Category Archives: Telecommunications industry

Two telecoms cables in Baltic Sea severed, raising suspicions of sabotage

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Outages include 1,200km link between Germany and Finland and 218km cable between Lithuania and Sweden

Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, have been severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors.

The episode on Monday recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines.

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Optus fined $12m after thousands could not call triple zero during 2023 outage

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Australian Communications and Media Authority says telco did not check welfare of 369 people who tried to make a call while lines were down

Optus has paid a $12m fine over its mobile network outage last year that resulted in more than 2,000 people being unable to make triple zero calls.

One year ago on Friday, a routine software upgrade to Optus’s mobile network brought down the service for 14 hours across the country for the company’s 10 million customers.

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Taiwan to have satellite internet service as protection in case of Chinese attack

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Coverage with UK-European provider will be in place by end of month, says island’s main telecoms company

Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.

The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.

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Tory donor Lycamobile handed winding-up order from HMRC amid tax dispute

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Pay-as-you-go simcard seller often filed late returns, had accounts queried by auditors and was embroiled in eight-year VAT battle

Lycamobile, a telecoms company that has given more than £2m to the Conservative party, has been issued with a winding-up petition by HM Revenue and Customs, amid a long-running VAT dispute.

The company, founded by businessman Allirajah Subaskaran in 2006, sells pay-as-you-go sim cards that are popular with low-paid workers wanting to make cheap phone calls to family overseas, as well as in the UK.

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Ex-BT boss pockets £3.7m final pay deal as group plans to axe 55,000 jobs

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Philip Jansen announced sweeping job cuts during same financial year covered by pay and bonus package

BT’s former chief executive Philip Jansen has been awarded his largest pay and bonus package, a £3.7m reward for the same year in which he announced plans to cut 55,000 jobs at the telecoms company by 2030.

The pay deal for Jansen, who was nicknamed Food Bank Phil after the company set up a “community pantry” for call centre staff struggling to make ends meet, was revealed in BT’s latest annual report.

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Shutdown of 3G networks a ‘health and safety issue’ for some regional Australians

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Telcos promised no loss of coverage but farmers outside official coverage areas fear their lifeline will turn off

Stacey Storrier was told she was “lucky” that she received mobile phone service at her home in the New South Wales Riverina region.

But when Telstra’s 3G network is switched off on 30 June, that luck will run out.

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Vodafone to sell Italian business to Swisscom for €8bn

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UK telecoms group says some of proceeds will be returned to investors via share buybacks

Vodafone is selling its Italian business to Swisscom for €8bn (£6.8bn) cash and plans to return €4bn to shareholders.

The telecoms company said it had reached an agreement to sell Vodafone Italy as part of wider plans to streamline its European operations and that some of the proceeds would be returned to investors via share buy-backs. Vodafone will continue to provide certain services to Swisscom for up to five years as part of the transaction.

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Telstra apologises to family of Victorian who died during triple zero outage

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Government says regulator is looking into the disruption which prevented more than 100 calls being transferred to emergency services

Telstra has apologised for a technical issue that meant Australians were not able to speak to trained triple zero call takers for more than an hour.

The telecommunications giant issued the apology to people who were unable to make phone calls to triple zero for more than an hour on Friday morning.

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Houthis may sabotage western internet cables in Red Sea, Yemen telecoms firms warn

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UN-recognised government and telecoms firms speak of threat to digital infrastructure, with some submarine cables lying just 100 metres below the surface

Telecom firms linked to the UN-recognised Yemen government said on Sunday they fear Houthi rebels are planning to sabotage a network of submarine cables in the Red Sea critical to the functioning of the western internet, and to the transmission of financial data.

The warning came after a Houthi-linked Telegram channel published a map of the cables running along the bed of the Red Sea. The image was accompanied by a message: “There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents – not only countries – pass near it.”

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Vodafone should spin off sensitive work after UAE deal, say UK officials

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National security concerns focus on arm of Vodafone that provides sensitive tech to government departments and agencies

Vodafone should be forced to spin off its most sensitive activities in order to quash national security concerns raised by a United Arab Emirates-backed telecoms group swooping on its shares, government officials have told the Guardian.

The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, announced on Wednesday that the deal involving Emirates Telecommunications Group building a 14.6% stake in Vodafone presented a “national security risk” to the UK due to Vodafone’s role “as a strategic supplier of services” to government departments, including those “which are in support of national security”.

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Virgin Media is most complained about UK broadband provider

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Ofcom figures show Virgin attracted about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband

Virgin Media is the UK’s most complained about broadband provider according to the latest figures, compounding woes for the firm, which is already under investigation by the communications regulator.

