Eurobites: Marc Allera to step down as BT Consumer bossEurobites: Marc Allera to step down as BT Consumer boss

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: UK government seeks satellite broadband partners; Orange teams up with AI giants for more inclusive large language models; Zain tests Huawei's microwave tech.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

November 27, 2024

4 Min Read
BT Consumer's current CEO, Marc Allera
BT's Marc Allera (above) will be replaced by Bell Canada's Claire Gillies in the spring.(Source: BT)
  • Marc Allera is leaving BT, stepping down as CEO of its Consumer division early next year. He will be replaced by Claire Gillies, who has worked in a variety of senior management roles at Bell Canada for more than 20 years, most recently as president of the company's Wireless and Consumer divisions. In a LinkedIn post, Allera said: "After nine incredible years, I have made the decision to step down as CEO of EE and BT Group's Consumer division in Spring 2025," adding somewhat enigmatically, "Now is the right time for me to move on to a new chapter in my career, and a new challenge. I'll let you know what that is when the time is right." BT CEO Allison Kirkby paid tribute to Allera's prominent role in the integration of EE into BT Group and the creation of the BT Sport joint venture with Warner Bros Discovery, praising him as an "outstanding leader."

  • The UK government has put out a call for companies interested in tendering for satellite broadband projects intended to provide connectivity to very remote areas of the country, with a promise of a share of £3.5 million (US$4.4 million) in state funding for three specific projects. One of these will involve the use of something called a Nomadic Multi-orbit User Terminal Demonstrator, which will be portable and able to be mounted on a standard vehicle, such as a tractor. It will use the signals from satellites in both low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO) to facilitate gigabit-capable connectivity. Another project, on Raithlin island, off the coast of Northern Ireland, plans to employ a hybrid approach, combining LEO and GEO satellite terminals with wireless/mobile technologies, possibly including 5G/6G.

  • Orange is teaming up with OpenAI and Meta to "fine-tune" AI large language models (LLMs) so that they are able to make sense of regional languages in Africa that today are not understood by any GenAI model on the market. The aim is to develop custom AI models capable of allowing customers to communicate naturally in their local languages with Orange for customer support and sales. The initiative, starting next year, will initially focus on incorporating two languages, namely Wolof and Pulaar, which are spoken by 16 million people and 6 million people, respectively, in West Africa. (See Orange, Open AI and Meta partner to train AI models in African languages.)

  • Zain has been testing Huawei's Superlink Microwave technology in Saudi Arabia, achieving, says Huawei, 3.5 Gbit/s high capacity over a 35km link, with availability of up to 99.999%. The trial, says the Chinese vendor, marks the first commercial application of its Superlink offering  with universal ODUs (outdoor units).

  • MNOs and MVNOs are at loggerheads over wholesale "remedies" demanded by UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) if the proposed merger of Vodafone and Three merger is to get the green light. In a new submission to the CMA, operator Virgin Media O2 says that it has "become increasingly concerned that some of these parties [meaning MVNOS] appear to be seeking windfall benefits from the merger clearance process, which go well beyond preserving effective competition in the wholesale market … While MVNOs are valuable wholesale customers for mobile operators, they do not invest in building, maintaining and upgrading the network and are insulated from the risks associated with such investments." On the other side of the equation, Sky Mobile, an MVNO that rides on O2's network, uses its additional submission to complain that the proposed remedies make it clear that MNOs "have no desire to support MVNOs in the future." It goes on to threaten that if the CMA does not makes improvements to the remedy it will "be forced to consider appealing the [merger] decision."

  • Elevate, which operates a rooftop point-to-point wireless network in London covering more than 80,000 businesses, has agreed a deal with Vorboss which allows it to sell (up to) 100Gbit/s Ethernet services over Vorboss' fiber lines in London.

  • Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia (TIM), has opened an IP node at its landing-hub data center in Genoa, Italy. The new node, says Sparkle, will enable network operators and others to benefit from low-latency IP transit services in scalable multiples of 10GB, 100GB and 40GB.

  • Analysts at ABI Research have ranked Nokia as the overall leader and top innovator in a competitive study on telco API platforms for internal exposure within network and partner ecosystems. Nokia's network API portfolio offers more integration points across the telco stack than any other vendor, the analysts said.

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About the Author

Paul Rainford

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.

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