INTERVIEW

Marcello Del Brenna, CEO Prysmian UK, shares his thoughts on the increasingly crowded space available for the UK’s energy transition and the deployment of broadband networks.

Prysmian is using its global experience in broadband rollout to develop smaller, higher quality pre-connectorised products to help networks meet the increasing demand for fibre connections at a time when the UK is experiencing a skills shortage.

Furthermore, Prysmian acknowledge that we’re in the first part of the big full fibre wave and we’re accelerating. In parallel, Prysmian are developing new products – cables, connectorisation, connectivity, to get the cables to the end users’ home – this is the second wave.

This interview was conducted at Connected Britain 2022, the event will return to London in 2023 – find out more here

The post Prysmian develops pre-connectorised products to address the UK’s increasing demand for fibre connections first appeared on Total Telecom.

Press release

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has announced that Amith Maharaj, Group Technology Executive, from MTN Group has joined its Board of Directors as the company’s representative.

Yago Tenorio, Chairman of TIP and Fellow and Network Architecture Director at Vodafone Group, commented on the appointment: “MTN has been a great contributor since it joined TIP in 2016. From its leadership in several Project Groups and other TIP initiatives, including DCSG, MUST, OpenWiFi and OpenRAN, MTN is a trailblazer of open and disaggregated technologies in Africa and globally. MTN’s appointment to TIP’s Board of Directors further reflects the international profile of our community and we look forward to deepening our collaboration with the company and benefiting from Amith’s extensive experience on the Board.”

Amith Maharaj, Group Technology Executive, MTN Group, commented: “I’m delighted to have joined TIP’s Board of Directors and to meaningfully contribute towards driving infrastructure solutions to advance global connectivity. As a pan-African mobile operator, we see TIP is a critical part in realising our strategic intent of leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress Forums such as TIP.”

Biography:

Amith Maharaj

Group Technology Executive, MTN Group

Amith Maharaj has extensive experience in the Telecommunications market, having worked in senior roles at three of the Tier 1 Telco’s in SA – Telkom, Vodacom and MTN.

Amith started his 22-year career as an Engineer at Telkom. He has held various roles at Vodacom, particularly within the Group’s Network team and Vodacom Business start-up. After 9 years at Vodacom he was recruited by, and returned to, Telkom to lead and start-up its Mobile business where he was responsible for commercially launching the Mobile business and building its network. During his 8 years at Telkom, Amith developed the strategy and managed the deployment of 2G, 3G, 4G and FTTx networks. Currently at MTN, Amith is responsible for Network Technologies across the Group.

The post MTN Group joins the Telecom Infra Project’s Board of Directors first appeared on Total Telecom.

STARTUP STORY

Tell us about your start up
We provide Consulting Services to the global Telecommunications and IT Service Provider industry. Our clients are generally headquartered in the UK, USA or Singapore, with global presence.

What is your USP?
Founded in 2020 in the middle of the global pandemic, we now work with some of the worlds largest brands to create and deliver innovative digital solutions. We pride ourselves in our ability to thrive in challenging environments, and enable our clients to do the same. We have already delivered millions of £ of savings for our clients, and engage at strategic levels across the industry.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
We exclusively partner with telecommunications industry clients. Our founders come from a telecommunications background, and are passionate about the industry, and its role in truly underpinning the current wave of innovation in digital transformation around the world.

How have you got to your current stage of development
We are here because of our reputation, and continue to grow through our ability to execute. Every client we have won so far has extended their relationship with us, because we pride ourselves on only ever doing the right thing for customers, and exceeding expectations.

What is your mentor or motivation?
We would love a more glamorous origin story, but in line with our values of transparency, the reality is that this business was born of necessity. In the middle of the pandemic, our founders found themselves on the market at a time when nobody was hiring. Having spoken about starting a business for over a decade, our founders came together to create a business in challenging times that has thrived beyond expectations. We have always been passionate about the potential of the telecommunications industry, and the key role it has to play in the digital world of today and tomorrow, and are passionate about helping clients within the telecommunications industry to transform their businesses, to be ready for what the future holds.

