Press Release

Joining the initiative offers the TIM Group the opportunity to play a decisive role within a coalition supported by the EU Commission and Parliament that aims to harness the potential of digital solutions in green transformation

The TIM Group has become part of the European Green Digital Coalition, a project launched by leading European companies in the ICT sector and supported by the European Commission and Parliament, with the aim of harnessing the potential of digital solutions to enable the green transformation.

TIM has signed the Declaration to support ‘The Green and Digital Transformation of the EU’ which establishes the commitment to bring forward achievement of the ‘net zero’ objective to 2040, set as 2050 by the ‘European Law on Climate’, to underline the commitment to reduce the emissions of its production chain and the selection of ever more sustainable suppliers.

Entry into the European Green Digital Coalition is further confirmation of the centrality of ESG objectives in the TIM Group’s Industrial Plan, strengthening the commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2040. Climate strategy, circular economy, digital growth and the valorisation of human capital are the main pillars on which the Group focuses to offer people and businesses the opportunities of a sustainability-based digital transformation.

The Coalition, established in 2021, aims to demonstrate the telecommunications industry’s enabling role in the achievement of climate targets, contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions both directly and indirectly, through the development and distribution of green and efficient digital solutions also in other sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture and construction. The Coalition will also collaborate with some European organisations to define standards that can scientifically demonstrate emission reduction by implementing digital solutions. The Coalition, whose Secretariat is managed by GESI, ETNO, GSMA and the SME Alliance, will work in close collaboration with the European Commission.

The recent validation of the decarbonisation objectives by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) also moves in the same direction: with respect to 2019, by 2030 TIM will reduce by 75% emissions from the company’s production (Scope 1) and the purchase of electricity (Scope 2), also thanks to the commitment to purchase 100% renewable energy by 2025, and by 47% emissions from its value chain (Scope 3) relating to the purchase of goods and services, the acquisition of capital goods and the use of products sold to customers.

The post TIM joins ICT sector’s ‘European Green Digital Coalition’ first appeared on Total Telecom.

Press Release

Cellnex UK has partnered with deep tech innovation organisation CPI to launch a new private 5G testbed for demonstrating and commercialising HealthTech innovations. The showcase facility is at CPI’s Coxon Building within the North East Technology Park (NETPark), County Durham and will host organisations as they design, develop, test and upscale digital and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for the healthcare sector.

Private 5G networks and IoT can transform the patient experience and provide NHS Trusts and other healthcare providers with critical improvements in network reliability, capacity, speed, and security. The technology has the potential to alleviate many of the key issues faced in the healthcare industry today.

The testbed will showcase how 5G networks enhance data security, boost communications to drive efficiencies and improve patient wellbeing in healthcare. It will demonstrate the use of 5G and IoT-enabled technologies in a healthcare setting – ranging from real-time asset management of equipment and medical supplies to VR headsets for surgery.

Steven Bagshaw, Head of Business Strategy – HealthTech at CPI, said: “The collaboration between Cellnex UK and CPI provides an incredible opportunity to accelerate the commercialisation of next-generation connected healthcare devices and solutions into the healthcare sector. Underpinned by digital innovation and multi-partner development programmes, our role is to bring together the HealthTech ecosystem to unlock existing pain points, whilst creating a reduced risk environment for partners to explore novel digital innovations which ultimately help improve the patient experience of the future.”

“Supporting digital innovation up and down the country is key to Cellnex UK, and this partnership with CPI is an exciting prospect for the healthcare sector,” said David Crawford, Managing Director, Cellnex UK. “Wireless connectivity is a critical foundation for success, and this private 5G testbed will enable the advancement of digital transformation in society, with the potential to revolutionise the way we care for people. For example, we are testing remote refrigeration monitoring, which will reduce waste from medical supplies including highly-perishable vaccines. This will reduce healthcare providers’ costs and – most importantly – mean that we can deliver more life-saving vaccinations to people who need them in a shorter period of time.”

Cellnex UK and CPI are working with an advisory board of senior healthcare professionals and have engaged with 5G stakeholders, regulatory experts, universities and Government agencies to identify key challenges in the sector; allowing the prioritisation of projects to develop and deploy in the 5G testbed before commercialisation in a live environment.

The project aims to have at least one innovation commercially adopted by the healthcare sector within 12 months.

Looking to the future, the testbed has the potential to act as a blueprint for industries beyond just healthcare, as private 5G technology can open doors for innovation and digitised operations across multiple sectors including manufacturing, energy, transportation and logistics.

