Author: Rob Pritchard

Oops – Ofcom Hacked. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Even telecoms regulators get hacked. Ofcom was hit by the MOVEit cyberattack, with the breach leading to information about a number of regulated companies and its staff being stolen.

• Consequently, Ofcom is now more likely to focus its attention of cybersecurity regulation, given that it is “the regulator for online safety in the UK.”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (‘Who watches the watchers’) was Roman poet Juvenal’s comment on people in positions of power and influence – which must, these days, also include telecoms regulators. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, alongside the likes of the BBC, Boots, and British Airways, was targeted in the cyberattack on MOVEit Transfer (a “secure file transfer service”) customers. So irony piles on irony.

Continue reading “Oops – Ofcom Hacked. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?” →

Measuring Mobile User Activity During the Coronation and Beyond

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Internet of Things
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Movers Index gives quarterly UK movement data collected by O2 Motion and by polling users to provide insight into behavior of the British public and businesses.

• More than 114,000 people visited central London (England) to be part of the Coronation parade, delivering a boost to business, matched by similar behavior nationwide.

Virgin Media O2 Business’s new Movers Index combines aggregated and anonymized UK movement data collected from its O2 Motion proposition (Virgin Media O2 Business O2 Motion may have been too much of a tongue twister), combined with polling of businesses and consumers ‘to provide quarterly trends and insights into the behavior’ of the British public and UK businesses.

Continue reading “Measuring Mobile User Activity During the Coronation and Beyond” →

The Enterprise Customer Segmentation Matrix

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Since customer databases are available for mass business markets alongside providers’ existing major enterprise knowledge, service providers have traditionally segmented target markets by number of employees.

• Service providers are realizing they need to be more sophisticated and are trying to identify factors like digital maturity and proportion of knowledge workers.

More often than not, enterprise telecoms service providers segment the market in terms of employee numbers. Typically, they divide the market into SOHO/micro (0-5 employees: owner-managers don’t count as employees), SME/SMB (from 6-250 employees), and corporate/enterprise (250+ employees). Of course, these definitions vary from one service provider to the next, and often, specialist markets such as the MNC segment and public sector are addressed outside of the employee count model. The main drivers behind this are: (1) ‘this is how we’ve always done it,’ (2) ‘we can get databases of the target market by employee numbers,’ (3) and ‘any other approach is too difficult.’

Continue reading “The Enterprise Customer Segmentation Matrix” →

European Telcos: Which Future Operating Model?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Europe’s rumor mill is running at high capacity, but it’s becoming ever clearer that – despite the EU – in telecoms, the region remains a series of national markets.

• Activist investors, workforce reductions, fast-changing technology, hyper-competition, multiple layers of regulation, socio-economic changes, and the digitization of everything have got C-suite heads spinning.

Unsubstantiated reports in the press of BT seeking to replace its CEO, Philip Jansen, are typical of a market that is not entirely sure where it is going. Activist investors, cross-shareholdings, and in-country consolidation are confusing enough for the telco C-suite. Add to that, the complications of national and EU regulation, growing ESG requirements, employee ‘rightsizing,’ broad socio-economic and workplace changes, rapidly evolving technologies, the key role of digitization across all aspects of home and work life, plus the need to invest in both infrastructure and systems – it is no wonder that heads are spinning.

Continue reading “European Telcos: Which Future Operating Model?” →

Underwater Data Center Going Swimmingly

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• A mini edge data center is being used to heat a public swimming pool in Devon, southwest of England (UK).

• Innovation is symptomatic of how sustainability issues – and marketing opportunities – can be addressed using imagination and technology.

UK company Deep Green is heating a public swimming pool in Devon (UK) with a ‘washing machine-sized’ edge data center. The data center’s computers are surrounded by oil to capture heat, which then is passed by convection/heat exchanger into the swimming pool and heated to about 30 degrees Centigrade. The pool, run by the local (Exmouth) council, gets the heat for free, and Deep Green and its customers can rest knowing they are contributing to dealing with climate challenges and supporting a free-of-charge municipal service. Seven further municipal pools have subsequently signed up for the service in the face of multiple swimming pool closures as a result of energy costs.

Continue reading “Underwater Data Center Going Swimmingly” →

UK SOHO Market Heats Up

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Infrastructure-focused Giganet has launched a wholesale connectivity offering targeting the SOHO market for its reseller, managed service provider, and ISP partners.

• This re-emphasizes both the importance of the SOHO and SME markets as a key target as well as of the fragmentation of the supply/value chain.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small office/home office (SOHO) businesses are becoming the telecoms target markets of preference across many countries at the moment. Given the background of deglobalization and trade wars, combined with many individuals choosing to pursue their own path or work on side businesses as a result of the pandemic as well as associated experience of working from home for white-collar workers (or laid-off blue-collar workers), smaller business is where much of global growth is being delivered, presenting an opportunity for many companies across all verticals, including the telecoms sector.

Continue reading “UK SOHO Market Heats Up” →

Customer Needs, Not Speeds

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:             

  • CityFibre, the champion of altnets in the UK, is reported to soon axe 20% of its workforce due to the UK’s “struggling” economy.
  • An obsession with end user needs rather than financing and technology is needed to encourage customers to migrate from their current broadband solutions.

Most folks waking up in the morning may think ‘I need more fiber’ – but that is usually a dietary consideration rather than anything bandwidth-related.

With reports that CityFibre, traditionally the darling of UK altnet market, is set to cut up to 400 jobs from its workforce of 2,300 (but will add 200 more, giving a net job loss of about 200), questions need to be asked and answered.

Continue reading “Customer Needs, Not Speeds” →

The Art of Buying the Market

by Rob Pritchard, posted in IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Partnership positioned as a digital transformation of the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) technology infrastructure and data analytics using the Microsoft cloud and supporting over 40,000 Refinitiv financial institutions.

• Co-creation of such ‘foundational platforms’ by super-sized tech companies also have the advantage of ‘locking in’ customers for future revenues – if the regulators don’t intervene.

Co-creation is a growing trend across the technology market: It is the process of forming a close partnership or even joint venture to enhance customer solutions using technology in a digitizing world. The theory is that both large enterprises and their technology partners benefit from inventing new products and services, combining technology with deep industry knowledge.

Continue reading “The Art of Buying the Market” →

BT – Would You Like Broadband with Your Pizza?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• BT has partnered with Just Eat and Checkatrade to offer discounted packages for broadband and mobile as part of its Enterprise Customer Charter.

• Service providers everywhere are looking to exploit third-party channels to maximize their addressable market – especially in mass markets like SOHO/micro businesses.

BT announced partnerships with Just Eat and Checkatrade to offer discounts on business broadband packages and mobile deals as part of the UK incumbent’s Enterprise Customer Charter – its ‘blueprint to boost UK plc by exploiting cybersecurity, digital services, and purpose-driven goals.’

Continue reading “BT – Would You Like Broadband with Your Pizza?” →

No More Faxes

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• UK regulator Ofcom is consulting on removing fax services from the UK’s universal service obligation (USO) for BT and KCOM.

• Once a core feature of office life, the history of fax machines goes way back, but they are set to be consigned to tech history.

The facsimile (fax) machine was ubiquitous in offices from the 1980s through the end of the 20th century, but the impact of email, the world wide web, and the relentless rise of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms is set to witness the demise of a technology that served users well in analog days (as long as there was paper and ink in the machine, no blockages, and not someone else using it already).

Continue reading “No More Faxes” →