What does the future hold for your business?
The telecommunications industry has always been through significant changes, current trends of consolidation, automation and digital transformation will all play a key part over the next 5 years. As experts in delivering change and transformation in the industry, we can and will help clients evolve to be ready for the future.

COMPANY CV
HEADQUARTERS: London, United Kingdom
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 20
LAST FUNDING TYPE: Angel Investors
URL: https://sphereglobal.solutions
FOUNDERS:
Rhys Lancaster
Harry Cheema

MEET SGS AT TOTAL TELECOM CONGRESS AND SEE HOW THEY CAN HELP YOU.

The post Startup Stories: a new approach to telecom consultancy first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

As Meta are reportedly spending up to $10 billion a year on developing Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse, a virtual world where people work, socialise, play games, transact and more in an immersive digital environment, you would assume that its going to be good and that it would get broad support from Meta’s own staff.

Now however new reports are emerging that the company’s flagship “metaverse” app – Horizon Worlds is virtually unusable, with quality so poor that not even Meta employees are using it.

The Verge reports obtaining an internal memo from Meta’s VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, saying the team would remain in a “quality lockdown” for the rest of the year to “ensure that we fix our quality gaps and performance issues before we open up Horizon to more users.”

The company however seem committed to continuing to plough forwards, despite The New York Times claiming to have spoken to dozens of employees who have expressed concerns about the path being pursued. Indeed, tomorrow at Meta Connect there are expected to be new metaverse features unveiled, including a V.R. headset.

It will be interesting to see what the markets think. Meta shares have been pummelled lately (falling 60% in the past year) and commentators haven’t been much more upbeat. At last weeks Sifted Summit, CEO of games company Improbable, Herman Narula said, “It wasn’t so much the renaming of the company that was helpful. It was the completely disastrous strategy that followed”. He claimed companies developing for metaverse are worried because they think that Meta will do to the metaverse what it’s done to our current version of the internet: monopolise user data and revenues from social media.

It’s all a long way from the upbeat feel earlier this year which saw positive announcements from the likes of Telefonica partnering to build a Metaverse Innovation Hub in Madrid.

Is the metaverse hype or reality? Join the discussion in The Tech Zone at the Total Telecom Congress on the 1-2 November. Passes are free for CSP’s and public sector.

 

The post Meta-worse – is a brave new world on the Horizon? first appeared on Total Telecom.

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) team has informed ISPs of several forthcoming changes to their Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which helps those in rural areas to get a gigabit-capable internet connection installed. The big news is that the maximum voucher values are to be increased. The GBVS scheme normally offers vouchers worth up […]

Network builder Freedom Fibre, which is supported by broadband ISP TalkTalk, has announced their first build in Wales with the £14m rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to the city of Wrexham. Previously, the provider had tended to only focus on semi-rural parts of North England. Many of the operator’s initial deployments have […]

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA) has announced a shortlist of potential finalists for their forthcoming 2022 awards event, which aims to recognise and celebrate the best alternative broadband networks (altnets) and ISPs from across the United Kingdom. Some operators, such as B4RN and Truespeed, have been nominated across several different categories. The winners will […]

London-based Axione UK, a subsidiary of French provider Axione that is investing £300m to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to 4 million UK premises, has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that their initial build is “on track” to cover 30,000 premises by the end of March 2023. The operator, which is targetting both […]

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has launched a Public Review to confirm the existing and planned gigabit-capable broadband infrastructure coverage within parts of the Highland Council Area, which relates to the authority’s investment under the new Inverness and Highland City-Region Deal (IH-CRD). The IH-CRD reflects a commitment of £315 million worth of funding – […]

Rural Broadband Solutions Plc (RBBS), which via ISP SWS Broadband serves UK homes in rural parts of Shropshire (England) and Wales via both wireless and full fibre (FTTP) connectivity, has today announced that they’ve secured a huge investment of £75m from Tiger Infrastructure Partners to extend their coverage. The company originally revealed last year that […]