Tarifica, a leading telecom analytics firm, has released its latest Data Dive analysis, shedding light on the critical roles of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and fiber technologies in expanding internet connectivity and bridging the digital divide.

According to the analysis, based on data from Tarifica’s Telecom Pricing Intelligence Platform, while fiber offers unparalleled speed and reliability, FWA presents a compelling alternative, particularly in regions where laying physical cables is impractical or cost prohibitive.

Soichi Nakajima, Vice President of Data and Analysis at Tarifica, commented, “Our exploration of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and fiber plans across various countries highlights the importance of both technologies in expanding internet access. While fiber offers unmatched speed and reliability, FWA plays a crucial role in bridging connectivity gaps, especially in areas where laying physical cables is challenging.”

In a chart mapping FWA plans from the US, Germany, and France, Tarifica found that FWA pricing in the United States remains expensive compared to Germany and France. However, the emergence of 5G FWA offers promise for connecting remote areas in the US.

Nakajima added, “In the United States, fiber remains the preferred choice due to its superior performance, but the emergence of 5G FWA presents an opportunity to connect remote areas. Meanwhile, Germany’s diverse FWA landscape caters to a range of speed and data requirements, providing versatility for users in urban and rural areas.”

Despite France’s FWA plans being the cheapest and fastest of the three countries considered, fiber reigns supreme in the country, emphasizing the market’s preference for high-speed, bundled solutions.

As technology advances and infrastructure expands, FWA and fiber will continue to coexist, with customer preference hinging on factors such as speed requirements, coverage area, and budget constraints. The shift towards more accessible and cost-effective connectivity solutions underscores the importance of innovation and competition in the telecommunications landscape, driving towards a more inclusive and connected society.

Nakajima concluded, “FWA fills a crucial gap in connectivity, providing a lifeline for communities where fiber infrastructure is unavailable. However, when both options are available, fiber’s superior speed and reliability provide greater value for the money, making it the preferred choice.”

To access the analysis, please click here.

The wholesale division of Virgin Media O2 Business (VMO2), which supplies other UK broadband ISPs and network operators with connectivity services, has today informed their partners that they will not be raising prices for new business or existing services across all products throughout 2024.

This “freeze on back book prices” follows the operator’s announcement in December that new business acquisition rates would not be raised in 2024 at any bandwidth. The decision is said to underpin the company’s “dedication to customers, by reassuring partners that their existing estate will not be subject to any price increases this year.”

The move is said to be recognising the challenging trading climate that many network operators currently face.

John Chester, Wholesale Fixed Director at VMO2 Business, said:

“In comparison to rising prices across the industry, we’re freezing our rates so that we can guarantee our partners a sense of predictability over the coming months. While we face our own cost pressures, our partners need an assurance of price certainty so they can maintain sales volumes with their own resellers and customers. Our market rates are already competitive, and this freeze demonstrates our commitment to long-term partnerships and our belief that price certainty fosters mutual success.”

Just to be clear, this is for Virgin’s wholesale division and not their consumer or SME facing packages. But it remains to be seen whether or not this will precipitate a greater price increase further down the road to compensate for the freeze.

The UK Government’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and local MP, Jeremy Hunt, has visited and praised the Broadband for Surrey Hills (B4SH) project for having worked with volunteers to help bring full fibre (FTTP) gigabit broadband to nearly 1,000 premises in a remote rural area of Surrey (England).

The project follows a similar mould to B4RN, which means it’s a not-for-profit Community Benefit Society (CBS) that is run by volunteers, who are helping to build the new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across some of the remotest corners of the Surrey Hills area. B4SH has so far connected 500 properties, including over 100 businesses, and has passed nearly 1,000 premises (via well over 100km of fibre duct).

The B4SH network is 100% underground and “does not use any unsightly and controversial poles“, unlike many other providers. The network is installed ’round the back’, going across fields and woodland and dropping into gardens from the rear, thus avoiding the costs and disruption of digging up roads and pavements.

