Community Fibre has called out BT and Virgin Media for “stifling” and “confusing” customers, making it harder for them to leave and join other service providers.

The move comes as, earlier this month, Ofcom announced it was going to stop internet providers from “misleading customers” about the technology being used to deliver their internet.

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According to Community Fibre CEO, Graeme Oxby, Ofcom should be “outraged on behalf of the public that BT, Virgin and others continue to stifle and slow down competition and confuse customers.”

He said: “If broadband providers use any copper to deliver the service, they shouldn’t tell consumers that it is fibre as that is ‘fibre fibbing’.

“Those companies who don’t provide 100% full fibre have been misleading customers for years and should implement ‘technology truthfulness’ in all their communications without any further delay.”

Rather than waiting for Ofcom to fine the offenders, Oxby has challenged The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), the organisation sanctioned and supported by Ofcom and funded by BT, Virgin and Vodafone, alongside the big players to pull their socks up and deliver the one-touch switching service for 14 March 2024.

He added: “Consumers want it, competition requires it and the Regulator has mandated it, so let’s get on with it.”

Mobile Marketing Magazine has contacted BT and Virgin Media for comment.

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Telecoms giant EE has launched its new service, EE TV, aimed to offer a flexible TV experience for UK homes.

A first-of-a-kind offering, which includes flexible content packages. replaces BT TV after its £12.5 billion acquisition by the telecoms company.

EE has also partnered with Apple to produce an EE TV app with live streaming and on-demand content, alongside a custom EE-branded remote, and automatic setup for the Apple TV box.

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The new offering allows customers access to over 70 Freeview channels, a Netflix subscription, as well as premium channels from Sky, Eurosport, TNT Sports and Discovery.

However, the service also offers Prime Video and Now, for an additional fee, with Disney Plus set to be available soon.

“The launch of EE TV is one of the first significant strides we’re taking since launching New EE,” CEO Marc Allera said. “The service is built for busy households, and we believe it will elevate the TV experience for consumers across the UK.”

The news comes as Allera recently revealed revealed customers are “not sentimental” about losing the BT brand.

He continued: “We’re effectively rebranding a national institution.

“Most are aware of the changes and they understand it” claiming the telecoms business has not “seen much resistance”.

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According to the regulator, around 400,000 EE customers who ended their contracts early were over-billed, paying a total of around £4.3m as a result. Almost 82,000 Virgin customers were also overcharged, for an amount totalling just under £2.8m, although Virgin has already announced plans to appeal this finding.

Phone and broadband companies can charge customers who decide not to see out the minimum term of their contracts, but such charged must be made clear to customers, and must not make switching to another provider too costly. Ofcoms investigation found that both EE and Virgin Media failed to comply with these rules, with both firms failing to make sufficiently clear the charges that customers would have to pay, in addition to over-billing leavers.

“EE and Virgin Media broke our rules by overcharging people who ended their contracts early,” said Gaucho Rasmussen, director of investigations and enforcement at Ofcom. “Those people were left out of pocket, and the charges amounted to millions of pounds. That is unacceptable. These fines send a clear message to all phone and broadband firms that they must play by the rules, in the interests of their customers.”

Ofcoms investigation of EE looked at a six-year period and found that the firm had miscalculated early-exit charges when it came to customers with discount contracts leaving early. EE cooperated fully with Ofcom during the investigation, has volunteered to conduct an in-depth review of its processes and systems, and has already refunded over £2.7m to affected customers. In light of these actions, Ofcom elected to reduce the companys fine by 30 per cent.

In contrast, following Ofcoms investigation of Virgin Media charging higher-than-contracted early-exit fees, the mobile provider was fined an additional £25,000 for providing incomplete information to Ofcoms statutory information request. Virgin Media has since reminbursed or made donations to charity in respect of 99.8 per cent of affected customers, and has reduced the level of its early-exit charges by an average of 30 per cent.

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TalkTalk has been in talks with Vodafone, O2 and Virgin Media, with hopes of striking a deal with one of the mobile network providers for its own mobile unit in the coming weeks, reports the Financial Times.

The move is a part of a company overhaul under its new management team, led by executive chairman Sir Charles Dunstone and chief executive Tristia Harrison.

