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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Conspiracy theorists in the UK who believe the <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> is being spread by <keyword id="764355" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="5G">5G</keyword> have been leaving razor blades and needles behind posters on phone masts to harm telecoms engineers, The Verge reported.</li><li>Since late March, telecoms engineers have suffered 200 instances of abuse, some of which have turned violent.</li><li>There have also been 90 <keyword id="105434" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="arson">arson</keyword> attacks on mobile infrastructure.</li></ul><p>5G conspiracy theorists in the UK are verbally harassing telecoms engineers, assaulting them, and even leaving traps for them.</p><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21276912/5g-conspiracy-theories-coronavirus-uk-telecoms-engineers-attacks-abuse">The Verge</a> reports telecoms engineers in the UK have discovered razor blades and needles hidden behind posters on telephone poles to catch them when maintaining the country's broadband network.</p><p>This isn't the only act of violence associated with 5G conspiracy theories. As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-5g-masts-fire-2020-4?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">theories blaming the spread of the coronavirus on 5G</a> began to gain traction online earlier this year, believers in the theories began setting fire to cell phone towers.</p><p>While the arson attacks are not unique to the UK, the country seems to have been particularly badly hit by them. Industry group Mobile UK told The Verge that since March 30 there have been 90 attacks on mobile infrastructure and 200 counts of abuse against telecoms engineers.</p><p>Most of the time the abuse is verbal, but some confrontations have escalated to physical violence. In one instance <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-2020-5?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">an engineer was stabbed and hospitalized</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qo-33xH1QM&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=1410p;t=1410">BT CEO Philip Jansen said in April</a> that some engineers had had cars driven at them.</p><p>The majority of these engineers and sites have nothing to do with 5G, but they have nonetheless become a focal point for the attacks.</p>

5G conspiracy theorists are hiding razors and needles as booby traps for telecoms engineers

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Peter Byrne/PA Wire/Press Association Images</span></p><p class="caption">BT Openreach workers in Liverpool.</p></div><p></p></div></div>BT will not have to sell-off Openreach, but has been ordered to make its broadband division more independent to improve the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>'s internet network.</p><p>Following a year-long review, <a href="http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2016/making-digital-communications-work-openreach-bt/" target="_blank">media regulator Ofcom has set out a "major reform" of Openreach</a>, which runs the wires and cables for the UK's telecoms network and its customers include Sky, Talk Talk, and BT.</p><p>Ofcom has resisted calls to force BT to sell off Openreach, which was a <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/millions-suffer-dire-internet-speeds-10144315" target="_blank">central recommendation in a report endorsed by 121 MPs earlier this year</a>, but wants the division to become a legally separate company within BT.</p><p>It said Openreach should have its own board, workforce, budgetary controls, and independent branding in order to provide it with independence from the wider BT group.</p><p>Ofcom chief executive Sharon White said the change will help get faster, more reliable broadband to more people.</p><p>"It will mean that we have faster, more reliable broadband. It will mean that engineers turn up on time, get the job done first time. And I think also, crucially for the UK, it will mean more investment in fast fibre to the doorstep," she <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36891446" target="_blank">told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme</a>.</p><p>BT chief executive <a href="http://www.btplc.com/news/#/pressreleases/openreach-to-be-more-independent-and-transparent-1492845">Gavin Patterson said the separation of Openreach will help calm the concerns of the broadband industry</a>.</p><p>"These changes will make Openreach more independent and transparent than it is today, something both Ofcom and industry have requested," he added.</p><p>"Openreach is committed to delivering better service, broader coverage and faster speeds and these changes will enable it to do just that."</p><p>But Openreach customers responded to the news with caution.</p><p>"Today's proposal to create a legally separate Openreach is a step in the right direction, although falls short of the full change that would have guaranteed the world-class broadband network customers expect and the UK will need," <a href="https://corporate.sky.com/media-centre/news-page/2016/statement_from_sky_on_proposed_openreach_reform?e=email-alerts">said Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch</a>.</p><p>"In particular, leaving Openreach's budget in the hands of BT Group raises significant questions as to whether this will really lead to the fibre investment Britain requires."</p><p><a href="http://www.talktalkgroup.com/articles/2016/July/TalkTalk-s-statement-on-Ofcom-s-consultation-on-BT-Openreach.html" target="_blank">Talk Talk chief executive Dido Harding added</a> that the separation will not stop BT from "gaming the system", adding that it plans to continue to lobby Ofcom as part of its consultation on the changes, which runs until 4 October.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/military-drones-chemicals-3d-printing-2016-7">Britain could be chemically 'growing' military drones in the future</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="ZibWRxNDE6NQX_2vvuom5VRc5xeepeQt" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

