The UK Government’s new Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (PSTI) is finally set to become law after passing through both houses of parliament this week. The new law will, among other things, make it easier for full fibre broadband and mobile operators to upgrade, share and deploy new infrastructure. The key focus for telecoms […]

City-focused broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which aims to cover 2 million UK premises with their full fibre (FTTP / FTTB) network by the end of 2023 (they’ve almost done half of that), has just discounted their top 1Gbps (symmetric speed) package to just £25 per month on their 24-month terms (£60 thereafter). The new Black Friday […]

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has unveiled the winners of their 24th annual 2022 internet industry and broadband awards, which among other things saw B4RN take home the award for “Best Rural ISP” (second year running), while Brsk was named as the best infrastructure provider with under 100,000 premises. The award categories have […]

Network builder and rural ISP County Broadband has today announced 9 new villages, this time in Essex (England), where local homes and businesses will now be able to access their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which is also being deployed across parts of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. The areas being announced today have already started […]

The Consumer Pricing Bill (CPB), which seeks to “prohibit the practice of offering preferential pricing to new customers compared to existing customers“, will today get its second reading in the House of Commons. The Private Members Bill (PMB) could, if passed, effectively prevent first term discounts on broadband ISP and mobile packages. At present new […]

New customers thinking of taking out one of EE’s fibre-based home broadband packages (FTTC and FTTP) may like to know that the ISP has just introduced a series of new Black Friday discounts (e.g. 900Mbps at £42 per month with free setup for 24-months), which will be available to take until 8th December 2022. All […]

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The investment will expand their existing LD7 and LD8 sites in London, as well as establishing a new MA5 datacentre in Manchester

This week, Equinix has announced the investment of a further £179 million into its UK-based data centres, aiming to meet the country’s rapidly growing data demand.

More specifically, these funds will be used to expand the company’s existing LD7 and LD8 data centres, located in Slough and London Docklands, respectively, and opening a new datacentre, MA5, in Manchester.

“The location of these data centres complements the growth of the UK’s two biggest cities. Manchester is one of Europe’s fastest growing business centres for technology and media, while London is a long-established financial centre of the world. Despite Brexit-born uncertainty, there are many reasons to be optimistic about digital transformation and technology investment in the UK,” explained Russell Poole, Managing Director for Equinix UK.

Explaining the motivation for the investment, the company said that despite the difficult global economic climate, businesses around the world are continuing to prioritise digitalisation, particularly the adoption of hybrid multicloud services. As such, additional investment is needed to ensure that the UK data centre sector is robust, allowing businesses to compete on a global scale.

According Equinix, the investment will create “multiple career opportunities”, with the company noting a number of programmes it has underway aiming at attracting female talent to the IT and tech industry.

In total, the new expansions will bring the digital infrastructure company’s total investment in the UK to over £1 billion.

In related news, just last week Equinix announced its participation in the Gaia-X project, an initiative aimed at building a framework for open IT standards and APIs to support decentralised, federated digital infrastructure. In short, to enable European service providers to interoperate and exchange data more smoothly via players like Equinix.

How is new digital infrastructure changing the economic landscape in the UK? Join the telecoms industry and local stakeholders at the upcoming Connected North conference in Manchester

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

The post Equinix expands UK data centre footprint with £179m investment first appeared on Total Telecom.

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KT and LG Uplus will have their licences cancelled, while SK Telecom will have their licence term shortened by six months

South Korea is rightly looked to as a world leader in many fields of technology and, for the most part, 5G is no exception.

However, when it comes to mmWave 5G, results in the country have been so disappointing that the government is now moving to remove some of the telcos’ licences altogether.

A recent audit by the Ministry of Science and IT (MSIT) found that all three of the nation’s mobile operators – SK Telecom (SKT), KT, and LG Uplus – have failed to meet their obligations with regards to their mmWave spectrum licences.

According to the Ministry, the operators “did not meet even the minimum requirements for the 28-gigahertz band infrastructure”, having failed to invest sufficiently in rolling out the technology.

The South Korean telcos were first awarded the five-year 28GHz spectrum licences back in 2018, paying roughly $463.7 million for the privilege. As part of the conditions attached to the licences, the operators were obligated to deploy 15,000 base stations each by 2021.

The audit showed, however, that KT had deployed just 1,586 base stations by April this year, while LG Uplus had deployed 1,868, and SKT 1,605.

Considering these deployment figures alongside other licencing criteria, such as network performance and plans for further Deployments, the Ministry judged both KT and LG Uplus to have failed to reach the minimum requirements to retain their licences. As such, the Ministry will be reclaiming both licences.

The revoked licences will be reauctioned, with the government suggesting they will introduce a number of incentives to drive interest from potential suitors. Whether KT and LG Uplus will bid to regain their licences remains to be seen but is unlikely unless service obligations are reduced.

SKT, on the other hand, was deemed to have just barely exceeded the minimum requirements, hence their licence will not be revoked but rather punitively reduced in length by six months.

The Ministry strongly urged SKT to accelerate its deployment efforts, noting that they will still have to deploy the full 15,000 base stations by May 2023.

For the South Korean government, the operators’ lack of interest in mmWave is somewhat concerning.

mmWave spectrum is set to be a mainstay of 6G, the next generation of mobile technology that is set to mature around 2030. The government fears that, without an adequate deployment of mmWave infrastructure over the coming years, the nation will fall behind in the race to 6G supremacy.

“The relative immaturity of the domestic 28-gigahertz bandwidth ecosystem compared to other countries may undermine Korea’s foothold as the leading player in the telecom sector, and therefore is very worrisome,” said the Ministry.

‘Other countries’ here refers to the likes of the US, Japan, and China, all of which have been rolling out mmWave infrastructure at scale for the past two years.

But for the South Korean telcos themselves, mmWave has proved far less inviting. Despite offering far greater data speeds than the more widely used mid-band 5G spectrum, its relatively short propagation range makes it more expensive to deploy. Couple this with the fact that mmWave 5G is not compatible with existing consumer smartphones and you have a relatively niche service proposition, typically limited to enterprise use cases, like smart factories.

For consumers, on the other hand, most of the operators’ commercial 5G traffic currently flows over their 3.5 GHz spectrum, which is not only compatible with existing mobile devices but provides an appealing balance of high speeds and coverage distance.

This is the band where operators have been focussing their investment, with recent reports suggesting that there are over 25 million 5G subscribers in South Korea, accounting for roughly a third of total mobile subscriptions.

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

The post “Very worrisome”: South Korean govt revokes mmWave 5G licences first appeared on Total Telecom.

Sky (Sky Broadband, Sky TV) has today announced that their Sky Mobile service, which is an O2 (VMO2) powered Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), has reached the major milestone of 3 million customers and is now the “fastest growing mobile provider in the UK“. On the surface, Sky Mobile’s plans might not seem as attractive […]

The ITU and United Nations (UN) Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has recently issued their annual progress update on getting the world connected to affordable broadband ISP connectivity, which among other things finds that 2.7 billion people have yet to even access the internet. The commission has long set a series of targets to assist […]