The ISP also provides free connections to community assets such as village halls, churches and small primary schools.

Jeremy Hunt said:

“This is fantastic news for those people and businesses in rural areas who have previously been suffering from slow or intermittent broadband speeds. The team behind B4SH are to be commended for their hard work in bring gigabit speeds to the Surrey Hills.”

Angus Denny, B4SH Director, said:

“It was a great pleasure to welcome Jeremy to B4SH and show him the success of the volunteer-led model in delivering world-class gigabit broadband to areas of the Surrey Hills ignored by commercial providers”.

The Chancellor’s visit took place last Friday (12th), when he learned about the unique nature of B4SH, saw the map of B4SH’s network in the area and saw first-hand the gigabit technology that powers their network. He was especially interested in B4SH’s funding model, particularly the impact of the withdrawal of Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR), and the importance of the gigabit voucher scheme administered by DCMS, which is currently suspended across large parts of the UK while the Project Gigabit procurements run their course.

Mobile network operator O2 (VMO2) has begun harnessing SpaceX’s global network of Starlink ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which are being used to help provide mobile backhaul (data) capacity to boost mobile services in some of the United Kingdom’s remotest locations (e.g. sites in the Scottish Highlands).

The use of such an approach is not new to O2, which last year tested a similar Starlink-based method alongside Wavemobile (here) when deploying 4G signals to the area around the South Stack Lighthouse in Holyhead, Anglesey (Wales), as well as other places.

The reality is that some locations remain “extremely difficult or impossible to connect using standard technologies“, such as fibre optic lines or fixed Microwave (point-to-point wireless) connections, which is where LEO satellites can come in handy. Past trials have helped to prove this point.

As a result of all that, O2 are now rolling out Starlink based connections for mobile backhaul capacity to a small but growing number of very remote locations, starting in northern Scotland. The project has been delivered in collaboration with shareholder, Telefónica Global Solutions (TGS), which is an official Starlink reseller.

Jeanie York, CTO of Virgin Media O2, said:

“We’re leaving no stone unturned when it comes to improving rural connectivity and are continuously looking for new ways to boost signal in remote areas. Our commitment to delivering on our part of the Shared Rural Network programme has seen us turn first to helicopters and now to satellites to connect some of the most difficult and remote parts of the country. By constantly finding new ways to deliver for our customers, we are bringing reliable mobile coverage to rural communities faster and helping to close the UK’s digital divide.”

One catch here is that Starlink, while a very useful solution for such locations, does not have the same sort of capacity and network latency as modern fibre optic lines. This may not be such an issue for the previous generation of 4G-based services, but it could limit the potential capabilities of future 5G and even 6G services. On the other hand, a lot of these locations won’t have even had 4G before now, so this is still likely to be a major improvement.

VMO2 are also exploring other ways satellite connectivity can benefit their customers in the future, including providing coverage for emergency services (police, fire, rescue, ambulance etc.) and improved mobile connectivity at special events.

Mobile network analyst firm Streetwave and the Northumberland County Council (NCC) in England have today released the findings of an interesting study that monitored the effects of Vodafone’s recent 3G switch-off in the region, which is said to have resulted in a small to modest boost in 4G/5G coverage and mobile broadband performance.

In case anybody has forgotten, Vodafone largely completed the process of switching off their old 3G network in February 2024 (here). Mobile operators have generally been compensating for the 3G switch-off in some areas by introducing upgrades for newer 4G and 5G services. The removal of 3G also freed up 10MHz of spectrum in their 900MHz band to be re-farmed for use by modern services, which could boost network speeds and coverage.

However, so far none of the mobile operators have released any solid evidence to show the practical and statistical impacts of the 3G switch-off, which is what makes the latest study from Streetwave in Northumberland – an extremely rural county in the North East of England – so interesting.

