• SpaceX snaps up more Echostar spectrum
• BT flatlines, preps for regulatory wrangle 
• Canada proposes telco regulatory shakeup

In today’s industry news roundup: SpaceX has splashed $2.6bn on yet more spectrum from Echostar; BT’s sales are slipping slightly and its earnings flatlining as it faces ongoing fierce competition; the Canadian government is planning a telco sector shakeup that could lead to lower prices and greater competition; and much more!

EchoStar has entered into an amended definitive agreement with SpaceX, the parent of low-earth orbit satellite operator Starlink, to sell the company’s unpaired AWS-3 licences for approximately $2.6bn in SpaceX stock, adding to the previous $17bn agreement to sell 50 MHz of S-band spectrum in the US as well as global mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum licences to SpaceX. EchoStar says the unpaired AWS-3 licences are nationwide and are part of 3GPP Band 70n (1695-1710 MHz uplink). “This transaction with SpaceX, in addition to our previously announced spectrum transactions and commercial agreements, will strengthen EchoStar’s ability to develop new business opportunities and growth in value for our shareholders,” stated EchoStar Capital CEO Hamid Akhavan. “The combination of AWS-3 uplink, AWS-4 and H-block spectrum from EchoStar with the rocket launch and satellite manufacturing capabilities from SpaceX accelerates the realisation of powerful and economical direct-to-cell service offerings for consumers and enterprises worldwide, including our Boost Mobile customers,” he added. 

BT Group has reported a year-on-year decline in revenues and flat earnings for its fiscal second quarter that ended on 30 September. Total revenues shrank by 3% to £4.93bn, while UK service revenues dipped by 1% to £3.86bn. BT is reporting UK service revenues to show the performance of the domestic operation, on which it is focused and plans to further develop: The UK telco is, in one way or another, offloading its international operations, which continues to be the worst performing part of its overall business (with sales down 6% year on year to £568m). Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was flat at £2.07bn. BT ended September with a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network that reached 20.3 million premises (including 5.5 million in rural areas, which is where the operator ultimately plans to expand its reach through the newly announced partnership with satellite broadband specialist Starlink). BT ended September with 3.7 million consumer and 300,000 enterprise fibre broadband customers, while its 5G mobile customer base grew by 11% to 13.9 million. CEO Allison Kirkby noted: “BT is delivering on its strategy in competitive markets. We’re building the UK’s digital backbone, connecting the country like no one else and accelerating our transformation. Openreach full fibre broadband now reaches more than 20 million homes and businesses and our award-winning EE network is live with 5G+ coverage for 66% of the population. Since the start of the year, we’ve driven customer growth across Consumer broadband, mobile and TV and we’re stabilising our UK-focused Business division. Outside the UK, we’ve completed strategic exits and we’re reshaping our International unit. BT’s transformation is delivering ahead of plan, as our UK focus and radical simplification and modernisation are helping to offset declines from our International and legacy businesses and higher labour-related costs since the start of this tax year. We remain on track to deliver our financial outlook for this year, our cash flow inflection to circa £2bn in FY27 and circa £3bn by the end of the decade, and we’re announcing an increased interim dividend to 2.45 pence per share.”

Still with BT… Clive Selley, CEO at the UK telco’s quasi-autonomous wholesale fixed access division Openreach, is pre-empting some argy-bargy with UK regulator Ofcom. The Financial Times reports that Selley is suggesting he might abandon the extant plan to get approval for the last phase of Openreach’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) rollout unless the current regulatory environment is relaxed under the terms of Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review (TAR), due next year. That final phase would be to expand the FTTP coverage from 25 million premises at the end of 2026 to 30 million premises by 2030. Selley has given notice to both Ofcom and the UK government that he will postpone the plan unless, and until, the powers that be cut some slack for Openreach where taxation is concerned. Openreach, which provides network services to about 650 retail ISPs, is ploughing £15bn into expanding the coverage of its full fibre network to 25 million UK premises by December 2026, including about 6.2 million premises in underserved rural or semi-rural areas. Extending that to 30 million premises is contingent on Ofcom providing Openreach with a favourable regulatory landscape and the government adjusting its planning and fiscal plans for the company. In a statement, Selley noted: “I’m going to hold fire getting approvals for that final 5 million tranche until I see what comes out of the TAR. If I can’t see where the regulation is going to land, then I can’t articulate the business case and, therefore, that business case goes on hold until we see the final wording. These are worrying times for the UK, as we are the only credible builder for the last tranche of homes.” Openreach’s competition may well take umbrage at the claim that it is the “only credible builder” and would be delighted if it back-tracked on its full fibre network build-out targets and gave them a chance to to provide an alternative service in rural areas. Currently, Openreach is now passing 1.1 million new premises per quarter. What’s more, the UK government has already moved the goalposts of its Project Gigabit: The original target was to have gigabit broadband available to 99% of the UK by 2030, but that has been put back to 2032 and could be deferred again.  

