• BT hit with fine for emergency calls failure
• Vodafone sells further 10% in Vantage Towers
• Bharti Airtel and Nokia complete a non-standalone 5G cloud RAN trial in India

In today’s industry news roundup: BT is ordered to pay £17.5m for being inadequately prepared to respond to a network fault that resulted in a UK emergency calls failure last year; Vodafone Group sells another 10% stake in Vantage Towers, bringing its total net proceeds from the sell-down deal to €6.6bn; Bharti Airtel targets a “superior customer experience” in India after completing a non-standalone 5G cloud RAN trial with Nokia; and much more!

BT has been fined £17.5m by the UK’s telecom watchdog, Ofcom, for “being ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure” that led to its failure to connect calls to UK emergency services in June last year. The regulator found that the UK incumbent telco “did not have sufficient warning systems in place for when this kind of incident occurs, nor did it have adequate procedures for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions.” The company’s disaster recovery platform was also found to have “insufficient capacity and functionality to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected,” Ofcom added in a statement. A fault with BT’s network on 25 June 2023 rendered 999 and 112 calls impossible in the UK for more than 10 hours, during which, according to Ofcom, nearly 14,000 call attempts were unsuccessful. “There have been no confirmed reports by the emergency authorities of serious harm to members of the public” because of the incident, noted Ofcom, but “the potential degree of harm was extremely significant”. Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s director of enforcement, said: “Being able to contact the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively. In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk. Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms – if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.”

Vodafone Group has sold a further 10% stake in Oak Holdings, the partnership that co-controls Vantage Towers, for €1.3bn. The move is part of a deal agreed in 2022 to sell a stake in the tower unit to a consortium of investors led by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and KKR for €32 per share, the same price as the initial transaction, taking the operator’s effective ownership in the tower company to 44.7%. The latest sale brings Vodafone’s total net proceeds from the deal to €6.6bn. “Proceeds from this sale will be used for deleveraging and will reduce net debt/adjusted EBITDAaL by 0.1x, which is in line with Vodafone’s target of operating in the lower half of its 2.25x - 2.75x leverage range,” the telco group noted. At the time of forging the agreement with GIP and KKR, Vodafone was tipped to net up to €7.1bn – see Vodafone sells a slice of Vantage Towers for up to €7.1bn.

Bharti Airtel and Nokia have completed a non-standalone (NSA) 5G cloud RAN trial in India in a bid to provide “a superior customer experience using high-performing networks”. In a statement, Nokia explained that the trial used 3.5 GHz spectrum and 2100 MHz for 4G, allowing for data calls over Airtel’s commercial network to achieve a throughput of more than 1.2Gbit/s. According to the Finnish vendor’s claims, the trial plays a key part in Airtel’s ambition to bring “cloud networking benefits, such as scalability and agility, to their network”. Bharti Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon noted that the trial represents “a significant step forward in our consistent efforts to integrate the latest and most efficient technologies into our network and leverage these to deliver brilliant customer experiences.” Read more.

Microsoft has revealed that as many as 8.5 million Windows devices have been affected by last Friday’s (19 July) global outage  following a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. In a blog from 20 July, Microsoft’s VP for enterprise and OS security, David Weston, explained that while this number represents less than 1% of all Windows machines, “the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services.” The global outage caused chaos and disruption to multiple industries worldwide, including airlines, banking and healthcare. Microsoft has since deployed hundreds of its engineers and experts to work with customers on restoring services, and has been in constant communication with CrowdStrike to expedite solutions for the outage, said Weston. “This incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem – global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers. It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritise operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist,” he added. A separate update from CrowdStrike on 21 July explained that “a significant number” of the affected Windows devices were “back online and operational”. The company added that it has been testing “a new technique to accelerate impacted system remediation”. “We understand the profound impact this has had on everyone. We know our customers, partners and their IT teams are working tirelessly and we’re profoundly grateful. We apologise for the disruption this has created. Our focus is clear: To restore every system as soon as possible,” CrowdStrike stated. Some experts described the incident as the largest IT outage in history.

Huawei has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese chip developer MediaTek for allegedly infringing its intellectual property (IP) patents. Nikkei Asia reported the legal action was taken in a Chinese district court, but no further details have yet been made public, including the amount of damages sought by the Chinese company. It suggested that the move is part of Huawei’s goal to collect royalty fees so it can continue with its R&D efforts. In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, MediaTek reportedly stated that the lawsuit would not have a significant impact on its business. Huawei, which is considered to hold as much as 20% of the global patents related to 5G, has upped its efforts to collect royalties since 2021 when restrictions against it were imposed by the US. The company has recently agreed licensing deals for 5G technologies with a number of players, including Oppo, Samsung, Xiaomi and Ericsson.

AI chip giant Nvidia is looking to launch a version of its new flagship chips for the Chinese market that are compatible with current US export restrictions, Reuters has reported. The new ‘Blackwell’ chip series are due for mass production later this year, with one of the chip models said to be 30 times speedier than its predecessor at certain tasks, such as providing answers from chatbots. According to the report, Nvidia will work with Inspur, one of its major distributor collaborators in China, on the launch, with shipments set to begin in the second quarter of 2025.

- The staff, TelecomTV