Companies News December 2016

BT announced a new 5G partnership with Huawei to conduct joint research into “how faster mobile communication technologies might be applied, as well as the technical and commercial feasibility of deploying them.” Aspects to be explored include network architecture, a new air interface between devices and base stations, ‘network slicing’ - which will allow operators to apportion network resources to specific services, machine-to-machine communications in Internet of Things (IoT) applications and security technologies.

CityFibre announced that it had connected its first business customers to 1Gbit/s services in Milton Keynes via its partnership with dbfb. The service is available to over 2,700 businesses in Milton Keynes.

Gigaclear announced the connection of the 2,000th property in Essex to its gigabit broadband service and the signing of a new contract with Connecting Devon & Somerset to deliver a £62.25m million network to an additional 35,225 of the hardest to reach homes and businesses in the region by 2019.

In a speech to the Institute of Government, Ofcom Chief Executive Sharon White set out her views on how the communications regulation should operate following the UK’s departure from the European Union, so as to protect the interests of UK consumers, promote competition and investment and support UK companies’ ability to trade successfully in the EU and globally. She suggested that the UK should seek to preserve the best of the EU telecoms framework and seize the opportunity to make improvements, whilst taking care to avoid making things worse.

Ars Technica and ISP Review reported that symmetric 10Gbit/s DOCSIS 3.1 cable broadband trials will commence in 2017 (more detail here). The technology could eventually be deployed in hybrid fibre coax (HFC) based cable networks as operated by Virgin Media.