Technology companies and healthcare providers wishing to find out more about the collaboration are invited to a launch event of the testbed at CPI’s facilities in County Durham on October 19. Find out more: https://www.uk-cpi.com/events/enabling-a-private-5g-healthcare-ecosystem-2

The post Cellnex UK partners with CPI to accelerate HealthTech innovation with new 5G testbed first appeared on Total Telecom.

Contributed Article

Daren Baythorpe, CEO of wholesale full fibre provider, ITS Technology Group discusses how the progress and delivery of ‘Gigabit Britain’ is being accelerated with joined up thinking across the public and private sectors

The road to ‘Gigabit Britain’ continues to gather pace. In the last twelve months, 70%[i] of the UK now has a gigabit broadband technology option, while true full fibre access has grown from 25% to around 40%.

This has been achieved thanks to an extraordinary push by infrastructure providers such as ITS. During this period, the altnet community has also continued to grow substantially, with combined financial firepower behind it now comparable to the scale of many of BT and Virgin’s investments.

While the delivery capabilities of these organisations are vital to get fibre into the ground, collaboration is a key enabler, bigger than the sum of its parts, that will ensure we meet the government’s ambitious targets for universal access to gigabit-capable services by 2030.

This was why ITS launched its Faster Britain programme in 2020, as a vehicle to work collaboratively with our stakeholders including our partner ISPs and resellers. A brand that they can get behind, helping them to go to market selling connectivity solutions to businesses, as we continue to accelerate our full fibre builds to major towns and cities across the UK.

Making the most of reuse

As a business, we have long recognised the benefits of reuse and ‘dig once’ network build methods which offer a more sustainable, environmentally friendly approach to delivering full fibre.

As well as being Openreach Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) accredited, ITS works closely with local authorities to maximise their existing assets, building on the success achieved across Nottingham. Having signed the first agreement of its kind with the City Council – a concession to reuse its city centre and tram ducts – we have forged many similar agreements since.

With increased joined up thinking, projects that are designed to utilise existing infrastructure are delivered more efficiently with less disruption to the local communities they are designed to serve.

The next level of collaboration

One of our most notable public private projects currently underway is LCR Connect, a £30m 212km rich full fibre spine that will reach 29k businesses across the six local authority areas of the Liverpool City Region – Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

With more than 30% already built, LCR Connect is bringing to life a key manifesto pledge by Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, designed to drive economic growth and better equip the businesses of the Liverpool City Region. It is a joint venture that takes public private collaboration to the next level being 50%-owned by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA), in partnership with ITS working alongside our construction partner NGE, who is managing the build and roll out of the network.

At the heart of LCR Connect’s delivery strategy is the collaboration between the JV and each of the six local authorities that make up the Liverpool City Region. This approach is not only harnessing the opportunities of full fibre, it is also helping to overcome many of the challenges and barriers that are part and parcel of building full fibre networks; from wayleaves to highways.

Smart collaboration facilitates smarter builds

To sum up, we cannot underestimate the complexities associated with infrastructure builds. These challenges are simplified when there is greater stakeholder collaboration. While the public sector is forward thinking in its mindset to creating better, smarter environments for its communities, there is still some way to go before there is true collaboration between the wider ecosystem such as landowners, developers, and housing associations. As these mindsets shift, the rewards will be great, and will further smooth and accelerate the path to a truly Gigabit-Great Britain.

[i] Source: ThinkBroadband

 

 

The post The art of smart collaboration first appeared on Total Telecom.

Ookla, which maintains the Speedtest.net service, has published their latest Q2 2022 report into the internet download, upload and latency speeds for UK customers – and those in other countries – on SpaceX’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based Starlink ultrafast broadband satellites. The bad news is that speeds have fallen sharply over the past year. […]

Mobile operator and ISP Vodafone UK has launched a flexible new package called ‘Pulse Connect‘, which for one monthly fee will bundle together business broadband, unlimited calls to UK mobile and landlines, collaboration software (Microsoft 365 Suite), and cloud calling tools for small and medium enterprises. Customers can build their own bespoke bundles too, with […]

The ITS Technology Group, which via their “Faster Britain” platform runs 36 wholesale full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks across urban parts of the UK for businesses and ISPs, has today announced that more than 13,500 businesses in the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield can now access their new network. The new network is 56km […]

Rural focused ISP County Broadband, which is aiming to cover 500,000 premises across the East of England with their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network by the end of 2027, has launched a new recruitment drive, offering over 30 jobs across the region and an opportunity to build a career in the industry. The provider, which […]

Contributed Article

by Blessing Makumbe, Vice President and Head of Digital Services UK&I at Ericsson

UK CSPs, like many the world over, are betting that their investment in 5G will pay off through increased revenue and customer satisfaction, as well as an expansion further into the enterprise space.