The data appears to show that Vodafone is now providing ‘Essential Coverage‘ across 92% of locations in Northumberland (up by 3%) and their average mobile (data) download and upload speeds are faster by approximately 10% after the switch off. Operators are deemed to have Essential Coverage by Streetwave in locations where the network provides users with above 1Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload, and below 100ms latency (covering only basic use cases / needs).

Vodafone’s Results Across Northumberland

Network Generation:
November 2023 – Percentage of Connections
March 2024 –      Percentage of Connections

4G
86%
96%

3G
13%
0%

2G
1%
4%

Metrics
November 2023
March 2024

Essential Coverage
89%
92%

Average Download Speeds
11.8 Mbps
12.8 Mbps

Average Upload Speeds
4.9 Mbps
5.7 Mbps

However, the results also show a sharp rise in dependence upon even older 2G networks (mostly for voice calling), which is something that will need to be considered when it comes time to remove 2G by 2033 (here). Older 2G signals remain useful as a low-power fallback and are still necessary for some rural areas, as well as for particular applications (e.g. many Smart Meters and other IoT / M2M services remain dependent upon 2G).

Councillor Richard Wearmouth, Deputy Leader, said:

“Ensuring our residents have access to dependable mobile signal is a key priority for the council. It’s fantastic to see that Vodafone’s 3G switch-off is benefiting our communities.”

Some local authorities had been concerned that residents might suffer potential disruptions after the 3G switch-off (e.g. connectivity problems and performance woes), although the new study appears to provide the first independent evidence of the opposite occurring. The council will now continue to monitor the switch-off of Three UK and O2’s networks, which are currently scheduled to take place in late 2024 and 2025.

Notably, no impacts from EE’s 3G switch-off were measured, as “no 3G connections were detected” during the surveys across Northumberland.

News 

The talks come as MasOrange are forced to sell its excess spectrum under European Union law 

Telefonica has entered into talks with the newly merged telco MasOrange over spectrum ownership, according to a report from Spanish news source Expansión.  

The merger of Orange Spain and MasMovil, worth €18.6 billion, was approved by the European Commission (EC) in February this year, following a long regulatory investigation. 

Last month, Spanish business newspaper El Economista first reported that Spanish operators Orange and MasMovil were set to name their newly consolidated business ‘MasOrange’.  

The merger is set to create the country’s largest operator and would leave it with more allocated spectrum than is allowed under EU law. Therefore, in December, rival operator Digi agreed to acquire €120 million worth of spectrum from the two companies, thereby allowing the proposed merger to get the green light from regulators. 

The spectrum acquired by Digi was 2x10MHz in the 1,800MHz band, 2x10MHz in the 2.1GHz band, and 20MHz in the 3.5GHz band. The acquired spectrum will allow Digi to become the fourth national mobile operator in the Spanish market, a move regulators say is crucial to maintaining healthy competition. 

However, despite the sale, MasOrange still need to get divest of 30MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band.  

Now, Telefonica are taking advantage of the opportunity, given that the merged entity is “obliged to get rid of that spectrum”, according to the Expansión report. 

Want to keep up to date with all of the latest international telecoms news? Sign up for Total Telecom’s daily newsletter  

Also in the news:
South Korea to invest $7 billion in AI semiconductors
Swisscom expands 5G partnership with Ericsson
Daisy Group set to acquire 4Com for £215m

News

Anonymous sources speaking to ISPreview say the two altnets are considering combining their operations “in the next 4–6 weeks”

This week, a new report says that two the UK’s major altnets could be set to merge, in a move that would create a combined company covering over 1 million premises with fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP).

According to anonymous industry insiders, discussions are currently underway that could result in the companies combining their networks “in the next 4–6 weeks”.

The combination would make some logical sense. As ISPreview points out, the companies share a mutual investor in the form of Adveap and also have a relatively similar approach to fibre deployment, focussing heavily on cost-effective deployment via accessing Openreach’s existing infrastructure.

Their rollouts too are broadly complementary, with little existing overlap between the two networks.

Brsk has covered 450,000 premises with FTTP, primarily around Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, Rochdale, Blackburn, and Burnley. Netomnia’s rollout, on the other hand, is much broader, having covered 850,000 premises with locations throughout the UK.