Figures released by Ofcom on Thursday showed that the number of complaints made about Virgin’s internet services between July and September were nearly double that of the next-most complained about provider, with Virgin attracting about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband.

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Emirates-backed stake in Vodafone is security risk, says UK

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UAE firm’s increased investment prompts Cabinet Office order for security panel at telecoms company

The stake in Vodafone held by a United Arab Emirates-backed telecoms group poses a national security risk to the UK, the government said.

The Cabinet Office issued a notice late on Wednesday warning that the 14.6% stake held in Vodafone by Emirates Telecoms, which is also known as e&, amounted to a security concern given Vodafone’s strategic role in the country’s telecommunications services.

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BT scraps above-inflation price rises for mobile and broadband customers

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UK’s mobile and broadband firms were accused of ‘greedflation’ last year by the Guardian

BT has become the first major telecoms company to scrap controversial above-inflation price rises for mobile and broadband customers – but not before pushing through a final increase this year.

The owner of mobile operator EE has moved to address the pressure on consumers from rising household costs during the cost of living crisis, after telecoms companies were criticised for increasing bills.

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UK telecoms firms told to safeguard at-risk customers in switch to digital landlines

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Minister’s move follows reports of pensioners left unable to call for help

Telecoms providers have been forced to pause plans to impose digital phone lines on vulnerable customers after reports of pensioners left unable to call for help during power cuts.

Companies including BT and Virgin Media have been forced by Michelle Donelan, the technology secretary, to sign a charter to safeguard at-risk households during the nationwide switchover from analogue to internet-based landlines.

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UK’s top mobile firms face £3.3bn class action lawsuit over ‘loyalty penalties’

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Campaigner Justin Gutmann alleges EE, Vodafone, Three and O2 have ‘systematically exploited millions of loyal customers’

The UK’s biggest mobile phone companies face a £3.3bn class action lawsuit alleging that long-standing customers are being ripped off by “loyalty penalties”, under which the same services are offered to new customers at a better price to lure them from rivals.

The legal action, which has been brought by the campaigner Justin Gutmann and the law firm Charles Lyndon, targets BT-owned EE, Vodafone, Three and O2, which is part of Virgin Media O2.

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EE launches streaming TV with custom Apple TV box in UK first

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Live and on-demand TV over broadband replaces BT TV as firm continues brand and service revamp

The BT-owned EE is rolling out its revamped TV over broadband offering, which delivers live and on-demand services streamed to a choice of set-top boxes that includes a customised Apple TV – a first for the UK.

The new IPTV service continues the firm’s replacement of the BT brand with EE and ditches the aerial while still offering free-to-air and premium channels in a range of packages starting at £18 a month on top of the required EE broadband subscription.

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Labor to reconsider mandatory data retention laws for companies in light of major hacks

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New cyber security strategy cites business concerns at having to store large amounts of data for excessive periods of time, increasing breach risk

Following several high-profile data breaches in the past year, the federal government will review laws requiring companies to retain data as part of its new cyber security strategy.

Released on Wednesday, the 2023-30 strategy notes that data is increasingly used for ransom attacks and as a tool for coersion.

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Optus gets some clear air but the ghosts of twin disasters will haunt whoever comes next

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Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation fuels speculation Optus executive and former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian could be top contender for CEO

The departure of Kelly Bayer Rosmarin as chief executive will give Optus some clear air to move past the 14-hour outage, but for whoever comes next as CEO the turbulence won’t be over yet.

Bayer Rosmarin’s appearance at the inquiry into the Optus outage on Friday went fairly smoothly compared with how disastrous it has been for some to face the same fate in the past. Yet it was clear to everyone watching that she was unlikely to last much longer at the helm.

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Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigns after network outage

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Optus parent company Singtel says ‘priority is about setting on a path of renewal for the benefit of the community and customers’

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned as the chief executive of Optus in the wake of the nationwide outage that took down phone and internet services for 14 hours close to two weeks ago.

In a statement released by Optus’s parent company, Singtel, on Monday morning, Bayer Rosmarin said it was an appropriate time to step down, following her appearance at a Senate inquiry into the outage on Friday.

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Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin faces Senate grilling as Singtel denies it was to blame for outage

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Optus claimed on its parent company’s Singtel Internet Exchange was responsible, but Singtel says its upgrade was not the cause

The Optus chief executive, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, faces a grilling at a Senate hearing on Friday over the telco’s handling of last week’s 14-hour nationwide outage as both Optus and its parent company Singtel dispute who was to blame.

Bayer Rosmarin will be facing the Senate committee, chaired by the Greens communications spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, over two hours on Friday morning in the inquiry launched shortly after the Optus outage last week.

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