TalkTalk first launched its mobile service in 2010, after signing a capacity deal with Vodaphone, but now has plans to return to focusing on being a budget internet provider. It has been discussing a deal with mobile operators that would see it sell their SIM cards alongside its broadband packages, and it hope its 913,000 users will be open to switching to the new mobile provider.

As part of a potential deal, TalkTalk is reviewing transferring at least part of its mobile base over to the rival it sells to. However, 25 per cent of its customer base has a broadband and mobile package, while 12 per cent are on deals that include broadband, telephone line, pay-TV and mobile in the same package.

Vodafone, which is one of the companies in talks with TalkTalk, recently introduced its VOXI mobile network. The network is aimed at people aged 25 and under, and places an emphasis on social media usage.

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Every day between now and the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony on 17 November, we will be previewing the finalists in one of the 3o categories. Today, its the turn of the Most Effective App Install category.

Nasmedia and 4:33 – Lost Kingdom UA Campaign
Korean games developer 4:33 was one of the first driving the initial boom of mobile RPGs in Korea, but over the years the market it helped build has become increasingly competitive. To promote its much-anticipated title Lost Kingdom, it used Nasmedias Nswitch app marketing platform, optimising inventory by publisher effectiveness to improve efficiency.

The campaign achieved the highest ROI of all the marketing channels used to promote the game, and helped push Lost Kingdom to the top of Google Plays free game charts.

Coral and Somo – Coral Sportsbook Euro 2016 Campaign
For gambling operator Coral, the Euro 2016 tournament represented a month-long opportunity to draw in a wealth of new customers. To capitalise, Somo planned and bought media from a number of partners to target the required demographic associated with sports betting, serving up daily creative with the latest special offers from Coral, alongside an app ranking campaign with two incentivised media partners that could drive a high volume of installs, at low cost.

The campaign drove over three times as many paid installs from 10 June-10 July than in a normal period, 60 per cent of which came from non-incentivised sources.

Virgin Media & RAPP – Wi-fi Buddy
Virgin doesnt operate its own mobile network – it uses EE’s, and has to pay for every megabyte of data its customers use. Wi-fi Buddy was conceived as a way of keeping data costs down for both subscribers and Virgin itself.

Via email, SMS and owned media, RAPP reached out to customers with a fixed monthly allowance and those on an unlimited data tariff alike, showing a benefit message appropriate to their situation: respectively focusing on the cost savings, or the ease of using the app. The campaign drove 377,000 downloads, and reduced total data consumption by 10 per cent.

Our winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony in London on 17 November. To book a seat or table, head for the Awards website or call John Owen on 07769 674824.

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Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 UK, is exploring the possibility of a debt-fuelled £8.5bn management buyout of the business following CK Hutchisons failed acquisition bid for the company which ended when the EU stepped in to block the deal.

According to The Telegraph, Dunne has been approached by private equity companies who are looking at a deal, and executives at O2 are now considering whether or not such a buyout would be financially feasible.

Given how recently the O2/Hutchison deal fell apart, talks are still in their early stages, and in fact an exclusivity contract between Hutchison and Telefonica, the owners of O2 UK, remains in place until the end of next month unless both agree to a split. However, given O2s strong cash generation for the past few years, it makes a good candidate for a leveraged buyout.

If the takeover does take place, the bid will reportedly be less than the £10.25bn offered by Hutchison, as its offer took into account potential savings that could be made through a merger of the O2 with the companys existing UK network, Three.

There were similar reports last week, suggesting that former EE and Virgin Mobile executive Tom Alexander was also looking into a privately financed takeover of O2. With O2 back on the market, Liberty Global, the owners of Virgin Media, and Sky have also both been floated as potential new bidders for the UK operator.

When the Hutchison deal collapsed, Telefonica said that it would “enter a period of reflection” on its plans for O2 UK. Given the interest that seems to be re-emerging, that period of reflection may be shorter than the company predicted.

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In that spirit, our Innovation Lab feature takes a step beyond the world of apps, ads and handsets with slightly bigger screens, in order to share some of the tech worlds innovative ideas. They might be interesting, disruptive or just outright strange, but these are the stories that have caught our eye over the past week.

