BT Archives | Page 5 of 7

Vodafone Germany to cut 1,300 jobs in realignment efforts Vodafone Germany has revealed intentions to cut 1,300 positions in management, double functions, and areas with no direct customer interaction as part of a realignment and return to growth effort. In addition, the operator intends to establish 400 new customer-facing positions, resulting in a total loss of 900 positions. The decision comes on the heels of a 1.8% year-on-year decline in fiscal Q3 service income due to client losses in Germany, which is likely to be a special focus of cost-cutting efforts. Telecom companies such as BT and Orange Business have also recently announced layoffs. Read the full article. Five9 launches AI Summary tool for contact centers Five9, a cloud contact center service provider, has released Five9 Agent Assist 2.0 with AI Summary, driven by OpenAI’s language model technology. The solution produces summary highlights of client call recordings in seconds, decreasing…

News Roundup

A quick roundup of the news in Telecoms | Week #5

By Aiste Kryzanovske February 3, 2023

BT partners with Kyndryl for cloud migration of legacy mainframe apps BT has collaborated with Kyndryl to migrate its mainframe applications that underpin its legacy copper business and broadband cloud offerings. BT Digital, the division in charge of the company’s digital transformation, estimates that by 2026, the transfer will have reduced mainframe operational costs and energy usage by 70%. This will result in estimated annual savings of $23 million. The company’s cloud move will allow it to serve a smaller number of clients who still utilize their copper network and will enable BT to extract more value from the data housed in its older applications. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/5t48r8hj Orange and Telenet wholesale deal gives hope of VOO acquisition approval Orange had planned to buy a 75% share in the Belgian operator VOO in 2021, but the company struggled to persuade authorities that the transaction would not hurt competition. A…

Telecom News

BT partners with Hiya to protect customers from spam calls

By Aiste Kryzanovske January 25, 2023

As the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, prepares revised regulations that will hold telecom companies to a higher standard, the UK operator BT is stepping up its efforts to fight scammers. In order to achieve this goal, Hiya Protect, a network-level monitoring system that can detect and reject suspicious calls, will be used by the company. This technology will be available to both fixed-line and mobile EE subscribers. According to a study done by the Hiya team, 29 percent of all phone calls in the UK are spam. 50 percent of those calls are fraudulent, making the UK the most fraudulent country in Europe. This demonstrates the scope of the problem, which affects a vast number of people in the UK. Naturally, Ofcom is aware of this problem. According to calculations made by the telco regulator, a quarter of UK adults dealt with at least one instance of suspicious…

Telecom News

BT creates a B2B unit called BT Business

By Aiste Kryzanovske December 22, 2022

BT, the UK’s largest telecommunications company, has announced plans to restructure its business by consolidating its Global and Enterprise divisions into a single unit called BT Business. The aim of this move is to cut costs and improve the performance of underperforming businesses. As part of this restructuring, BT will eliminate various product portfolios and management and support positions, with the goal of saving £100 million by 2025. The combination of the two divisions is expected to increase simplicity by eliminating unnecessary duplication and allowing the company to offer a single service to both corporate and public sector clients. This restructuring comes after the company announced in April that it would rebrand all of its consumer operations as EE, with BT becoming the flagship brand for its corporate units. In addition, the enterprise division has experienced a series of poor quarters, with a 23% drop in the first…

News Roundup

A quick roundup of the news in Telecoms | Week #40

By Aiste Kryzanovske October 7, 2022

French telecoms to reduce their energy use Orange has proposed numerous energy-saving measures in order to address the current energy crisis that is expected to strike Europe this winter. Orange has announced that it will reduce its immediate power use by 5 to 10% for one hour every day. Altice will also assess its mobile network settings and implement power consumption cutbacks based on system traffic. The telecom provider will also phase out less energy-efficient equipment and limit its use of air conditioning when feasible in its data centers. Its offices and businesses will also have tighter controls over air conditioning and lighting usage. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2p83c9km Elon Musk decides to buy Twitter after all In the upcoming days, Elon Musk and Twitter may come to a settlement to terminate their legal dispute, paving the way for the richest man in the world to finalize his $44 billion purchase…

