Infracapital-backed UK ISP Ogi, which is investing £200 million to roll-out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across 150,000 premises in South Wales by 2025, has signed a 10-year deal with Fontygary Leisure Park in the Vale of Glamorgan that will enable around 500 holiday homes to be connected to their full fibre lines. The deal […]

UK ISP Quickline, which is building a gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband infrastructure to 96 rural locations (55,000 premises) across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), has been awarded Safe Contractor accreditation in recognition of their efforts to ensure a high level of health and safety protections for their contractors. The certification was awarded following an […]

A new survey of over 2,000 UK adults, which was carried out four times over the past year by YouGov on behalf of Point Topic, has found that respondents who bundled their broadband ISP connection with a TV product has increased by 8% year-on-year (i.e. starting at 35% in Q2 2022 and rising to 43% […]

Interview

We caught up with Elad Nafshi, EVP and chief network officer at Comcast, to discuss the company’s new 10G network upgrade and the added reliability this brings to customers

Over the past two years, Comcast has made significant advances in 10G network capabilities, building on the latest DOCSIS 4.0 technology. By the end of 2022, in a world-first, the operator was trialling 10G and Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 network technology in a live network, paving the way a commercial rollout of multi-gigabit connectivity over its cable network.

Just a few short months later, in early 2023, the company’s enormous network upgrade had already begun, with around ten million homes targeted to receive the upgrade and become part of Comcast’s Xfinity 10G Network.

At this year’s Connected America conference in Dallas, Texas, we caught up with Comcast’s chief network officer Elad Nafshi to learn more about the impact the company’s Xfinity 10G Network could have for customers.

“Xfinity 10G network is about multi-gigabit symmetrical services with unrivalled reliability, both powered and empowered by real-time telemetry, that offers the lowest latency to all of our subscribers,” explained Nafshi. “Not just the customers on the right side or the left side of the street, but across our entire network. It’s truly transformational and its very, very exciting.”

You can view our full interview with Elad Nafshi from the link above.

Higher speeds are to be expected from a next-generation network upgrade, but perhaps more interesting here is the network’s improved reliability thanks to the incorporation of emergent technologies.

“For the first time, we’re able to see a down-to-the-second view of what customer experience is,” explained Nafshi. “Taking that data, we can start to self-heal. We can start to run AI and machine learning algorithms on top of the network to pinpoint network failures and event to predict them before they ever happen, allowing us to self-heal a lot of these failures before they impact customers.”

The Xfinity 10G Network has already passed ten million homes, with vast majority of Comcast’s network set to be upgraded by 2025.

How is the US broadband market changing in 2023? Join the operators in discussion at the Connected America conference live in Dallas, Texas

Also in the news:
Vodafone warns of investment cuts if Three merger is blocked
Vodafone and Three UK closing in on merger
Dish and EchoStar consider merger

News

The project aims to upgrade Vodafone’s nationwide backbone network and increase its capacity to meet increased demands for a growing customer base 

In the past, Vodafone has managed three separate networks to carry mobile, home broadband, and enterprise customer traffic, respectively. Now, the company’s new Redstream Evolution network will bring together all three services onto a singular Software Defined Networking (SND)-enabled, core Internet Protocol (IP) transport network for UK customers. 

Redstream Evolution consists of 200 core sites throughout country connected by over 11,000km of optical fibre. By adding all customers onto the same network, Vodafone can benefit from economies of scale, resulting in improvements in customer experience as well as cost savings. 

This multi-year backbone network upgrade is now entering its “final phase”, with mobile and broadband customers being moved off the old network in a phased manner. Enterprise customers will be moved “in the near future”, according to the operator. 

The convergence of these three networks will ensure that customers do not experience congestion on the network and ensuring the infrastructure can cope with a future increase in demand. 

According to Vodafone, data consumption across the country is increasing 50% year-on-year. 

“The massive growth in data-hungry consumer apps and business services, alongside ever-increasing internet usage, simply cannot be supported by traditional approaches to network management and capacity expansion” said Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer of Vodafone UK. 

“Redstream Evolution is a significant investment to modernise this critical link in our Vodafone network, creating a new express superhighway bringing more than enough capacity to deliver an amazing network experience for customers today, while also staying well ahead of future data traffic demands. This will be crucial as our home broadband customer base continues to grow, more of our business customers go through digital transformation programmes, and 5G and IoT usage rapidly increases the amount of data we use each day.” 

Vodafone says that UK customers’ mobile data usage has increased 300% since 2019. Simultaneously, businesses have increased consumption of digital and cloud-based services, thus requiring a reliable network. 

How will network improvements affect the the UK’s telecoms industry?  Join the ecosystem in discussion at this year’s live Connected Britain conference 

Also in the news: 
Vodafone UK launches second social tariff offering higher speeds
Enhancing and expanding connectivity with EXA Infrastructure
Why the industry must accelerate the adoption of 5.5G 

News

The citystate will follow in the footsteps of many countries that are saying goodbye to 3G this year, including Sweden, Greece, and Denmark  

Singaporean mobile network operators (MNOs) M1, Singtel, and Starhub have announced today that they will retire all 3G services by July 31st 2024. 

Since the introduction of 5G in 2021, nearly 99% of Singapore’s mobile subscribers are currently using either 4G or 5G. This leaves just 1% of customers using 3G, primarily those that have yet to upgrade to a 4G or 5G-capable mobile device. 

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) – the statutory board under the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information – noted that the firms must ensure the smooth transition of these remaining 3G users to the 4G and 5G networks before closing their 3G services.  

The three operators will provide assistance to those customers migrating to the newer technologies.  

Once the 3G services are shut down, the operators will be able to use the newly freed-up spectrum to improve their 5G services, offering customers faster speeds and improved security. 

This 3G shutdown plan follows similar patterns seen in others markets worldwide.  In the US, for example, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon have almost completed their 3G phase outs, while in Europe, Vodafone UK is shutting off their 3G network in early 2024.  

How is the global telecommunications market evolving in 2023? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live from Amsterdam. 

Also in the news:
Vodafone UK to begin 3G switch off in June
Bouygues Telecom lays out 2G and 3G sunsetting plans
Why the industry must accelerate the adoption of 5.5G 

The website domain for full fibre network builder and UK ISP Swish Fibre appears to have been offline since yesterday because, according to the notice on its holding page, swishfibre.com has “expired and is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com” (i.e. somebody probably forgot to renew it). Just to recap, the operator – backed by an […]

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Vodafone UK has revealed that they’re now entering the “final phase” of their multi-year Redstream Evolution project, which reflects the work being conducted to upgrade the backbone of their nationwide network and boost their capacity for future growth. Redstream Evolution is the backbone network that transports all of Vodafone’s telephony, […]

Broadband ISP and network builder Lit Fibre has today announced that their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network has gone live in several new towns, growing its overall coverage of the UK to 140,000 premises (Ready for Service) – up from 100,000 in April 2023. The provider, which started their deployment in 2021 and aims […]

In June, we reported on how Openreach were “exploring whether it’s practical” to deploy public EV chargers next to some of their 90,000 broadband cabinets (here). The good news is that BT, via their start-up and Digital incubation team, Etc. (that’s the actual name), plan to conduct a pilot that will “convert or upgrade” its […]