expansions that CityFibre anticipates over the next two years. Alongside its ongoing fibre rollout, the company has chosen to pursue the acquisition of altnets to expand its footprint, aiming to become the UK’s third digital infrastructure platform.  

Currently, the company has passed 3.6 million homes, and is on track to connect another million this year. 

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

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

Indigo, a leading provider of engineering and support services for subsea cabling, welcomes EU recommendations for member states to map submarine infrastructure and to assess risks and vulnerabilities as part of a drive to make subsea cables more secure and resilient.

The Commission Recommendation, published in February 2024, is concerned that networks and services are “a prime target for cyberattacks”, something that Indigo has been addressing for some time in partnership with hyperscale subsea infrastructure providers. 

A number of initiatives have already advanced Indigo’s capabilities, including the appointment of William Rendle as Head of Information Security. Rendle’s previous experiences include directing technology GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance), digitisation, cyber and information security change programmes within highly regulated environments globally

Ian Duggan, CEO of Indigo, said, “William brings two decades of experience in technology risk management and delivery to Indigo as we look to build on our leadership position as a network support and security provider. His skills will be particularly relevant for our continued growth in the US and in the subsea market, where cybersecurity is a priority for the hyperscale tech companies we support.”

William Rendle commented, “I’m looking forward to further developing Indigo’s cybersecurity capabilities, building on the great work of a team that has security embedded in its culture.”

Since entering the subsea support market in 2021, Indigo has opened a second Network Operations Centre(NOC) in the States, emulating the original NOC in South Wales in being ‘security aware’, providing clients with a combination of fault and threat identification capabilities.

Duggan said about the strategy, “A modern NOC must be able to cross-reference data when tracking an incident and ascertain if there are any security implications. It is increasingly important that network monitoring capabilities can identify early indicators of a cyberattack.”

Aware that service providers themselves are a potential target for cyber criminals, Indigo has narrowed its own threat surface by ensuring full ownership of all connectivity around its remote monitoring service. Its carrier-grade IP-based Data Communication Network (DCN) has advanced security features for high availability and redundancy. The Indigo NOC teams have a forensic level of understanding of the equipment they use, which is always procured as new, direct from the factory.

A Salesforce-driven system is key to the model, integrating APIs from multiple vendor platforms to capture all events and alerts through a single pane of glass for lightning-fast incident management. At the same time, the Salesforce system is gathering incident data for root cause and trend analysis to inform a more proactive approach to security and maintenance. Indigo ensures its team’s processes conform to  international critical infrastructure requirements by meeting stringent NIST, ISO 27001 and NSA standards.

Eurasian focused network operator RETN, which proclaims itself to be the UK’s number one IP transit provider, has today announced that they’ve expanded their fibre connectivity to Manchester, which they say will bring “lightning-fast, secure, and high-availability internet to ISPs and enterprises in the city“.

The operator has recently made a series of investments into its international backbone, with network deployments in Western, Northern and Central Europe and Asia. The latest development reflects its expansion into two major sites in Manchester – including new Points of Presence (PoPs) in the Equinix and Datum (formerly Teledata) data centres.

As a result, RETN’s updated connectivity ring will better link Manchester with existing networks in London, Slough, Dublin, mainland Europe via the Paris Crosslake subsea cable (a low-latency route opened recently), London-Amsterdam, and London-USA etc. All of this will offer businesses both domestic and international access to their global internet backbone, which stretches as far as Beijing.

Chris Elliott, UK Commercial Director at RETN, said:

“Manchester’s status as a key digital hub aligns with RETN’s mission to improve communication and connectivity, underpinned by our core principles of transparency, flexibility, agility, and responsiveness. By expanding our services in this dynamic city, we’re dedicated to offering secure, private, and reliable connectivity solutions that empower both local and international communities, driving growth and innovation in every market we serve.”

Services offered include Layer 3 IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) and Layer 2 VPN Ethernet Services, to provide redundant access to RETN’s 870+ points of presence across Europe and Asia.

Mobile network operators can now deploy 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) connectivity across more stations and tube lines on the London Underground, which comes after the ongoing network roll-out was extended to include Paddington, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Woolwich on the Elizabeth line.

Just to recap. Boldyn Networks (formerly BAI), using kit from Nokia, currently holds a 20-year concession deal with Transport for London (TfL), which was signed in June 2021 (here) and allows them to build the new 4G infrastructure. This can then be made available via wholesale for Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to harness. The goal of this roll-out is to cover the entire London Underground by late 2024 (ticket halls, platforms and tunnels).

Currently, around 31 out of 121 Tube stations with platforms that are underground, and therefore usually unable to get a mobile signal, as well as connecting tunnels, now have 4G mobile coverage. This is around 25% of stations which are underground, and when combined with Tube stations which are above ground, means that more than two thirds of all stations on the Tube network now have mobile coverage available.

Around 500 people are working overnight across the Tube network to install the new mobile equipment, with all works needed to be tidied away before the network opens for customers every morning. Once fully delivered, more than 2,000 kilometres of fibre optic cabling, as well as thousands of radios (base stations, small cells etc.), are expected to be installed within tunnels and stations – fitted outside of operational hours.

