Industry News

Fossil fuels aren’t fashionable these days, but for any oil company looking at diversification, the UK retail broadband market would not typically be the first sector that springs to mind. Nevertheless, a Sky News report on Thursday claims that oil giant Shell has emerged as one of the bidders for the Post Office’s telecoms business.

TIM has awarded the first tender for last-mile fibre-optic cabling for its new FiberCorp unit to a quintet of domestic suppliers. The Italian incumbent named Ecotel, Metallurgica Bresciana, Prysmian, Technikabel and Tratos as its first five suppliers, noting that each has committed to carrying out all parts of its contract at production and certification facilities

Besieged Chinese telecoms giant Huawei grew its revenues by 9.9% in the first nine months of this year, much less than the 24% of the tear-ago period. Huawei is not a public company, so it’s not really obliged to publish any of its numbers, but it does so anyway, when it’s in the mood. This

Nokia has been tapped to upgrade the final drop on NetCologne’s FTTB network from VDSL2 to G.fast. It means that residents of the 30,000 premises currently served by NetCologne’s infrastructure will soon have – theoretically at least – access to 1-Gbps broadband. Under the contract, Nokia will supply its Lightspan SX G.fast distribution point. In

Embattled Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has overcome the odds to debut the latest and greatest version of its Kirin SoC in the new Mate 40 Pro smartphone. The Mate 40 wasn’t launched under normal circumstances, of course, with the US having effectively blockaded Huawei’s access to any chip fabs for the past few months. This

Mobile streaming video startup Quibi, which was backed by Hollywood, has been forced to shut down after its core narrative failed to persuade. On the face of it, creating a new SVoD (subscription video on demand) service at a time when Apple and Disney were joining the fray was at the very least optimistic. But

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Susan James, senior director of Telecommunications Strategy at Red Hat, explains why she things edge computing will enable CSPs to maximise their 5G capabilities, strike up partnerships with hyperscalers and flourish as cloud-native players. The edge conversation

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson reported a strong Q3 2020 on the back of 5G revenues from China. When Ericsson won 5G business at all three Chinese MNOs, it revealed it would have to take an initial hit on the write-down of a bunch of inventory. We interpreted that as Ericsson having to offer some kit

The largest smartphone maker you’ve never heard of is finally venturing to Europe as Vivo brings over a full range of devices. Vivo is consistently the sixth-biggest smartphone vendor by units shipped but, until recently, that was almost entirely down to Chinese consumers. Huawei made its international move a decade ago and then, more recently,

Europe has finished testing its platform for allowing COVID-19 contact tracing apps to work across national borders, but only a few countries are up to speed. To be fair to the EU, on this matter it has not only made the correct decision to focus on the decentralised contact tracing model, but has, by its

During a trial of OpenRAN technology in the Netherlands, Vodafone and NEC managed to make a voice call, using the disruptive new radio technology. NEC is a major player in OpenRAN, which seeks to disaggregate the various components in a cellular base station, such that operators can pick-and-choose their vendor for each bit. Its most

The inevitable Chinese retaliation against US sanctions is taking form. Meanwhile a European telecoms lobby group has objected to politically motivated bans. The Chinese Communist Party indicated it was preparing reciprocal action, to counter America’s mounting sanctions against Huawei, when it announced the creation of its own ‘unreliable entity list’ a month ago. Now, reports

On the second day of the 6th Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF) held online, Huawei’s Executive Director and President of the Carrier Business Group Ryan Ding gave his keynote speech “Intelligent Experiences Unlock New Value”. Over the past five years, Huawei, along with its partners, has worked together to define the industrial value that gigaband and premium

October 14, 2020, the UN Broadband Commission and Huawei held the sixth Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF 2020) online in Beijing. With the theme of “Intelligent Connectivity, New Value Together”, this year’s UBBF discussed the challenges and opportunities facing the connectivity industry in the intelligent era. At the event, David Wang, Huawei Executive Director and Chairman of

Twitter and Facebook blocked a NY Post report that was damaging to a US Presidential candidate, leading to renewed calls to remove their Section 230 protection. The Post report alleged corruption on the part of Joe Biden, the Democrat Presidential candidate. Almost immediately Facebook moved to ‘reduce its distribution’ and Twitter even went so far

