TP-Link has successfully completed a trial of Wi-Fi 8 in a move the company described as a “critical milestone” in the development of next-generation wireless connectivity.

In a trial conducted alongside an unnamed industry partner, the company said data transmission using a “prototype” device. This test successfully validated both the Wi-Fi 8 beacon and data throughput, according to TP-Link.

“This underscores the feasibility of the technology and marks a critical milestone in global Wi-Fi 8 development,” the company said in a statement.

“TP-Link is taking the next important step towards the highly reliable wireless performance that the industry requires, given the increasing availability of devices and bandwidth-intensive applications.”

The announcement from TP-Link comes in the wake of rapid Wi-Fi 7 adoption in recent years. As ITPro reported in early 2024, the Wi-Fi Alliance began certifying devices that supported the new connectivity standard, which offers improved speed and connectivity compared to its predecessor.

Wi-Fi 7, for example, provides speeds up to four-time faster than Wi-Fi 6 and 6E.

However, if you’re expecting similar improvements akin to the jump from Wi-Fi 6E to Wi-Fi 7, you might be left disappointed. This latest iteration won’t blow users away as far as speed or bandwidth goes.

Indeed, specifications released by the company show Wi-Fi 8 will use the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands – which are already used by Wi-Fi 7. Elsewhere, Wi-Fi 8 will also use a 48 Gbps data rate with a 320 MHz maximum channel bandwidth.

So what’s all the fuss about?

What to expect from Wi-Fi 8

TP-Link is keen to emphasize that this marks the first major breakthrough in development of the new standard, which is a significant milestone.

There will be notable improvements for users, however. Chief among these are stability and reliability, the firm noted.

“Wi-Fi 8 is the next Wi-Fi standard, focused on ultra-high reliability,” TP-Link said in a statement. “Instead of striving for maximum speed, it focuses on stable connections, stronger coverage, and smoother roaming – even on heavily congested networks.”

Wi-Fi 8 will also better manage more devices simultaneously and provide users with a stable connection while moving around a home or office space, for example.

“Devices experience less lag and greater stability - even at greater distances from the router.”

Don’t hold your breath for the arrival of Wi-Fi 8, however. The standard still needs to be ratified, which the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently noted will be finalized by 2028.

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Three Ireland and Ericsson have announced the launch of a new managed 5G service aimed at bolstering enterprise connectivity.

Dubbed 3Business Broadband Pro, the new service represents a “groundbreaking leap in connectivity” for businesses across the country, the duo claimed, providing users with improved reliability, performance, and scalability.

The service will use the Ericsson Cradlepoint X10 Router, managed through the Ericsson NetCloud service, and is targeted for use across a range of sectors, from retail to remote operations.

“By combining Ericsson’s advanced wireless solutions with Three’s customer-centric approach, we are enabling connectivity that will unlock new levels of agility, security, and scalability,” said Ross Hockey, senior director for EMEA service provider sales at Ericsson.

“This innovative platform not only addresses the evolving technology needs of today’s businesses but also paves the way for future digital transformation and growth.”

What customers can expect from 3Business Broadband Pro

Underpinned by Ericsson NetCloud, the duo said the new managed service will give users a “single dashboard” through which they can configure, deploy, and monitor network devices across multiple locations.

This includes access to 4G and 5G connectivity depending on specific needs, Ericsson revealed in a statement.

Meanwhile, the X10 router will facilitate the delivery of the service, with customers also granted an “optional battery backup capability” to maintain connectivity in the event of power outages.

Key features of the managed 5G service touted by the duo include “pro high-speed connectivity” for uploads and downloads, which Ericsson said will ensure businesses can “operate seamlessly without interruptions”.

Scalability is another big talking point with the launch of the service, with enterprises able to adjust usage based on changing needs. This will give users the ability to add new users and locations without the need for costly infrastructure expansion projects.

Other features include “high-grade encryption” and data protection measures to bolster security and ensure compliance with privacy regulations

“Three understands how important it is for businesses to have solutions that are agile, reliable and secure,” said Ciara O’Reilly, head of business product at Three Ireland.

“Utilizing Ericsson’s transformational technology, 3Business Broadband Pro will truly alter how businesses control and engage with their own connectivity systems, providing an enhanced means of managing their users and hardware remotely.”

Similarly, the service will offer customers enhanced support through Three Ireland’s customer care team in Limerick.

This, the duo said, will allow remote access to equipment to streamline troubleshooting and remediation in the event of faults or downtime.

MORE FROM ITPRO

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• Can AI deliver better broadband?
• Does satellite broadband have a business case in the UK and EU?

AI can help operators accelerate broadband deployments, in particular if it's used to design networks, according to new research.

A report by the World Broadband Association (WBBA) argued that the technology could help in the pre-deployment phases of broadband networks by being put to work during network planning and expansion.

The findings of the report were presented at the Broadband Development Congress (BDC) in Barcelona this week.

So far, telecom companies are focused on AI for customer service and network troubleshooting and optimization — all useful applications but by bringing AI into systems earlier, there could be further benefits.

By using AI to help with network development, operators can make sure they roll out infrastructure to the right places at the right time and with the right technologies, the report noted. Similarly, this could help ensure a return on investment (ROI).

"The pre-deployment phases in broadband are periods of decision-making and network planning before infrastructure is rolled out or upgraded," said Martin Creaner, Director General of the WBBA.

"It’s an ideal environment for AI to make an impact, and if its models are supported by the right data and algorithms, then it can be used to help operators predict the return on their investments much more accurately."

Using AI to support broadband deployments

The white paper suggested, for example, that an AI model can identify the most suitable areas for a new broadband deployment, when to make upgrades from copper to fiber, or how to improve penetration in rural areas by considering existing networks, customer data, and geography, as well as costs.

"All of these decisions should be informed by many interdependent factors and moving pieces related to deployment costs, demand dynamics, wholesale versus retail trade-offs, and regulatory constraints," the report noted.

"AI can play a key role in generating and analyzing a huge quantity of high-quality data for some (or all) of these factors to produce outputs for one (or more) of these decisions while optimizing the ultimate objective variable (which, in this case, is assumed to be ROI in broadband investment)."

That information can help operators decide when and where to deploy, which customers to target, and how to price services, the white paper noted.

However, the WBBA warned that this approach requires the right dataset and that AI has limitations. As such, operators should understand that it works best with clear constraints and is used alongside existing analysis for the best results.

"AI is not a magic wand that can solve the entire ROI optimization problem, but it can add significant accuracy to parts of the equation," the paper noted.

AI needs broadband too

The WBBA also noted that more efficient broadband was necessary to power the shift to AI and next-generation internet services.

"There is no single use case that will drive demand for gigabit broadband access," the WBBA said in a separate report about Gigabit broadband.

"It will be driven by a combination of three core trends: a rapid increase in connected devices, the development of advanced video-enabled AI applications, and the shift of computing power to the cloud. This combination will drive the need for high-speed, low-latency, highly reliable, and consistent networks."

As part of its Gigacity Index 2025, the WBBA ranked the broadband sophistication of cities around the world, revealing Singapore, Shanghai, Zurich, Hong Kong, and Dubai as the leaders.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• UK rural businesses set for broadband boosts
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One-in-ten UK businesses are being held back by insufficient bandwidth, a new report from Beaming has revealed.

This equates to over half a million (560,000) firms nationwide, including 370,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on standard broadband services and 122,000 using fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) connectivity.

Medium-sized and large organizations are being affected as well, with around 35,000 of these larger firms yet to upgrade to dedicated ethernet or other gigabit-capable systems.

Poor connectivity is a serious IT challenge, particularly as data volumes and communications traffic increases, the study warned. Network capacity demand from UK businesses saw a 30% increase over the course of 2024, Beaming said.

Insufficient bandwidth can cause a range of issues, the study found. Overloaded networks can delay customer interactions and affect workflows by slowing access to cloud applications and communications tools. They can also force businesses into periods of downtime that prevent communication or transactions.

There’s a security aspect as well, as network congestion can mask suspicious activity and allow malware into systems, making firms more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Businesses are straining their bandwidth

Bandwidth and connectivity problems can create significant costs for businesses, according to Tom Grange, director of connectivity business at Bionic, and firms need to consider how they manage internet infrastructure.

Video calling tools and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems, for example, can demand a lot of bandwidth, so firms should ensure VoIP has dedicated resources to maintain call quality, Grange told ITPro. Peer-to-peer file sharing can also drain bandwidth, as well as overcrowded connections.

"When multiple employees are using the same, single connection, more devices will use more bandwidth. Because of this, each device is automatically allotted a smaller portion of available bandwidth which can result in slower data transfer," Grange said.

How can businesses mitigate the issue?

Provisioning sufficient bandwidth and ensuring internet connections can handle peak traffic is key, Beaming’s report stated, as well as implementing Quality of Service (QoS) measures that prioritize critical applications.

Firms can employ advanced traffic management systems, for example - these are tools that can be utilized to manage network traffic more efficiently, prevent network congestion, and ensure smoother operations.

Proactive monitoring is also useful. By keeping a close eye on network performance, businesses can identify potential issues and address them before they become problematic.

MORE FROM ITPRO

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London’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) are making £28 billion a year less than they should thanks to slow and unreliable workplace broadband connectivity, new research shows.

High costs, along with the complexity of securing reliable services, make the cost of fast and dependable connectivity prohibitive for many firms, according to analysis from G.Network.

This, the company said, leaves many SMBs at a major disadvantage in terms of productivity, innovation, and competitiveness.

"Digital connectivity is at the heart of London’s economy, but despite extensive availability the SMEs we spoke to for the research are still suffering because connections are too costly and complicated," said Kevin Murphy, CEO of G.Network.

"As an SME ourselves, we understand the challenges they’re facing, and we’re determined to put an end to slow internet speeds."

Working with Censuswide and Development Economics, researchers surveyed senior leaders and business owners at the capital’s SMBs, with the results used in conjunction with ONS data to establish the overall economic impact on revenue.

The study found broadband issues have negatively affected productivity for a quarter of all employees over the last three months, leading to an estimated annual lost output of £5.34 billion Gross Value Added (GVA).

More than half of senior leaders and business owners said they'd considered moving office locations to get better access to faster and more reliable internet services, with four-in-ten stating they can’t serve clients in the way they’d like due to connectivity problems.

A quarter admitted that problems with slow or unreliable broadband have caused them to lose out on business. Similarly, almost half (47%) of business owners and senior leaders said employee productivity is often undermined by poor connectivity.

How improved broadband connectivity can solve SMB problems

SMBs identified quicker response times to clients and customers as two of the key benefits they could reap from improved connectivity.

Looking ahead, said G.Network, the productivity gap experienced by SMBs is only likely to get worse, with poor connectivity compromising their ability to leverage emerging technologies and remain competitive in an increasingly digital economy.

"London’s SMEs play a key role in powering growth and productivity in the capital," commented John Dickie, CEO of London business advocacy group BusinessLDN.

"This important research from G.Network not only underlines the connectivity challenges that businesses in the capital are facing, but also shines a light on the fantastic growth opportunity that lies ahead, for London and the wider UK, should access to fast and reliable broadband be improved for the city’s SMEs."

Achieving excellent internet speed and low latency can break down the barriers to productivity and unlock value for almost any business. But without reliability, speed doesn't matter very much.

Just as it’s no good having a good product if you don’t have enough employees to sell it, superfast broadband speeds are only useful to a business if they can be relied upon. Many organizations over-invest in superfast headline speeds without considering this and end up tied to an internet service that is fast but flaky.

Across the UK, poor reliability has a big impact. Research by Uswitch found that 11 million overall UK customers experienced broadband outages lasting at least three hours between 2021 and 2022, with a total financial impact of £1.3 billion on the UK economy. 

It’s up to business leaders to ensure that when their employees come to the office, they can reliably connect to the internet and complete their work undisturbed by poor latency, slow downloads, or outages.

When your internet connection is unreliable, it’s not just your leaders or workforce that will bear the brunt of this. Poor performance always finds its way along the chain to partners and customers; finding a solution that means you can be there for your customers when they need you is as much a matter of reputation as it is revenue.

Direct leased lines offer the most reliable internet connection alongside the highest speeds, with upload and download rates ranging from 50Mbits/sec to 10Gbits/sec. They provide symmetrical connections, allowing firms to make use of identical upload and download speeds and work that requires any level of connectivity done to the same high measure regardless of the time of day.

Guaranteed fibre and bespoke maintenance

Because leased line fibre involves a business making a direct contract with an internet service provider (ISP), it comes with guarantees and services that are not standard for every internet contract.

For example, the ISP laying fresh cable specifically for a customer helps to prevent any hardware problems in the immediate future and ensures that the specifications meet a client’s needs exactly.

In the unlikely event that a business’s leased line does go down, technicians can also react with haste and work with the affected business to resolve the problem as soon as possible. Unlike businesses that share a cabinet with other firms or even residential addresses, those on leased lines can be served on a 1:1 basis by their supplier.

Through BTnet, businesses get a 100% uptime guarantee to make sure that vital services stay running at all times and employees don’t have to sit idle. Alongside the symmetrical connections of the leased line, this means employees can do their work with total confidence in fast connectivity with the lowest possible latency.

Business leaders who choose BT for their leased line will have direct contact with BT from the day the line is installed, rather than relying on a third-party supplier. This begins from the moment a contract is agreed

If something does happen to affect availability, BT offers 24/7 support and technicians will be dispatched to address issues within five hours. In this way, a business’s losses can be reduced even for more severe internet outages.

BT has backed its confidence in BTnet with a promise to reduce the rental charges for customers who experience an outage. Rates are set out in the SLA and can reach the equivalent of ten days’ rental charge for hours lost to outages.

Guaranteed speed

Because a business doesn’t have to share its connection with others when on a leased line, it will never lose out by having to share bandwidth. With a direct leased line, there are no periods in which a business has to deal with slower broadband due to the time of day or the intensity of a neighboring company’s internet habits.

This frees leaders to adopt or maintain flexible aspects to their working day, including asynchronous collaboration, without the need to predict the time at which the internet will be fastest or anticipate potential slowdowns and outages at a specific time caused by a bottleneck in their business broadband. 

A direct leased line for fibre can ensure that an internet connection is maintained all day and night without the need for more staff and whenever an employee needs the internet in the office, it’s there to be used.

The leaders at Castle Grove, a nursing home in Devon, contacted BT to conduct a digital transformation project on its site linked to resident internet demands and its own pugs for a more resilient and convenient WiFi system.

BT sent a local business expert to Castle Grove, to tailor the project to meet the needs of the nursing home. It found that a dedicated leased line would allow Castle Grove to rapidly improve the quality of data transfers taking place on-site. The reliability and guaranteed bandwidth allow Castle Grove to deliver consistent digital services to its residents, in the same way that one’s employees can make use of solid fibre without breaks.

Castle Grove also experiences fairly regular power failures and there was a prolonged period after each power outage in which its internet connection struggled to reassert itself. BTnet means that once the power cut is resolved they are back online extremely quickly.

The reliability of a direct leased line can be further enhanced through integrated cyber security controls. As your first line of defense against malware and other threats, your internet service is improved if it can independently screen against attackers before any additional security measures come into play.

Being able to repel attacks feeds directly into uptime guarantees, with the number of cyber attacks on UK organizations continuing to surge each year. BTnet customers have the choice to add a Cisco firewall to protect their internal network from malicious external traffic and URL filtering to prevent employees from inadvertently visiting unsafe content.

It also comes with resilience guarantees for the core network, which can help prevent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from affecting a business’s services.

In choosing BTnet, businesses can achieve the support they need while safe in the knowledge that multiple contingency plans are in place to keep services safe. Even in the most intense circumstances such as a cyber attack on a business’ connectivity, BT works to resume services as they were.

For more information on BTnet dedicated leased line options, click here.

Every modern business owner knows the importance of a good internet connection. Those moments in which network connectivity fails us stick out in our memory: Calls canceled, projects delayed, emails unsent. With the world more connected than ever, business leaders should treat internet provisions as seriously as other necessary utilities.

But even in a world so reliant on the internet, guarantees of connectivity can still be hard to come by. Business broadband connections can vary in reliability or fail to live up to their promised speeds, which can be endlessly frustrating for workers. Done right, workers shouldn’t have to concern themselves with upload and download bandwidth — the internet should just work for them seamlessly.

Dedicated leased lines are one antidote to this situation. These cut out the middle man entirely by connecting businesses directly to their nearest exchange, and come with better peak speeds and more reliable download and upload in general.

When one uses a broadband connection, one almost always shares bandwidth with multiple different parties in a balance. This is measured using a ‘contention ratio’ expressed as n:1, with a higher number indicating more users sharing one connection and therefore a higher likelihood of bandwidth issues or slow uploads and downloads.

Through a dedicated leased line, businesses can achieve a contention ratio of 1:1, meaning they have guaranteed bandwidth and no dips in speed at peak times. These steady speeds can range up to 10Gbit/sec both up and down, which provides connectivity capable of handling whatever employees need.

Reliable fibre for urban or rural offices

Businesses looking to thrive and expand outside of the UK’s biggest cities have waited a long time to be adequately served by the UK’s fibre boom. Sadly, rural communities are still repeatedly overlooked when it comes to providing internet connectivity.

A direct leased line can provide fibre to the majority of sites in the UK and can be a far more reliable method of ensuring one has the internet speeds one needs, rather than waiting for a fibre cabinet to be built near the office.

The end result of this is more freedom to choose where you build your business. At present, businesses have to play the post code lottery when it comes to seeking out the fastest speeds, or are often forced to shift their office closer to a city to enjoy the low latency their competitors already do. This creates rural brain drain and prevents entrepreneurs situated outside cities from achieving their goals. Direct leased lines can alleviate these strains.

Another common occurrence with business broadband – and rural broadband in particular – is downtime. Days where the internet is very slow or goes down completely can kill productivity, or drive employees into spending more time working from home. A direct leased line through a service like BTnet Leased Line comes with a service level agreement (SLA) that comes with guarantees for fibre performance.

With BTnet, businesses are given a 100% uptime SLA, to ensure they have the connectivity they need day or night. The service also comes with 24/7 network support, as a person-to-person backup should the worst case scenario happen. It's this kind of consistency, offered independent of location and not limited to large enterprise, that business leaders have been seeking out since the fibre rollout first began.

Dedicated leased line customers also get a symmetrical connection. This means that the upload and download speeds are equal to one another, to ensure that workforces don’t have to compromise on their activities in the name of particularly fast downloads or uploads. Those who do a lot of video conferencing or who work with large file sizes can especially benefit from this.

Upload speed is often lacking in traditional broadband plans, or at least offered at a slower rate than download speed. Having this symmetrical dedicated line also means that workers can send data via the internet without having to worry about potential data theft or leakage.

Latency is another consideration. Those in roles that necessitate accurate and timely responses to events such as being as present as possible during an important video call or interfacing with remote autonomous vehicles need as low latency as they can possibly get, to reduce unwanted lag. BT’s leased line offers a steady 20ms response time within the UK. and 95ms for cross-atlantic connectivity. The former pushes the limits of human perception, with many users unable to clearly discern the little lag that is present.

This all ensures that staff enjoy as lag-free and borderless an experience as possible while doing their daily work. As previously mentioned, if your staff are actively noticing their internet connection, it means it’s too slow. This is the beginning of real dissatisfaction and productivity issues.

Another benefit of a dedicated leased line is the reassurance that one’s data is safe. With no one else sharing the line, there’s no local way for hackers to perform attacks by joining the same network. 

Adopting a leased line doesn’t mean committing to a one-size-fits-all approach. Depending on the scale and demand of your business, there are a variety of options for speed and additional tools but all retain those core bandwidth and latency guarantees of a leased line.

Leased lines can be scaled up to suit the growing demand of a business down the road. If gigabit internet isn't a need just yet, one can still tap into the consistency and low latency of direct leased line fibre at speeds starting at 500Mbits/sec.

Business broadband has come a long way in the past few decades, but still has issues that are disproportionately felt by those in rural regions. Through a direct leased line like that available with BTnet, business leaders can ensure their teams have the speeds they deserve, whenever they need them.

For more information on BTnet dedicated leased line options, click here.

Rural communities face increased brain drain, poorer business opportunities, and worsening digital exclusion under current government broadband plans, an industry expert has argued.

Poor broadband outreach has undermined the potential of rural businesses, said Dave Happy, Managing Director Telint Ltd and Non-Executive Director Jet Engineering, with many job seekers now being forced to relocate to well-resourced urban centres instead.

Speaking on the IT Pro Podcast, Happy argued the effect of poor connectivity on rural communities is far worse than the stats may suggest.

“The loss to the rural economy of not having this fibre in place is infinitely greater and far more personal than people really understand.

“In terms of gross value added (GVA) I think the stats, if anything, are depressed. I think that the real loss to the rural economy is far more significant than we can report, because one has to remember these are simply economic indices of measurement.”

Happy warned that businesspeople who may wish to establish companies in rural areas are being deterred from doing so due to their poor connectivity. He gave the example of attempting to conduct a simple Teams voice call while driving through Dorset, and having been unable to due to poor connectivity.

The more prospective entrepreneurs and tech workers move to urban areas out of necessity, both in terms of better connectivity and job opportunities, the worse the overall landscape for rural business becomes.

