Alternative broadband ISP Trooli, which is rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of England and originally aspired to cover 1 million premises by the end of 2024 (so far they claim to have covered 275k), has finally launched a cheaper entry-level 150Mbps tier. Just to recap. Trooli’s fibre build has slowed […]

Ofcom’s ongoing probe into internet-based UK cloud services, which tend to be dominated by big providers like Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure), has uncovered practices and features that “could limit competition” and is proposing to refer the market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for further investigation. The regulator has been busy conducting a […]

The Government’s new National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), which is a digital UK map of underground pipes (water etc.) and cables (broadband, power etc.) that could help reduce accidental damage, has started to go live for several initial areas under its first deployment phase – covering North East England, Wales and London. The Government believes […]

Scottish ISP Lothian Broadband (LNBL), which is building a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network across rural parts of East and Mid Lothian, has announced that they’ve completed a £20m senior debt raise arranged by Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) – taking total investment capacity up to £50m for 2023. The provider, which also […]

Viewpoint

I’ve enjoyed my tenure as a judge for the Total Telecom World Communication Awards (WCA) for several years. This year, one category will be enhanced by taking Customer Experience to Total Experience. Historically, the Customer Experience Award has garnered many submissions, so why change it? The WCA asked if I would weigh in, and as a technology industry analyst that covers networking and telecommunications – I am always eager to share my insights and perspective.

If it ain’t broken, why fix it?

That’s a famous expression from my birthplace in Austin, Texas, and it wholeheartedly applies here. Customer experience, or CX, as it has been coined by many in the tech world, is at the forefront of many mobile network operators (MNO), communication service providers (CSP), and networking infrastructure company strategies. Why, might you ask? A lack of focus on CX can result in poor application and service experience, missed service level agreements (SLAs) and other negative consequences, leading to the dreadful notion of subscriber churn and financial penalties. On the other hand, a proactive focus on CX can provide differentiation, drive innovation, and lead to incremental monetization opportunities. However, the WCA’s decision to broaden the award category from Customer Experience to Total Experience is a smart move for many reasons. Let’s dive in!

Defining the Total Experience

CX mainly captures the subscriber journey. Undoubtedly, it is a valuable endeavour, but the MNO and CSP experience are equally important. These companies are under intense operational and capital expense pressure to deploy next-generation public and private 5G networks and the underlying services that will transform consumer and enterprise applications. It is a challenging task, thus these efforts should be recognized with the new award category focusing on Total Experience. The trend toward using open, disaggregated hardware in the radio access network and cloudification of the converged core infrastructure will likely immediately impact greenfield network deployments. Some examples include Dish Wireless in the U.S., Rakuten in Japan and Reliance JIO in India – but the telecommunications industry should recognize efforts beyond these broader ecosystem considerations. I believe that the WCA Total Experience Award will deliver on this objective for both net-new network deployments and existing ones too.

Wrapping up

I applaud the WCA’s decision to broaden the popular Customer Experience award to Total Experience. This move will recognize not only the subscriber’s experience but also the operator. Both are essential measures that should be quantified and recognized for the collective impact on the telecommunications industry – totally!

If you are interested in entering the Total Experience Award, or any other WCA category, the first step is to download the categories brochure. Entries close on 16 June 2023.

Will Townsend is the Vice President and Principal Analyst that manages the Networking Infrastructure, Telecommunications and Security practices at Moor Insights & Strategy. He advises some of the world’s largest networking infrastructure providers and mobile network operators. Townsend has been featured on the NBC Today Show, NPR, CNBC, and the Wall Street Journal, providing insights into enterprise networking, 5G and security. Mr. Townsend is also considered one of the top technology analysts in the world as measured by ARInsights and his consistent ranking within the ARchitect Analyst Power 100.

Internet provider MTH Networks, which sells full fibre (FTTP) broadband packages to customers covered by several different UK networks (e.g. Openreach, OFNL, Glide), has softened their approach to annual price rises for those on OFNL’s network (usually serves new build homes) and introduced a new social tariff. The first change being made is to their […]

News

The test saw drones travel between the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites in Coventry and Rugby, in preparation for medical deliveries

This week, BT has announced the latest steps in its ambition to help create the world’s largest drone superhighway, with a new trial seeing drones travel successfully between two Midlands hospitals.

The trial, jointly conducted by Skyfarer Ltd and Medical Logistics UK, was initiated in October 2022.

Using connectivity from BT’s network, the trial saw 130 drone flights conducted on the 32km route between the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites. This included travelling in complex airspace, close to urban areas.

Cumulatively, the drones in the trial travelled over 1,900km, including 220km in a single day. Over 30 hours of these flights were beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) – the first time BVLOS drone flight has taken place over-land in the UK.

As well as delivering the obvious benefits of being faster and more direct than comparable car travel between the two locations, drone deliveries will also bring major sustainability benefits; Skyfarer recorded the carbon emissions of a drone delivery as being 99.98% lower than a diesel van and 90.5% lower than an electric van.

“This trial would not have been possible without our consortium of partners. BT Group’s support has enabled a considerable amount of application learning and development, pushing Skyfarer and our consortium closer to a point where turn key long range BVLOS drone operations are an everyday occurrence,” said Georgia Hanrahan, Business Manager, Skyfarer.

“The Skyfarer and BT Group relationship will be the driving force for this revolutionary innovation and its adaption to day-to-day life. With BT Group providing the technology and communications expertise, Skyfarer is able to offer long-range BVLOS capability in return to justify and prove systems.”

