Matt Howett, from analysts Assembly Research, added: "Recognising the need to be connected, and the financial hardship customers faced, many operators have taken steps to ensure access to vital services.
"We've really seen the sector step up and respond to the challenging circumstances many customers have found themselves in."
Analysts say Facebook’s actions in Australia are designed to send regulators worldwide a clear message: don’t touch the business model.
“It’s a conflict that is playing out in different ways, across multiple countries and I think what Facebook is doing is flexing its muscles, not only in Australia but also showing the rest of the world that it is prepared to take extreme measures if it's business model is threatened,” says Luca Schiavoni, Senior Analyst at Assembly Research.
“The message is: regulate us on things like privacy but please do not disrupt key elements of our business model”.
Matthew Howett, principal analyst at Assembly Research, said: “We’ve already seen something of a shift in that direction given the restrictions that they’ve faced by being unable to license the Android operating system from Google in the US.”
Howett added that global politics have had a “profound” impact on Huawei’s success, but the company seemingly remains resilient and observant of new business pathways despite the US’s “sustained attacks”.
The current political climate has “forced” Huawei to develop their own operating system, Harmony OS, which will be developed further throughout this year, Howett added.
"The slowing down of the full rollout of gigabit capable broadband will impact productivity and cost tens of thousands of jobs,” said Matthew Howett, the founder of Assembly Research.
“If the infrastructure is not there to make the UK an attractive place set up shop then we miss out. That's really what we don't get back. That's gone for good.”
Matthew Howett, principal analyst at Assembly Research, said: “The original target for 2025 was always an ambitious one, but crucially one that industry felt it could deliver with the right enabling regulatory environment.”
“While progress was made with that, a number of barriers still remain. To depart from the original target with four years still left to run suggests perhaps that mountains can’t be moved after all, and the remaining barriers are permanent ones.”
Another observer - Matthew Howett, founder of research firm Assembly - added: "The original target for 2025 was always an ambitious one, but crucially one that industry felt it could deliver with the right enabling regulatory environment.
"While progress was made with that, a number of barriers still remain. To depart from the original target with four years still left to run suggests perhaps that mountains can't be moved after all."
"We know these are the hardest to reach and most expensive households to connect, where there are real barriers and real costs to deploying broadband, and where further government subsidy may be needed," said Matthew Howett, founder of research firm Assembly.
"Sometimes eye-watering quotes might arise because of estimates made without full engineering surveys having yet been completed. We're still at the early stages of the scheme so Ofcom's investigation may result in useful guidance when calculating quotes for future requests."
Imagination Technologies this week confirmed the appointment of telecoms veteran Simon Beresford-Wylie as its next chief executive, marking a new chapter for the British chipmaker.
Matthew Howett, principal analyst at Assembly Research, described Beresford-Wylie as a “well-liked” figure who was a “safe pair of hands”.
After decades of efforts to open up the market, Italy is the only example of a country backing off,” said Luca Schiavoni, a telecoms analyst at Assembly, a regulatory research firm in London. TIM — formerly a public company — held a monopoly over Italy’s telecommunication infrastructure for many years until new players entered the market. When TIM was a monopolist, telecom operators often blamed it for hindering access to the network, the analyst noted, adding that regulators should impose remedies and strict conditions “to avoid the mistakes of the past.”
There’s no reason to believe that a single operator would bring any efficiency from a technical point of view, noted Schiavoni, the analyst at Assembly, arguing that the government decided to step in to ensure that the infrastructure doesn’t fall into the hands of foreign investors.
Telecoms analyst Mathew Howett, from Assembly Research, said: "There is very clearly a cost to the industry in terms of replacing Huawei earlier than operators might have done naturally.
"Government can't expect the industry to speed up deployment of networks if they pile on additional cost and slow down that rollout."
But he added: "The last time the government directed Ofcom with regards to spectrum - the liberalisation of bands for 4G and associated annual licence fees - legal challenges went on for a decade."
Matthew Howett, the founder of the research firm Assembly, said: “Mobile phone operators have so far cherry-picked the major urban areas to deploy 5G, but changing the rules now will mean delays for the rest of the country.”
Previous research conducted by Assembly on behalf of the telecoms firms BT, Vodafone, O2 and Three, concluded the UK would suffer an economic hit of £6.8bn from not deploying 5G and risk falling behind continental Europe.
“We also thought it would set the UK back 18 to 24 months, but Dowden went further and said it would be three years,” Howett said. “Anywhere where coverage is already poor is now going to have to wait longer.”
The ban on Huawei will delay the UK's full rollout of 5G by two to three years and the transition to an alternative will cost "up to £2 billion".
Tech expert Matthew Howett has estimated the delay's cost to the economy to be as much as £6.8 billion "in terms of lost benefit".
"It's about attracting new industries and new investment from manufacturers that want to take advantage of the 5G capability - all that gets lost if you slow us down," he said.