Current network availability may also be hindering innovation throughout rural England. Leading edge technologies such as 5G mmWave also have a role to play in the agricultural tech sector, according to Happy, including using the standard’s high throughput for analysing individual ears of grain in a field. However, Happy argued that the current government thinking on 5G use cases is too siloed for rural businesses to benefit.

Happy suggested that “pockets of excellence” may be deployed, with research and development hubs designed to help build expertise in a given area spread throughout rural England. These could fill the same role as centres such as the University of Sheffield’s new 6G research facility. He’s currently working on a Skills Development and Training Centre for delivering fibre alongside water at Dorset Innovation Park.

These could help to retain local graduate talent, as well as attract workers from around the country to bolster rural business and improve connectivity in underserved areas.

The government’s target is for 99% of UK premises to have gigabit-capable broadband by 2030. However, in its latest update, Building Digital UK (BDUK) reported that only 36% of rural premises are gigabit-capable and just 33% have full-fibre broadband.

“I actually feel deep concern and support, and pity for BDUK, I think they're trying to do a cracking job. They really are trying to make a difference. And their approach to open access and stuff is really good.

“But on the one hand they're doing great work and on the other hand, it almost feels like Ofcom's given them a kicking, because what we're doing by changing what areas are not covered by what, and when, it doesn't seem to me that it's quite joined up.”

Britain’s fibre broadband boom is continuing apace, and alternative network providers (altnets) are leading the charge into rural spaces. Happy highlighted Wessex Internet as one such altnet direct-burying fibre, and noted that these smaller firms may be key in delivering more fibre for rural areas, and delivering on open network opportunities.

The planned 3G sunset, which will see 2G and 3G services shut down across the UK in order for network operators to prioritise 4G and 5G, could also affect rural businesses to a disproportionate extent. Many rural businesses use cellular services for reliable connectivity, and Happy pointed out that “it is not impossible these days that you might be served by some kind of radio solution, or might even be dependent on your 2G or 3G signal”.

He argued that as 3G fills a connectivity niche between 2G and 4G, it’s possible that retiring it could be done with minimal disruption, but that 2G is a more critical network without which rural businesses will suffer.

“2G does give you that excellent coverage,” said Happy.

“The difficulty in terms of spectral efficiency is well known, it's not the most efficient. However, I don't think that they can turn it off easily because the quality of the rest of the infrastructure in a rural area simply won't permit it. Now, I haven't seen that actually stated in a press release by anybody anywhere. But that's the real truth behind it.

“So you can't switch 2G off because it's such an elementary baseline and there's nothing else if you did, it would be a disaster.”

The government has begun trials with Starlink in Snowdonia to test the effectiveness of satellite broadband as a solution for underserved rural areas. However, this will not be able to provide gigabit internet and instead will offer top speeds of 200 Mbit/sec through direct contact with special user terminals.

For most of us, updating software requires merely a few taps or clicks on our device before watching a progress bar fly across the screen. For University of Birmingham astronomer George Dransfield, however, it isn’t so easy.

Last summer she took a plane to Hobart in Australia, then, after a spell in quarantine, flew to Wilkins Aerodrome on the coast of Antarctica. After an Antarctic bus ride to Casey Station, and one final flight on board a tiny Basler turboprop, she arrived at her final destination: Concordia Station, which sits 680 miles inland. She came armed with a couple of portable hard drives, a laptop, and seven weeks to perform critical software maintenance.

Dransfield’s mission was to update the software that processes data collected by the most remote space telescope on Earth. The epic journey was essential because the station lacked anything resembling decent internet connectivity. And this is a problem when images taken by the telescope, A-STEP, are 4,096 x 4,096 pixels each.

“We spend the time taking images of the sky, and each image is about 150MB,” explains Dransfield. “Like most telescopes, you download the raw images to your computer after a night of observing, and you process them yourself.”

It’s getting the images out of Antarctica that’s the tricky bit. The station itself does have an connection back to the rest of the world, but only via satellite, and it can only reach dial-up era speeds that would have been impressive in, say, 1996. “Our internet connection has recently been upgraded,” says Dransfield. “We can now reach speeds of 80kB/sec.”

The only way to retrieve the raw data is if somebody goes the following year and puts it on a hard drive, she adds. Rather than beaming them back at snails’ pace, then, Concordia uses software to automatically analyse images and return a snapshot of the data – akin to attaching a low-resolution JPEG instead of a fully-fledged RAW image file – over the satellite connection. It means that scientists back at the University of Birmingham, and in other places around the world, at least have some data to work with.

Patching the hard way

The software Dransfield was sent to upgrade manages the data pipeline, taking data from the telescope and processing it. It was originally written in IDL, a language similar to Fortran developed in the 1970s. But before heading south, Dransfield was tasked with rewriting the entire stack in the relatively modern Python.

Updating it remotely was not an option. “If I want to edit maybe five or six lines of code, I need to set aside at least an hour,” says Dransfield. “You're in a terminal, you type a letter, and then it takes two or three seconds for that letter to actually appear. I cannot begin to explain how tedious it is.”

Getting the new software installed was important, though, so the telescope could actually do some science. “They changed the camera so the images that came in this year were different from last year's images. So, I had to do a million fixes to adapt everything.”

Even if Dransfield could put up with the dismally slow connection, the limited connectivity means only one person could access the virtual private network (VPN) at once. So, it was time to head for the Antarctic. “This is such an enormous piece of software, so I couldn't just upload it,” says Dransfield, “Because I'd written the software, I had to be the one to install it.”

The two towers of the climate station Concordia, based in Antarctica

Before taking off, however, other obstacles presented themselves. “You'd think that with such big important operations, people would be really careful about everything, but no one could tell me for sure what the specs of the new server were that they had shipped down there,” she laughs. “I needed to test installation on a really similar computer, but I didn't know what that was.”

Although the code was destined to run on a Linux system, she couldn’t be sure exactly which packages and binaries would run on the destination system. Before she set off, she set out to test her code on as many different computer systems as possible, including a Raspberry Pi. This was necessary because the effective lack of internet connection removed a key tool in every coder’s arsenal – access to Stack Overflow. “It was genuinely super challenging to do this job without access to the internet and access to help from other people,” says Dransfield.

Embracing the satellite broadband disruption

Concordia is currently stuck with a torturously slow connection, but things may be about to change. Last September, SpaceX announced that its Starlink satellite broadband system was now available in Antarctica. Satellite broadband is gaining momentum, with many suggesting it could be a definitive solution to rural connectivity woes.

What makes it different to what came before from the likes of Iridium is that Starlink is a mega-constellation of up to 12,000, with almost 3,000 already in space. This means each satellite covers a significantly smaller patch of the Earth – so bandwidth isn’t shared between so many users – and they’re closer to the ground, meaning latency becomes less of a problem for activities such as videoconferencing.

Given Concordia doesn’t have any neighbours, it’s conceivable that if the system was deployed, it could enjoy up to 200Mbits/sec, roughly equivalent to an excellent home broadband connection, and plenty fast enough to shuffle masses of data around.

Other Antarctic research bases, such as the American McMurdo station, are already trialling the technology. What difference could it make to Corcondia? “That level of bandwidth increase would be transformative,” says Dransfield. “It would save me so much time, I'd be able to SSH in and just make any adjustments that I have to make quickly. It would also mean that we'd be able to, more often, download raw images.”

Dransfield recently attended a conference of Antarctic scientists, and the enthusiasm for Starlink was palpable. “Most people are just like, yes, Starlink, as soon as it's available, we're going to go for that because we need the bandwidth.”

Of the Antarctic scientists present, however, only a handful were astronomers – and this gives Dransfield a very different perspective on satellite broadband. It turns out, despite the enormous bandwidth benefits, she’s not a fan of Starlink. “We have a different thing to balance,” says Dransfield, “because we can see Starlink in our images.”

Could satellite broadband scupper astronomy?

“We're not super keen on the idea,” she adds. “If you look at images from places like other popular observing sites there's little streaks that you see.”

The streaks are the motion trails of satellites in orbit around the Earth, captured because space telescopes take long exposures to capture objects far away in space. SpaceX will be putting up a lot of satellites, and while Dransfield wants the internet, she doesn’t want the satellites ruining what’s one of the most important and unique astronomical sites we have.

It’s a criticism SpaceX has heard before. "I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries – zero," said founder Elon Musk in 2020, "That's my prediction, we will take corrective action if it's above zero."

Space telescopes take long exposure shots and are susceptible to picking up streaks

Theoretically, it’s possible for astronomers to correct their data to account for satellites getting in the way of the telescope. But Dransfield ultimately believes there’s a more fundamental problem. “If we know their orbits then we can just correct our images for them, but I think [SpaceX] underestimate how much additional work that is.”

This sort of error correction is already common in astronomy – the satellites and other objects are referred to as “systematics”, and astronomers are used to modifying their data to account for, say, the Hubble Space Telescope moving into view in the skies above. But Starlink is on a different level.

“It's an additional systematic error in our data,” says Dransfield. “The problem is the more you correct your data for systematics, the more that increases the uncertainty on the actual end result."

For example, if she were to detect a planet in orbit around a distant star, she might attempt to calculate the size of the planet, but the error bars on the calculation will be much wider – because the “systematic” has introduced more uncertainty. “Sometimes we're looking for really, really small events, like shallow changes in brightness of a star, and if you can't trust those changes in brightness because you had a Starlink transit as well, then it could end up just ruining so much otherwise awesome data,” she says.

Weighing the trade-off of the potential benefits of Starlink with the impact on her work is difficult – but it’s a battle she worries she is going to lose. “Because there's not a lot of astronomy in Antarctica, our voices are not as important as everybody else who is just like, 'Yeah, but we could have internet.'

“As an astronomer with access to Antarctica, I cannot begin to tell you how unique it is and how special what we can do from there is, in our field of searching for planets,” Dransfield says. “I would prefer it if they didn't contaminate our skies further, to be honest, because the skies are so, so precious.”

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘The crisis in rural connectivity'. We apologise for any errors.

Rory Bathgate

Hi, I'm Rory Bathgate.

Jane McCallion

And I'm Jane McCallion.

Rory

And you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast, where today we're discussing rural connectivity.

Jane

The conversation around UK connectivity is often centred around the rollout of 5G, or the race for widespread gigabit broadband. But for many rural communities, basic connectivity such as reliable cellular service is still lacking, limiting the successful operation of rural businesses and continuing the already present divide between business in and out of the UK’s big cities.

Rory

In areas like Dorset, private groups have taken measures into their own hands to ensure they receive the connectivity they need in the region. Today, we're speaking to Dave Happy, collaboration lead at 5GRuralDorset, to discuss the connection difficulties facing rural businesses, and what is being done to help.

Dave Happy

Thank you very much indeed. Well I have to say this, of all the things I've done in my 37 years in telecoms, is the one closest to my heart. Thank you for having me.

Jane

Thank you very much for joining us. So first off, can you tell us a little bit more about 5g rural Dorset?

Dave

Yeah, I'll give you a short pen portrait. It was part of the original department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport's, 5G testbeds and trials programme. It was originally envisioned as a programme that was only going to be of around value 5 million I think. During the course of the two and a half years or thereabouts that it ran, with an extension, it doubled in value. The partners included all kinds of people from Dorset Council who led it, I have to say, excellently to a large bunch of smees from all over the United Kingdom. There was academic input from Strathclyde University up in Scotland, one of the largest industry participants came from Wales. Rural is a big problem. And to think that Dorset could be at the forefront of leading a programme like this to help rural was something I'm immensely proud of. And although that piece, the formal piece has now come to an end, I think that the legacy speaks for itself. And there's now a formal mapping programme, which we can also discuss, and how that fits in with the programme later on in the podcast.

Jane

Yeah, it's really interesting, you say about how big the rural community is in the UK. We're often as you said in the introduction, whenever we're talking about connectivity we're talking about London, classically and Manchester, Liverpool, and so on. But a very high percentage of the UK is not a metropolitan area, it's small towns, it's hamlets, it's villages. And there are there are people living in those areas who would like to connect to the internet, in fact.

Dave

Yeah, and I have to say that not only do I strongly agree with you, I think it's long overdue or well past the point where we need to be gripping this problem as a nation. You know, having worked as a vice president in Samsung for a while, one of the things that I picked up in career was the great word 'pali-pali': 'now, now'. I cannot understand after 37 years why we still even have a digital divide, let alone on a scale which with the withdrawal of 2G, 3G, and copper switch off is actually going to be exacerbated, not improved. Now, however you look at that it's unacceptable. I've been told in the past never to use the word digital apartheid, which is now precisely why I do so. Because to me, this is a form of discrimination against those that happen to have grown up in a rural area, or those who are elderly and happen to live in such a rural area for whatever reason. Or a farmer who happens to be clearly by nature of his or her profession, in the middle of a rural area. And why should they have any poorer quality of service, not be able to place an order for their items on Amazon, not be able to download Netflix. But more importantly, interface with their surgery, get help from the council, try to interact with a bank to find out what their credit should be on, for example, an electricity bill not that many of us are worried about this stuff. But we really are. This is the reality of life in a rural community, and it frankly is unacceptable. We need to be gripping this, and to the extent that 5G RuralDorset has been able to play a part in fixing that problem, which incidentally it was never designed to fix, it's absolutely brilliant that this stays on the agenda. And we need to make damn sure it stays there until it's fixed.

Jane

And not to mention all these case studies of how the IoT can be used in farming, which are all great. We have, we'll have to put it in the related links in the show notes, a case study involving connected cows. But you know, you hear more about sort of combines and other law large machines on farms that in theory could be connected. But if there's no signal, then you might as well not bother, because they're certainly not going to drive themselves.

Dave

I mean, this is one of the weird things okay? Clearly, if you're setting this up and you only live in Westminster, and you've never heard of a famous place in Dorset called un Iwerne Minster... Iwerne Minster is not Westminster. These are different worlds, the solutions and the remedies that one might apply as a regulator or as a policymaker that might fit well in Victoria Street or outside Westminster Abbey do not uniformly apply in areas that don't have even basic service. And one of the things that we need to do is to make sure, as I said earlier, that we're not disadvantaging whole swathes of our population, young and old, who just happen to have the misfortune to live somewhere that doesn't have good connectivity and therefore can't even benefit from all the new stuff that we've been dreaming up. And I'll give you one thought. One of the things that we were doing appeared to be an unrelated project. And if you think back into the history of how our industry worked one of the biggest successes on the mobile networks, as I'm sure you may not know because your're both far too young, was SMS, Short Message Service. Now, this was not something that network operators foresaw as a major growth. And yet it was, and it was because it met a specific need. Well, now we have another specific need. And let me outline to you one of those examples. On what appeared to be an unrelated programme, we were looking at how we might improve grain production. We were looking at this partly as a result of the situation in the Ukraine, which as some of you may know was the world's second largest grain producer, until recent events, obviously made that impossible. So how can we still use less but generate more? Well, I'd actually go as far as to say I think we're in the middle of a second agrarian revolution right now, through agri tech that people just haven't woken up to, because they're all too busy telling me about industry, 4.0. I'm really tired of this. Right, what we did was we started using very high frequency radio. And for those of you that know anything about physics, and again I'll keep this really simple so as not to bore you. If a signal can only travel a short distance, we typically call it a high frequency signal and to that high frequency signal you can attach a lot of megabits or gigabits, whatever you want to call it to. So the lesson that I want to give you is if you're going to go for higher-frequency spectrum, it might only travel a few hundred metres but you might be able to carry gigabits worth of data over it. Now think about this. Everybody thinks of these applications in terms of small cells in a city, right? Oh there's lots of people in Oxford Street, they're all using tonnes of stuff, because they all want to watch Netflix while simultaneously being on eight teams calls and talking to their grandma in Bolivia. I mean, the reality is fine that's all true. But don't forget, through AI and analytics and smart technology I also want to use that in a rural area. What we did was we said, "Okay, what if we could use millimetre wave and connect it to an unmanned tractor using electricity? What's the advantage there? Why would we do it?". First of all, we had a system where we could use that tractor and we could scan a field for every single plant, we could then go back to a database and decide is that plant a weed? Or is it not not a weed, right? If we say "no, it's not a weed", we leave it. If it is a weed, we have an electric probe that comes along after on another tractor, electric of course, and zaps that weed. And what that does is it also puts nutrients back into the soil - let's not discuss the USA and dust bowls in the 30s, if you think it doesn't happen, it does. We have to look after our soil, we have to look after how all of this stuff is done. And all of a sudden, I've come up with a use for millimetre wave radio that requires a brand new chipset with high uplink capabilities. And all of a sudden, we were very much in the technical space that you guys and I inhabit. And yet nobody saw it coming, just like with SMS nobody saw the thread. And yet if I can find a way that could get fibre to the farm, this is a new acronym FTTF, note it note it well we'll be using it a lot. And guess how we might do that? We either direct bury the fibre like pioneering companies like Wessex internet for example in Dorset already do. And/or maybe we look at technology like fibre in water, because guess what? Farms have a need for irrigation. So if I need to get fibre closer to a farm, and I want to do the things that Jane was referring to earlier, including IoT, if I can get that basic connectivity there, I can use doubling grain production to do that because I've now managed to do that and not had to use pesticides on the field. I haven't had to buy so many of those nasty chemicals that I need to actually enrich the soil, which I can't afford anyway because they've gone up by 650%. Happy days. Now tell me, as I erect that mast on the side of the farm building, or on another small tower. If I erect a mast strong enough for double loading, in other words I can put two sets of kit on it. And that means that I can see either another local farm, the local school, an old folks home, whatever it might be that is a way forward. And all of a sudden, instead of just doing a research programme that was looking at a theory of stuff and what might be, we've come up with something about what is. And and we've come up with a way that we could begin to address that. And we've looked at a whole new design for chipsets with massive uplink instead of downlink capability. That's game changing. Welcome to Dorset, Dorset does, just don't think we're all asleep down here because we're not.

Rory

So when you're talking about some of these exciting applications, I know you mentioned direct burial there, you mentioned Wessex internet. As it stands, is this a case of cannot or will not on the part of the network operators?

Dave

I think it's a case of economics, I would say cannot. If it is a case that we've structured a market, and we have a regulatory environment which clearly incensed them to build where they can get the best bang for their buck, then I would contend that it's a statutory duty on their board members to do that. And therefore, there's no magic panacea here. There's two ways to fix this problem in a real way, they're either the costs come down to deploy the network, or the revenues go up from the network, or some combination of both. Now, if you want to make the costs come down, and the operator cost base is too high, one of the options is to empower new private networks perhaps. And guess what? The fastest growth in the UK is in private networks. If you want to empower that you need to do innovative stuff with spectrum. I mentioned Ofcom earlier, and credit to Ofcom for coming up with the design of millimetre wave spectrum supply that will enable those rural areas to start utilising those tractors, and not having to pay money they don't have for a service they can't afford, provided by a third party that doesn't really understand the rural need in the same way because it doesn't have a footprint there. And if you think that SRN is going to fix it, that's the shared rural network, I would contend again. Dream on. That's another problem we can come to in a minute. So let me come back to your question and your hypothesis there. I don't blame the companies concerned, whether they're fixed or mobile, for not doing that that doesn't get them a return on capital. Where I struggle is not having found an effective way, and seeing over decades repeated announcements about how it's all going to be closed and everything's going to be fine. Well, yeah, but where I'm sitting right now it isn't. And not only that, the stats bear it out. So let's just have a small reality check, and let's think calmly and constructively between all of us how we can fix it. And I think one of the things that you want to do is push and pull a problem at the same time. If operators that exist don't want to do it, either let little guys that can do it more cheaply and or give them additional revenues. And if you can't do that, which you can't because we don't have the income in a rural communities, then there's a role for central government in helping that to happen. BT UK, for example, has been useful in doing this kind of stuff. They've done innovative stuff in Cornwall, and some stuff going on in Dorset I'm aware of at the moment. But we have to just do more. And we have to do better, because it's not acceptable to have a digital divide this century. I'm sorry, it just isn't.

Jane

Yeah, I was gonna ask actually about sort of what the role of the government is. Whether that's local or national government, for example there is a very small village, it's a hamlet really that I know in France. And when I first visited there was no connectivity, we didn't even have a television. Now they've got faster broadband, certainly faster broadband than you will find where my parents are in Wiltshire. And is there a possibility that that's what we need to do here? And if that is what we want to do, is it going to happen?