BT has been increasing its activity in the drone space for a number of years now, viewing ubiquitous mobile connectivity as a cornerstone for BVLOS drone flight. In fact, last year, a consortium including the operator introduced “Project Skyway”, a plan to build a 165-mile drone corridor spanning Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby.

Since then, BT has expanded its relationship with the consortium’s leader, Unified Traffic Management (UTM) specialist Altitude Angel, by entering into a £5 million deal to help the Altitude Angel scale up its ARROW tower network beyond its initial goals outlined in Project Skyway.

According to BT, the opportunity here is enormous – in healthcare alone, the recent research suggests that commercialised drones could increase the GDP of the sector by £4 billion by 2030.

Perhaps it should comes as no surprise, then, that BT is not the only operator expanding its drone-related activities in recent years, with both Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom among the major telecoms players helping to develop this ecosystem.

How will mobile networks enable commercialised drone flight? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Connected North conference

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NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

Contributed Article

For the first time since their inception over a century ago, America’s age-old copper and cable networks are being replaced with high-speed gigabit fiber optic networks in cities across the US

SiFi Networks, the pioneer of last mile open access fiber networks in the US is leading this charge and has produced a book: Broadband The Second American Revolution to back up its claim that its networks are the future of US broadband.

At a time when connectivity matters most, 42 million Americans still do not have access to wired or fixed wireless broadband. Where it is available, consumers often only have one choice of provider, and face the prospect of inflated prices and poor customer service.

SiFi Networks has explored this issue in a book titled Broadband: The Second American Revolution, which illustrates the shortcomings of the prevailing model of American broadband, where service providers own and operate their networks exclusively, instead of using a shared infrastructure as is common in most European and Asian countries.

As well as featuring interviews with leading US representatives, and the cities pioneering the next generation of broadband, the book explores three key issues: how to bring about better consumer choice, how to tackle the digital divide through better broadband and how to lay the connectivity groundwork for the smart cities of the future.

SiFi Networks is rolling out its privately funded open access networks in cities across the US which will enable selected ISPs to access new markets that were previously out of reach.

“Our city-wide fiber networks deliver wholesale access to service providers enabling them to quickly and profitably access new markets without any capital deployment” commented George Templeman, President, Networks Access Partnerships, SiFi Networks.

You can download SiFi’s book Broadband: The Second American Revolution by clicking on this link www.sifinetworks.com/futureofbroadband

SiFi Networks recently took part in Total Telecom’s first ever Connected America conference. Keep up to date with all of the latest Connected America news using the hashtag #ConnectedAmerica

Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

Press Release

The Orange Cyberdefense team says it will hire 800 cyber professionals in Europe to meet the growing cybersecurity threats to enterprises

Orange Cyberdefense, the Orange subsidiary and European leader in cybersecurity services, announces the launch of its latest recruitment campaign, which will run until the end of 2023. It aims to attract and recruit around 800 professionals in the 9 European countries where it operates to meet the new cybersecurity challenges of companies of all sizes, and who will join the 3,000 experts already in the organization.

Positions are available across the entire organization, from analyst roles in operational teams to architects, engineers, consultants, and even ethical hackers.

From beginners to experts (master’s level, engineering or business schools, universities, training in new technologies and/or IT, work-study programs, etc.), roles are available to those who want to work in the fast-paced and mission critical cybersecurity space, on topics ranging from anticipating, identifying, protecting, detecting, and responding to cyber threats.

Building a community of experts to support the organization’s strong growth

Orange Cyberdefense ended the last financial year with overall growth of 14% across its activities, achieving sales of €977 million. More generally, its revenues have increased fivefold over the past 8 years.

To support its development ambitions, it has increased its acquisitions in Europe, integrating 4 new companies in 4 years. The goal of rapid expansion can be seen in the organization’s desire to be one of the most dynamic employers in its market each year, with an average growth of 13% in its headcount in the last 2 years. Last year it hired 777 new experts.

A single, global recruitment platform for applicants across 9 European countries

In a context where talent is scarce and customer demand is high, Orange Cyberdefense is making significant changes to improve its recruitment credentials. To attract new professionals from all backgrounds, it has created a single recruitment platform for all its cyber campuses in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, and is implementing measures to enrich professional and personal paths by simultaneously strengthening the gateways between the various jobs and the opportunities to identify the nature of the cyber threat as close as possible to its customers.

These actions, aimed at considerably diversifying the profiles of its employees, are reflected both in the average age of its employees (which is 35 years old), and in proportion of women in the organization (approximately 20%), and who represent 25% of new hires. Orange Cyberdefense is also committed to increasing diversity within tech jobs. As such, it is a member of the Women4Cyber association, which promotes cybersecurity jobs to women through mentoring and tutoring sessions.

“Our goal is to create the largest community of cyber experts in Europe. This is a huge challenge, especially with the talent shortage the whole industry is experiencing. We promise the professionals who choose to join us that they will be joining a very ambitious organization that has the resources to be the leader in its market and to offer extensive development opportunities to its employees. Our employees are united by a common mission to build a safer digital society. We have entered an ultra-digital world with many clear benefits – let’s not deny ourselves this – but we must not forget the real dangers it also poses,” said Hugues Foulon, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense.

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Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures

The Comms Council UK (CCUK), which represents the United Kingdom’s Unified Communications (UC) and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone industry, will this morning publish a series of advice documents for the industry and consumers about the PSTN (analogue phone) switch-off in 2025. Having engaged with members about the switch-off, the council found that there was “insufficient publicly […]