British-registered OneWeb, which is building a mega constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast low-latency broadband satellites, has confirmed in their accounts that they took a $229.2m (£199m) hit after Russia blocked the launch of 36 platforms earlier this year due to the war in Ukraine and related sanctions. The company has so far […]

The post The Connected Britain Awards shortlist 2022 first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

Alongside various banks, Vodafone and Ooredoo have been awarded licences by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), opening the door for mobile payments head of the FIFA World Cup.

This weekend, a tweet from the QCB has revealed that two telcos are among the seven companies to be awarded mobile payment licences.

Earlier this week, the QCB allocated digital payment licences to five Qatari banks, thereby enabling customers to make payments with a variety of popular apps, including Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay.

Alongside this announcement, the QCB also revealed that it had granted a similar licence to the country’s two mobile operators Vodafone Qatar and Ooredoo, thereby allowing the telcos’ customers to make digital payments using the telcos’ respective platforms, namely Vodafone iPay and Ooredoo Money.

 

أصدر مصرف قطر المركزي أول ترخيص في الدولة لشركتين تمارسان نشاط تقديم خدمات الدفع الإلكتروني.#مصرف_قطر_المركزي pic.twitter.com/XSqoO1V3SO

— مصرف قطر المركزي (@QCBQATAR) August 30, 2022

Additional digital payment licences are expected to follow in the months to come, in anticipation of the huge influx of tourists arriving for the World Cup in November.

It should be noted, however, that the Qatari government remains staunchly against allowing digital assets (e.g., cryptocurrency), which have been banned for being too high risk since 2020.

Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and Tunisia, have all issued similar bans.

Instead, the government is focussing on blockchain technology and its own central bank digital currency, though progress in this area appears to have stalled sine it was first announced in March this year.

 

How is mobile banking reshaping the telecoms industry? Learn more from the operators themselves at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
Jio prepares to plough $25bn into 5G
VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network

The post Telco duo snaps up digital payment licences in Qatar first appeared on Total Telecom.

Some of our readers may be interested to learn that Poynting has recently begun to make their latest external antenna – the XPOL-24 – available to retail, which is specifically designed to get the most out of 4G and 5G based mobile broadband routers that can support a 4×4 MIMO configuration. We don’t often talk […]

Broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) is today claiming to have launched the “UK’s Fastest WiFi Guarantee” in “every room or money back,” which is to be included “at no extra cost” on their 1Gbps broadband packages and all Volt bundles. Customers on their 50Mbps to 500Mbps plans (without Volt) can add it for £8 extra […]

The Fibre for Ashton Hayes, Horton cum Peel, Mouldsworth & Manley (F4AMM) campaign group in rural West Cheshire (England) has revealed that UK ISP Gigaloch, which has been building a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the area since last year, has finally started to go live. We haven’t had any solid updates on Gigaloch’s builds […]

NEWS

The Commission says more data is needed before any landmark decision to force Big Tech to help subsidise teclo networks

The European Commission, according to a document seen by Bloomberg, wants telecom companies to provide evidence that streaming sites such as Netflix and YouTube should pay for additional traffic sent over their networks.

Telcos will reportedly be asked to provide details of how much traffic has increased in the past three years, where the increased traffic is coming from, and what the impact of the higher traffic is having in terms of costs, according to a draft questionnaire from April.

As part of the proposed questionnaire, tech companies will also be asked how their costs have increased, their relationships with the telcos, and whether there are any signs of ‘market failure’ in how content is delivered across networks.

While the Commission has declined to comment on the matter, there have been rumblings of a proposal for a “fair share” renumeration policy for many months now, potentially requiring companies that provide streaming services and other data-heavy applications to compensate telecoms operators for the amount of traffic they send over their networks. Operators would then be able to use the additional funds to invest in their network rollouts and upgrade infrastructure.

There has been fierce debate in response to this proposal, with parliamentarians, open internet campaigners, and the tech giants themselves raising concerns that such proposals would hurt net neutrality and potentially create a two-tiered internet across the bloc.

Responses have also differed nationally with the Dutch and German governments urging the Commission to wait for BEREC’s final report, as well as open consultation with member governments and citizens before moving ahead with a proposal. In contrast, according to a Reuters report from earlier in the summer, the French and Italian governments have increased calls for a renumeration policy to be implemented.

The questionnaire has yet to be fully finalised, and a final proposal will be ready at the end of this year or the beginning of 2023. However, given the issues at stake, this is a debate that is likely to run for much longer.

 

Should the content giants be forced to help pay for the network infrastructure they so rely on? Join the experts in discussion about this and other fascinating topics at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
Jio prepares to plough $25bn into 5G
VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network

The post European Commission to ask telcos for proof that US tech giants should pay for traffic first appeared on Total Telecom.

Network operator and ISP Giganet, which offers gigabit broadband to UK homes and businesses via its own full fibre infrastructure (as well as via third-parties including Openreach and CityFibre), has today announced the acquisition of upcoming internet provider Cuckoo as part of efforts to grow its reach into the wider market. Giganet is currently best-known […]

Mobile operators and some broadband ISPs including Vodafone, BT, EE, Plusnet, iD Mobile, O2 and Virgin Media have in the last week responded, separately, to the massive floods in Pakistan by giving their UK customers free calls to the country and roaming. The gestures and timeframes tend to vary, but it appears to have started […]

Hull-based UK ISP Pure Broadband, which in March 2022 announced that their broadband packages had been made available via MS3’s new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in the North of England (here), has suddenly stopped offering related services since being taken over by Connexin in July (here). Until now Pure Broadband has tended to deliver […]