ISPA POLICY UPDATE
Government announces changes to the Electronic Communications Code
The Government published the Product Security and Telecommunications Bill and response to the consultation on reform of the Electronic Communications code at the end of November. The Bill introduces new measures to tackle the challenges to accessing land as a result of unresponsive occupiers. It places a greater emphasis on Alternative Resolution Disputes and introduces changes to the upgrading and sharing of apparatus. Elsewhere, the broadband subgroup met at the start of November to discuss ongoing policy concerns. The Secretariat also met with Peter Aldous MP, the Chair of the County APPG to discuss the APPG’s recent report on connectivity in the counties.
ISPA gives evidence to DCMS Committee
ISPA gave evidence to the DCMS Committee as part of their work looking at the Online Safety Bill. ISPA provided an overview of the actions ISPs had long been taking to make the internet a safer place including IWF membership, supporting online safety regulation and offering parental controls but stressed that new technologies meant ISPs were no longer the “gate keepers of the internet.” Meanwhile the Joint Online Safety Bill Committee completed their pre-legislative scrutiny duties. The final evidence session heard from witnesses including DCMS Secretary of State Nadine Dorries MP who expressed her support for a permanent joint online safety committee to ensure the Bill continues to adapt to new developments within the online world.
Cyber takes centre stage
This month saw a wide range of cyber announcements and milestones including the Telecoms Security Bill achieving Royal Assent and becoming an Act. Meanwhile Part 1 of the new Product Security and Telecommunications Bill set out Government’s
plans to introduce minimum security requirements for connectable devices made available in the UK and the Government response to the supply chain security call for views hinted at the possibility of legislative intervention. The NCSC Annual Review provided an insight into key achievements and activities over the last year as well as the changing nature of cyber threats and continued growth of the UK’s cyber security sector.
ISPA EVENTS
WINNERS REVEALED
The winners of the ISPA Awards 2021 were revealed on on 4th November at the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane Hotel.
Community Fibre and Exa Networks were big winners on the night and took home multiple awards, and this year saw some new categories (e.g. Best Ultrafast ISP – a surefire Sign o’ the times!) and new winners, such as CityFibre and B4RN.
Digital inclusion was a big theme of the night as Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation, took home the 2021 Internet Hero Award for her work for promoting digital inclusion and tech upskilling during the pandemic. Many of the winners were commended by the judges for their efforts to bridge the digital divide and connect those hardest- to-reach.
Find the full press release and all winners here.
If you would like to sponsor the event next year, please contact awards@ispa.org.uk. The awards 2022 will launch early next year.
ISPA PARTNERS
Full Fibre Infrastructure Partner
Last month the CityFibre team were thrilled to win ‘Best Infrastructure Provider’ at the ISPA Awards, in the same week that the company announced that over one million homes are now ready for service across its Full Fibre network.
This was closely followed by the news that CityFibre had launched a new National Access product, making it even easier for wholesale partners to sell Consumer FTTH broadband to residential customers.
The National Access product is thanks to a major investment by CityFibre in new network that brings together all its local access networks onto a multi-terabit nationwide backbone. It will significantly accelerate partners’ speed to market in locations as they come online. It will also make entering new markets considerably more cost effective for those partners not wishing to set-up local network infrastructure of their own, or invest in third party backhaul..
John Franklin, Chief Technology Information Officer at CityFibre, said: “We’re committed to building a world-class digital infrastructure platform that’s simply ‘Better By Design’. We’re using infrastructure that is dependable, a platform that’s powerful and enabling a service experience for our partners that’s effortless and second to none. That’s why we are fast becoming the network of choice for ISPs. The launch of our National Access product is just one way we are delivering against that commitment. We are making it faster, easier and cheaper for partners to access our network nationwide, bringing Full Fibre broadband to millions of homes and businesses even faster.”
CityFibre is fast becoming the wholesale fibre platform of choice with over 30 consumer ISPs selling market-leading, symmetrical Full Fibre broadband services on the Full Fibre network.
Open Disaggregated Solutions Partner
How Can Open Networking Help Reduce Energy Costs and Carbon Emissions?
Panel Discussion at Data Centres Ireland
Fresh off the back of COP26, reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions are of utmost priority from all quarters. Data centres of all sizes are under scrutiny for their power usage and emissions. But how can data centres and Service Providers keep these outputs whilst providing the critical infrastructure that supports the ever-increasing volumes of data produced in this data-driven economy?
Our Senior Systems Engineer sat on a panel along with the Open Compute Project & The Cube National Centre of Excellence for Low Carbon at Data Centres Ireland this month, to discuss real life examples of how and where open-source hardware and software is being used to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions in data centres worldwide.
By availing of the Open Networking ecosystem, Service Providers can realise energy efficiency and cost reduction opportunities in their supply chain.