However, we are nearly three years into 5G’s launch in the UK and uptake has been slower than hoped. According to Ericsson’s ConsumerLab report, 97% of UK consumers do not have a 5G phone and a 5G subscription.

This was perhaps to be expected, given the nature of the UK’s 5G rollout so far, which has been based on existing architectures and therefore doesn’t yet offer a markedly different 5G experience from the 4G most consumers already have.

This has been an approach most countries took to launch 5G. But we are seeing international operators swiftly leaving this ‘first phase’ of this technology behind, and in the UK there will be increasing pressure for CSPs to evolve their offering and take the next step towards a 5G solution that can support the type of step-change performance and services that will lead to real return on investment.

A critical path to achieving this will be cloud native 5G. The term ‘cloud native’ describes architectures and technologies, including containers and microservices, that optimise the cloud’s scaling capabilities to speed up the introduction of new functionalities and increase automation.

 

Implementing cloud native 5G networks

While cloud native has been around for a while and has enabled the launch and explosive growth of tech giants like Facebook, Alibaba and Uber, adoption in the telco space is much more challenging than in most industries. Cloud native demands software is both more decoupled from the underlying hardware and decomposed into smaller components. This is a complex task for an operator, given the vast scale and bespoke configurations of the networks we’re talking about.

But the rewards for adopting cloud native are tantalising, particularly the ability to improve operational efficiency, enable faster and more automated upgrades, and support a shorter time to market for new services.

So, what’s stopping UK CSPs from taking their network topologies into the cloud?

First and foremost it is a question of deployment strategy and mindset. Operators in this country have prioritised 5G as a consumer technology, with a focus on achieving as much 5G coverage as quickly as possible. This is understandable given the need to show consumers 5G is available, however it has not properly demonstrated the real power of the technology.

The ‘second phase’ of 5G, characterised by a migration to cloud-native architecture, will unlock one of the most transformational aspects of 5G and a huge potential source of revenue growth – network slicing.

 

How to make a packet with network slicing

Network slicing is the key to monetising 5G investments. It is needed by 30 percent of use cases and represents a nearly £200 billion opportunity for CSPs globally.

Each slice of a network can have its own logical topology, security rules and performance characteristics and different slices can be dedicated to different purposes, such as ensuring a specific application or service gets priority access to capacity. It can also isolate traffic for specific users or device classes. These features enable network operators to maximise the use of network resources and enhance service flexibility.

These characteristics of network slicing give the potential to transform businesses’ operations by tailoring networking specifications to specific tasks to improve efficiency and performance, while also creating new revenue opportunities. It provides service flexibility and ability to deliver services faster with high security. That’s why a range of industrial applications are starting to take hold, from healthcare to energy generation.

These exciting use cases unlock the most transformative applications of 5G and could transform the UK economy – Ericsson research shows that new use cases enabled by 5G´s unique capabilities could deliver additional economic growth of £15 billion in the UK.

 

UK operators can deploy cloud native quickly

The good news for UK operators is that they can migrate relatively quickly, using learnings from other international operators that have been on similar journeys.

At Ericsson, we have over 170 live deployments of cloud infrastructure solutions globally. We’ve also played a leading role in developing the new 3GPP standardized 5G Core functions that are cloud native and container based.

Using our technical expertise and extensive practical experience deploying such networks, we have created a set of principles especially for telecom applications based on microservices, containers and state optimized design.

These principles underpin the Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure solution: an infrastructure fully optimized for cloud native application.

To learn more about this solution, and for practical guides on how to implement a cloud native 5G Core, visit us here or get in touch.

The post Cloud native solutions are key to unlocking 5G’s revenue potential first appeared on Total Telecom.

UK ISP Plusnet has today moved to slightly sweeten the offers on their new range of cheaper Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) powered home ultrafast broadband packages – provided over Openreach’s national network, which sees the provider shaving a couple of extra pounds off each of the plans. Customers of their full fibre service can expect to receive […]

The Communications Workers Union has just upped the ante in its pay dispute with broadband and telecoms giant BT (including Openreach) by announcing a third round of national strikes, which have been staggered to hit the operator over four days. But worryingly, the next strike will include hundreds of 999 emergency call handlers. Up to […]