• BT’s Openreach snags rural broadband deals worth £289m
• FCC kickstarts spectrum auction to raise $3bn for rip-and-replace funding
• Microsoft pledges $3bn of cloud and AI investments in India

In today’s industry news roundup: BT’s wholesale fixed access unit picks up the latest Project Gigabit contracts from the UK government; the outgoing FCC chairwoman has started the process that will lead to a new spectrum auction, the proceeds of which will be used to fund the US rip-and-replace programme; Microsoft is preparing to invest heavily in India’s datacentre sector over the next two years; and much more!

Openreach, the quasi-autonomous wholesale fixed access network division of the UK’s national telco BT Group, has been awarded four contracts worth £289m to build high-speed fixed broadband networks in rural areas of the UK as part of the government’s Project Gigabit initiative. Openreach will build broadband infrastructure that will reach 131,000 premises across hundreds of towns and villages in some of the most isolated communities across the UK in north and south-west Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex, north-east England and Worcestershire. “Dozens of Project Gigabit contracts representing more than £2.2bn [worth of] investment have now been signed with over 10 different suppliers to deliver the upgrades, including many smaller, independent broadband providers,” noted the UK government’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in this announcement (though of course this time all of the contracts are going to a unit of the country’s largest telco). “Our new full fibre broadband network now reaches more than half of all properties in the UK, and we’re confident we can reach as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade, assuming the right regulatory and investment conditions exist,” stated Openreach CEO Clive Selley. “We believe that everyone deserves access to fast and reliable broadband, and we’re proud that this partnership will help extend our ultrafast, ultra-reliable network to areas that would otherwise be left behind by the private sector,” he added. News of the contracts came a day after Openreach announced it had extended its fibre access network coverage to an additional 4.2 million premises during 2024, taking the total to more than 17 million. Of that current total, 4.3 million are in remote and/or hard-to-reach areas, according to the operator. “We’re building and connecting people faster than ever before and I’m proud of the progress our engineers have made. We’re well on our way to delivering our ambition of reaching 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, and now our sights are set on reaching 30 million premises by the end of 2030,” added the CEO, who noted that more than one-third of the properties passed by Openreach’s new optical access network had switched to fibre broadband connections.  

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has kickstarted the process of raising the extra $3.08bn needed to complete the so-called rip-and-replace programme that aims to help US network operators swap their Huawei and ZTE equipment for gear from suppliers that are not deemed to be a security risk.  Following recent congressional and presidential approval for the funding to be raised and allocated, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel (who leaves the post on 20 January) has “called for the agency to quickly adopt rules that will allow the FCC to proceed with a spectrum auction to fully fund the removal, replacement and disposal of insecure Chinese-made Huawei and ZTE equipment and services from US networks without further delay.” The auction of AWS-3 (advanced wireless services) spectrum will, the US regulator hopes, top up the $1.9bn already allocated to the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (as the rip-and-replace programme is formally called) to hit the $5bn that is needed to oust the Huawei and ZTE tech still deployed in US networks. “With Salt Typhoon and other recent incidents, we are all acutely aware of the risk posed by Chinese hackers and intelligence services to our privacy, economy, and security,” said Rosenworcel. The proposal to get the auction process underway “is a critical step toward finally filling the shortfall in the rip-and-replace programme.  I am confident that the FCC’s world-leading and award-winning auction team will meet this important moment,” she added. 

In the wake of its announcement that it plans to invest $80bn in AI datacentres around the world that will be used to “train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications” during its current fiscal year, which ends in June 2025, Microsoft has unveiled plans to pump $3bn into Indian digital infrastructure. Bloomberg reports that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, addressing attendees at an industry event in Bangalore, pledged to invest the funds over the next two years in the big tech firm’s cloud and AI infrastructure platforms in the country. 

In partnership with Samsung and MediaTek, Verizon claims to have achieved 5G data download speeds in a lab environment of 5.5Gbit/s, a rate that would enable a user to download 266 Taylor Swift albums in just one minute (if they so wished). The remarkable speed was achieved by using carrier aggregation technology to combine the capacity of six separate sub-6GHz channels (for an aggregate of 350MHz of capacity). “Using Samsung’s virtualised RAN (vRAN) solution and MediaTek’s next-gen connectivity platform featuring 6CC [component carrier] technology, the trial ran 5G data through Samsung’s 5G standalone core, and demonstrated how the next generation of devices with this evolving technology will enable new use cases and drive innovation in mobility,” noted Verizon in this press release. “Customers expect the gold standard from Verizon and we work every day to do even better for them,” said Adam Koeppe, senior VP of technology planning at Verizon. “We will continue to push the boundaries of our technology and drive innovation in our industry so our customers know they are always a step ahead of what’s next, simply by being a Verizon customer.”