Dave

Okay, is it what we want to do? To a degree, yes. Is it going to happen? No. That would be my... I believe in straight answers to straight questions. However, I can give you a more positive steer at the end of it because I do see a third way. I remember France, I also used to live in France many years ago. And I remember Minitel. I also remember having lived in Germany, the development of early ISDN, ISDN2. There is a point where it's the right time to do something, and I think in the UK it's fair to say we've left it a bit late. We are no longer major manufacturers. Our problems have been in my view, partly a failure to release spectrum more quickly, although I understand why Ofcom is cautious. I therefore challenge the orthodoxy that underpins spectrum pricing as no longer being fit for purpose. That's one. For fibre I say like I said before, if we can find ways to either reduce the cost of deployment or look at ways that we can enhance the revenue, and to do that everyone's always gone for let's enhance the revenue and stackable use cases. Well, if they're making the kit of course they'd say that. If they're an operator, of course they'd say that it's very, very difficult to do that. If you're struggling with finances, and you're on an income of maybe 17 and a half, £18,000 a year you don't know what the future of the Common Agricultural Policy that's now defunct, who's going to pay for what to keep you in business and keep you alive. And the average age of a farmer is considerably older than the national average and other professions. So we should be doing more to help our farms, we should be doing more to help our rural communities. I think Defra, as one of the departments that isn't going to be merged into something new, I hope shortly, have an interest in this. And I know I've spoken to the NFU on a couple of occasions whom I write most highly. So I'd like to see the continued growth of for example, more true independent neutral network hosts. Now, typically if you talk to a mobile network a neutral network host is, oh, it's one of us four. Well no, it doesn't necessarily need to be that at all. And not only that, in the new world all I really want for connectivity is an Ethernet port. I'm not even sure I need switch connectivity in the way I used to need it. So guys, if you don't come along and provide it and make that investment, I'm gonna go to someone else that can. So what I'd like to see is that fibre rolled out, for example why shouldn't every village in Dorset or indeed every rural community have fibre to the local village hall? Why should we not have free Wi-Fi 6 hanging off the end of there? Is this beyond the wit of man or woman? No, it isn't. The handsets to do this, this kind of tech, how many frequencies have you got in a handset? Probably in excess of eleven these days, you can link to satellite, you can link to multiple Wi-Fi bands, you can link to multiple cellular bands, you can make sure you don't get lost on your way to work but hurry up in case they switch the satellites off. There's all kinds of stuff you can do. And to say that we can't do it or we shouldn't do it isn't good enough. What we have to do therefore I think as a country is to look more at the standards angle here. Because what we're suffering from is a downstream problem. If we're not making stuff, and we're not spotting where the the opportunities are, and therefore what's in the standards isn't in these devices that means people can't use them quickly and cheaply. Now, if I'm doing stuff like agricultural robotics on funky new chipsets on farms, using a frequency band that you can now get in a form factor, meaning the size of your phone okay? Then surely that's an intelligent way to proceed. And if we could continue to spot technologies, for example, you wouldn't back WiMAX would you, let's back Wi Fi. We need to be looking at the standards, we need to look at the spectrum and the third 's' that I will add to that is security. Because it doesn't matter whether you're in an urban or rural area, if it isn't insecure and you can't trust it, you're not going to use it. So I think an intelligent combination of that as a way forward, combined with making it easier for smaller companies to get radio spectrum and to deploy fibre, having that all most importantly of all intelligently mapped on a platform that enables alternative network companies to swap their capacity or just to swap their assets, is a really smart move. Oh, guess what? Fibre in rural Dorset, mapping it all, doing this is exactly what one of the outputs of the Dorset project is and I believe just signed up to by a company called Wildanet in Cornwall this very morning

Jane

I mean, the name of the organisation is 5G RuralDorset and I'd actually quite like to talk for a moment, we've been speaking about fibre. As I understand it, once again listener back to my days when I was living in the countryside. We had no mobile signal when I was living between Shaftesbury and and Salisbury.

Dave

Oh, difficult terrain.

Jane

As I understand it, part of the problem yeah is the geography. Listeners cannot see this, but Dave is making hill signs. You just cannot get the signal to work with the geography and actually mobile broadband, which has worked super well in places like Africa where it is much flatter, doesn't work here because millimetre wave can't even make its way through concrete sometimes. Let alone a big old chalk down. What do we do, is mobile broadband, mobile internet, do we just forget about this in a rural context?

Dave

Okay, no, I don't think we forget about it. And also for those of you listening to this in the future, I'd like you to think about something that you might find interesting to conjure up a mental image of the terrain we're talking about here. For those of you old enough to remember the Hovis adverts on the television. There's a wonderful street which people wander up. It's a really steep street, it's got buildings on either side, it appears to have been a real life cut out from the mid-19th century. That's Shaftsbury. For those of you in Yorkshire, I apologise but that's ours, we own it. Back off. Now, on that note however, we have a lot in common with our friends in North Yorkshire and the moors in terms of difficulty of the terrain and economics of this. My contention will be is that we need to have a more open minded approach to this. I don't see mobile necessarily as part of the solution, I see it perhaps as part of a problem. The spectrum holdings of the mobile networks are actually in the lower frequency bands. But the demands are coming increasingly for greater capacities to these devices, which in turn, these mobile devices are going to require ever higher frequencies. Now that's going to cause a real problem. That's why stuff like network densification is important, but I'm not interested in what we're doing in Oxford Street because I don't live in Oxford Street. I live on that street in Shaftesbury, and I can't get a signal across to Salisbury because the terrain is difficult. And I haven't got any base stations, we don't dream about or have problems with whether or not we have overbuilding in rural areas, we have a far simpler problem. It's called 'any build'. And in order to make this work, the only way to do something which actually meets two needs both coverage and capacity, I see the two as two sides of the same coin. It's just not acceptable to have just coverage and no capacity, because then all you're doing is you're rationing food between people that are all hungry, that's wrong, you shouldn't be thinking that way. What you should be thinking of is how do we get that big capacity utilised? If the laws of physics are telling us anything, they're telling us that what we need to do is get fibre deployed as far and as deep into these places as possible. And if that means I can do it at 30 or 40 quid a metre by simply direct burying it, or not subducting it but getting something in there, that's more sensible to me. Yes I know, in the States and other places you can string it between poles. I'm talking to you from a rural area right now where it is fibre to the pole, and it is hanging off, and it does break down in the wind. But it's still sure as hell a lot better than the alternative. So I don't see mobile as a solution, because I don't don't see the spectrium holding as relevant to the capacity needs that Shaftesbury and Salisbury still have. I don't see it as a way of serving the rural spots in between, because wherever there's a farm I want to break out from that fibre and enable my millimetre wave robots and all the IoT and other devices, as well as let the children on the farm do their homework and watch Netflix, and all the other things that normal people do in the real world. And I don't want discrimination to exist in any place. And therefore I say we have to get fibre in, we have to do a deeper and Jane, I think asset mapping is the key here. And that's the thing that could unlock it, and is well worth discussing further because I think it's something that everybody else misses.

Rory

I mean, we've talked to him about some of the solutions here. And I know this is something we touched on earlier. But I was wondering if you could expand for our listeners some of the biggest challenges for businesses associated with with poor connectivity in rural areas, and maybe what the impact on the local economy is as it stands,

Dave

Oh, it's major. If you're in a business and you can't even get a basic Teams call set up, it's just unbelievable. I'll give you an example, I was actually driving across Dorset less than 48 hours ago. I was trying to be on a Teams call at the same time, it dropped out on at least three occasions. This was in a 20 minute period for what should have been an hour call. In the end, I had to drop out completely. I have as yet no clue what the conclusion of that business deal was, or whether or not we were even able to transact any business. And therefore to the second part of your question Rory, what impact does this have? Well governments and others measure, local government as well, measure on gross value added GVA. What what is it that we're losing out on, in effect, in our areas as a result of not having that connectivity? Well, I can put a value on that business deal. I can also put a value on something far less pleasant, and I'll tell you this because it's a true story. One of my neighbours recently died, God rest her soul. And she would have been in her mid 80s. I'm in the middle of nowhere, I'm in the lee of the hill, the coverage is appalling and I've got trees around me. And we're it not for the fact that I've complained bitterly and ended up getting fibre to the pole, and I no longer have a problem within my house, this was not the case when fate overtook her. And what happened was the ambulance showed up, they were trying to communicate with the local hospital which is 25 minutes away. Forget your eight minutes ambulance targets because we've already died if you live in a rural area. Another good reason for improving rural connectivity, because there's an NHS set of cases around this. The reason that she died was at least in part because they were unable to communicate and get ECG information about her heart rhythms and quality to a consultant, who was available at the other end of a line had they been able to get a signal through. She died. Now, for me that's deeply distressing and personal. We talk about this in some kind of esoteric way, like nothing actually is real or it doesn't matter, or it's okay to have a divide. It's not okay to have apartheid, it's not okay to have people die, it's not okay for children not to be able to do their homework. It's not okay for a farmer not to be able to do his or her job properly. It's not satisfactory, this is not the Stone Age it's a techno age, we need to do far better. So in terms of GVA, I think the stats if anything are depressed. I think that the real loss to the rural economy is far more significant than we can report, because one has to remember these are simply economic indices of measurement. And we don't know exactly what line items they put into it, because I bet they didn't put my neighbour who died into it. I bet they didn't put what would the cost of a lifetime value of a life have been if that lady or gentleman had been in their 30s, and the tax income and all of those things. If you want to do that, that's the terrible, sordid, and unpleasant work that people do when they're looking at actuaries, and insurance benefits and payouts. But only part of that is, as I understand it, done for GVA. So the loss to the rural economy of not having this fibre in place is infinitely greater and far more personal than people really understand. We need to do better and when I say it, when I told you I meant it from the heart, now you know I do.

Jane

Yeah, and there's also presumably a brain drain issue as well. Younger people move away because the jobs are in the larger towns in the cities. You may not even be in the county they grew up in but yeah, so if I wanted to found a business in we're gonna give listeners we're gonna give you a tour of the rural South West. But if I wanted to found a business just outside Wilton, which is also near Salisbury, I can't help but think that there would be limited impetus for me to do that rather than move to Southampton. And do it there where I know that I can get the support from a tech point of view, from a business point of view. And when it comes to the digital divide and levelling up and all that, this is the reality of the problem with connectivity.

Dave

In terms of location, your point about Wilton, Wilton is also not Westminster. And if you're trying to operate a business and you know that you must have solid, reliable connectivity you know that you're not going to get it when you're moving about around from Wilton, because I know the terrain fairly well. Between Wilton and Shaftesbury, and that whole area, is equally hilly, the coverage is equally lousy. So if you start a meeting, find that you have to go out to do something else, you don't have the flexibility you would have done in an urban area just to do that because you can't, that ties you to your desk, that may mean you lose other things. These are real problems. So getting that fibre in, and I've mentioned Wessex internet I should stress other brands are available, the smaller altnets making these investments. If they begin to be able to link up their capabilities and capacity to extend their footprints and obiter dicta they're able to improve the radio coverage because more spectrum becomes available, and more open neutral network hosting becomes available where they can play a role in it too. That would be great. If the MNOs are able to do that quicker then that would be great. But just for God's sake, get something in that takes away this location dependency because, as you rightly point out Jane, the inevitable conclusion of this is it sucks people into more urban areas where there's already pollution, congestion, and all the problems that go with being in that environment. But we have a circular economy, the urban areas can't function without the food that the rural areas provide, the rural areas can't function without some degree of dialogue with the urban areas and would want it to be so. And then you might get a pandemic, where everyone in the urban area wants to come and rush out to a rural area. And then find they can't because there's no connectivity, I'm just saying. So point one location, it matters, your point is well made and it needs to get sorted because we will not be able to encourage people to look at this in a broader context and move to outside and actually have a living in a super area. And let's face it, who wouldn't want to live near Durdle Door and have the quality of life that goes with that if they could also have the salary that they would have got if they'd have stayed in Dulwich? Now, your second point was skills. I had for two and a bit years a young lady working for me who was a postgrad at Exeter University. She was a Dorset resident and absolutely brilliant, studying the geographies of 5G. During the programme, we went back to DCMS and said "could you change the rules on collaboration to make it more inclusive?" Again, discrimination is a big thing of mine. It really is important that we stop this nonsense and to encourage, in particular, people from rural communities. In particular, women from rural communities in an industry which is full of middle-aged middle-class people that look and sound depressingly like me I'm afraid. It's not good enough. And I hold my hands up, okay, mea culpa. So I did something about it, we acted as mentor for the young lady concerned who has now been recognised as one of the top 100 people to watch in the field. Recognised, she's got multiple awards, she's met the former minister I forget they changed so often these days, don't they? Also, she was interviewed on Connected Britain, she's just really all alert and about herself and able to give us information and insights about how we could improve skills that would help her to stay in her home county of Dorset. Because she's from the Bridport & Lyme Regis area. Exeter is her local university. If we could develop an ecosystem technical hub, which we're currently working on in the area of Winfrith, for those of you that know Dorset Innovation Park. One of the things we're looking at, we don't know yet if we can make it happen, is a Skills Development and Training Centre for fibre and water. We will be putting in a bid in the near future to someone from a government body or regulator that might be able to assist in that regard. So what we see is the chance to develop pockets of excellence, and try and build all that expertise in a given area. It might be fanciful, but one thing I do know is that if you don't try and if you don't take individual and personal responsibility for mentoring somebody younger than you in a rural area, and you then try to give them better prospects, then you failed. And that in actual fact, the thing that you don't measure by gross value added benefits realisation on the DCMS programme, is whether or not you've been able to change young lives in a positive way. One of that young lady's colleagues is now working for a company of which I'm on the board. That would not have happened, but for the 5G RuralDorset programme. And at the moment, we've been able to keep her working from home in Cornwall. Am I proud of that? You betcha.

Rory

Something I wanted to circle back to that you mentioned earlier, is this idea of the sunset for 3G and for 2G. I know we discussed this briefly at an event recently, but take 2G. Ofcom has set a target of 2033 for when all 2G services will be completely deactivated in the UK, if not before then. Between now and then, at the moment, does it feel like the necessary steps will be made so that rural communities don't feel its absence?

Dave

May I be cheeky and broaden the question to include 3G sir?

Rory

Absolutely.

Dave

Oh, thank you. That's very sporting because now I can give a slightly different answer. Okay so what have we actually seen, and let's link it also into copper switch off as well. Because if you live in a rural community, it is not impossible these days that you might be served by some kind of radio solution. Or you might even be dependent on your 2G or 3G signal, because you haven't got any other reliable means of doing it. Because under the new regulations, if BT want or Openreach wants to decommission an old exchange, it doesn't have the same duty to serve all the people on the new exchange, that it's just fibred up that it previously did. And what that means is the people that are most likely to suffer are actually the remotest in location terms from that exchange. So in actual fact, that makes the problem worse not better, and more expensive to fix. So let's look at 2G first of all. 2G does give you that excellent coverage. Okay, the difficulty in terms of spectral efficiency is well known, it's not the most efficient. However, I don't think that they can turn it off easily because the quality of the rest of the infrastructure in a rural area simply won't permit it. Now, I haven't seen that actually stated in a press release by anybody anywhere. But that's the real truth behind it. So you can't switch 2G off because it's such an elementary baseline and there's nothing else if you did, it would be a disaster. However, 3G you might be able to say that you could, because it sort of fits as a stall in my mind between what 2G has and what 4G has always promised, and actually begun to deliver in a good way. So 3G is the one you could switch off, but in so doing you're still going to impact people most and forgive me, but the one thing that we have in common on all of this is that when you're touching 2G, 3G, or copper, you are hitting which areas? Is it a) urban or b) rural? Ah, I think we know the answer to this one, don't we ladies and gentlemen? So my take on it is 2G I think will be left on. We've already seen 3G, I've heard you were talking about 2033 on 2G, I've heard dates of 3G switch off taking place within 24 months. Now, it might well be that government can set all the targets in the world, and regulators can set targets, wonderful things targets. And sometimes they even get hit. I'm not saying they won't be, I'm not saying they will be, I'm simply saying if 3G is going to get switched off in two years and they can switch off 2G more quickly then they will. They're already switching off copper. So in a sense, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of trying to help a rural community, it's all part of the same thing. On the one hand, we're being told that we're all going to get gigabit capable connectivity. On the other hand, it's not happening fast enough. And I actually feel deep concern, and support, and pity for BT UK I think they're trying to do a cracking job. They really are trying to make a difference. And their approach to open access and stuff is really good. But on the one hand, they're doing great work and on the other hand, it almost feels like Ofcom's given them a kicking, because what we're doing by changing what areas are not covered by what and when it doesn't seem to me that it's quite joined up. I'll leave it at that, because I think there's good intent on all sides. And of course, things will always evolve but my sympathies in this particular discussion will go to BT UK over Ofcom as to how legacy spectrum has been refarmed. Do I think it's necessary? Yes. Is it of limited supply? Well, we can debate that till the cows come home, literally, unless of course we begin to look at things like CBRS and expansion of spectrum sharing. Interfering with military capability. No, thank you, Dorset's largest employer is the military. You can't have something that might damage capability. But what you could do is look at improved sharing within existing bands that are there. And the big problem that rural areas have, if you go for a licence that you don't have to go to a mobile network to beg for because in reality, that is a form of licence called licence shared access, begging perhaps a strong word, but it is at their discretion, and rightly so because they paid for it. However, if you go for spectral new rights to Ofcom in a licensed band that they don't hold, my big complaint has always been that process has been far too manual. It's had a lot of errors in it. And it hasn't been adjusted quickly enough to enable the growth of the private networks that would have helped the rural areas more, and would have got those Ethernet connections in and might have speeded up my doubling of grain production, helping the local farm and enabling my granny in a home to have a haptic hug because I can't give her a real one. And those things actually really matter.

Rory

Yeah, absolutely. I was wondering, as a kind of a final question. We're talking in 2023. What do you think this situation will be like in say, five years? In 2028? Better or worse, or about the same?

Dave

I'd love to tell you that I thought it would be better. I think it may be slightly better. To some of its to some of that depends on how much we as individuals, and in particular in rural areas are prepared to make enough of a noise about it. Because within two years, there'll be a general election that will lead to inevitable change, we have changed within government departments. Now, I don't think on the government side that there's a lack of interest in trying to fix the problem. It may be a lack of understanding, it could be a lack of money. It's certainly sometimes the case of not being able to easily join up policy silos. So for example, one department might want to get better fibre connectivity to remote location for capability reasons, a farming, Defra may have a need to get capability to farms for other reasons. Be the UK might just want to improve gigabit broadband services to everybody. But they're all working to their agendas in the way that they work to the budgets they have, because they need to have some command and control. But the thing about 5g is it no longer respects those boundaries. If we could get to, in five years time, a place where we haven't been in a rural community penalised by 2G, 3G and copper switch off in the way that we are today. If we could see the mobile network operators doing their absolute level best to fill in current capacity gaps, even if we haven't fixed all the coverage and capacity gaps getting it better than it is or far better than SRM is promising. That will be helpful. I don't expect them to fund it, they're not charities and therefore I'd like to see Ofcom make more spectrum available on the shared access licencing side with higher power levels that would enable me to transmit beyond the foot of my damned mast. Because at the moment, that's a problem if we do those things, and we continue to remove the barriers to deployment in rural areas, and I think again, credit to DCMS as well. is doing some great work with the barrier dusting type busting task force, then Rory, the answer is on balance just about slightly better, but not a radical change. I fear, I hope we can get the radical change.

Rory

Well, it's something we could talk about for ages. But unfortunately, we have time for for this episode. So thank you very much for being on the show.

Dave

You're welcome. Thanks very much indeed.

Jane

As always, you can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk.

Rory

You can also follow us on social media, as well as subscribe to our daily newsletter. Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, why not tell a friend or colleague about us?

Jane

We'll be back next week with more from the world of IT, but until then, goodbye.

The conversation around UK connectivity is often dominated by the rollout of 5G, or the race for widespread gigabit broadband.

But many rural communities and businesses struggle with a lack of even basic connectivity such as reliable cellular service. This has severe consequences for rural businesses, holding back their growth while accelerating brain drain as younger people gravitate towards urban areas for education and employment.

Some groups have taken measures into their own hands to ensure they receive the connectivity they need. In this episode, Jane and Rory speak to Dave Happy, collaboration lead at 5GRuralDorset, to discuss the connection difficulties facing rural businesses and what is being done to help.

Highlights

“I cannot understand after 37 years why we still even have a digital divide, let alone on a scale which with the withdrawal of 2G, 3G, and copper switch off is actually going to be exacerbated not improved.”

“The loss to the rural economy of not having this fibre in place is infinitely greater and far more personal than people really understand.”

"I've heard dates of 3G switch off taking place within 24 months. Now, it might well be that government can set all the targets in the world, and regulators can set targets, wonderful things targets. And sometimes they even get hit. I'm not saying they won't be, I'm not saying they will be, I'm simply saying if 3G is going to get switched off in two years and they can switch off 2G more quickly then they will."

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Cloud growth experiencing ‘slowdown’ amid rising economic disruption
• Cisco gets ahead of the herd with ‘connected cow’ app
• UK's first 6G research facility to open at the University of Sheffield
• Satellite broadband could turbocharge rural business connectivity
• Rural businesses face "digital exclusion" due to underinvestment in connectivity
• MediaTek announces new 5G mmWave chipset and Wi-Fi 7 platforms
• What is 5G and how far are we from rollout?
• Preparing for the 3G sunset: What your business should expect

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BT has announced that it successfully connected network masts to OneWeb's satellite constellation - a major milestone in the journey to deliver satellite broadband to the UK's small and rurally located businesses.

The feat meant the two companies were able to deliver 4G data over low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for the first time, connecting an EE mast to the network core.

Businesses with poor mast coverage, such as those in more remote areas in the UK, as well as those located in areas with older network architectures, are set to be the main beneficiaries of the technology once it matures.

During the trial, a terrestrial base station was connected through the OneWeb user terminal (UT), which then connected to OneWeb’s LEO satellite constellation.

The connection then flowed down into OneWeb’s network and through to BT’s point of presence in London.

Here, there is a direct interconnect into BT 21C, which connects through to IPsec security gateway and onto the mobile core network.