If combined, the two companies would therefore have access to around 1.3 million premises across the UK, making it a considerable force in the country’s broadband market.

Consolidation of the UK fibre market is gradually picking up steam. While rumours of Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) buying CityFibre last year ultimately came to nought, there has been a considerable amount of movement in the market over the past 12 months: Trooli was acquired by a newly formed Agnar UK Infrastructure; CityFibre acquired Lit Fibre from Newlight Partners; and Nexfibre – the joint venture owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, and 50% owned by InfraVia Capital Partners – joined forces with its sister company VMO2 to acquire Upp, to name but a few.

Perhaps the biggest move for the altnet market so far is perhaps not strictly M&A, but rather restructuring, with investment Fern Trading consolidating all of its altnet investments – Giganet, Swish Fibre, Jurassic Fibre, and AllPoints Fibre – into a single entity, trading under the Cuckoo brand.

No doubt we can expect to see more consolidation over the rest of the year, with the altnets struggling to battle difficult macroeconomic conditions as well as typically low levels of take up for full fibre services.

Speaking of the latter, part of the problem for consumers is that the process of switching to a new provider can be a daunting, lengthy endeavour. Ofcom has tried to combat this by mandating the introduction of One Touch Switching (OTS), but so far BT (Openreach) and VMO2 have struggled to implement the process, leading to heavy delays.

Earlier this month, Netomnia CEO Jeremy Chelot expressed his dissatisfaction with Openreach and VMO2 on the matter, saying that even Ofcom’s latest revised deadlines may not be feasible.

Chelot is speaking on a panel on this very topic at the Connected North conference in Manchester next week.

How is consolidation impacting the UK’s altnet market? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s live Connected North conference

Also in the news:
South Korea to invest $7 billion in AI semiconductors
Swisscom expands 5G partnership with Ericsson
Daisy Group set to acquire 4Com for £215m

News

Telecoms companies and industry associations have submitted recommendations for how the FCC should allocate spectrum, despite losing their auction authority.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking ways to circumvent its lack of spectrum auction authority.

Some of the nation’s largest telecom companies have offered recommendations, but there is plenty of disagreement on how the FCC should utilize loopholes to award spectrum.

In March 2023, Congress declined to renew the FCC’s authority to conduct spectrum auctions. The Commission is now unable to issue new spectrum licenses and dispute over usage of the lower 3GHz band of spectrum is ongoing.

After over a year, the FCC is still unable to conduct spectrum auctions. So far, T-Mobile is the only large company that has publicly raised a complaint, but the FCC is keen to explore solutions beyond Congress.

T-Mobile has previously taken spectrum issues directly to Congress. After the FCC lost auction authority, T-Mobile was unable to access the licenses it was awarded during Auction 108, which occurred while the FCC still had auction authority. Ultimately, legislation from Congress instructed the FCC to release auction winnings, but did not restore broader authority.

A Public Notice, released by the FCC in March, sought comments on “how the Commission should fulfill its responsibility to make spectrum resources available for use in the public interest in light of the ongoing lapse of the Commission’s auction authority”.

The FCC mentioned several bands of spectrum it might make available for use in the public interest. These bands, called “Inventory Spectrum” by the agency, include 600MHz, 700MHz, 800MHz, AWS-3, PCS, BRS and MVDDS.

The Commission asked for comments on several questions, including whether it could utilize its ‘Special Temporary Authority’ (STA) to release spectrum, approve spectrum-sharing or lease spectrum licenses. Final comments are to be submitted by 22nd April.

Some of the country’s largest wireless operators and industry bodies have urged the FCC to use its STA process to make spectrum available.

The CTIA, the major lobbying association for large US wireless operators submitted comments stating that where needed, “STA licenses may be a rational vehicle for making spectrum available from the Inventory Spectrum pending reauthorization of the agency’s auction authority.”