London Underground Stations with 4G Availability

➤ Central line – Holland Park, Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus (Central line only), Tottenham Court Road, Holborn (Central line only), Chancery Lane, St Pauls

➤ Northern line – Belsize Park, Chalk Farm, Archway, Tufnell Park, Kentish Town (station closed from 26 June 2023 due to engineering works, but 4G will still be provided to platforms for passing trains), Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, Euston (Charing Cross Branch), Warren Street (Northern line only), Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road

➤ Elizabeth line – Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street (Elizabeth line only), Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Woolwich

➤ Jubilee line – Westminster, Waterloo (Jubilee line only) Southwark, London Bridge (Jubilee line only), Bermondsey, Canada Water, Canary Wharf, North Greenwich

➤ Piccadilly line – Covent Garden

Next month, coverage will also begin on the Bakerloo line. The southern end of the Northern line from Stockwell to Morden will also start to get mobile coverage shortly, with 4G and 5G coverage due to become available at Clapham Common station next week, and further tunnels and stations going live during the summer.

Shashi Verma, CTO of TfL, said:

“It’s great to see that all Elizabeth line stations, and even more Tube stations, now have high-quality mobile coverage for the first time. This programme is gathering pace and we are working hard to bring the benefits of being able to stay in contact while travelling through our city as quickly as possible.”

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:

“This is yet another step towards ensuring Londoners and visitors can stay connected on our transport network. I promised that customers would be able to access high-speed mobile coverage at all stations and in tunnels, and I’m pleased to see how quickly the team are moving to enable 4G and 5G connectivity.

Now, customers can access the latest travel information, keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family, use social media and stream music at every station along the Elizabeth line. This is just one of the many ways we are supporting Londoners as we build a better, fairer and more prosperous London for everyone.”

The progress means that a significant proportion of the entire Tube network (around 80% of stations across the network), as well as the entire Elizabeth line, remain on track to have mobile coverage by the end of 2024.

News

The wildfires damaged communication infrastructure on May 10, disrupting access to emergency services

Last week, ongoing wildfires in Canada’s Yukon territory severed critical fibre lines, leaving customers in parts of the Yukon, British Columbia, and the Northwestern Territories leaving customers unable to communicate or access emergency services.

Two separate fires damaged cables operated by local telco Northwestel simultaneously, leaving customers without access to mobile, internet, or telephony services.

“This really was a bit of a perfect storm,” said Northwestel’s vice-president of customer experience Tammy April to Global News.

“We had two fires that really went from no fire to incredible blaze within a matter of hours of each other. So we had our east-west (fibre) route fail late afternoon on Friday, and it was within about five hours that we had our north-south route fail.”

To make matters worse, satellite phones – usually a reliable backup to terrestrial networks fail – were also experiencing disruption. April ascribed this disruption to electromagnetic interference resulting from the recent solar storm.

Repairs to the infrastructure have been underway since the weekend, with services already restored in most affected regions.

“We are closely monitoring the active wildfires near critical infrastructure and want to advise the public that conditions can change quickly and services could become impacted,” said Northwestel in a statement.

Natural disasters knocking communications infrastructure offline is a relatively commonplace occurrence worldwide, with telcos adopting various strategies to quickly reestablish communications in the region, from erecting temporary mobile towers to shifting traffic to satellites.

Wildfires of the scale seen in Canada, however, represent a unique challenge, since telcos and their engineers often cannot access the critical locations for days at a time. As a result, telcos are largely reliant on building resiliency into their networks by adding multiple routes for traffic, making it unlikely that areas will be entirely cut off from the network.

As this weekend shows, however, sometimes these measures alone are not enough.

“With wildfires burning sooner, and hotter and more unpredictably, with floods sometime impacting our communications infrastructure as well, it’s so important to be prepared for anything,” said Julia Duchesne, the Yukon’s emergency coordination centre information officer.

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

Also in the news:
UK government conditionally approves £15bn Vodafone–Three merger
Nokia and Vodafone trial Open RAN with Arm and HPE
T-Mobile and Verizon to buy US Cellular, reports say

Broadband, TV, digital phone and mobile provider Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) look set to expand their existing multi-platform streaming services, which appears set to include a new range of streaming, gaming, health, lifestyle and security services for UK customers.

Virgin Media’s customers can already access a variety of streaming services and features via their existing TV products and platforms, such as Virgin TV 360 and their newest STREAM box. But a new deal with Israeli software company Amdocs will enable VMO2 to deliver an enhanced range of end-to-end digital services, which customers will be able to “seamlessly” manage via a single streaming subscription on their TV, mobile or PC.

The details are currently quite limited, although there’s talk of the collaboration helping to expand VMO2’s offerings to “include new streaming, gaming, health, lifestyle and security services following a rapid, standardized approach.” The focus seems to be on streaming, although the mention of “security services” would appear to indicate that this goes beyond merely TV and video solutions.