Smart Pavement Puts Superfast Wi-fi Under Your Feet
Virgin Media has installed the UKs first Smart Wi-fi Pavement in Chesham, enabling residents and visitors to access free internet access thats seven times faster than the average UK speed while out and about.

The installation, carried out in partnership with Chiltern District Council, provides unlimited wi-fi throughout the centre of Chesham and even covers part of Lowndes Park, a 36-acre green space nearby.

The high speed internet will enable users to download large video files in a matter of seconds, and the smart pavement, which uses a specially developed resin cover, combines with Virgin Medias high street cabinets to enable access up to 80m away.

“The internet is at the heart of modern life and it is brilliant to have such a cutting edge network in Chesham and to be right at the vanguard of connectivity in the UK,” said the Rt Hon Cheryl Hillan, MP for Chesham and Amersham. “It will keep the community connected, help Chesham people save some money on their mobile bill and could be a key piece of the jigsaw in connected cities moving forward.”

Autonomous Boat Is Eating the Trash in Baltimore Harbour

A year ago, Baltimores harbour would regularly fill up with garbage following heavy rainfall as the Jones Fall river brought polystyrene containers, plastic bottles and more from the surrounding area and dumped them into the scenic Inner Harbour.

However, that has all changed thanks to the Inner Harbour Water Wheel, known affectionately as Mr. Trash Wheel by locals. The autonomous floating platform has removed over 330 tons of rubbish from the water, including an unbelievable 6.6m cigarette butts.

The wheel is sustainably powered by the flow of the river itself, and by solar power on days when the current isnt strong enough. The water wheel drives a conveyor belt that removes the garbage from the river, and can life even the heaviest items out of the harbour.

The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, who are behind the wheel, are hoping to install a second wheel in Baltimores Canton neighbourhood, and the original wheel is so popular it has its own Twitter account and live webcam showcasing its environmental efforts.

Artificial Intelligence Put to Work Writing Clickbait Articles

Software developer Lars Eidnes is experimenting with machine learning AI technology by feeding 2m clickbait news articles into an intelligent software program and asking it to write its own.

Click-o-tron uses a recurring neural network, a form of machine learning that can analyse a data set and derive lessons from it. Eidnes tested it by taking articles from BuzzFeed, Gawker, Huffington Post and other publishers, getting the program to pick out recurring phrases, topics and words, and then produce its own.

The resulting headlines are produced every 20 minutes, and take photos from Wikimedia Commons that supposedly match their content. Some of the articles are nonsensical, but a surprising number are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. So far, the program has produced such gems as “A Tour of the Future of Hot Dogs in the United States”, “12 Awesome Ways to Drink Like a Boss” and “New President is Hours Away from Royal Pregnancy”.

RoboCubes Enable Your Toddler to Build Robots

If you are already worried about todays children outpacing you when it comes to technology, Robo Wunderkind will terrify you, as the new educational toy aims to put the tools to create robots into the hands of children as young as five.

Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, the modular kit uses a series of motorised cubes that can be used to create plug-and-play robots with a variety of functions. Kids can then program functions into their robots using a simple iOS or Android app that is aimed at young children, and uses tap and drag commands to add and modify behaviours.

The options available to kid creators are pretty advanced, with infrared sensors, laser pointers, accelerometers and E-ink displays among some of the colour-coded blocks available. The right combinations can product robots that can predict the weather, solve mazes or act as remote cameras, and with a full set, the only real limit is your (or your childs) imagination.

Vring Aims to Combine Fashion, Wearables and Voice Commands

While wearables might be all the rage, many of them are still hampered by the control issues faced with trying to fit as many features as possible into a device with small or non-existent screen. Vring, developed by Whynot Tech, aims to reverse this trend with a device that focuses on making smartphone operation more effortless and efficient.

The device uses next-generation voice control technology to connect with a users smartphone and, by extension, any IoT devices that are also connected to the phone. Using the ring, which is also available as a wristband, users can search the internet, find their phone remotely, control household appliances and throw online videos onto TVs using Chromecast.

“The average person spends 90 minutes on their cell phone every day,” said Canner Tang, founder of Whynot Tech. “We developed Vring to give people more freedom to experience life and spend time with family and friends. Our goal is to make life easier, and home smarter by using the latest advancements in voice-recognition technology.”

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