The telco has demonstrated voice calls and group voice calls using the system, which offers greater capacity than would be possible through a direct-to-handset satellite connection.

"A key factor for us was getting that direct interconnect in," said Andy Sutton, chief network architect at BT, told IT Pro. "That’s game-changing for us in terms of quality and capability, and it’s one of a number of direct interconnects we’re going to be building around the world.

“The key point here is not only that we are using the LEO satellite constellation, but also the direct interconnect as well. So we have the end-to-end control of that quality of service user experience, which you wouldn’t have if you were just using a traditional LEO service with internet-based backhaul.”

BT used its test environment in Bristol to carry out the trial, but has also deployed an Intellian dual parabolic user terminal in a field trial site in Shropshire.

It's hoped that testing at this ‘live site’ can begin soon after BT’s Q4 ends in March 2023, which will see both 4G and 5G backhaul tests will be carried out.

The site is currently supported by geostationary backhaul, which provides limited capacity and high latencies. LEO tests in the area should significantly reduce latency - BT's simulations predicted speeds of 100-150 Mbits/sec downlink and 30 Mbits/sec uplink.

BT Business is in discussions with several large enterprise customers about agreements to use the service. Potential partners have also indicated interest in using the infrastructure to provide further resilience in parallel with terrestrial connections.

For example, satellite connections could be established to support an organisation’s SD-WAN should terrestrial connections fail.

As it has a global supplier agreement with OneWeb these partners are based both in the UK and internationally, but its primary focus on LEO networks at this time is centred on UK connectivity.

BT and OneWeb signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2021, with the goal to provide better digital services to underserved rural businesses.

Aiming for a range of resilient options, BT is also working closely with Stratospheric Platforms Ltd. This Cambridge-based aerospace company has trialled its high altitude platform (HAPS) system with BT at Adastral Park in Suffolk, in which unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying at 60,000ft and above to deliver uninterrupted 4G and 5G direct to consumer smartphones.

Through this multi-orbital strategy, BT aims to provide excellent resilience and speed across the UK, particularly for smaller to medium-sized businesses in under-served rural areas.

“We’ve been able to offer resilient access through space for backing up terrestrial communications. We do that today in some cell sites for emergency services,” said Sutton.

“We see that continuing as a trend in mobile but also being a great opportunity in the wider business world as well.”

It's clear that satellites could be key to boosting rural business connectivity in the UK, alongside widespread fibre broadband rollout and expansion of 5G by mobile network operators (MNOs).

But, addressing the UK government’s Starlink trials in Snowdonia and the Lake District, Sutton said that trials of this kind are not a key focus at this time.

“At the moment, OneWeb is very focused on B2B and that’s reflected in the types of packages they offer, and the capacity across the constellation. Clearly we see a different approach with Starlink, with a direct business-to-consumer proposition.

“OneWeb has plans to densify its constellation considerably in phase two. And with that densification, they'll be able to offer significantly greater capacity per satellite, and each satellite will cover a smaller area, because there’ll be more of them. So then you start to look at the prospects around delivering - potentially - a consumer-based service on the back of that.”

BT aims to provide 90% of the UK’s geography with 5G by 2028, with the network available on demand to 100%. The OneWeb backhaul service is one part of a wider range of tools to deliver on this goal, with its polar-based constellation now able to provide 24/7 UK coverage.

OneWeb continues to launch satellites to expand its satellite constellation, with SpaceX having helped the firm to launch 40 satellites in January 2023. The firm has done 16 of these launches to date, and recently stated that only two more launches are necessary until its first-generation constellation is complete.

From The Highlands of Scotland to the villages of Cornwall, Britain is in the midst of a full-fibre frenzy, with dozens of smaller providers – so-called altnets – running fibre to the doors. It’s a massive land grab and, with companies keen to please investors, they’re offering stupidly fast broadband at stupidly cheap prices to attract customers.

But can it last? Will these cut-price fibre providers be able to compete with giants such as Openreach and Virgin Media over the long term? Or will the market go the same way as it did with ADSL, with smaller fish swallowed by the bigger sharks?

What's triggered the full-fibre explosion?

When it comes to delivering end-to-end fibre connections, Britain had – until relatively recently – been lumbering along at a pedestrian rate. At the start of the 2010s, BT set an ambitious target to reach 25% of British households with full fibre, but it quickly faltered. Openreach largely concentrated on delivering the much slower and cheaper fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and full fibre remained a rarity.

In the past few years, however, something changed. Although Boris Johnson’s bluster about delivering ultrafast broadband to everyone was typically exaggerated, there has been a serious surge in Britain’s full-fibre rollout and experts do give credit to the government and regulator Ofcom for giving it a shove.

“The number of alternative full-fibre networks in the market has rocketed to over a hundred in just the past three to four years, and this stems from the combined impact of several changes,” says Mark Jackson, editor-in-chief of ISPreview.

“Some examples of positive changes include demand side-interventions, such as the government’s rural gigabit voucher scheme, making the economic model for rural builds more viable, and support for providing fibre to public-sector sites, which can later be harnessed by commercial networks for further expansion. Ofcom has also made it easier and cheaper for altnets to viably run their own fibre over existing telecoms poles and underground cable ducts on Openreach’s infrastructure.”

Lit Fibre is an altnets that’s benefited from access to Openreach’s ducts and poles. The company’s CEO, Tom Williams, says the long battle to get physical infrastructure access (PIA) to Openreach’s infrastructure was crucial. “I was involved in PIA right from the very beginning and… it took a good three to five years to get that product to a place where it was viable enough for people to overcome the challenges that it faced,” he says. “I think some of the bigger companies are still struggling with some of those challenges, which is a perfect set of circumstances for more entrepreneurial companies to spring up and take advantage.”

Breakthroughs in PIA have allowed alternative providers to enter the market

The other big factor is money – and plenty of it. With the ongoing economic uncertainty, there’s an appetite to invest in solid infrastructure projects, especially infrastructure that’s going to last a long time. The fibre being put into the ground now will last for at least a generation to come, because as Stewart Crabb, director of B2B at GoFibre says, “nothing travels faster than light”.

GoFibre, which is installing fibre in some of Scotland’s more rural areas, is installing XGS-PON and 25G PON technology from Nokia in its network to future-proof for the speeds that might be needed in the 2050s or 60s. “We’re not building it for today, we’re looking far into the future of what people will need, because theoretically that can deliver 10Gbits/sec to a home,” says Crabb. “Ten gig will never be used in a home today, but we don’t know what’s going to come 20, 30 or 40 years down the line.”

Why altnets have an advantage

The emergence of 100-plus fibre providers is inevitably going to splinter the broadband market, meaning each of those providers will be counting customer numbers in the tens or hundreds of thousands, rather than the millions or tens of millions of people on Virgin Media or Openreach lines. So how do smaller operators hope to compete with the industry giants?

One man who should know is Steve Robertson. He used to be the CEO of Openreach, but has recently joined Lit Fibre as a non-executive director. He believes the biggest advantage the altnets have is they are “starting a business with a clean sheet of paper”.

“The infrastructure space offers you the opportunity to do things that you just can’t do if you’ve got a massive legacy, as I know only too well,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong – there are great things about having a legacy… it’s not a dirty word. But having a clean sheet of paper does give you certain opportunities.

“If you are a smart, well-funded, intelligent, alternative network provider, you’ve got the opportunity to build and operate your network in a way that is quite different from a big legacy operator,” Robertson adds. “And in doing that, you can give customers a different sort of experience, you can be more personalised, you can be more agile. There’s a big market and there’s places for lots of different flavours.”

Being a new provider also allows companies such as Lit Fibre to shake off some of the problems that have long afflicted the broadband business. “If you look at things like TrustPilot, people are very suspicious, disillusioned and mistrustful of the industry,” says Williams. “Right back to the mid-2000s, people have been saying ‘I don’t get what I pay for’ because it’s always been ‘up to’. So there’s a big job for companies like us to educate the consumer as to how different it is. It’s about building that credibility and demonstrating the fact that full fibre is completely different.”

The other advantage is cost. By piggybacking on Openreach infrastructure and not bearing the cost of digging up roads, the altnets can be very competitive on price. With so many altnets in the landgrab phase, they’re driving down prices to attract customers. “You have got some [altnets] that are coming in and trying to bump up their customer base as quickly as possible, coming in with competitive pricing,” says GoFibre’s Stewart Crabb. “For the end user, that’s great. You are getting more than what you’re getting today for, if not a better price, the same price [as your current broadband].”

The influx of low-cost full-fibre providers is also putting pressure on the big players to not only accelerate the rollout of their own full-fibre networks, but to keep prices down. Openreach doesn’t sell directly to consumers; it wholesales its network to ISPs such as Sky, TalkTalk and Zen Internet. But the company’s managing director for fibre and network delivery, Matt Hemmings, admits the altnets are keeping Openreach on its toes. “I think that [competition] is a very positive thing for UK PLC and its customers, and we are making sure that we remain very competitive on [wholesale] price to ensure that we continue to grow and scale our business, and generate the returns that we that we want to make on our business case for our investment in FTTP,” he says. “The UK is building more fibre homes today than it ever has before and the pace of build accelerates every single quarter.”

Those cheap fibre prices might not be an introductory flash in the pan, either. “If we look across other markets where FTTP has matured, then if anything gigabit speed packages actually become even cheaper. Put another way, over the longer term, there’s scope for prices to fall further and for speeds to increase. Some ISPs are already charging around £25 to £35 per month for their top 1Gbit/sec package, and that may become much more common over the next five years.”

How long can Britain’s broadband boom last?

The full fibre expansion comes alongside a shift in the way these services are sold. For years, broadband has been bundled with other products, such as television, landline and mobile phone packages. But the bundles are beginning to unravel. “We are seeing the market shifting,” says Hemmings. “I couldn’t tell you my landline number, I don’t remember the last time I used my landline. I think and we will continue to see that market shift but we have an obligation at Openreach to ensure that we consider all customers and all their needs across the entire spectrum.”

Openreach’s ongoing drive to switch off the old PSTN network will drive a further stake through the heart of the landline business, with most consumers either sticking to their mobiles or relying on VoIP services for phone calls.

While customers might reap the benefits of cheap gigabit fibre connections for a few years to come, there are doubts over how long the British broadband boom can last. Indeed, in the early days of the cable rollout, there were numerous regional providers that eventually consolidated into one or two big players. When dial-up and ADSL first took off, there were hundreds of smaller ISPs, which were one-by-one subsumed by the bigger companies.

Almost everyone in the industry – even the altnets themselves – concede that there will be similar consolidation in years to come. “It will happen,” says GoFibre’s Stewart Crabb, “but the networks need to be built before you can go buy it. The important thing is getting those networks in the ground and getting customers on it, and getting everybody using it, then you’ll start to see acquisitions.”

North Berwick, a seaside town in Scotland, is one of the locations GoFibre has reached with its fibre rollout

We’re already starting to see overbuilding – areas with two, three or more full-fibre providers – and that creates problems for the business case. “We have a business case to build 25 million homes, which is about 80% of the UK, and we probably wouldn’t stop there,” says Hemmings. If you add up all of the announced plans to build from the various providers, it comes to 75 million homes. This is a problem when there are only 27 million homes in the UK. “I don’t think that, personally, is a sustainable market position,” he says. “I think you will naturally see consolidation over time.”

The good news is that strong competition is forcing altnets to build in places with less competition, places that might not otherwise have got fibre. GoFibre is targeting more rural areas in Scotland and the North of England, for example; Lit Fibre has rolled out in less affluent locations such as Clacton in Essex, because customers can afford its competitive prices and it delivers benefits to the entire community.

It’s the more competitive, inner-city areas where the crunch is likely to be felt. “The market reality is that having a mass of smaller players, many of which will be competing over some of the same areas, often overbuilding several other opponents, is not sustainable,” says ISPreview’s Mark Jackson. Even in dense urban areas, with plenty of customers in small geographic areas, you’d still run into problems with more than five networks competing.

“Wide-scale consolidation in a market that has become as aggressive competitive as this one is thus inevitable,” he continues. “I suspect, given enough time, that we’ll end up back in a position with a handful of large infrastructure players, followed by a smattering of medium-sized and smaller players in particular or niche areas. But not the 100-plus altnets you see today.”

Remote businesses and homes across the UK will be connected to satellite broadband in a new government trial intended to address unequal coverage of high-speed internet.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced plans to test the effectiveness of satellites in delivering high-speed connectivity in “a dozen” sites considered ‘very hard to reach’, the less than 1% of rural and remote sites where the cost of delivering broadband rises to untenable levels.

Starlink, the satellite broadband arm of aerospace firm SpaceX, has been chosen to support the trial given its already extensive low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.

For the future of the trial, the government will continue to evaluate other services, and named UK-based satellite operator OneWeb as a potential partner for connectivity in more complex locations.

Test sites include Snowdonia National Park, with the base of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation (Sefydliad Achub Mynydd Dyffryn Ogwen) and the Ty Cornel outdoor activity facility run by Scouts Cymru both participating. Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire and Wasdale Head in the Lake District were also among the selected locations, while further sites are under review.

The tests will seek to establish the effectiveness of the satellites, as well as the specific benefits of faster connections in remote areas, such as improved communications for rescue teams.

The potential of satellite broadband for rural business connectivity is great, with initial government figures demonstrating that reliable connections as high as 200 Mbits/sec can be established using the technology.

Businesses have also registered interest in satellite solutions. In its response to a consultation on improving broadband for very hard-to-reach premises, published in May, the government stated that 43% of businesses had explored satellite broadband as an alternative to fixed broadband. A further 29% had tried both satellite broadband and fixed wireless access.

“High-speed broadband beamed to earth from space could be the answer to the connectivity issues suffered by people in premises stuck in the digital slow lane,” said Michelle Donelan, secretary of state for the DCMS.

“Ensuring everyone can get a quality internet connection is crucial to our levelling up plans and these trials aim to find a solution to the prohibitively high cost of rolling out cables to far-flung locations.”

In October, the government launched a £15 million competition to encourage UK businesses seeking to enter the satellite internet market, citing the great potential for innovation and job creation within the sector.

Alongside its satellite trial, the government is expanding its broadband outreach scheme Project Gigabit, and has awarded Northern Ireland-based broadband firm Fibrus a £108 million contract to improve fibre connectivity across Cumbria. Initial Fibrus connections are expected by the spring, with construction commencing immediately.

“Using innovative methods to beam broadband to isolated areas, alongside this latest Project Gigabit deal to level up the north of England, will connect thousands more hard-to-reach premises, helping people get and stay connected,” said James Cartlidge, exchequer secretary at the Treasury.

It is hoped that investment in the region will spur opportunities for employment and apprenticeships across Cumbria, and the government is additionally seeking to award contracts in areas such as Cornwall, Norfolk, and Suffolk.

SpaceX continues to launch Starlink satellites into orbit at pace, with its constellation now containing around 3,000 of an FCC-approved total of 12,000 that could eventually provide internet access for much of the world. The firm now has approvals to provide internet to moving vehicles, and has signed both a partnership with Royal Caribbean and a deal with T-Mobile to construct a satellite-based mobile network.

Technology service provider Zen Internet has announced two internal promotions with the appointment of David Barber as director of strategy and Amanda Rogers as its new head of marketing.

After accumulating two decades of experience at Zen, Barber will now be responsible for the strategic development of the company’s portfolio and its overarching marketing strategy. He will also co-ordinate all of Zen’s strategy-setting, as well as strategic development with key suppliers, the firm said.

New head of marketing Amanda Rogers will report directly to Barber, overseeing the creation and implementation of marketing strategies that target both new and existing customers.

Rogers and her team will support the consumer, partner, and business operating divisions with marketing communications and campaign activity to help build brand awareness and grow market share, Zen added.

“David and Amanda have already made significant personal contributions to the development of Zen as an established player in the connectivity, cloud, and communications markets,” said Paul Stobart, CEO at Zen Internet.

“Going forward, our ambition is to be recognised as the most trusted service provider, delivering an exceptional customer experience, underpinned by the highest quality technology.”

Founded in 1995, Zen Internet has grown to become the largest B Corporation-certified telecommunications and network connectivity provider in the UK and now has a staff base of more than 500 people.

The Rochdale-headquartered ISP provides broadband, data, voice, hosting, and infrastructure services to homes and businesses across the country, as well as complex network and cloud solutions for large businesses through strategic partnerships with AWS and Cisco. The firm also works indirectly via its network of channel partners.

In its announcement, Zen said Barber and Rogers will play a key part in helping the business take advantage of new market opportunities.

“Notwithstanding current economic headwinds, the next few years are likely to be full of opportunity for Zen as the market moves to full fibre and the cloud,” Stobart said.

“David and Amanda will play an integral role in ensuring that our business, product and marketing strategies are shaped to help us deliver on our ambitions and make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead.”

Vodafone has partnered with the French telco Altice to launch FibreCo, a joint venture which will deploy a fibre broadband network to up to seven million homes in Germany, its biggest market.

The new company intends to invest up to €7 billion (£6 billion), 70% of which is expected to be financed by debt, and will be owned 50% by Vodafone Germany and 50% by Altice. It aims to construct and operate a “fibre-to-the-home” (FTTH) broadband network over a six year period.

The British telco currently offers up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) connections to over 24 million homes in Germany. It hopes the partnership with Altice will complement its upgrade plans for its existing hybrid fibre cable network where it's aiming to provide 10 Gbps speeds in the future.

Around 80% of the roll out will focus on large housing associations in Vodafone’s existing hybrid fibre cable network footprint and the remaining 20% will be outside of the British telco’s current footprint, focusing on neighbouring homes.

FibreCo is set to offer wholesale access to all telecommunications service providers to fully exploit the potential of the infrastructure. The joint venture will benefit from Vodafone’s commercial expertise, and relationships with housing associations, and Altice’s FTTH roll-out, wholesale, and operational expertise.

“This partnership builds on Vodafone’s significant next generation network with Altice’s industrial expertise and proven Fibre-to-the-Home construction capabilities enabling us to bring gigabit connectivity to even more customers in Germany,” said Nick Read, the chief executive of the Vodafone Group. “We are proud of our long-standing relationships with housing associations and pleased as a trusted provider to bring more connectivity options for tenants.”

Additionally, FibreCo has contracted engineering and construction company Geodesia, an Altice subsidiary, for the majority roll out and construction and maintenance. The creation of the joint venture is expected to be completed in the first half of 2023 and is subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval.

Vodafone is expected to receive cash proceeds from Altice of up to €1.2 billion as part of the transaction. This includes an upfront payment of €120 million at closing, additional deferred payments of up to €487 million as the roll out progresses once the first 1.5 million homes have been passed and until the end of the roll out. It will also receive an earn-out of up to €595 million based on FibreCo’s performance.

The British telco is investing in its biggest market after it suffered a drop in service revenue in Germany earlier this year. The group said in July 2022 it had lost 79,000 TV and 64,000 broadband customers in the first quarter, a 0.5% decline in service revenue in the country after a law came into effect ending automatic renewals and one of its IT systems underperformed, according to Reuters.

The company said that customer losses weren’t as bad as the previous quarter after it managed to fix its IT problems, and churn related to the new law started to decrease.

"We're on track to resolve the issues in Germany by the end of the summer as planned, which will further support a gradual recovery in our commercial performance," Read said at the time.

Fibre rollout appears to be going well, with the majority of UK homes and businesses able to access gigabit-capable broadband. But there is still much confusion around what exactly terms like ‘full fibre’ mean, and adoption still lags behind international partners even as businesses turn to greater bandwidths than ever before to undergo digital transformation.

Moreover, many rural businesses aren’t being catered to by large network providers, and as they remain on copper lines, wonder if alternative providers might hold the keys to connectivity. This week, we talk to David Tomalin, Group Chief Technology Officer at CityFibre, to discuss the UK’s broadband infrastructure and what businesses can look to gain from the network in the near future.

Highlights

“Yes, absolutely, worker happiness is absolutely fundamental. We see at the moment, across the industry, high churn rates as we've come out of the COVID constraints, and people are working, looking for that more balanced working life environment. And that's, there's not nothing wrong with that, but it's about us embracing it as a country, as a community of industries. Because we absolutely have to close that UK productivity gap.”

“I think that the market is never competitive enough. We, again, it goes back to what is in our DNA: our DNA is to be a competitor. Why are we successful? It's because we are competitive, but we need to keep our edge. And the only way that we can keep our edge is having other competitors in the market to keep up that creative tension.”

“we have got the potential to ensure that the telecoms infrastructure in the UK is no longer the constraint upon our society. The investment that we're putting in the technology that it enables, should unlock a potential of opportunity for everyone, in every walk of life, to endeavour to their maximum potential as an individual, and as a business. And I think that is transformational, compared to any other time over the last two or three decades in the telecoms history of the UK.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• CityFibre network passes 2 million homes on its march toward 8 million
• UK fibre rollout lags considerably behind developed nations, needs 'more ambition' to compete globally
• CityFibre raises alarm over UK telecoms overbuilding that could lead to broadband market regression
• 7 million homes to be connected to fibre in new joint venture network
• Prodapt aims to improve regional fibre choice with OpenFibreXchange launch
• Market consolidation – like Virgin Media O2 – is proving costly for the customer
• Five reasons why digital transformation is essential for business growth
• Half of UK premises now have access to gigabit broadband
• Yorkshire businesses first to trial cost-cutting water pipe broadband

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This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘The road to 10Gb broadband'. We apologise for any errors.