David Bouchier, VMO2’s Chief TV and Entertainment Officer, said:

“We’re always looking to enhance our customers’ experience and meet their evolving needs. By broadening our offering with new sources of entertainment across mobile, broadband and TV, our customers will be able to manage their subscriptions and unlock new digital services all in one, convenient place.”

By the sounds of things, Virgin Media will be specifically aiming to integrate Amdocs cloud-native Subscription Marketplace (software as a service – SaaS) solution, which is described as being a scalable platform that enables a frictionless OTT (Over The Air) and digital consumer services experience and monetization.

Hopefully this works out a bit smoother than Virgin Media’s prior Netflix integration, which caused a variety of phantom billing problems (here). Naturally, there’s a promotional video for this new platform, which offers a bit more insight into what it might look like, even if it is steeped in the usual hyper promotional marketing spin:

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of the same parentage as Virgin Media UK (VMO2), has announced that they expect to cover 40,000 premises across Durham during 2024 with their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network – most of which (over 30,000 premises) will be in the Sedgefield constituency.

The company has already covered 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.

The latest move into Sedgefield makes sense as Virgin Media doesn’t currently have any presence in the town. The investment will also move into other areas of Newton Aycliffe including, Trimdon, Trimdon Grange, Fishburn, Chilton, Ferryhill and Cornforth.

Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre, said:

“We are committed to delivering high quality full-fibre connectivity to communities and business across the UK, including in Sedgefield and the wider county of Durham. By boosting access to broadband, we are enabling access to the tools needed to participate and thrive in a modern, digital society and stoking growth in the local economy.”

Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield (Pictured), said:

“The investment nexfibre is making in Newton Aycliffe, Trimdon, Trimdon Grange, Fishburn, Sedgefield, Chilton, Ferryhill, and Cornforth will create jobs, drive economic growth and help provide better services for people locally. This Conservative government has made boosting access to fibre broadband a priority and we are delivering that for local people and communities here in the North East and across the country.

I welcome the work nexfibre is doing to increase access to quality broadband and provide the national scale competition that will drive the innovation and progress the UK needs in the fibre market.”

Now if they could just add some other ISPs to nexfibre’s network, ideally ones with products that aren’t restricted to mirroring Virgin Media’s pricing. A truly independent wholesale network must be able to offer products that are both fair and competitive for other internet providers.

Gigabit broadband builder CityFibre has today announced the completion of their recent share-based acquisition deal for alternative network provider and UK ISP Lit Fibre (here), which adds another 220,000 premises to their existing full fibre coverage (i.e. a predicted total of c.3.8 million or c.3.5m RFS) – rising to 300k once existing builds complete in 2025.

At present CityFibre’s wider ambition remains to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK subsidy) – or around 30% of the UK (here), although it’s unclear precisely when that will now be achieved (it was originally a goal for the end of 2025). But as previously reported, the operator is currently also aspiring to add up to another 1.5-3 million premises through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the next couple of years, with Lit Fibre being one of their first targets.

CityFibre typically sells packages via various broadband ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen Internet etc.) and will now, as a result of the Lit Fibre deal (estimated to be valued at around £80m), also be able to cater for premises across 20 towns in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Essex and Suffolk.

CityFibre now intends to complete Lit’s work-in-progress deployment, as well as the majority of its planned network rollouts. In total, the network is expected to reach up to 300,000 premises by “early” 2025, which will then be added to CityFibre’s total coverage footprint.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:

“We’re delighted to have concluded our acquisition and we’d like to welcome everyone at Lit to the CityFibre team. We’re also pleased to welcome Newlight Partners, with their deep understanding of the fibre infrastructure market, as our newest CityFibre shareholders.

“We’ve already been working hard with the great team at Lit to ensure that its network is integrated quickly as our partners are excited to begin marketing over the new footprint. This is a great opportunity for us to hone our integration capabilities as acquisition becomes an increasing accelerant to our 8m plan.”

Joshua Ho-Walker, Partner at Newlight Partners, said:

“We are excited to be CityFibre’s newest shareholder and we look forward to helping bring CityFibre’s market-leading, full-fibre platform to 8m homes in the UK. This acquisition is important recognition for the high-quality business that Lit Fibre built and we are grateful for the Lit Fibre team’s hard work and dedication over the past few years.”

The remaining challenge is in the issue of separating Lit Fibre’s retail ISP business (10,000 customers) from their network side (vertical integration), since CityFibre is normally a wholesale-only provider and won’t want to be competing with their existing retail partners. But for now, Lit Fibre’s brand will be retained, although CityFibre have said that they will “explore options for the retail ISP following the integration of the network.”

Fully integrating Lit Fibre’s network into CityFibre’s is expected to take about 6 months, and officially they probably won’t be able to count this as part of their total coverage until this phase completes. But after that it’s plausible that we may see some divestment of Lit Fibre’s customer base or retail brand to a new owner on the same network.

Newlight Partners has also become a minority shareholder in CityFibre, where they will join major shareholders such as Antin Infrastructure Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mubadala Investment Company and Interogo Holding.