Speaking of regulation… As part of its 2025 budget, introduced this week to parliament in Ottawa, the Canadian federal government announced plans to “take measures” to increase telecom competition in the country whilst mandating lower internet access and smartphone costs for subscribers. The Canadian Press reports that, for its part, the government will release additional wireless spectrum and, next year, bring forward modernised spectrum licence transfer rules. It is also initiating a “dig once” policy to “encourage telcos and service providers to co-ordinate their efforts when installing fibre optic lines.” Furthermore, it will “reduce regulatory hurdles when deploying telecom infrastructure across the country, including by consulting on a streamlined tower-siting process.” However, the federal government stresses that in the past the Canadian telecom sector has “lacked competition” and that led directly to mobile service tariffs and bills being considerably higher than in other countries. Canada’s finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, stated: “Canadians are paying some of the highest phone and internet bills around the world. Our budget will increase competition in the telecommunications sector and give Canadians more options and lower their costs.” The ruling Liberal Party called the plans “some of the most ambitious, pro-competitive measures for Canada in a generation.” It’s not before time. Telecom services in Canada have been generally uncompetitive for a long time, primarily as a result of the oligopolistic market structure dominated by three major national carriers – Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus between them command 90% of wireless service revenues – high barriers to entry for new competitors, and a regulatory environment that has historically favoured the big incumbents. Meanwhile, building a national network across Canada’s immense, geographically difficult and sparsely populated country is hugely capital intensive. The enormous infrastructure costs, including spectrum licences, cell towers and fibre optic networks, make it very difficult for competitors to enter the market and compete effectively on a national scale. Elsewhere, and in addition to the regulatory regime that benefits incumbent operators, Canada’s big telcos have for many years lobbied aggressively, continually and vociferously to prevent smaller players, such as MVNOs, offering services at “competitive prices”. The regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) says it is “taking steps” to encourage more competition but progress is slow and it’s time for the CRTC to pull on a pair of seven-league boots. As might be imagined, the incumbents are at pains to point out that wireless tariffs fell by 50% between 2020 and 2024. The new budget also commits the federal government to continue working with the CRTC to implement amendments to the new Telecommunications Act that was announced in the 2024 budget, especially the provision allowing subscribers to more easily switch internet access and broadband service providers.

MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology has a major role to play in permitting 5G and 6G networks to maximise energy efficiency whilst exploiting much improved spectral efficiency and spatial diversity. As we know only too well, telecom nomenclature is often an alphabet soup of initials and mnemonics, and the latest development in antenna selection techniques to enable excellent energy efficiency is no exception. Traditional antenna selection strategies are based in highly complex optimisation methodologies but now, in a paper, Energy-efficient transmit antenna selection with Fast-ABC-Boost, published in the latest edition of Nature, the British weekly scientific journal (that was founded in 1869 and is still going strong), a team of scientists at the School of Physics and Telecommunication Engineering at Yulin Normal University in Yulin Guangxi, China, has propounded a new technique for antenna selection maximisation. It is based on“fast-adaptive base class-boost” or “Fast-ABC-Boost” for short, that increases the classification performance of many “weak” classifiers, such as the regression trees used in machine learning, to produce what the team describes as “a powerful committee” to make classification decisions. Results of laboratory tests show that Fast-ABC-Boost has many advantages over the current most commonly used learning method based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). A single radio frequency (RF) chain antenna is expensive – the hardware costs a lot – and power consumption is high and pricey, but selecting a subgroup of transmit antennas according to criteria, such as maximum energy-efficiency and quality-of-service) requirements is much more economically effective. The paper concludes that Fast-ABC-Boost “is a highly compelling antenna selection method for MIMO systems”, adding that ongoing work will generalise the system model to a broadly applicable multi-cell multicasting scenario.

Belgium’s Proximus, including its subsidiary Scarlet, are the latest operators to be hit by ‘bad actors’. The Belga News Agency reports that a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack perpetrated by pro-Russian hacker group NoName057 briefly disrupted the telcos’ services on Wednesday. Ghent University Hospital was also hit by a DDoS attack around the same time.

– The staff, TelecomTV