Telecom News

BT and Ericsson ink a private 5G partnership agreement

By Aiste Kryzanovske June 1, 2022

BT and Ericsson have launched a new cooperative venture in which the two companies will collaborate to deliver private 5G networks to Industry 4.0 clients. The details of the multimillion-pound arrangement have not been released, although it is reported that the partnership duration is to be for several years. Under the terms of the agreement, BT will use Ericsson technology to provide private 5G networks to partners in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation and logistics, with a focus on enabling valuable solutions such as asset tracking, predictive maintenance and automation. Asset tracking, predictive maintenance, networked sensors, real-time data processing, automation and robots are among the industry 4.0 solutions promised. The actual implementation may vary depending on the environment, but the private 5G network, which enables all of these use cases with low latency connectivity, is the main selling point. Katherine Ainley, CEO Ericsson…

News Roundup

A quick roundup of the news in Telecoms | Week #18

By Aiste Kryzanovske May 6, 2022

BT announces a new deal with Amazon Web Services BT’s Digital division has announced a new partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will see the cloud giant assist BT in migrating internal applications to the cloud. This initiative is part of BT’s larger strategy, which aims to modernize the company’s operations and save up to £2 billion each year by 2025. The operator claims that it will continue to make large investments and leverage AWS technology to improve its internal operations. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2p9ykxaz Apple under pressure over NFC access Apple has been accused by the European Commission (EC) of misusing its position to prevent competitor mobile wallets from being used on iOS devices. The European Commission stated that in order to benefit Apple Pay, the vendor restricts third-party wallet software developers’ access to the NFC input on its devices. If this statement is confirmed, it would appear…

News Roundup

A quick roundup of the news in Telecoms | Week #17

By Aiste Kryzanovske April 29, 2022

BT to make EE its flagship brand BT Group has announced intentions to make EE its main consumer-facing brand. This move is intended to streamline the mobile operator’s service while also propelling the company into new areas of convergence. The BT brand will be more focused on consumers who utilize standalone broadband and telephone services, while BT Sport will remain unchanged. BT will also continue to be the name for its Enterprise and Global divisions. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/bdk4ef3k NTT and Sky Perfect JSAT forma joint venture NTT and SKY Perfect JSAT have agreed to form a joint venture company to increase humanity’s use of space. The formation of the joint venture is a significant step toward the construction of the space-integrated computer network specified in the two companies’ partnership agreement of 2021. The collaboration will help to advance the global space industry and promote the achievement of a sustainable…

News Roundup

A quick roundup of the news in Telecoms | Week #13

By Aiste Kryzanovske April 1, 2022

BT putting its digital voice service rollout on halt Last year, BT began rolling out Digital Voice, which is a VoIP solution that works over the company’s broadband network rather than the old analogue network, as the name implies. This service is an essential improvement, as BT points out, to replace analogue technology, which is rapidly becoming outmoded. The operator is, however, delaying the Digital Voice switchover for consumers who do not wish to switch right away. BT did not specify how long the halt will occur, nonetheless, it is confident that the switchover will take place soon. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/mt23py8u DigitalBridge enters into mobile infrastructure deal with Telenet Telenet has agreed to sell all of its mobile telecommunications towers in Belgium to DigitalBridge, a US-based real estate investment trust and a subsidiary of the DigitalBridge Group. The investment firm has agreed to pay $820 million for Telenet’s 3,322…

Telecom News

ABB signs a new deal with BT

By Aiste Kryzanovske January 13, 2022

BT and ABB, a Swedish–Swiss multinational corporation specializing in robotics, power and automation technology, have announced a collaboration to upgrade the latter’s globally managed communications infrastructure to new levels of performance and flexibility to support the company’s new operating model. Under this partnership, BT will modernize ABB’s network infrastructure in cooperation with ABB’s Information Systems team to build a sustainable, robust and secure core platform with a highly automated and data-driven managed service. BT will provide an end-to-end, comprehensive, multi-layered cyber security environment to support ABB’s cloud-first goals. The company will install, operate and monitor over 1,100 end-point devices, constantly validating every device, user and application that is connected to the network. Security is a primary focus as ABB implements its cloud plan, which involves consolidating data centers and sending more apps and data to the cloud. With nearly 600 locations in 60 countries, the communications infrastructure will…