BT has hit out against Ofcom’s decision to launch an investigation into its compliance with broadband USO rules, calling for a new plan for connecting hard to reach areas. To put it simply, the UK regulator is looking into whether BT is inflating the cost for homeowners when it quotes for the provision of a

Japan will not bar Chinese kit makers – including Huawei – from supplying telecoms network equipment in the country, it emerged this week. The US is keen to see other nations follow in its footsteps and block Chinese companies from providing 5G equipment, but Japan is reluctant to join the growing club of governments that

SK Telecom has teamed up with Uber to launch a new joint venture in the taxi market in South Korea that will also look ahead to future mobility technologies, such as flying cars. Uber will invest a total of US$150 million in the as-yet unnamed venture and in SKT’s broader mobility business. SKT is spinning

We’re sure your appetite for virtual events is undiminished by nine months of Zoom calls, so make sure you register for the best one yet. After an outrageously successful inaugural event last year, Telecoms.com LIVE has been transformed into a digital symposium, no less, for reasons that will be only to obvious. You see, the

Finnish kit vendor Nokia has decided to save a few euros by migrating its on-premise IT infrastructure to the Google public cloud. There are several upsides to a move like this. As well as the cost savings that come from not having to manage your own datacenters, Nokia also gets to bang on about how

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Akil Chomoko, Chief Marketing Officer at MDS Global, explores what we mean by ‘digital BSS’ and why we should care. The need to switch to digital methods and systems has been an accepted business and technology

Spainish telco group Telefónica wants to squeeze as much value as possible out of its international operations. To that end, the company has integrated its wholesale, roaming and multinational business customer divisions into single new unit, called Telefónica Global Solutions (TGS). It is part of Telefónica’s five-point plan, unveiled in November 2019. Julio Beamonte, who

After years of preparation, China Broadcasting Network has been given the bureaucratic seal of approval. As with nearly everything else in China, the state had a major role to play in the creation of CBN, having issued the license over four years ago. According to China Daily it’s 51% owned by the state broadcasting authority,

Softbank has a acquired a 9.69% stake in Norway’s Kahoot! at a cost of US$215 million, and is reportedly looking for external funding for a new acquisition vehicle. Kahoot!, an education software company, said it issued 43 million new shares at a cost of 46 kroner (US$5) each, raising NOK1.98 billion in total. In approving

Finnish kit vendor Nokia has done one of those grand studies that extrapolate a technology to see what its total economic impact might be. As ever the actual research was done by a specialist firm, in this case Sapio, which surveyed 1,628 technology purchasing decision-makers in eight markets and across six industry sectors. The apparent aim was

By digitising their business support systems (BSS), operators can address declining revenue growth in the enterprise segment and increase their EBIT, potentially by as much as 34%. This report, commissioned by MDS Global and written by STL Partners, outlines the quantifiable benefits that operators could achieve by digitising their BSS systems, focusing on the following

UK ISP TalkTalk has agreed to discuss a takeover bid from its second-biggest shareholder. Hedge fund Toscafund Asset Management (TAM) currently owns around 28.5 percent of TalkTalk, according to the telco’s most recent annual report. Charles Dunstone remains its single-biggest shareholder, with a stake of 29.8 percent. On Thursday, TalkTalk confirmed that it received a

Never one to pass up an opportunity to make its rivals look bad, T-Mobile US is extending its fixed-wireless access (FWA) service to areas left in the lurch by AT&T’s DSL phase-out. “We can’t stand idly by while AT&T leaves potentially millions with fewer home Internet options at a time when our connection to the

The two largest Belgian CSPs have announced a wholesale swap-out of Huawei gear in their RAN, in favour of Nokia. Both Proximus and Orange Belgium are currently heavily invested in Huawei for their radio access network, which they share. After a supposedly ‘thorough competitive process, based on technological, operational and financial criteria,’ (both operators used

UK telco group BT is preparing its network for the expected explosion in 8K video and AR/VR usage. Which is another way of saying that BT is the flagship customer for a new edge CDN (content delivery network) offering based on the Streaming Video Alliance’s Open Caching technology. The solution itself has been jointly developed