Verizon agreed, noting that any proposed options are “inferior to assigning Inventory Spectrum by auction” but that “the Commission could rely on its special temporary authority to grant access to Inventory Spectrum licenses on a temporary basis”.

In its comments to the FCC last week, T-Mobile concurred, having first suggested the use of STA last year. T-Mobile noted that there are well-established processes for issuing STAs, meaning that spectrum can be available quickly.

While the large wireless operators argued that the FCC should not rely on spectrum-sharing, the NCTA encouraged the agency to use “coexistence-based frameworks” to license spectrum. The NCTA represents, among others, the country’s large cable companies, such as Comcast and Charter Communications.

EchoStar, the parent company of Dish Network, prompted the FCC to offer “right of first refusal” for Inventory Spectrum to “non-incumbent carriers (more specifically, every carrier other than AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon)”.

As the FCC seeks the return of its auction authority, these interim measures aim to allow consumers and enterprises to reap the benefits of additional spectrum. Given the political deadlock in Washington, there is no clear indication when the FCC will be able to auction spectrum again.

New data from Ookla‘s popular broadband connection testing service, Speedtest.net, has revealed how well Samsung’s Galaxy S24, S23 and S22 family perform for 5G based UK mobile broadband speeds vs Apple’s latest iPhone 15 family. Overall, the S24 comes out as the fastest, but experiences may vary.

Naturally, there can be caveats with internet speed testing services like this, since we don’t know anything about the locations of different users, what mobile spectrum bands they were being used, whether the devices were performing any other background internet tasks while the test was being performed or any limitations of the remote servers etc. Mobile operator performance may also differ between locations by how much capacity they have available etc.

Nevertheless, Ookla’s latest data attempts to analyse how the Samsung Galaxy S24 family (S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra) measures up against its predecessors, in terms of 5G speed and latency, during its first several weeks on the market. The benchmarking firm also pits those against Apple’s iPhone 15 family (15, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max) to see how the different chipsets perform.

In the UK, Samsung’s S24 models were found to be the “fastest in the market“, returning a median (average) 5G download speed of 156.71Mbps – offering a speed gain of nearly 40Mbps compared to the Galaxy S22 family. Galaxy S24 models also posted faster speeds than both the Galaxy S23 and iPhone 15 families. But as we say, take all of this with a pinch of salt, although it’s not unusual to find that the most modern devices tend to also be the fastest.

News

The concerns follow an initial report on AI Foundation Models published in September last year 

The UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has expressed concerns over the growing power of big tech companies in the AI Foundation Models (FMs) market.  

Speaking at a conference in Washington DC last week, the CMA’s CEO Sarah Cardell explained that the concentration of power amongst Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia gives them “the ability and incentives to shape these markets in their own interests”.  

These companies not only dominate in the development of foundation models, but also in their deployment to consumers, through apps for example. 

Highlighting the swift evolution of this sector, Cardell warned of three key risks that pose significant challenges to fair and open competition: 

Companies controlling critical inputs for developing FMs may restrict access to shield themselves from competition
Powerful incumbents could exploit their positions in consumer or business facing markets to distort choice in FM services and restrict competition in deployment
Partnerships involving key players could exacerbate existing positions of market power through the value chain

The speech’s accompanying update paper highlights a growing “interconnected web” of over 90 partnerships and strategic investments between the aforementioned six companies. These partnerships reinforce existing concentrations of market power, and stifle competition and innovation of rivals in the process. Therefore, the CMA is “keeping very close watch on current and emerging partnerships,” said Cardell.  

Although acknowledging that these companies have an important role in the development of the AI market, through their resources and expertise, the paper notes the importance of avoiding an “over-dependence” on them. 

Set to be published this week, the CMA will release a detailed technical report on FMs, accompanied by finalised principles to guide regulatory action. 

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Also in the news:
South Korea to invest $7 billion in AI semiconductors
Swisscom expands 5G partnership with Ericsson
Daisy Group set to acquire 4Com for £215m