State-owned ISP JT (Jersey Telecom) has announced that they are planning to invest £80 million in order to roll out a new 5G based ultrafast mobile broadband network across Jersey (English Channel Island), which is to be deployed using Ericsson’s technology (radio kit etc.). The deployment will also see JT’s existing 4G network, which is […]

The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme has announced that CityFibre have secured three major build contracts for Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk in England. The combined award is worth £488m (£318m state aid and £170m private) and will see the operator extend 10Gbps capable FTTP to 218,000 premises. The operator, which is supported […]

Benchmarking firm Opensignal, which specialises in testing the performance of mobile networks, has published new research that reveals how the UK compares with the rest of the world for 5G based mobile broadband speeds (downloads and uploads) and availability. Suffice to say, we sit at the wrong end of the table. The new research is […]

The latest biannual summary of UK fixed broadband coverage for H1 2023 has found that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have surged to reach 52.77% of premises (up from 45.13% in H2 2022) and 76.22% are within reach of “gigabit” speeds (up from 72.66%). Read on for details of England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. At […]

Customers of Virgin Media’s (VMO2) email service are once again reporting problems today. The situation occurred after the provider attempted to conduct maintenance on the service which, instead of making things better, only appears to have resulted in a new set of “intermittent issues” (connectivity problems). In case anybody has forgotten, Virgin Media suffered a […]

Broadband and telecoms giant BT has revealed that last Sunday’s outage and disruption to their 999 emergency services number, which resulted in 11,470 unique emergency calls being “unsuccessfully connected“, was caused by a “complex software issue” that had never previously been seen through their testing regime. Apparently, the software bug was causing a “caching issue“, […]

Press Release

SK Telecom today announced that it has released a major UX overhaul of its AI service ‘A.’ (pronounced A dot) to enhance customers to enjoy various content based on personal tastes and preferences. The reorganisation includes enhancements to several features such as the addition of new AI agents that are capable of taking on diverse personas.

SKT has improved the UX of the main screen of ‘A.’ so that various content can be viewed on one screen at once according to the user’s unique preferences.

The company has also added a chatroom in ‘A.’ where users can have conversations with an AI character. Through these conversations, users can share information about their daily life like they are talking to a close friend.

In addition, SKT has added ‘Chat T’ to ‘A.’, using the ChatGPT model of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service. By asking ‘Chat T’ questions, users can receive rich and informative responses beyond simple answers.

SKT also upgraded its own Large Language Model (LLM) to enable users to engage in a multi-turn dialogue. The model can understand the context of a conversation and grasp complex intentions, thereby creating a more logical and useful conversation.

Furthermore, through a joint development project with Scatter Lab, an AI startup known for the Lee Lu-da chatbot, SKT has introduced its new AI agents named ‘A. friends’ to bring colourful personas to its improved ‘A.’

‘A. friends’ are applied with conversational AI technology that enables emotional and human-like conversations. By engaging in conversations with ‘A. friends’, users can receive counselling and advice on a wide variety of topics. The feature is available on Android with the iOS version coming at the end of July.

In addition, to enable more customers to experience generative AI, SKT eased the age limit for signing up for ‘A.’ so that those under 14 years of age can join the service.

“With the massive overhaul of ‘A.’, we expect more customers to feel comfortable and enjoy using our conversational AI,” said Kim Yong-hun, Vice President and Head of AI Service Business Office. “We will continue to evolve ‘A.’ into a service that can help customers in their daily lives in all kinds of ways.”

How is the AI changing the telecoms world? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live in Amsterdam

Also in the news:
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Orange-MásMóvil merger may reduce competition in Spain, says European Commission
White House announces state BEAD allocations

VIEWPOINT

The global digital industry, enabled by 5G, continues to move from strength to strength. In the last four years, 5G has not only gained one billion users across the world but is also playing a crucial role in the digitalization of all industries.