At its most basic, and most practical, Open Disagreggated Networking provides:
- Centralised network management - Making config changes centrally and deploying across the whole network means there's a lot less truck rolls and visits to branch offices.
- Greater usage of the hardware’s capacity - Using the right open Network Operating System software on your bare-metal and whitebox switches allows you to use more of a switch's capacity, 70 - 80% instead of 20 - 30%. This has several benefits:
- Cost reduction opportunities for the Service Provider because you can reduce materials management, which also allows you to reduce Scope 3 emissions as your value chain footprint gets smaller.
- Power usage effectiveness - the same amount of electricity is required to power a switch regardless of the capacity used, so the higher capacity used the better.
- Less cooling is required – helping you towards achieving your low carbon agenda.
Watch the panel discussion now!
Or Talk to us today about Open Networking.
Fibre Technologies Partner
FIBRAIN BU-XN - one product – many possibilities!📣
With great pleasure we introduce new product in the Fiber Distribution product portfolio - wall-mounted cabinet BU-xN!
This wall-mounted cabinet BU-xN is specifically designed for FTTH applications, and is characterized by small size, and clever design of large capacity.
The biggest advantage - although it is not easy to choose only one among so many features, is the modular design.
The possibility to connect individual modules and the appropriate choice of the equipment makes the product very useful at a particular connection location during the construction of your telecommunication networks.
We kindly invite you watch the short video https://youtu.be/R7euOVz63gc which shows great possibilities of our FIBRAIN BU-XN cabinet
Naturally, if you have any questions about FIBRAIN products, contact k.moulton@fibrain.com!
TV & Smart WiFi Partner
ISPA member offer from Netgem TV & WiFi
Our TV & Smart WiFi Partner Netgem, who picked up the Best Customer Solution Award for their Internet streaming and TV service at our Awards ceremony earlier this month, complements ISPs ultrafast fibre with fully managed TV and WiFi Mesh.We are offering members a special member rate with a half price discount on the "off the shelf” Netgem TV managed service.
This offer expires at the end of December 2021, so please feel free to explore this option with Netgem before then.
To find out more please contact Netgem here
Infrastructure Partner
New test lab puts analogue kit through digital health check
By the end of 2025, we’ll be retiring the UK’s analogue phone network and replacing it with a faster and more reliable digital network. Reason being, it just can’t keep up with the demands of a digital society that does so much work online. To retire the old analogue phone network, we’ve rolled out Superfast Broadband (FTTC Fibre to the Cabinet) to 95% of the UK and made Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband (FTTP Fibre to the Premises) available to six million premises so far.
And before the end of 2025, we’ll be working with our Communications Provider (CP) customers to help convert more than 14 million analogue lines across the UK to digital. It’s not just homes and businesses phone lines that will be affected. A range of systems can be reliant on phone lines. Things like alarm services, lifts, ATMs, payments or even medical equipment like health pendants currently run on the old analogue phone lines. All of these will need to be considered before the upgrade.
So how do you know if your products will still work after the switch to digital?
Well, we’ve opened a new Digital Services Test Lab in our London head office, where manufacturers and suppliers can find out if their kit, such as telecare, Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), lifts or alarm systems, will work with the new digital phone lines, or if it’ll need updating.
The lab emulates the conditions found when an analogue line migrates to a digital line and gives vendors of hardware devices the opportunity to test their equipment in an All-IP environment.
At the moment, the test Lab has a variety of types of Openreach lines for testing including:
- WLR (Wholesale Line Rental - PSTN, ISDN2)
- FTTP (Fibre to the Premises)
- SoGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access)
- SOGfast (Single Order Gfast).
So if you’re a hardware manufacturer or supplier and want to test your equipment in the All IP environment, you can book an appointment via Digital Services Test Lab (openreach.com)
CX & Smart WiFi Partner
New whitepaper
In today’s hyper-connected environments, where wireless dominates and the number of connected devices in the average home increases every day, traditional methods of measuring Quality of Service (QoS) are inadequate. Plume’s transformative Quality of Experience (QoE) metric is a measure of connection quality that captures the customer’s actual experience.
Download the whitepaper >
ISPA MEMBERSHIP
ISPA welcomes Legend Communications to its membership fold
Provider of Data Centre Services sitting with an IXP, connectivity and FTTP
Find membership benefits and form to join here
ISPA IN THE PRESS
This month, our ISPA Awards winners press release was published by ISPReview, thinkbroadband and Choose.
PARTNER EVENTS
ISPA offers its members a variety of discounts for events that we partner with.
White Label Expo UK - 2nd and 3rd March
For more information and discounts please visit our website. If you would like to advertise your events here and on our website, please contact Michaela@ispa.org.uk