US president-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose hefty new tariffs on imports of Chinese-manufactured communications equipment and high-tech products as soon as he takes office, in continuation of the tit-for-tat trade war that began in 2018. In the last year of Trump’s first administration, the US agreed a deal that lowered tensions for a while as some tariffs were reduced and others scrapped altogether. As part of the accord, China agreed to buy an extra $200bn worth of US goods and services but failed to do so, and US/Sino relations took another dip during the Biden years as the tensions flared again. And now, in the dying days of his time in the White House, Biden has stolen some of Trump’s thunder by instructing the Department of Defense (DoD) to add the gigantic Chinese gaming and social media company Tencent to the US national blacklist on the grounds that it works with China’s vast military complex. Tencent is the parent company of the instant messaging app WeChat. The listing does not mean that an instant ban will follow, but it will give US companies with trading ties to the People’s Republic renewed food for thought, and it seems likely that with the change of president, the US Treasury Department will soon impose sanctions on the newly nominated companies. In addition to Tencent, these include  Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), the giant Fujian province-based manufacturer of batteries, versions of which are vital to powering Elon Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles. Also included in the new list are the microprocessor company Changxin Memory Technologies, Quectel Wireless, drone maker Autel Robotics, and China’s biggest shipping company, COSCO Shipping Holdings. Also sanctioned are the estate-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as well as CNOOC China Ltd and CNOOC International Trading. Those designated by the DoD to be “Chinese military companies” come under the provisions of the US “Section 1260H list” embodied in the William M Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act and are published in the Federal Register. The DoD says the 1260H list is “an important continuing effort in highlighting and countering China’s military-civil fusion” strategy. The listing certainly hit the fortunes of the Chinese companies newly registered on it. Tencent’s share price fell by more than 7% to HKD$379.6 on the Hong Kong stock market following the news, wiping close to HKD$40bn from the company’s value. Meanwhile, CATL, which is listed in Shenzhen in mainland China, saw its share price dip by about 4%. For their parts, both Tencent and CATL deny that they work with the Chinese military authorities. Indeed, Tencent is claiming that its inclusion on the new US blacklist is “clearly a mistake”. Liu Pengyu, a spokesman at the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, commented: “The US’s practices violate the market competition principles and international economic and trade rules that it has always advocated, and undermine the confidence of foreign companies in investing and operating in the United States,” adding that the decision amounts to “unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies”. 

Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-earth orbit (LEO) constellation that is due to start deploying its satellites in the coming months (later than planned), is lining itself up to launch satellite broadband services for consumer and enterprise customers in the UK within the next two years and is considering the development of direct-to-cell communications from its fleet, according to The Guardian.   

Since 2015, when Nokia acquired the world-renowned technology research powerhouse Bell Labs as part of its $16.6bn acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Bell Labs has been working towards its long-term goal of building the first cellular network on the moon. Now the company has announced the dream will become reality, hopefully late next month, with the news that Nokia and Intuitive Machines (IM) have successfully achieved the final integration of Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communication System (LSCS) into the Nova-C IM-2 mission lunar lander, which is affectionately and pertinently called Athena, after the Ancient Greek goddess of heroic endeavour, Nokia has announced. The modules will make the 239,000-mile journey to the lunar south pole region in the upcoming IM-2 mission. Intuitive Machines is a US space exploration company headquartered in Houston, Texas, which holds three NASA contracts under the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and is tasked to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. Following many months of testing and validation with Nokia Bell Labs, Intuitive Machines engineers have installed the LSCS “network in a box” to one of Athena’s upper carbon-composite panels in the hope and expectation that it will work perfectly on the moon’s surface. Temperatures at the moon’s polar regions vary massively, reaching in excess of 121 celsius during the lunar day and plummeting to -133 celsius after lunar nightfall. Effective thermal insulation will be vital to the success of the mission and Intuitive Machines has also integrated the network into Athena’s thermal protection system. It will expel heat when the network is operating and supply heat to protect the network when it is idle. Two other device modules make up additional components of Nokia’s LSCS and they have been installed in two lunar mobility vehicles: Intuitive Machines’ Micro-Nova Hopper and Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover. As soon as the moon landing is achieved, the two vehicles will deploy to the lunar surface where they will immediately use the Nokia device modules to establish connections to the network on Athena. The LSCS uses the same 4G/LTE mobile cellular technology as billions of devices back on earth, but Nokia Bell Labs has adapted the system to meet the uniquely stressful requirements of a lunar mission. The network is engineered to handle surface connectivity between the lander and vehicles, carrying high-definition video streaming, command-and-control communications and telemetry data. Intuitive Machines expects to relay data from the LSCS back to Earth using its direct-to-Earth data transmission service. Thierry E. Klein, president of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia, said: “We intend to prove that cellular technologies can provide the reliable, high-capacity and efficient connectivity needed for future crewed and uncrewed missions to the moon and eventually Mars. Cellular technology has irrevocably transformed the way we communicate on Earth. There’s no reason it can’t do the same for communications on other worlds.” Just don’t tell Elon Musk! Nokia Bell Labs developed the LSCS, and Intuitive Machines created the Micro-Nova Hopper, in partnership with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate via its Tipping Point initiative, which funds industry-developed space technologies that can foster the development of commercial space capabilities and benefit future NASA missions. One of the goals of Intuitive Machines’ second lunar mission will be to use the Micro-Nova Hopper and the LSCS to test new sensor instruments that could help identify and map precious resources on the moon such as water ice. The Micro-Nova Hopper (named Grace), will descend into permanently shadowed lunar craters and use the new sensors to scan for large concentrations of hydrogen that are indicative of ice deposits. All data collected by the Micro-Nova would then be transmitted over the Nokia network to Athena, where it would be relayed back to Earth. Meanwhile, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover was developed by Lunar Outpost. Once on the lunar surface, the MAPP rover will leave its protective enclosure on Athena, extend its antennae, and establish a connection to Nokia’s cellular network on Athena. The MAPP rover will then begin a multiday journey exploring the Moon’s south pole region, mapping the lunar surface while collecting stereo imagery and vital environmental data along the way. Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, said: “We believe delivering Nokia’s 4G/LTE system to the lunar surface is a transformative moment in the commercialisation of space and the maturity of the lunar economy.” Later in 2025, Nokia Bell Labs will incorporate high-speed comms technologies into the next-generation spacesuits that will be worn by the crew of Artemis III, the first crewed mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972, more than half a century ago. 

– The staff, TelecomTV