“All stakeholders from across the industry will need to work together, exploring innovative ways to connect people, homes, industries, machines, and vehicles. We will have to create new value with 5G to unleash digital dividends as it delivers higher traffic, more extensive connectivity, more reliable latency, and ubiquitous cloud services and intelligent applications,” says Li Peng, Corporate Senior Vice President, President of the Carrier BG at Huawei. He was delivering address, Creating New Value with 5G to unleash Digital Dividends at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2023.

Modernizing networks to meet evolving consumer demands

A key reason for the growing 5G adoption is the ever-growing demand for new experiences in the consumer market. This is fostering innovation in this segment leading to the development of new forms of content and application, which are expected to drive future growth.

“To meet these high demands, the Chinese carriers have been promoting new applications like New Calling, cloud phones, and naked-eye 3D. New Calling helps carriers better connect consumers using video-based calls. The application facilitates communication in both personal and professional settings, making remote work easier. A single New Calling user can generate over 1 GB of data per week,” explains Li Peng.

On the other hand, cloud phones are being used in China to support cloud gaming, mobile office and more. Naked-eye 3D helps users enjoy higher-definition content from more perspectives. This application’s value chain is rapidly maturing, and the traffic generated by naked-eye 3D content will see a three-to-ten-fold increase compared with 2D videos.

However, for service providers to deliver these innovative applications requires them to upgrade their networks to deliver 10Gbps connectivity.

“Spectrum resources will have a big role to play in this network upgrade. The industry needs access to new frequency bands, including the 6 GHz and mmWave bands, as well as sub-100 GHz spectrum for 5G New Radio,” says Li Peng. Huawei has conducted field tests to demonstrate that a 10Gbps downlink speed can be achieved on the 6GHz band with the help of Extremely Large Aperture Arrays (ELAA). Even so, the growing digital ecosystem means that the demand for new 5G frequency bands will continue to grow as new applications emerge.

“There needs to be more 5G chips, IoT modules, and devices that support new spectrum bands. More efforts will be needed to pilot new applications around the world,” he adds.

This ever-increasing demand for improved experiences in the home segment means that the telcos would need to improve user experience.

“We believe the smart home market will develop rapidly in the next decade. To help carriers maximize the potential of this market, we launched 5G FWA Square solutions. We have FWA Pro for ultrafast connectivity, FWA Lite for cost-effective connectivity, and FWA Biz for the highly reliable connectivity required in industrial scenarios,” elaborated Li Peng.

Huawei is also working with carriers to explore FTTR [Fiber-to-the-Room] innovation and drive technology and business upgrade. This enables carriers to provide gigabit Wi-Fi connections to all parts of the premises without impacting the quality, paving the way for the telcos to adopt an innovative business model. “Early adopters of FTTR have already seen more than 30% increase in the ARPU of their home broadband services as well as a huge drop in their churn rate,” explains Li Peng.

Accelerating digital transformation of the enterprises with 5G

Unlike the previous technologies, 5G is helping enterprises accelerate digitalization and use it to grow production and efficiency. Huawei has helped conduct a trial of the industry’s first 5.5 G-enabled production line. The trial demonstrated that the 5.5G deterministic network guaranteed ultra-high reliability and reduced latency to 4 milliseconds in a high-concurrency environment.

Growing importance of 5.5G

“Customers will require new services and experiences in new scenarios, so carriers will need to upgrade their networks to 5.5G, in order to support 10 Gbps downlink, 1 Gbps uplink, and 100 billion IoT connections. 5.5G will open up unlimited opportunities for carriers,” says Li Peng. The industry is moving towards this with the 3GPP’s Release 18, the first standard for 5.5G to be released in the first half of 2024.

All the industry stakeholders will need to work together to drive the adoption of 5.5G to spur innovation in this segment and to be able to maximize the revenue potential of this technology.

 

 

The Scottish Government has, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, published a useful progress update on their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT), which reveals that 24,194 premises have now been covered by their rollout of a new “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) capable ISP network. At present 96% of premises in Scotland […]

Broadband ISP Zzoomm, which aims to cover 1 million premises in 85 UK towns with their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network by the end of 2025, have today announced that their rollout has now covered 150,000 premises (Ready for Service) across 29 locations – an extra 50,000 since February 2023. The operator is currently being fuelled […]