Rory Bathgate

Hi, I’m Rory Bathgate, and you’re listening to the IT Pro Podcast.

This week, we’re getting our daily dose of fibre.

Fibre broadband has become a priority in so many of our lives, and we all learned the importance of good internet during the long lockdown months of the pandemic.

Right now, fibre rollout in the UK seems to be continuing well, with 19.3 million (66% of UK homes) able to access gigabit-capable broadband and 9.6 million homes (33% of UK homes) now able to access full fibre according to Ofcom’s latest Connected Nations report.

But many communities, especially those in rural areas, are underserved by current networks, and some call for more power to be given to alternative network providers. Joining the show this week to discuss the UK’s broadband infrastructure, the future of the network and what businesses can seek to gain from it, is David Tomalin, Group Chief Technology Officer at CityFibre.

David, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

David Tomalin

Thanks very much, Rory for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Rory

Great. So just right off the bat, just to establish the kind of situation in the UK right now. How mature would you say the UK’s broadband infrastructure is right now?

David

Simply, it's not. We still lag many of the international indices for fibre deployment and fibre adoption in the market. However, I would say the work that CityFibre have done to invigorate that market over the last five years have moved us from the bottom and we're now accelerating up those league tables. So we're absolutely moving in the right direction, and we're moving quickly, which is the main thing

Rory

You say that CityFibre has been instrumental in spurring this change? This movement?

David

I think that CityFibre, with its mission for full fibre network encompassing all premises or properties or businesses in the UK, working with people like Vodafone, was instrumental in changing the foundation of the UK fibre market approximately five years ago. And that has invigorated competition in the marketplace. And hence why you see so much more broader fibre deployments by Openreach and by Virgin Media, and the plethora of other alternative network carriers across every breadth of the United Kingdom.

Rory

That term 'full fibre', that's a sticking point I know in the networking community. I was at Connected Britain this year, and I had the opportunity to see the CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch called for competitors to stop advertising fibre to the cabinet as 'fibre' or 'full fibre'. For those who don't know, what is the definition of 'full fibre?' And could you talk a bit about maybe why it's misleading to describe it as, to describe fibre to the cabinet as full fibre.

David

So for us, we focus on fibre from the central office, which is the exchange the data centre, where we bring the customer's traffic to meet the content providers, the service providers from that building through to the customer premise from the fibre that enters into their building, for full fibre must be fibre all the way. We appreciate that in the marketplace, people have different investment criterias, legacy networks they wish to support for as long as possible, generally copper based networks in those instances, and they try to minimise their investment, but maximise their return by maybe taking fibre from those data centres, exchanges to those active cabinets, those power cabinets and street. But that's almost like saying "I'm buying an electric car, but it's a hybrid. It's got a combustion engine in it." Is it, is it really an electric car? Or is an electric car completely electric? So we are on a mission that resets that definition, full fibre end-to-end.

Rory

It's all or nothing, in other words.

David

Absolutely.

Rory

So on that point, a lot of businesses will be weighing up the internet they currently have versus the internet that they could possibly invest in. Would you say that higher broadband speeds are really necessary for businesses seeking to invest in digital transformation, things like remote working?

David

I think there are two elements here that we need to consider. One, there is broadband speed, but there is also broadband reliability. And if you're a business, you actually need to to think about what is the reliability of a service to you to run on a daily basis. And all of our studies all of our reality that we see is, fibre based networks are inherently more reliable than copper based networks. So the first thing I'd have to pose to our listeners is, how important is it to you that that service works day in day out every moment of the day? So that's reliability. Now let's talk about broadband speeds, then. You don't necessarily know how valuable capacity is to you, until that constraint upon your business is unlocked. So very often in industries, what we see is by creating that uncapped potential, you see the businesses thrive in ways which was not envisioned by them before, when they were locked down to five megabits per second, two megabits per second, at a busy point of the day, or even 10 megabits per second. Industries change, they evolve, they realise they can do so much more, because we've unlocked that capability. So it's about envisioning the industries that we wish to grow in the United Kingdom over the next two, three, four, or five years. And the potential that gives each and every business owner and in fact home user, by moving to a fibre-based future.

Rory

That's great. I mean, I was going to follow up by asking if speed or bandwidth is the most important metric when looking at connectivity. But based on that, would you argue that it's kind of a blend?

David

It has absolutely a blend, it's to me, it's almost like standing on a seesaw. You're trying to balance the two things for your business. There's no point getting the highest bandwidth in the world, if it's not reliable. But equally, it's not worth getting a very reliable service, which gives you no bandwidth. So it's about balance. And it's about that balance within your commercial needs. So you might be, for example, a company who does drug development for pharmaceuticals. So the pharmaceutical industry, uploading masses of data, you need that network to have high capacity and reliability. But you may only need it in sporadic times of the day. But what you don't need is an unreliable service, and you absolutely don't need one more no bandwidth, where it's actually quicker for you to put that data on the hard drive and drive it to the end location. Okay, but that's different from where you're a small business owner, you're running a shop and you're doing transactions on your EPOS system. And every loss of a sale to you hits your bottom line. And at this point in time, if you're running those small businesses, you need to get that income stream secured, and ensure that it is always in place for you.

Rory

It is staggering that there are still businesses that, when they're weighing up transfer speeds, it's just a no brainer to still rely on physical transfer. And obviously there are air gapped systems, where that is sometimes seen as more necessary. But it sounds like what you're saying is, businesses currently don't, some of them don't have that choice. And they are being underserved in that way. If they're not actively seeking physical transfer, there absolutely should be a wireless transfer option. Well, sorry, internet transfer option, as opposed to physical transporting hard drives.

David

Yes, everything CityFibre does is focused on evolving the UK economy. And we're lucky enough to have the support to look over the five, ten, twenty-year period. So we've got to be transformational. And with that view, we hope by creating that framework and that environment, we can help the UK industries, from small startups to large scale conglomerates understand what their long term potential is by unlocking bandwidth as a constraint on their business. And you almost need to make a step changing your thinking about what your potential could be. So if you could have multi-gig services to your content distribution networks, and your development networks, well then workers who are currently constrained to office environments, where bandwidth is is so critical to their day-to day work — so for example, you might work in the oil industry, doing designs on geophysical calculations, all that high data intensity service type services — you know what, why can't we enable them to work from home? Why can't we empower that productivity gap, which let's face it as a UK economy, one of the biggest issues we have is productivity gap to our long term growth. So helping us as a community, and as businesses within that community understand that potential is absolutely key. But you can't just do it by focusing only on the now, you need to think about, well, how do I need to transform my business over the long term? How do I enable more productivity from my workforce? And how do I actually take on board the learnings of the last two, three years about work life balance, because it's not just about pure productivity, it's about retention of staff, the maximum engagement from your workforce to get the best outcomes for everyone, putting putting family first and putting your company as an enabler to you enjoying a balanced life. All those things come together into how you want to develop your business over the long term.

Rory

Enabling this kind of transformation, and then as you're saying, linking it so so closely to UK productivity, really highlights how fibre is so intrinsically linked to things like UK GDP, overall worker happiness?

David

Yes, absolutely, worker happiness is absolutely fundamental. We see at the moment, across the industry, high churn rates as we've come out of the COVID constraints, and people are working, looking for that more balanced working life environment. And that's, there's not nothing wrong with that, but it's about us embracing it as a country, as a community of industries. Because we absolutely have to close that UK productivity gap. That's the only way we are going to be successful in the modern world.

Rory

So with all that in mind, in a sort of general sense, what are some of the main hurdles that are holding back fibre rollout in the UK right now?

David

Probably the single biggest challenge is, is gaining scale, I think our learnings from the last three to five years, has been to go from a company of 150 people to approximately 2,000 individuals. And in that growth curve, also helping our key partners primarily in the build, construction, fibre termination industries, scale their businesses through Brexit, through COVID. Until we've now reached a sustainable run rate of premises past per year, and that will continue to be a constraint on the ability of us to maximise fibre rollout. There is only so many construction companies, only construction workers, especially when we see this scenario in the UK workforce of relatively high employment, and relatively free labour workforce to undertake these types of construction and build type roles. So there is that constraint there, but as an entity, I think we've reached this sustainable level for CityFibre that helps us power forward for the next three, five years to get to the 8 million target of homes passed. Now, there are other elements that have been an output of the COVID era, as we could call it, as we look back in many years time and probably relate to it, supply chain challenges that we've seen across the board for chipset, manufacturer, etc. But an awful lot of those are now also coming to an end. It has required strong partnership relationships across the industry. But you see that, that reality has set in we've started to get working principles over long-term forecasts working through supply chains getting security, and it's the willingness to face into the challenges together, as a partnership of companies with an end goal and fibre enabling the UK that has effectively enable us to reach the success we have so far.

Rory

Would you say that this this relationship, you're talking about, being able to very closely talk to partners tend to their individual needs, would you say that being in the position of — I don't know if you would describe yourself as an alt-net, but what some would describe as an alt-net not provider, Do you think that's been a benefit? That being in this period of growth, I think I'm correct in saying that you've reached a quarter now, 2 million of the 8 million targets —

David

So we've absolutely passed 2 million premises, just recently announced I think it just for Connected Britain.

Rory

Right. Exactly. Would you say that this has put you in a position where you're able to more closely talk to partners than say, some of the competitors such as Openreach?

David

I think that, culturally, we have always tried to be a partnership with community. Since the early days of CityFibre are working with key councils, I mean, we've had a huge relationship over the years with Coventry City Council who've been incredibly supportive of our, of our journey, as a business, as we provided services to them fibre-based services to them, as they've transformed the city of Coventry. And that, that inherent DNA of who we are, as a business has helped support us across all our partnerships, be they with suppliers, or be they with customers. It's, it's a cultural value that we I think we hold dear. And you're able to do that as you're growing a business, it's very easy as you become a mature business to lose that, that feeling of care and relationship and partnerships. And we've had the benefit of of growing with the community in the UK, building these fibre infrastructure. And that's why, frankly, right now, we are the second national fibre infrastructure provider. And that's the place we intend to stay. And it'd be lovely to be first. But, you know, that may take another five to 10 years.

Rory

Well, looking at the state of providers in the UK, do you think there's enough competition in the market right now? I mean, I realised I'm asking you if you prefer more competitors, but is the market competitive enough?

David

So I think that the market is never competitive enough. We, again, it goes back to what is in our DNA: our DNA is to be a competitor. Why are we successful? It's because we are competitive, but we need to keep our edge. And the only way that we can keep our edge is having other competitors in the market to keep up that creative tension. And I would then say that that should apply to the users of our service. All industries should be competitive, don't get complacent, become creative, push the boundaries. Because only that way we will achieve the maximum we can. Because if there isn't a competition, it's so easy to sit back on your previous success, and, and lose out in this modern, quite frankly, incredibly competitive world.

Rory

Something that the government has, they've revised their target several times, but they're more generally talked about gigabit broadband. It was originally a manifesto commitment, which has been sort of pushed back again and again now to 2030. But when are we likely do you think to see, as an example, 10 gigabit broadband speeds becoming widely available for businesses?

David

I think businesses and residential, what we see is the business and residential market are closely converging in their wants and needs. To the point of which I would say the residential products we provide now are very much like the business products you were seeing five years ago. And time is only likely to bring those together. Because working from home is is often not necessarily a choice anymore, it's a part of how you live. So you need that sort of reliance, reliability and capacity. In regards to 10 gigabit, what we're rolling out is we're rolling out a technology called XGS-PON, which is a 10 gigabit PON. And that enables what we're calling 'multi-gig services', and multi gig services are where a customer can have one gig, two gig, five gig and so on and so forth. There is an easy challenge to make here, which is because we are providing a 10 gig PON, does it actually provide a 10 gigabit per second service? It's slightly less than that. Because there are certain allocations, you have to put in that service for committed information rates or committed bandwidth to each and every customer. There's overheads with distance, etc. But introducing multi-gig services — that one, two, and five gig — is imminent. It is something that we are moving in the market. We're trying to be competitive in space across the whole of the national footprint over the next year or so, and the challenge will then become the innovation impact that has on ISPs. So we provide services for the ISPs. Well now, the ISPs need to do multi gig residential broadband hubs. Is your PC 10 gig capable? Is it two gig capable? And we're carefully watching this market: it is an innovation market. There are going to be leading contenders who can push on the boundaries of how you can use the services. But jump five years from now, I think it will be ubiquitous. That term five gig services will be standard across residential platforms across the UK.

Rory

Would you say... I know you said that the sort of lead time if you like between business and residential is narrowing and narrowing. Would you say that businesses are still likely to see multi-gig services slightly before residential? Or can we expect these around the same time you said —

David

So we, yeah business services, we'll see them quite frankly, I think they'll see them predominant about the same time. Because the technology adoption for residential is actually, enthusing that market to service the business market. One of the classic reasons why are we able to move to XGS-PON now so quickly in the marketplace, compared to where we thought it was going to be five years ago, is because there's massive residential network build-outs for XGS-PON globally, that has brought down the manufacturing price point, okay, it's all about those manufacturing dynamics, high volume, commodity components. Those elements have come down in price, meaning, you know what? It's relatively easy now to move to residential multi-gig services, and business multi-gig services, with those business multi-gig services, more orientated towards modern SLAs price points and dynamics than if we'd gone with a traditional lineup of products based on traditional technologies, point to point fibres, etc. They would have, they would have cost more and been therefore available to less of the business market.

Rory

So this is also something that small/medium businesses, SMEs, can benefit from, it's not just for the larger enterprises.

David

Absolutely. This has got to be empowering our broad wave of business community in the UK, it can't just be for one or two of the larger entities. Now, the question that comes with a full fibre network, where your fibre is enabled to all entities, is what potential does that give to the larger businesses? Why stop at 10 gig? Why not have 100 gig or even an 800 gig terminated service? There is, that's the beauty of a full fibre network, you're not constrained by copper in any part of the network architecture. So all those potential long range services start to come to the fore.

Rory

So once you've got the infrastructure there, it's really just a stepping up point, where you can keep expanding the speeds, the bandwidth, really to user need.

David

Absolutely. So even in the residential market, as we look at that over the next 20 years, we've gone G-PON, that's two and a half gig effectively down, one and a little bit up. Then we've got XGS-PON, which is 10 gig symmetrical, then there's a decision that the industry needs to make between 25 gig and 50 gig PON. We generally think at this point in time, we will move to 50 gig PON, round about 10 to 14 years from now, is our current thinking. But industry changes quickly, if the potential changes, we will reflect on that. And those step changes work across technology. And we will bring them to the market based on our own competitive pressure, based upon the business need of the UK community, based on government direction, all those things come into the melting pot to create that truly innovative service layer that businesses can rely on and residential users can build on.

Rory

Great. Are there any changes that businesses should be making to their current infrastructure in order to prep for this, to really take advantage of 10 gigabits and above when, when it's available?

David

I think the fundamental one is, if you're building out your business network in your office, 10 gig capable devices, start thinking about them, start prioritising them. I mean, it's clear we're in an economic environment that requires you to focus on the right investment. Spend that little bit more time going well, you know what, the backup storage server on site versus the cloud based storage service that does need to be 10 gig. Whereas my PC can be a two gig. Wi-Fi compliant, if I'm moving to the new Wi-Fi hubs, then move to the two gig capable Wi-Fi solutions. All those elements come together to enable you to have that longer, kind of return on investment on that infrastructure spend that you need to make as a business.

Rory

And for businesses, I mentioned in the intro briefly, rural businesses, I know that a lot of rural areas are still served primarily by copper, are these immediate benefits experienced by areas where new lines are being laid, or existing fibre is being upgraded? And will the existing copper lines, can they expect a delay, rural businesses, when it comes to rural communities?

David

We as the alternate carrier sector, need to understand which of our businesses, which businesses serve those communities the best. There's some fantastic examples of local businesses and rural communities getting together to help serve themselves. So can we as a, as a industry support their capability to move to these types of services. Now, that might be not necessarily for us to build them. But it may be for us as we build out our networks, to provide connectivity to them so they can connect to the internet. So all those things need to, to come into a web of the potential of enabling rural locations. Now, I appreciate the government, I think, are supporting a whole number of initiatives to enable rural communities. And, again, it's going to come down to in the end to building out at scale, can we, as an industry, make sure that we have in our plans, the timelines to enable those communities so they are not left behind? If we can do them with urban builds, then let's do so. And it's the efficiency of serving all, rather than being focused only on a few. I think our story has always been about the potential that we can bring to the market. And I think we have to work with that wider body of alternative infrastructure providers, and industry and government to ensure that no community is left behind.

Rory

Fantastic. This is more of a broad point. But kind of in summary, you'd say that in the next 10 years, the UK can look forward to this initial, this rollout of infrastructure, which will then allow the next 20, 30 years of UK networking to really be "the sky's the limit", in terms of expansion?

David

I think in summary, I will say this, which is: we have got the potential to ensure that the telecoms infrastructure in the UK is no longer the constraint upon our society. The investment that we're putting in the technology that it enables, should unlock a potential of opportunity for everyone, in every walk of life, to endeavour to their maximum potential as an individual, and as a business. And I think that is transformational, compared to any other time over the last two or three decades in the telecoms history of the UK.

Rory

Just to clarify, as it stands, does copper fit into your strategy?

David

It fits into our strategy in regards that it is a legacy technology that constrains our competitors in the market. We are a fibre only company. We are lucky not to be constrained by copper based networks, in the activities we undertake. And that's a real opportunity for us. We're very clear on that position.

Rory

Broadly, where do you see CityFibre In five years time?

David

I think we're going to build on where we already are, which is we are the UK's largest independent, open access fibre-only network. And, and we're going to pass 8 million homes but we've got to build on that, we've got to enable that alternate carrier community to possibly come together to maximise the footprint, really create that creative tension, that competition that you spoke about. And I think we're well positioned to help orchestrate those changes to the UK economy.

Rory

David, thank you very much.

David

Thank you very much, Rory.

Rory

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk.

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Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and a review.

We'll be back next week with more insight from the world of IT but until then, goodbye.

Satellite connectivity is undergoing a major expansion, benefiting from major investment from organisations such as SpaceX, OneWeb and DISH. SpaceX’s Starlink, for instance, now has more than 3,000 satellites in its constellation, while OneWeb has recently partnered with French satellite operator Eutelsat to boost its coverage. Public sector organisations, such as the EU and DARPA, are also getting in on the action, with the former set to launch a constellation this decade to serve Europe with 5G. The latter, meanwhile, has launched a competition to develop a satellite network to transmit encrypted communications.

Although the cost of launching a satellite may seem extortionate right now, when seen as part of a larger outlay that provides broad coverage, high investment might make sense. Each satellite can provide coverage for a very wide area, whereas fibre will never be able to reach every single customer; some businesses and households will always be too remote. Additionally, for areas lacking basic infrastructure, satellite deployments might arguably outpace the fastest cable laying operations.

The satellite broadband industry has jumped on this opportunity, and sees a great deal of potential in providing connectivity for difficult-to-reach customers, like people living on mountains or based in far-removed rural areas. Due to practical issues, and market forces, this customer base has traditionally suffered from unreliable coverage and slow speeds, while those based in major towns and cities have been able to get ahead.

Organisations like SpaceX, however, are hoping to be the remedy. Starlink, for instance, says its services provide internet for “remote and rural locations across the globe”, while OneWeb claims it “exists to remove the barriers to connectivity that are holding economies back”. The company highlights the widely publicised “digital divide” experienced by more than three billion people in rural and remote areas worldwide, pledging to bridge it in a way fibre optic cables haven’t yet been able to.

The dismal state of rural connectivity

Although cities seem like a natural home for major businesses, swathes of organisations operate in rural areas, with more employees than ever before also working from home on city outskirts or the countryside. Government figures show 23% of all registered businesses in England are based rurally (549,000), with remote areas host to more businesses per head than urban areas, excluding London.

Last year, Three’s head of government affairs, Simon Miller, argued the government was underserving rural organisations, despite continued full-fibre rollout. Even rural areas with a range of connectivity options face reduced speeds, too, with 2020’s average speeds in rural England standing at 51 Mbits/sec versus the urban figure of 84 Mbits/sec. Some businesses even lack services as basic as reliable mobile phone signal, preventing them from engaging in digital transformation or performing tasks like video conferencing.

The status quo is hugely frustrating, Dave Happy, 5G RuralDorset spectrum standards & security lead, tells IT Pro. “I find it chronically depressing that, after the sharp end of 37 years of deregulation, that we're even still having the discussion at all,” he says. “The notion that a rural community should be settling for just coverage and not adequate connectivity speeds is itself a concept founded on shaking and shifting sands.

“When you think about everybody now, using one-time pass codes for purchases online – I can’t, and 15% of the country, after 2025, may [still] have a similar problem. Is that the kind of world we want to live in? It’s a bigger failing and it could be addressed by policy decisions higher up, and I’d like to see a little bit more weight to those policy decisions.”

Could comprehensive satellite coverage alleviate these problems? Happy is quick to contest the claim satellite launches could provide coverage quicker than fibre for rural businesses, although low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites might play a role in future. He cites one provider that was deploying 50km of rural fibre a week, which has risen to nearly 70km. This organisation has four ploughs in operation and is directly burying the fibre.

Despite the ongoing rollout, though, communities not currently served by fibre optic cable can face quotes of tens of thousands of pounds to get lines brought out to them, or must wait until larger network operators see their area as profitable enough to recoup the cost. In comparison, satellite broadband customers can expect smaller setup and monthly fees — organisations in the United States, for instance, can get 350 MBits/sec for $500 per month, with a one-time setup fee of $2,500 through Starlink.

Ofcom’s role in spectrum allocation is key

In 2021, BT and OneWeb signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the intention of exploring LEO satellite communication for rural customers. This partnership will focus on improving capacity, mobile resilience, backhaul and building out coverage in challenging locations. The two firms will also consider ways to develop new services beyond the UK’s shores for BT’s global customers.

As things stand, the company expects high-altitude platform (HAP) systems to combine with LEO satellites, with the firm examining applications for LEO around resilience, such as backhaul backup in remote areas, according to a spokesperson. There are challenges, though, at play. Although LEO, on its own, offers a number of possibilities, there are capacity constraints that means it might not be practical in offering a ‘direct to customer’ option. Capacity constraints, specifically, could translate to spectrum rationing – particularly if Ofcom rules the increasingly crowded satellite market must directly compete with internet service providers (ISPs) for high-frequency millimetre wave (mmWave) bands above 24Ghz.

Little consensus has so far been reached over the rights of satellite operators within Europe. MmWave offers greater bandwidth and lower interference than other bands, which puts it in high demand for both satellite networking operators as well as for 5G usage by traditional network operators. Sharing issues, therefore, may occur above 40.5GHz, according to Aarti Holla-Maini, secretary general of the Global Satellite Operators Association (GSOA), which will mean requiring emission limits on 5G equipment. “We have urged Ofcom to ensure protection of satellite DL (40.5GHz – 42.5GHz) with separation distances, as well as protection of satellite UL (42.5GHz – 43.5GHz) satellite receivers from aggregate interference from 5G base stations.”

GSOA isn’t concerned allocation will necessitate spectrum rationing, with some groundwork having previously been laid. “This part of the band was foreseen for some years as a priority band for 5G by the EU anyway,” adds Holla-Maini. “But it’s potentially a deployment constraint because satellite operators will have to co-exist with 5G in urban areas, which might put constraints on where we can deploy gateway earth stations.”

Gateway earth stations are satellite dish hubs that send data from fibre networks to a constellation and to a user’s own receiver, and vice versa. They require adequate space, free of obstructions such as tall buildings or dramatic geographic features, as well as weather conditions conducive to good radio transmission – the same set of criteria required by telecoms infrastructure. Beyond interference caused by stations packed too closely, competition between operators could rear its head not through allocation, but the mundane problem of real estate on the ground. Urban areas could be particularly difficult to populate with infrastructure, both due to competition from existing 5G masts and reduced space.

Accessing untapped ultra-rural potential

While the debate over spectrum allocation rages on, rural businesses continue to suffer. Scotland, home to some of the leading lights of the UK tech sector, has stark differences in connectivity between cities and rural communities. “Scotland’s got some specific challenges – 98% of the land mass is classified as rural or ultra rural, which means that to start with they haven’t got the decent connectivity,” says Julie Snell, Scotland 5G Centre chair. “Trying to enable that has been a really big challenge, and the pandemic really brought it home.”

The Scottish government officially defines rural areas as “accessible” if they have a population of less than 3,000 within a 30 minute drive of a settlement containing 10,000 or more people, and either “remote” or “very remote” if the drive takes more than 30 mins. Snell notes there’s great potential among business in remote communities that isn’t currently being tapped, with 21% of the Scottish GDP coming from such rural areas, despite the fact they’re often poorly connected. Bridging the digital divide could hugely boost the economy.

“Satellites have absolutely got to be part of the solution in Scotland, which has now got a huge space industry,” Snell continues. “We are looking at it, and not just for Scotland, but any other really remote areas. It isn’t always necessarily about 5G – it’s about the best connectivity you can get. In some cases, it’s never going to be reached by wireless, and it’s never going to be reached cost-effectively by a fibre link. There are times when it’s going to be satellite.”

It’s clear satellite broadband offers a compelling story that makes it sound an ideal solution for rural customers’ woes. After all, if one relies on the market, there will likely always be businesses whose premises are too far removed for network infrastructure providers to justify running fibre to, without huge setup costs being passed onto the end-user. For several good reasons, it may be some years before UK businesses can make full use of satellite broadband, but, when deployed and utilised correctly, LEO satellites could prove a powerful and permanent antidote for underserved rural business.

A new index by Omdia has ranked the UK just 53rd in the world for fibre development, with the US far ahead at 23rd overall.

UK network infrastructure was ranked lower than other countries in the report due to the inconsistency of 'full fibre' coverage across the country, as well as through other metrics such as lower overall speeds.

The index benchmarked countries against metrics such as fibre to the premises (FFTP) coverage, fibre to the business, and household penetration, as well as mobile site penetration and tech investment.

Additionally, Ookla Speedtest data was used to rank the broadband experience in countries, taking their median upload speeds, download speeds, latency, and jitter into account.

Leading country Singapore already claims that it has achieved full FTTP coverage and ranked top in seven of nine metrics measured. This is a setup in which the fibre optic cable runs all the way from its exchange directly to the end user’s property, rather than running first into a street cabinet, which is known as fibre to the cabinet (FTTC).

South Korea, China, the UAE, Qatar, and Japan comprised the other leading countries and each of which were identified as having robust broadband targets in the report. Omdia's assessment was that the UK could do more to improve its targets.

“Fibre investment is an essential metric for government institutions and other stakeholders to track,” said Michael Philpott, research director at Omdia. "As a broadband-access technology, optical fibre provides an optimised, highly sustainable, and future-proof quality service.

“This superior level of quality is essential for the development of future digital services and applications across all verticals. With increased efficiency stimulating greater innovation, high-speed broadband has been proven to drive not just consumer satisfaction but national economic indicators such as GDP and productivity.”

As companies increasingly look to embark on digital transformation journeys, which can involve enabling their employees to work remotely, reliable and high-speed internet has become more of a business necessity.

Rural businesses argue that they are least prepared for these demands, with the non-profit research organisation Rural CIC pointing to the ‘digital exclusion’ caused by a poor rollout in rural areas.

Although the UK Government’s manifesto commitment was to deliver nationwide FTTP broadband by 2025, this was changed in February 2022 to a target for nationwide gigabit broadband to be made available by 2030.

In comparison, Singapore is already claiming full FTTP coverage, where it is treated as ‘strategic infrastructure'.

While superfast broadband is available to 96% of the UK, only 33% of premises are currently able to access ‘full fibre’ broadband, often used to refer to FTTP networks.

However, the rollout of fibre broadband has been accelerating in the UK compared to that of 5G. The government’s mandate that BT removes all Huawei devices from its core UK network for national security purposes has slowed the next generation of mobile networking.

“There is at least one provider last year that was deploying 50km of rural fibre per week, and that’s gone up to nearly 70,” said Dave Happy, security lead for rural campaign group 5G RuralDorset.

Key figures in private companies have also suggested that there needs to be a more concerted campaign to explain what ‘full fibre’ actually means.

At the UK networking conference Connected Britain 2022, Vodafone UK CEO Ahmed Essam said: “Nobody gets what new fibre is in the market. And I think there is a point here about making it easy for customers to decide what’s the right technology for them, being more transparent.

"I think when it comes to broadband it’s very difficult, even for people in our business, to know the difference in some of the offers between what is called fibre,” he added.

In response, Lutz Schüler, CEO at Virgin Media O2, said consumers don't care about the technology itself, just about the quality of the product they receive.

“You see what actually matters is not the technology, it’s the speed,” he said. “So if you look at Switzerland, it has fibre coverage of 90%. But still, customers are not sitting 100% on the fibre network - actually the minority are - because there’s also a cable network. So I think what customers want is speed, latency, and reliability.”

Global technology consulting firm Prodapt has announced the launch of its OpenFibreXchange (OFX), which it hopes will boost the drive for high-speed connectivity across the UK.

OpenFibreXchange is a cloud-native and open source solution for fibre aggregation, which would allow internet service providers (ISPs) to utilise the networks of alternative network (alt-net) providers. In the UK, alt-net providers are typically defined as those operating their fibre networks outside of Openreach and Virgin, whose infrastructures dominate UK connectivity.

The company says investment and development of OFX began after alt-nets and incumbent operators expressed interest in such a system, in the interest of accelerating digital transformation and fibre rollout across the UK.

At present, fibre rollout in the UK is continuing at pace, with 19.3 million (66% of UK homes) able to access gigabit-capable broadband and 9.6 million homes (33% of UK homes) now able to access full fibre according to Ofcom’s latest Connected Nations report.

Despite this, many rural interest groups, such as Rural England CIC, have emphasised the digital divide that still exists between urban and rural communities throughout the UK. The group 5GRuralDorset has also expressed disappointment at what they see as an inadequate rollout.

“The notion that a rural community should be settling for just coverage, and not adequate connectivity speeds, is itself a shaky concept,” said Dave Happy, collaboration lead 5GRuralDorset.

“People often don’t think about the democratic deficit and the things you just have to do online. So you could say, staying alive is important and having that connectivity is a real boon because you’re able to get necessary things like Covid passes.”

Although several regional fibre operators are currently active in the UK, collaboration between their networks and those of ISPs is not always achieved. Those with the infrastructure to operate and lay their own networks, such as Virgin, have been regarded by some as stifling the market and preventing alt-nets from establishing successful networks of their own.

Earlier this year, telecommunications firm CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch argued against overbuilding that he credited companies such as Virgin with, stating that it would reduce competition in the market and therefore limit consumer choice. CityFibre is a private telco that operates its own full-fibre network used by ISPs across the UK, which aims to service 8 million homes and 800,000 businesses by 2025.

“There’s been a weak duopoly in the UK’s fixed market, BT across everywhere and Virgin across half the country,” stated Mesch at Connected Britain 2022, the UK’s largest connectivity conference.

“It has underinvested into fibre. The alternate fibre providers like CityFibre have sprung up and said we can build fibre at pace, and that has unlocked £20-30 billion of investment. Nothing I can think of would be better for the UK as a whole and for the businesses and citizens of the UK than to keep a flourishing, competitive infrastructure market.”

With greater interconnectivity between networks, enabled by fibre exchanges, customers might be given a greater number of ISPs to choose from, all using pre-established regional networks as opposed to laying their own.

“OpenFibreXchange will accelerate the time-to-market for ISPs to offer high-speed digital services across the country,” said Mukul Gupta, EVP and head fibre at Prodapt.

“The ISPs will be able to unlock the full potential of full-fibre in 80% reduced cycle time via OFX, which will bridge the gap between disparate process and tech stacks of regional fibre operators.”

Charlie Ruddy, the CEO of alt-net provider Digital Infrastructure, expressed support for Prodapt’s announcement.

“High-speed full fibre access is indispensable for the digital economy, and OpenFibreXchange can help accelerate the collaboration between ISPs & fibre operators at a national level in the UK,” he stated.

Prodapt, a member of the Indian Jhaver Group conglomerate, has a range of partners including telecoms operators, as well as industry giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Google is aiming to include connectivity for satellite internet in Android 14, a move that would put it at the forefront of networking technology.

Google senior vice president of Android, Chrome, Chrome OS & Play, Hiroshi Lockheimer, expressed admiration for how far connectivity on Android has come and hinted towards the future of the mobile operating system, in a Tweet on Monday.

“When we launched G1 in ‘08 it was a stretch to get 3G + Wifi working. Now we’re designing for satellites. Cool! Excited to support our partners in enabling all of this in the next version of Android!”

The release of Android 14 remains firmly on the horizon, with Android 13 having only just dropped for many Pixel users, and many more across the Android ecosystem yet to receive it. Despite this, Google has indicated that the beta could be available for use as soon as April 2023.

In the meantime, Google is working with partners on multiple avenues of networking innovation. It recently announced a successful network slicing test with Nokia, in which a phone running Android 13 was able to connect to multiple 5G network slices simultaneously, for improved security and optimised network performance.

Last month, T-Mobile announced plans with SpaceX to provide satellite coverage for texts and eventually calls to some of the most remote areas in the US. With its low Earth orbit (LEO) Starlink satellite constellation, SpaceX is able to give its customers download speeds of up to 104 Mbits/sec in areas that lack even basic broadband coverage.

At present, devices such as phones can only access SpaceX Wi-Fi through a router that connects directly to a Starlink dish, which is the hardware that transfers data to and from the constellation. Phones that can connect directly to satellites could experience unprecedented network stability, and access high-speed broadband across the globe.

Satellite internet is a rapidly growing sector, with competition already hotting up between nation states and companies alike.

SpaceX’s Starlink constellation continues to expand at pace, with over 3,000 satellites in orbit at time of writing and FCC approval to eventually increase this number to 12,000. Starlink is the most widely supported satellite broadband provider currently, operating in over 40 countries and having recently secured exclusive deals to provide Wi-Fi for the Royal Caribbean cruise fleet, and for JSX airlines.

Meanwhile, the UK could receive home-grown satellite broadband coverage in the near future, as London-based OneWeb faces a merger with French satellite operator Eutelsat. This could greatly boost the rollout of OneWeb satellites to its own constellation, which currently consists of 428 satellites.

AT&T has announced its intent to bring fiber internet service to Mesa, a city in Maricopa County in the US state of Arizona.

The company is set to offer speeds of up to 5 Gigs to over 100,000 homes in and around the Mesa area. The high-speed broadband service is expected to be available to local Mesa residents in 2023.

The move will facilitate better access to education, jobs, healthcare, and more for one of the largest and fastest growing cities in America, the company claims.

"Fiber is hands-down the best technology to deliver high-speed broadband, and this expansion is allowing AT&T to aggressively roll out service to the Mesa area," said John Stankey, chief executive officer of AT&T.

"Our long-term goal is to provide fiber to as many customers as we can, and this is just one of many steps we're taking to achieve that goal," added Stankey.

The announcement follows Corning Inc.'s recent investment in a new optical cable manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona. The company's position as AT&T's largest fiber manufacturer sweetens the deal for Arizona.

"In an increasingly virtual world, access to high-speed internet is a key to success for individuals, families and business owners," said John Giles, Mayor of Mesa.

"We welcome AT&T to Mesa as their team delivers fiber connectivity, ultimately creating better access to education, jobs and healthcare for our great city."

SpaceX and T-Mobile have announced plans to directly link mobile phones with SpaceX's low-Earth-orbiting Starlink internet satellites in orbit.

The move will provide T-Mobile users with network access within parts of the US. The shift will also reduce dependence on cell towers while boosting cell coverage at previously untapped locations.

Specifically, Starlink's satellites will leverage T-Mobile's mid-band spectrum to create a new network. Existing T-Mobile customers can also avail of the new service, which will include text messaging in a beta phase by the end of 2023. Voice and data coverage are next on the list, as confirmed by T-Mobile.

“SpaceX's next-generation Starlink satellites, the first of which are planned to launch on SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket whenever it is fully developed, will have larger antennae that will allow connectivity directly to mobile phones on the T-mobile network,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO.

"We are constructing special antenna... They are actually very big antenna that are extremely advanced. The important thing is you will not need to get a new phone. The phone you currently have will work,” added Musk.

AST SpaceMobile, a Texas-based satellite communications firm, is also in the works to deploy a global cellular broadband network in space for use with mobile devices without requiring additional hardware.

Earlier this month, SpaceX announced it would be offering bounties between $100 and $25,000 to hackers who successfully unmask exploits to the company through their website.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has named 11 teams, including Intel Federal, SpaceX and an Amazon subsidiary, for an inter-satellite ‘translator’ project.

In a press release, the government agency outlined the goal of the programme, known as Space-BACN, as being to create a low-Earth orbit (LEO) 'internet' that allows reliable information transfer between military, government and civilian satellite constellations.

DARPA identified three key areas of development key to creating such a network, including a low weight, size, cost, rigidity and power optical aperture; a reconfigurable optical modem supporting 100Gbits/sec internet; and cross-constellation command and control (C2) parts necessary inter-satellite communications.

The firms chosen to work within the first area of development are CACI Inc, MBRYONICS and Mynaric. The latter is an established name in the sector of wireless data transmission, having created laser communication technology for use between aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and larger satellite networks.

DARPA is a research and development agency within the US Department of Defense (DoD), tasked with experimenting on and testing emerging technologies.

Intel, Arizona State University and II-VI Aerospace and Defense will all develop designs for the reconfigurable modem. This is not the first time that DARPA has partnered with Intel, with an announcement last year that the microprocessor giant would design custom chips for the DoD, containing novel security protections.

The third area of development has the most participants, comprising SpaceX, Telesat, SpaceLink, Viasat and Kuiper Government Solutions LLC (an Amazon subsidiary). Currently, SpaceX could be considered the best-placed to provide the required connectivity, with over 2,200 satellites currently in its constellation and FCC-backing to provide Wi-Fi to moving vehicles.

The companies will submit competing designs within their respective areas of development after 14 months, after which a select few will be chosen to take part in a second phase lasting approximately 18 months.

The interest of DARPA in the satellite internet sector makes sense, given the agency’s mission statement to “make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security”. Space broadband is a rapidly-growing industry, with companies such as SpaceX and DISH are already competing over the limitations of authorised bands, and due to its highly-utilisable nature is certain to represent a promising sandbox for US government use.

Last month, UK-based communications firm OneWeb announced a merger with French satellite operator Eutelsat, marking a major consolidation of power within the European satellite sector. The former had announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with BT last year, to provide satellite broadband to rural customers across the UK, and as satellite networking technologies develop deals such as this may become the key to global internet access.

A new fibre network servicing up to 7 million UK homes has been announced as part of a joint venture between telecommunications giant Liberty Global, fellow telco Telefónica Infra, and private equity firm InfraVia.

By 2026, the partnership is set to roll out fibre to 5 million homes that are not currently connected to Virgin Media O2’s network. A further 2 million homes have been identified as expansion targets for a point after this date.

This would prove a significant boost for the UK’s gigabit internet availability, benefiting customers as well as rural businesses underserved by current infrastructure.

The fibre network is expected to offer fibre to the home access to existing internet service providers (ISPs), with Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) already an operating client. Added on to VMO2’s existing network, this will expand the company’s fibre reach to approximately 80% of UK homes.

For the initial stage, it's estimated that £4.5 billion will need to be invested, which will be funded pro rata by the three partners, with up to £1.4 billion in aggregate, over a four to five year period.

Liberty Global and Telefónica will hold a joint 50% stake in the venture by way of a holding company, and InfraVia will hold the remaining 50%.

The announcement comes at a time of stagnation in UK fibre rollout, with a report this year criticising the lack of progress on the part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to meet its 2025 broadband coverage targets.

However others in the industry, such as telecommunications service provider CityFibre, have argued that overbuilding by Openreach and VMO2 is stifling competition within the UK.

“This landmark agreement with Liberty Global, Telefonica and InfraVia will expand our FTTH footprint to millions of new UK homes, creating the undisputed second national fibre network in the UK,” said Mike Fries, CEO and vice chairman of Liberty Global.

“VMO2 has already committed to upgrading its entire existing 16 million footprint to FTTH. This JV will take our aggregate FTTH footprint to up to 23 million homes, reaching around 80% of the UK.”

SpaceX has officially been given approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to provide Wi-FI to moving vehicles, a long sought after goal for the company.

With licence in hand, the company's Starlink service will now be able to provide Wi-Fi to planes, boats, ships, and large trucks in a landmark move that expands the capabilities of the ambitious satellite network.

Starlink provides high-speed internet access to customers in remote locations across 36 countries, using satellite receiver dishes to connect to an array of low earth orbit satellites. Residential customers can expect download speeds around 104 Mbits/sec, while the company claims that firms signed up for Starlink Business get 150-350 Mbits/sec.

To date, the service has only been available for static use, as well as in a flexible package called ‘Starlink for RVs’ in which customers can pause and unpause their connection as they move between locations for an added cost. SpaceX has not announced when customers will see the immediate benefits of the ruling.

Earlier this year, SpaceX signed an agreement with independent air carrier JSX to provide in-flight Wi-Fi for their flights, as well as with Hawaiian Airlines with the service set to go online next year. With Starlink’s reputation for strong satellite connection, it is likely that other industries, such as shipping, will sign contracts with SpaceX in light of the FCC decision.

The network has been in the news recently due to praise it has received from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, as citizens and soldiers in the war-torn country have continued to speak with loved ones and access crucial information systems using satellite receiver dishes supplied directly by SpaceX.

SpaceX has ramped up Starlink deployment of late, with four launches in May alone adding 212 satellites to its ever-expanding network. Over 2,200 Starlink satellites are currently operating in orbit as part of the ‘Gen1’ phase, with an overall plan for 12,000 satellites having received permission to go ahead by the FCC several years ago.

SpaceX has filed paperwork to allow further expansion of this ‘megaconstellation’ of satellites to between 30,000 and 42,000 over the next decade. This has drawn criticism from some in the space community, with concerns aired over the potential for debris from Starlink satellites to make orbital activity more perilous, and astronomers last year asking the UN to look into the satellites’ increasing intrusion into long-exposure photos of the night sky.

Verizon has announced its Fios Forward initiative has made free high-speed internet available to over 11.5 million low-income homes entitled to FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The news comes months after the company pledged to offer reliable and free internet access through its Citizen Verizon scheme ‌that promotes economic, environmental, and‌ ‌social‌ ‌advancement.

The move encourages eligible ACP customers to connect to their virtual jobs, classrooms, healthcare, etc.

“In today’s world, connectivity is critical, and Verizon is taking a stand to ensure cost barriers won’t stand between customers and the most reliable home internet,” explained Verizon.

Verizon Fios' 100% fibre-optic internet for qualifying ACP subscribers comes free with download and upload speeds starting at 200Mbps, the fastest available in the market.

Commenting on additional discounts, Verizon said its Maryland Broadband Benefit program offers ‌a discount of up to $15 per month to Maryland customers who are enrolled in ACP.

Additionally, the firm assures no hidden cost barriers, extra fees, or router costs for its internet service.

"Responsible business — through programs like ACP — is and has been part of our core strategy to improve economic, environmental and social advancement,” said Hans Vestberg, Verizon chairman and CEO.

“Through our Citizen Verizon efforts and a pledge of $3 billion, we have made great strides to help those who need access to technology the most. Our ongoing work with the government and across the industry to put the power of technology in the hands of more families across the country remains paramount as we continue the important work to help bridge the digital divide,” added Vestberg.

The rate of overbuilding by UK telecoms providers has been flagged as a cause for concern by challenger provider CityFibre, saying the market could regress to a duopoly of the biggest companies.

CityFibre founder and CEO Greg Mesch said the current rate of overbuilding, especially by Openreach and Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), is good news for the UK consumer given the better availability and choice afforded them but regressing to a market duopoly could lead to stifled innovation in the networking industry.

“The only people that are building over each other are these two, and they naturally should because we're overbuilding them, and they have to upgrade their network,” said Mesch speaking at Connected North 2022. “The reason they're having to upgrade the network is that we're going to take all the customers. It's quite simple. We’re going to take them all unless they upgrade.

“So, the only overbuilding is really taking place is by Virgin, and suddenly ‘ah, me too, I'm going to upgrade.’ Openreach: ‘me too, I'm fibre first’, which is fantastic for you, the UK nation, the UK citizens. But to be very, very clear, the world will not look very good if it's re-monopolised and the only providers are these two. It won’t look good again.”

Overbuilding is a practice in the telecoms industry whereby one provider will build a network where a competing provider already has one. If Openreach already had an active network in Prestwich, Manchester, for example, and VMO2 decided to build there after the fact, this would be known as overbuilding.

Overbuilding provides additional options for consumers but brings with it concerns of market dominance given the cost of building is so prohibitive.

Paul Kells, director of network strategy and engineering at VMO2, said its rate of overbuilding is currently at 30%, that the situation is being monitored “very closely”, but “it’s not something that’s concerning us at the moment”.

Mesch also claimed the incumbent broadband providers in the UK didn’t have investment plans for fibre infrastructure before challenger brands like CityFibre were introduced to the market.

Matthew Hemmings, managing director of fibre and network delivery at Openreach, refuted the claim, saying that Openreach had focused on delivering widely available superfast broadband before targeting fibre builds.

“We've been investing billions in our network for years,” said Hemmings. “What we focused on is Openreach, not BT. Openreach has taken our network as fast as we can, and we delivered superfast for over 95% of the UK.

“That's one of the fastest superfast roll outs in the world and we think it brought greater availability to a broader population as possible in a very quick timeframe,” he added. “Now we agree the future of is fibre and we're getting on with building fibre across the UK as possible.”

Mesch added that Ofcom needs to ensure challenger providers survive “because as long as we survive, they will invest massively”. He said the UK’s service-based economy is reliant on internet delivered by “pure fibre” infrastructure and to maintain a strong digital economy, strong internet needs to be prioritised through the enabling of competition.

Mesch suggested that competition is also under threat given the prohibitive cost of building new networks. All panellists at the Connected North 2022 event - Openreach, VMO2, and CityFibre - agreed that a shortage of skilled labour is driving up the costs of building.

“We definitely are competing with Virgin and Openreach all the time for labour resource, and we're doing something that's silly which is: I go after a contractor that Openreach has, and I get them over on my pitch, and then we pay him money. And then Openreach comes along and says no, I want them back to my pitch and he pays them a little more,” said Mesch.

“So, we're just chasing around the same labour pool and we're driving up wages, and it's, you know, nutty stuff,” he added. “But I guess that's what you do in a competitive, challenging environment with scarce resources.”

Matthew Hemmings, managing director of fibre and network delivery at Openreach, said the company is trying to bring in 4,000 new workers every year to meet the demand for skilled labour that can install the fibre networks needed in the UK.

“We've got everybody - butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, coming into our trading schools and 16-17 weeks later, they're coming out and then we're putting them in the field and turned them into fibre joiners and cablers.”

Kells agreed that resources are scarce but added that VMO2 doesn’t need a large resource base to upgrade its fixed fibre network. Kells admitted the resource strain is most felt in the company’s expansion programme which involves the building of new networks altogether, rather than maintaining existing ones.

Yorkshire businesses will be the first to test the cost-cutting benefits of gigabit broadband being deployed through drinking water pipes, the government has announced.

The trial, led by Yorkshire Water, is set to last up to two years and use 17 km-long active water pipes between the South Yorkshire towns of Barnsley and Penistone, connecting as many as 8,500 homes and businesses along its route.

If found to be safe and compliant with legal requirements, the technology could become operational in water networks around the country from 2024.

The announcement comes eight months after the UK government announced a £4 million fund for innovators to find ways to feed fibre optic cables through water pipes, in an effort to help speed up the rollout of gigabit broadband to rural areas, all while saving costs.

Up to 80% of the expenses used to build new gigabit-capable broadband networks come from the development of poles and ducts, according to the government, with works often involving digging up rural roads and limiting access to remote villages.

Digital infrastructure minister Julia Lopez described road works as “one of the biggest obstacles to rolling out faster broadband”, adding that the issue prompted DCMS to explore how water pipes can be used to “accelerate deployment” while minimising leaks.

“We’re committed to getting homes and businesses across the country connected to better broadband and this cutting-edge project is an exciting example of the bold measures this government is leading on to level up communities with the very best digital connectivity,” she added.

Yorkshire Water has received a £1.2 million grant to kickstart the trial, with its innovation programme manager Sam Bright saying that the water services company is “very pleased that the government is supporting the development of the Fibre in Water solution”.

According to Bright, deploying broadband through water pipes “can reduce the environmental impact and day-to-day disruptions that can be caused by both water and telecom companies’ activities”.

“The technology for fibre in water has significantly progressed in recent years and this project will now enable us to fully develop its potential to help improve access to better broadband in hard-to-reach areas and further reduce leakage on our networks,” he added.

Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) have partnered with Amazon to support the latter’s Kuiper project, an initiative aimed at expanding global broadband access via a constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

As part of the deal, the trio has agreed to provide heavy-lift launch services for up to 83 rocket launch events over five years, enabling Amazon to deploy a big slice of its 3,236-satellite constellation.

Per reports, the retail giant’s agreement with Arianespace, Blue Origin, and ULA space firms marks the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history.

Among the 83 proposed launches, Arianespace has contracted with Amazon for 18 launches using the firm’s Ariane 6 launcher to place the Kuiper constellation of satellites into orbit for broadband internet access.

Additionally, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rockets are envisaged for Project Kuiper, with up to 12 and 38 launches respectively.

“Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president for Amazon devices & services.

“We still have lots of work ahead, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of our satellite system. These launch agreements reflect our incredible commitment and belief in Project Kuiper, and we’re proud to be working with such an impressive lineup of partners to deliver on our mission,” added Limp.

Amazon’s contract with Arianespace, Blue Origin, and ULA is also set to boost job creation and innovation in the launch services industry across 49 states in the United States and 13 countries in Europe.

Amazon is also collaborating with Swiss-based satellite technology provider Beyond Gravity to build low-cost, scalable satellite dispensers that will assist with the deployment of the Kuiper constellation.

“Securing launch capacity from multiple providers has been a key part of our strategy from day one,” commented Rajeev Badyal, VP of technology for Project Kuiper at Amazon.

“This approach reduces risk associated with launch vehicle stand-downs and supports competitive long-term pricing for Amazon, producing cost savings that we can pass on to our customers. These large, heavy-lift rockets also mean we can deploy more of our constellation with fewer launches, helping simplify our launch and deployment schedule. We’re excited to move one step closer to connecting residential, business, and government customers around the world.”

The UK has fallen 25 places in Cable.co.uk’s global broadband costs ranking, from being the 67th cheapest country for ISP packages in 2020 to 92nd in 2022.

The broadband comparison website’s survey found that the average monthly package prices had increased by over 14% in less than two years – from £25.97 to £29.70.

Previously the fourth most affordable Western European country for broadband, the UK has dropped six places and now sits behind countries including Greece, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Malta, and Portugal.

Italy, Germany, and France took the Western European podium this year, with monthly package costs ranging between £20.80 and £21.72.

The three countries were far behind Syria, Sudan, and Belarus, which topped this year’s global ranking, with monthly packages priced at £1.64, £3.65, and £5.62. It has to be noted, however, that the world’s cheapest broadband providers also delivered exceptionally slow connectivity, with Syria’s fixed network speeds estimated at a median 2.90 Mbps.

Cable.co.uk's telecoms expert Dan Howdle told IT Pro that while many countries saw broadband deals become cheaper, “prices in the UK have stagnated by comparison”.

“If you look at the historic data, it's evident that the price of broadband in the UK has been, on average, pretty much unchanged in the last five years,” he said, adding that “broadband in the UK has gotten faster, it just hasn't gotten cheaper”.

Cable.co.uk’s latest survey of global broadband speeds found that the UK managed to climb four places in the 2021 ranking, reaching an average broadband speed of 51.48Mbps – a 36% increase in just one year.

However, the progress was considered minimal in comparison to other states in its region, with the average speed for Western Europe being 90.56Mbps – almost twice as fast as the UK’s.

Cable.co.uk’s latest broadband cost findings come days after Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries urged UK network providers, including BT, Virgin O2, and KCom, to raise awareness of their low-cost social tariff offerings for people on benefits. This comes amid an 8% inflation which has been deemed a ‘cost of living crisis’.

Six nations have partnered to improve internet connectivity in the Pacific by funding to build a new undersea cable for the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati, and Nauru.

Australia, Japan, and the US have partnered with the three island countries to build the new cable, which will provide high quality and secure communications to around 100,000 people.

The group said this would support increased economic growth, drive development opportunities, and help improve living standards as the region recovers from the severe impacts of the pandemic.

The new cable is set to connect Kosrae (FSM), Nauru, and Tarawa (Kiribati) with the existing HANTRU-1 cable at Pohnpei, providing internet connectivity through a submarine cable for the first time.

“This six-country collaboration highlights our commitment to work together on critical telecommunications infrastructure and contribute to reliable and secure internet for the region,” said senator Marise Payne, Australia’s minister for foreign affairs.

“We will continue to coordinate closely with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to ensure this project complements investments by these institutions to enhance digital connectivity in FSM, Kiribati, and Nauru,” she added.

Last December, the US warned Pacific island nations about security threats posed by a Huawei Marine’s, a Chinese company, bid to build an undersea internet cable as part of an international development project in the region, as reported by Reuters.

The project was designated to improve communications to the island nations of Nauru, FSM, and Kiribati. Washington reportedly sent a diplomatic note to FSM in July 2020, expressing strategic concerns about the project, as Huawei Marine and other Chinese firms are required to co-operate with China’s intelligence and security services, said the report.

Last October, the Australian government and Telstra, the country’s biggest telco, announced they would acquire the telecoms company Digital Pacific for $1.6 billion, in what was seen as a move to counter Chinese influence in the region. There were reports last year that state-owned China Mobile was looking to buy the company, with the deal said to be worth as much as $900 million.

The UK government has unveiled the latest regions that will be able to access download speeds of 1,000 Mbps as part of the £5 billion Project Gigabit.

An estimated 567,000 homes and businesses across Cheshire, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Essex, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, East Riding, and North Yorkshire have been named as those falling into the next stage of the rollout.

Procurement for broadband companies will begin in 2023, with work to build these connections expected to start in early 2024. This means customers may have to wait until late 2024 before they can take advantage of the faster speeds.

The UK has now reached 57% gigabit coverage, up by 7% since hitting the 50% milestone on 21 September. This places the UK firmly on track to reach 85% coverage by 2025, after a notably slow start – in 2019, the country’s gigabit coverage was only at 6%.

However, the project’s success will depend on the ability to roll out gigabit broadband in rural, hard-to-reach areas, with the cost of digging up roads and land being named as the biggest obstacle faced by telecoms companies. In August, the government called on the UK’s innovators to find ways to feed fibre optic cables through water pipes to help speed up the rollout to rural areas.

Apart from the ten English regions announced today, the next phase will also include 3,600 Scottish homes and businesses located in Aberdeenshire, Angus, the Highlands, Moray, and Perth & Kinross, as part of a £8 million cash injection announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak on Wednesday.

The Scottish premises were expected to gain access to 30Mbps broadband through the Scottish government’s Reaching 100% (R100) programme. However, due to a new agreement between the UK and Scottish governments, the six regions will now be able to benefit from gigabit-capable broadband instead.

The areas announced today follow the 18 English regions that were named in August 2021. Shropshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Worcestershire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight were among the first to be included, followed by counties including Derbyshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Surrey, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire.

The first phase of Project Gigabit was announced in March 2021, and included thousands of premises across Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Northumberland, South Tyneside, and Tees Valley, with infrastructure work set to begin in the first half of 2022.

Verizon and Amazon have forged a strategic alliance to develop connectivity solutions for unserved and underserved communities through Project Kuiper.

Project Kuiper, an advanced satellite network from Amazon, aims to increase global broadband access via a constellation of 3,236 satellites positioned in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Among the beneficiaries of this initiative are private homes, hospitals, businesses, and organizations operating in areas with limited or no access to the internet.

Through the partnership, Project Kuiper and Verizon will develop technical specifications and define preliminary commercial models for a range of connectivity services aimed at US consumers and global businesses operating in rural and remote locations.

Furthermore, Amazon and Verizon will leverage cellular backhaul solutions from Project Kuiper to expand Verizon's data networks.

“There are billions of people without reliable broadband access, and no single company will close the digital divide on its own,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO.

“Verizon is a leader in wireless technology and infrastructure, and we’re proud to be working together to explore bringing fast, reliable broadband to the customers and communities who need it most. We look forward to partnering with companies and organizations around the world who share this commitment.”

Together, Project Kuiper and Verizon will design and deploy new connectivity solutions that will benefit a wide range of industries, including agriculture, energy, manufacturing, and transportation.

As partners, Amazon and Verizon have previously integrated Verizon's 5G Edge MEC platform with AWS Wavelength and formed the Voice Interoperability Initiative.

Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said: “Project Kuiper offers flexibility and unique capabilities for a LEO satellite system, and we’re excited about the prospect of adding a complementary connectivity layer to our existing partnership with Amazon.”

“We know the future will be built on our leading 5G network, designed for mobility, fixed wireless access and real-time cloud compute. More importantly, we believe that the power of this technology must be accessible for all. Today’s announcement will help us explore ways to bridge that divide and accelerate the benefits and innovation of wireless connectivity, helping benefit our customers on both a global and local scale.”

Alphabet subsidiary X, the Moonshot Factory claims its laser-based broadband service has supplied nearly 700TB of data within its first 20 days of operation, with 99.9% uptime.

Dubbed Project Taara, the network is powered by wireless optical communications (WOC) links which are based between Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo and Kinasha in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These sites are separated by 4.8km across the Congo River.

This laser-based network beams highly precise light signals between terminals and is based on learnings from a previous experiment in which X beamed lasers between stratospheric balloons.

The project aims to plug connectivity gaps and expand global access to fibre-like speeds in rural and poorer areas around the world, without the need for fibre cables.

Internet connectivity in Kinasha, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is currently five times more expensive than in Brazzaville, despite the relatively short distance between the two cities. This is largely because fibre cables need to be routed more than 400km around the river to reach Kinasha.

“Being able to deliver high-speed internet (up to 20 Gbps) most of the time is a vastly better option than having millions of people miss out on the benefits of connectivity,” said director of engineering for Taara, Baris Erkmen, “because the economics of laying hundreds of kilometers of cable in the ground simply don’t stack up.

“My team and I are delighted to be bringing these technical advances to the banks of the Congo River to help provide people in Brazzaville and Kinshasa with access to faster, more affordable connectivity.”

The technology works much in the same way traditional fibre cables use light to carry data beneath the ground, with Taara using narrow, invisible beams of light to transmit signals over vast distances.

To successfully establish a link, Taara terminals search for each other, detect the other’s beam of light, and lock in like a handshake to create a high bandwidth connection.

These beams of light are roughly the width of a chopstick, according to X, and need to be accurate enough to hit a 5cm target that could be as far as 10km away.

This form of networking hasn’t traditionally been considered viable, because signal reliability is often compromised by adverse weather conditions such as fog or haze. Disruption might also be caused by birds flying in front of the signal.

X has worked to address some of these concerns in developing Project Taara. For example, it’s refined atmospheric sensing, mirror controls and motion detection so terminals automatically adjust to maintain a precise connection. By automatically adjusting to things like the amount of laser power being transmitted, the reliability of links has also greatly improved.

Although its developers admit places “like foggy San Francisco” may never be ideal for WOC, there are many places around the world with ideal weather conditions for Taara links.

The future of the project will therefore be driven largely by those areas around the world that have favourable weather conditions for more than 99% annual availability.

The UK’s broadband speeds are among the slowest in Western Europe, with only nine countries behind it in the region’s speed table: Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, San Marino, Austria, Italy, Guernsey, and the Faroe Islands.

That's according to the latest findings from Cable.co.uk, which today published its annual worldwide broadband speed league.

With an average broadband speed of 51.48Mbps, the UK managed to climb four places in the global ranking in the last year – from 47th in 2020 to 43rd today. Its average speed at the same time last year was estimated at 37.82Mbps.

However, the progress is still minimal in comparison to other states in its region, with the average speed for Western Europe being 90.56Mbps – almost twice as fast as the UK’s.

Eight of the top ten countries in the world for broadband are in Europe, with Jersey being crowned the fastest with average download speeds of 274.27Mbps. The English Channel island is also the first jurisdiction in the world to make pure fibre (FTTP) available to every broadband user. By comparison, the latest Ofcom figures estimated the UK’S FTTP coverage at 21%.

Jersey was followed by Liechtenstein, Iceland, Andorra, Gibraltar, and Monaco.

According to consumer Cable.co.uk telecoms analyst Dan Howdle, these findings are not surprising: “The obvious reality is that the smaller, and broadly speaking the wealthier the landmass, the easier and more likely it is to be among the first to switch its network to FTTP full fibre,” he said, adding that Europe’s domination of the league can be credited to its “largely excellent infrastructure”.

“In all cases, those countries ranking highest are those with a strong focus on pure fibre (FTTP) networks, with those countries dawdling too much on FTTC and ADSL solutions slipping further down year-on-year,” he said.

Dowdle noted that, among the countries with the fastest broadband speeds, the acceleration had “finally plateaued this year as they reach FTTP pure fibre saturation”, meaning that their speed increases “can be attributed in greater part to uptake in many cases than to network upgrades”.

SpaceX will soon secure a licence to establish a ground station on the Isle of Man that will help the firm expand coverage of its satellite-based internet service Starlink to the entirety of the UK.

The venture, spearheaded by Elon Musk, is in the final stages of securing a telecoms licence with the Isle of Man’s communications regulator to build what will be the third ground station to service the UK, according to the Telegraph. This station will combine with bases in Buckinghamshire and Cornwall to expand Starlink coverage to the whole nation.

By transmitting from the Isle of Man, Starlink can take advantage of less crowded airwaves so the signal can reach more remote parts of Northern Britain that aren’t being serviced with either 5G signal or full-fibre broadband.

Starlink, established by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is a low orbit satellite-based broadband service that provides high speeds with low latency, while eliminating the need to install physical cabling.

A major disadvantage of cable-based broadband is that more remote areas aren't prioritised in most rollout plans, generally as such areas are far less profitable.

Deploying a satellite-based service, however, means rural areas are just as likely to benefit from coverage as densely-populated areas are, so long as there are sufficient base stations and satellites in orbit.

SpaceX launched a test service in the UK earlier this year, according to the newspaper, with customers able to sign up for £89 a month alongside £439 for a satellite dish to receive speeds of up to 150Mbps.

Sky News previously reported in March that SpaceX was in talks with the UK government to attempt to solve the UK’s connectivity crisis, particularly the widespread concerns that more remote parts were being left behind.

The government has been keen, in recent months, to vastly expand full-fibre broadband coverage across the UK, although the vast majority of Britain still isn’t eligible to receive gigabit speeds.

While Starlink isn't offering download speeds that are as fast as those quoted in full-fibre packages, it’s likely to be immediately available in areas not likely to receive full-fibre connectivity for months or even years.

Openreach has said it has successfully completed a test of a next-gen fibre technology that promises to more than double maximum network speeds.

The trial, conducted at an Openreach testing facility in Ipswich, aimed to determine whether the new type of passive optical network (PON), dubbed 25G PON, can work seamlessly alongside existing full-fibre network infrastructure.

The technologies already embedded in Openreach’s network are known as GPON and XGS-PON, delivering speeds of up to 1Gbits/sec and 10Gbits/sec respectively. 25G PON, pioneered by Nokia, delivers speeds of up to 25 Gbits/sec across a single optical fibre cable.

The benefits, which include more than double the maximum data transfer rates, will mostly be felt by large enterprises, 5G-based transport networks, and major industrial players.

Versus XGS-PON, 25G PON is designed to provide the bandwidth required to maintain many connected devices, especially when there’s a high density of 5G small cells present, which may otherwise hamper performance and lead to problems with connectivity. Nokia has also claimed that 25G PON will help satisfy the growing reliance on high-bandwidth connectivity by large-scale enterprises, which is set to explode in the coming years.

Openreach has stepped in at this stage to trial whether Nokia’s technology can be laid alongside the fibre infrastructure that already exists, so that businesses would be able to tap into speeds of up to 25Gbits/sec like any other internet package. Nokia said the fibre tech can even be used to build out 5G networks, with smaller cells required in areas of dense traffic.

If it sees deployment, the technology will be able to provide a much wider range of speeds and business-oriented services for Openreach partners like BT, Sky, TalkTalk, and Vodafone.

“As the country’s largest digital infrastructure provider, it’s crucial that we continue to plan, innovate and evolve our network, to make sure we have the capacity and capabilities that the UK needs in the future,” said Openreach’s director for networking technology, Peter Bell.

“The Full Fibre network we’re building today is going to be the platform for the UK’s economic, social and environmental prosperity, and these trials prove that we can keep upgrading the speeds and services our customers experience over that network for decades to come.”

Having tested the 25G PON technology at Openreach’s Adastral Park lab, the two companies will launch a field trial by the end of 2021, with tests involving a range of bandwidth-hungry applications.

New Zealand has installed its largest internet capacity cable to date, which is set to double its internet capacity once it is completed next year.

The Southern Cross NEXT cable (SX NEXT), a joint venture between Southern Cross and Spark NZ, launched from Takapuna beach in Auckland on Tuesday. It will carry an additional 72 terabits of data per second in and out of the country, making it the largest capacity express route to ever land in New Zealand.

The companies said that this represents an almost 100% increase in the country’s international connectivity and is the equivalent of streaming more than 4.5 million Ultra HD 4k videos at the same time.

SX NEXT will form a third route in the Southern Cross cable ecosystem and connect New Zealand with Australia, Fiji, and the US. The cable will also provide high-capacity fibre links for the remote islands of Tokelau and Kiribati, connecting them to the network.

“Being geographically isolated like we are in New Zealand means there’s never been a greater need to invest in our technology infrastructure and grow our global digital connectedness,” said David Clark, minister for Digital Economy and Communications for New Zealand. “Technology like this is critical for New Zealand to form stronger international partnerships that unlock valuable data volumes and drive innovation forward."

Laurie Miller, Southern Cross CEO, revealed that the SX NEXT cable is set to be completed early next year and will connect New Zealand “to the world” via an ecosystem of 12 cable stations and 8 key data centre hubs in Australia and the US, spanning 6 countries and 8 time-zones, all interconnected by over 45,000km of cable.

“That’s more cable mileage than the circumference of the earth, and enough to traverse the length of New Zealand over 28 times,” he said.

In May, Reliance Jio announced it would construct the largest international submarine cable system centred on India to support the growth in data demand across the region.

The systems are set to provide over 200Tbps of capacity spanning over 16,000 kilometres, and the company claims it is the first time in the history of fibre optic submarine telecommunications that India has been placed at the centre of the international network map.

BT and OneWeb have announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will see the two companies explore solutions to improve digital communication services in rural parts of the UK.

The new partnership will focus on the hardest to reach communities that might not be covered by the UK government’s £5 billion ‘Project Gigabit’ infrastructure programme, work on which is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2022.

The two companies will focus on “improving capacity, mobile resilience, backhaul and coverage, including Fixed Wireless Access, in challenging geographic locations”, with the help of OneWeb’s Low Earth Orbit satellites.

News of the partnership comes almost exactly a year after the London-based satellite operator made headlines for being involved in a post-Brexit navigation system blunder. In late June 2020, prime minister Boris Johnson and chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak invested £500m in OneWeb in an effort to find a satellite navigation system that would replace the EU’s Galileo. However, it had then transpired that OneWeb didn’t provide that kind of technology, with experts confirming that the UK government had “bought the wrong satellites”.

Commenting on the firm's partnership with BT, digital Infrastructure minister Matt Warman said that “it is great that BT and OneWeb are working together to explore new ways to bring faster and more reliable connectivity to the hardest to reach homes”.

“No one should miss out on the benefits of better broadband and mobile coverage,” he added.

Warman’s sentiments were echoed in a recent Cisco report, which found that 66% of UK respondents view secure, fast, reliable connection as a necessity, with 48% saying that the government investment in fast, reliable internet is just as important as maintaining the national water and energy infrastructure.

BT chief executive Philip Jansen said that the company’s “ambitious full-fibre and mobile commitments have put BT at the forefront of efforts to expand digital connectivity across the UK”.

“It is clear that greater partnership is needed, both with Government and within industry, to ensure connectivity can reach every last corner of the country. Our agreement with OneWeb is an important step to understanding how that goal could be achieved in the future,” he added.

A third (33%) of the UK’s smallest businesses have never heard about Gigabit-capable broadband, according to new research commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

This lack of awareness was even higher among consumers, with almost 60% of those surveyed admitting that they were not aware that Gigabit-capable broadband existed.

The findings were revealed today in a new report by the Gigabit Take-up Advisory Group (GigaTAG), assembled by Which?, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

GigaTAG suggested that the low awareness of Gigabit-capable broadband, especially among businesses, might lead to lower demand for the service, which in turn could hinder the UK government’s goal to reach 85% coverage by 2025.

This has prompted GigaTAG to issue a range of recommendations for the government, which include improving the digital skills of small businesses and the self-employed and the promotion of clear and common terminology in advertising campaigns, which would raise awareness and promote the benefits of upgrading

GigaTAG emphasised the importance of promoting the benefits of Gigabit, having found that two in five (41%) of those surveyed were unclear about how it differs from their current package.

The advisory group also suggested that the government seek inspiration from footballer Marcus Rashford and consider implementing a targeted voucher scheme aimed at lower-income households, which could take a similar approach to the free school meal voucher system.

The GigaTAG report found affordability to be the main obstacle to the adoption of Gigabit-capable broadband by lower-income households, being cited by 44% of those surveyed. Other common barriers included low willingness to spend more on broadband, with only one in five (21%) of consumers willing to pay more for gigabit broadband.

Commenting on GigaTAG’s recommendations, FSB Digital Policy chair Kieran Charleson said that the COVID-19 pandemic had “demonstrated the vital importance of connectivity”

“Small businesses need good quality internet but all too often they are left grappling with a poor connection and slow broadband speeds, potentially losing vital business and hampering their productivity. Gigabit is a fantastic opportunity for businesses to futureproof and many small firms are already engaging with the new technology or are eager to start.”

According to Charleson, digital skills training and targeted information programmes “need to be a vital part of the Gigabit rollout”.

“Equipping businesses with the confidence, skills and knowledge will empower them to engage with the new technology and to use it to their advantage,” he added.

BT has announced plans to launch a new business unit tailored to the unique needs of the small and newly-formed businesses.

Named SoHo, which stands for "Single/Small Office, Home Office", the unit will aim to help the UK's SMBs and startups rebuild following the economically challenging pandemic.

BT's announcement follows a 16% increase in new tech startups last year, according to Companies House, which also recorded a 40% rise in new UK businesses. It estimates that there had been 800,000 new companies set up during the pandemic, many of them being digital shopkeepers and freelancers who work from home.

SoHo will aid home-based and single-site businesses with their digital and connectivity needs, according to BT, by offering a suite of services and apps including cyber security, free digital skills training, and new digital advertising tools.

The company also announced the launch of a new Wi-Fi package for micro-businesses, which will include full-fibre broadband with speeds of up to 900MHs as well as a Hybrid Connect device that switches to EE's 4G mobile network in the event of any connectivity issues with the fixed-line.

BT's managing director for Commercial and Marketing Chris Sims has been appointed the head of the new SoHo business unit, which he said was set up to invest "in the future of the UK's smallest firms and startups which are the lifeblood of the UK economy".

"Every big business starts small, and we want to help them thrive by delivering flawless connectivity, coverage and customer service - so that their broadband never lets them down," Sims said.

"Building on the purpose of our Skills for Tomorrow programme – which has delivered free digital skills training to almost 300,000 small business employees - we'll also be launching a suite of new services and apps to move the UK's smallest firms into the digital fast lane," he continued, adding that he's "really proud to be leading this new unit at a time when their success has never been more important in securing our country's future as we rebuild after the toughest economic crisis in a generation".

SoHo is to sit in BT's Enterprise division and will officially launch on 1 July 2021.

BT is trialling a new type of optical fibre which uses air to transmit information through a 'hollow' cable.

The telecommunications giant has installed a 10-kilometre-long cable at its research and engineering campus in Adastral Park, Ipswich, that has an 'air-filled centre' running its entire length.

The research into hollow-core fibre presents an opportunity to explore how the capabilities of optical fibre can be enhanced in the future, with the potential to reduce latency or signal delay caused by light travelling through glass by up to 50%, according to BT.

Standard, single-mode optical fibre cables consist of solid strands of glass that quickly carry information over long distances by channelling light from laser transmitters through the glass strands. However, the nature of glass means that the light travels marginally slower inside the fibre than it would do across the air.

The new hollow cables correct this by using only an outer ring of glass to guide the light, effectively replicating natural conditions.

This reduction in the transmission delay could prove pivotal for connections that require split-second data transfers, such as high-frequency trading, and could even lead to lower mobile network costs, according to BT.

Using hollow-core fibre could also increase the distance between street antennas and the back-end processing in exchanges, the company added.

"This new type of fibre cable could play an important role in the future of the world's communications infrastructure, heralding a step-change in capability and speed, to keep up with the demands for high-speed, low latency communications driven by 5G networks, streaming, and more," said professor Andrew Lord, BT's Head of Optical Network Research.

Reliance Jio, one of India’s leading telcos, will construct the largest international submarine cable system centred on India to support the growth in data demand across the region.

The systems will provide over 200Tbps of capacity spanning over 16,000 kilometres and the company claims that this is the first time in the history of fibre optic submarine telecommunications where these systems place India at the centre of the international network map.

The India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) system connects India eastbound to Asia Pacific markets, with express connectivity from Mumbai and Chennai to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) system connects India westbound to the Middle East and Europe, finishing in Savona, Italy.

Besides the seamless connection of the IAX and IEX sub-sea systems, the two systems are also connected to the Reliance Jio Global Fiber Network beyond Asia Pacific and Europe, connecting to both the east and west coast of the USA. IAX is expected to be ready for service in mid-2023, while IEX will be ready for service in early 2024.

“Jio is at the forefront of India’s explosive growth in digital services and data consumption. To meet the demands of streaming video, remote workforce, 5G, IoT, and beyond, Jio is taking a leadership role in the construction of the first of its kind, India-centric IAX and IEX subsea systems,” said Mr. Mathew Oommen, president at Reliance Jio.

“Implementing these critical initiatives in the shadow of a global pandemic is a challenge, but the ongoing pandemic has only accelerated the digital transformation and the necessity of high-performance global connectivity for the delivery of a richer experience to enterprises and consumers.”

Earlier this month, a number of Indian companies announced they were creating jobs in the UK, with Infosys and HCL technologies together creating 2,000 digital jobs as part of government efforts to create a stronger UK-India relationship. Other Indian tech companies will create jobs too, including MPhasis, which will create 1,000, Wipro, which will create 500 and Mastek, which will create 357.

BT has announced plans to create 7,000 additional jobs following its decision to increase its full fibre target from 20 million to 25 million premises by December 2026.

The jobs are to include direct and contracted positions in planning and field-based coordinating, fibre and civil engineering, as well as the installation and maintenance of the networks.

The 7,000 new employment opportunities will help BT’s Openreach increase its FTTP rollout to 4 million premises a year. The decision had been fuelled by Ofcom’s recent Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review as well as the results of March’s 5G spectrum auction, where BT’s EE managed to secure the largest variety of wavelengths.

Announcing the acceleration of the rollout, BT Group chief executive Philip Jansen said that the company is “already building more full fibre broadband to homes and businesses than anyone else in the UK”.

“Today we are increasing our FTTP target from 20 million to 25 million homes and businesses to deliver further value to our shareholders and support the Government’s full fibre ambitions,” he added.

Jansen also stated BT’s decision to ramp up the rollout by five million premises will deliver three significant benefits for the company as well as the UK.

“It allows us to go faster, beefing up our capacity to build fibre to households and businesses; it allows us to go further, getting fibre to more people including in rural communities, and; it will help fuel UK economic recovery, with better connectivity and up to 7,000 new jobs,” he said.

According to CCS Insight director of Consumer and Connectivity, Kester Mann, BT’s announcement “is welcome news for the UK’s recovery from COVID-19”.

“The pandemic has underlined the value of high-quality connectivity to support households and businesses. It will be an important factor in restoring the economy and bridging the digital divide so starkly highlighted over the past year,” he said.

Mann also noted that the announcement “follows Ofcom’s crucial recent decision not to impose caps on the wholesale prices fibre operators can charge for access, for at least ten years”.

“BT has always maintained that its fibre targets were contingent on the right regulatory conditions that would enable it to make a fair return. It is now living up to its word,” added Mann.

The news of the new 2026 FTTP target comes as BT unveiled its financial results for the full year to 31 March 2021. The company reported a 7% drop in revenue, which Mann described as “another let-down”.

However, he added that “the investment certainty it has long craved, combined with a positive outcome at the recent 5G spectrum auction and encouraging take-up on its existing fibre footprint suggest brighter times may finally be ahead”.

Researchers in the Netherlands have built a multi-node quantum network. The project is another step on the road to a quantum internet that uses quantum physics for communications.

The team, from research institute QuTech, strung together three quantum processors in a network that enabled each node to talk with the other using a physics process called quantum entanglement. This binds the properties of two quantum particles that are physically separate so the state of one instantly affects the state of the other.

The processors - which the researchers called Alice, Bob, and Charlie - used quantum bits (qubits) to set up their connection using a new quantum network protocol that the researchers created. Alice sends two qubits to Bob. The first establishes the entanglement, and the second is a memory qubit that Bob stores to set up its own connection to Charlie.

When that connection is made, Bob entangles its two qubits, forming a link that connects Alice, Bob, and Charlie together. The quantum networking protocol the researchers created also teleports the entanglement to both Alice and Bob, enabling them to talk directly to each other.

This rudimentary network is significant because, unlike conventional computers, quantum processors allow a single bit to simultaneously represent 0 and 1. This makes it possible to handle far greater computational loads than conventional computing and will pave the way for quantum cryptography that makes it practically impossible to crack an encrypted connection between two devices.

The researchers also created a 'flag' signal that will enable processors to indicate when they're connected. This is critical to scalability, they said.

The team conducted the initial demonstration within the same building, but the researchers look forward to demonstrating the protocol on traditional telecom fiber across their Quantum Internet Demonstrator. This is a network infrastructure it’ll use to demonstrate its quantum research over wider areas. The first metropolitan link is due to be turned on next year.

In the meantime, they will focus on developing higher-level software and hardware layers to build out the technology stack, they said.

QuTech is a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

Last October, BT and Toshiba unveiled the first cross-site quantum data connection between two sites, using it to demonstrate how quantum key distribution could secure data traffic. In the US, The Department of Energy and the University of Chicago created a 52-mile link quantum link, with plans to develop it into a three-node network spanning 80 miles.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed a bill that will require internet service providers (ISPs) operating in the Empire state to offer low-income customers internet access for $15 per month.

The price cap will force ISPs to offer regular broadband for $15 per month, while high-speed broadband caps will sit at $20 per month. A basic high-speed internet plan, on average, costs more than $50 per month.

New Yorkers will have to qualify as low income to get affordable broadband, such as being eligible or receiving free or reduced-price lunch, supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits, Medicaid benefits, the senior citizen or disability rent increase exemptions, or an affordability benefit from a utility. According to the Governor’s office, up to seven million New Yorkers and 2.7 million households could qualify for the deal.

According to reports from the Verge, ISPs must provide the greater of two speeds: either 25 Mbps down or the speed of the ISP’s existing low-income broadband service.

"High-speed internet is essential to our everyday lives, and as we continue to reopen our state and adjust to new norms that have been shaped by the pandemic, we need to make sure every household has access to affordable internet," Governor Cuomo said.

"Remote learning, remote working, and telemedicine are not going away. This program - the first of its kind in the nation - will ensure that no New Yorker will have to forego having reliable home internet service and no child's education will have to suffer due to their economic situation."

In addition to the cap, Governor Cuomo launched the Affordable Broadband Portal to help New Yorkers find affordable broadband programs in their area. The website will give New Yorkers information about the FCC's Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which includes a $50-per-month subsidy for broadband service, plus up to a $100 discount on computers and tablets.

New York will also conduct an in-depth statewide broadband mapping study to identify its availability, reliability, and cost of high-speed broadband services. It is expected that it will report on its findings within one year.

Last month, Governor Cuomo teamed up with the Ford Foundation and Google founder Eric Schmidt’s Schmidt Futures to launch the ConnectED NY fund to provide around 50,000 students in economically disadvantaged school districts with free internet access through June 2022.

AT&T will invest $2 billion over the next three years to help address the digital divide.

The initiative combines the company’s discounted broadband service offerings with community investment. It builds on the company’s $1 billion contributions over the last three years toward bringing broadband to underserved communities.

“We believe that broadband connectivity is essential for all Americans,” said CEO John Stankey. “Our broadband networks rose to the challenge of the pandemic in part due to policies that promoted private sector investment in multiple technologies and networks.”

The company also intends to expand affordable broadband through the federal government’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program. That program will expand broadband subsidies for low-income households during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are five elements of this AT&T initiative:

Education Offers: The company will continue to offer discounted wireless to more than 135,000 public and private K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.

Access from AT&T: This five-year-oldAT&T-funded program makes the internet more affordable for customers by providing qualifying households with wireline internet service at $10 or less per month. AT&T continues to waive data overages for these customers and is keeping the expanded eligibility to qualifying households and those participating in the National School Lunch Program and Head Start.

Emergency Broadband Benefit: Eligible customers can temporarily reduce their monthly broadband costs by taking advantage of the federal Emergency Broadband Benefit. This FCC program will allow more than 30 million households to receive an additional subsidy of up to $50 a month for broadband internet service. This will push the broadband’s monthly cost to as low as $0.

To be eligible for the EBB, households must qualify for the Lifeline program. This initiative targets low-income households and provides small discounts on telephone and broadband services. To qualify for Lifeline, a household’s income must be at or below 135% of federal poverty guidelines or participate in other federal assistance programs, such as Medicaid.

Digital learning platform: AT&T is working with WarnerMedia to develop a digital learning platform to deliver high-quality educational content.

Learning centers: The company is launching 20 AT&T Connected Learning Centers in 2021. They’ll be in traditionally underserved neighborhoods where residents face barriers to connectivity. The company will provide high-speed internet and Wi-Fi and will ensure the centers have resources for devices like laptops and tablets. The centers will have access to WarnerMedia content and access to virtual learning tools from collaborators like Khan Academy.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has recorded a new peak in internet usage, which comes just over a year since the mass shift to remote working began and started a new era of increased network reliance.

LINX, an internet exchange point (IXP) with headquarters in London Docklands’ Telehouse, was founded in 1994 as a way of saving time and costs involved in routing data from UK to US internet exchanges. Originally involving just two ISPs, it now counts 965 members, including ISPs and mobile operators from the UK and abroad.

The organisation has now announced that earlier this month, it recorded a new total maximum traffic peak of over 6Tbps, with its primary LAN in London reaching 5.17Tbps alone. The peak occurred on the evening of Tuesday, 6 April, between 8:35 and 8:40 pm.

Although the main cause behind the surge in network traffic has not been identified, LINX has attributed the spike to the online streaming of football games being transmitted that evening. The traffic substantially dropped when the two games went into half-time at around 8:45 that evening.

Another potential contribution to the surge could be due to online gaming updates being released that day, intensified by the thousands of office workers confined to their homes as the UK remains under lockdown restrictions.

LINX CCO Jennifer Holmes described the past 13 months as “demanding”. However, she added that the organisation had been able to keep up with capacity demands caused by the increased reliance on internet networks for communication and collaboration purposes, including video conferencing.

“This time last year we were quickly adjusting to the new virtual set up as lockdown hit. We saw the first of many traffic peaks, and we have continued to respond and manage the demand from our members for increased capacity,” said Holmes.

“To hit 6Tbps across our network is really satisfying, and considering the amount of traffic which also passes across our Private Interconnect service, this is a huge increase from this time last year,” she added.