BT has been ordered to make Openreach more independent to boost UK broadband

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A <keyword id="433679" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="conspiracy-theory">conspiracy theory</keyword> that baselessly links <keyword id="764355" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="5G">5G</keyword> technology with the <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> has led to a series of <keyword id="105434" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="arson">arson</keyword> attacks on cell phone towers in the UK.</li><li>The attacks started in early April, and 77 towers have now been attacked, an industry group told Business Insider.</li><li>Engineers have also been attacked, with one stabbed and hospitalized according to the CEO of UK telecoms firm BT.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>A conspiracy theory that claims that 5G internet is behind the coronavirus outbreak has led to arson attacks on more than 70 cell phone towers in the UK.</p><p>The conspiracy theory began to gain traction in the UK in late March and early April, coinciding with the rising number of cases in the country and its nationwide lockdown. Conspiracies around phone signals have existed for years, however.</p><p>The scaremongering is thought to have led directly to arson attacks on mobile phone infrastructure.</p><p>On April 15, Mobile UK, an organization representing Britain's four mobile operators, told Business Insider that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/attacks-cellphone-towers-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-2020-4?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">roughly 50 phone masts had been attacked across the country</a> — the majority of which were not actually 5G-enabled.</p><p>Mobile UK told Business Insider on Wednesday that the number has now risen to 77, and that the rate of attacks was thankfully slowing. "Daily attacks are very low now but have not stopped entirely," a spokesman said.</p><p><div type="image" title="5G phone mast huddersfield arson" height="1996" width="3000" msid="75580295" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Anti-5G conspiracy theorists don't just appear to be attacking masts, however. Philip Jansen, CEO of British telecoms company BT, said that one engineer had been violently assaulted while out maintaining network infrastructure.</p><p>"We have 40 incidents where people have attacked, either physically or verbally, our staff. We've had engineers being driven at by people and swerve away at the last minute, and we've even had one Openreach engineer stabbed and put in hospital," Jansen said on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qo-33xH1QM&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=1410p;t=1410">YouTube video on April 21</a>.</p><p>The outbreak of attacks has been condemned by the heads of the four UK mobile operators. Mobile UK told BI in April: "Theories being spread about 5G are baseless and are not grounded in credible scientific theory.</p><p>"Mobile operators are dedicated to keeping the UK connected, and careless talk could cause untold damage. Continuing attacks on mobile infrastructure risks lives and at this challenging time the UK's critical sectors must be able to focus all their efforts fighting this pandemic."</p><p>Conspiracy theories around 5G have spread on social media, with Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all taking action to try and curb the spread. One offshoot of the theory claims that 5G accelerates the spread of the virus by lowering the body's immune system and that the coronavirus is itself a fiction designed to cover up damage being done by 5G. Both these claims are false. </p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-5g-masts-fire-2020-4?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">You can read a more in-depth examination of the theory here</a>.</p>Read the original article on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-2020-5">Business Insider</a>

77 cell phone towers have been set on fire so far due to a weird coronavirus 5G conspiracy theory

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Mary Turner</span></p><p class="caption">Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT.</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul><li><strong>Insiders at BT say the 13,000 layoffs announced yesterday are much more "savage" than expected.</strong></li><li><strong>The company is rife with the rumour that management is trying to dress the company up for some kind of transaction, possibly involving Deutsche Telekom.</strong></li><li><strong>BT is hobbled by years of technical debt. Its main internal database is decades old.</strong></li><li><strong>It is so fragile that a fire in a Rochdale datacentre crippled the company internally for 10 days in 2016.</strong></li><li><strong>Any acquiring company that can free itself of BT's £11 billion pension deficit obligation might inherit a nice little monopoly over Britain's internet.</strong></li></ul><p><br />LONDON - In years past, when Gavin Patterson, the CEO of BT, has wanted to launch a major new initiative, he broadcast an all-hands video to BT's 106,000 employees.</p><p>Internally, the events have been a big deal: When BT launched its new brand values effort in 2017, the video was presented by Clare Balding and Jake Humphrey, the BT Sport channel's most famous TV presenters. Large screens were erected in BT's major offices. Balloons and food were provided. The whole company stopped to watch together.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>(Photo by Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images)</span></p><p class="caption">Clare Balding is a longtime sports presenter for BT.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Last week, however, "it was basically just Gavin sat at his desk looking into his webcam. It was a funereal atmosphere. There was no razzmatazz, no fun," a source who has worked at the phone, internet and cable TV provider for over a decade told Business Insider. "Everyone stopped work and watched Gavin for an hour."</p><p>That's because Patterson was telling his staff that 13,000 of them were about to be laid off - 12% of the entire workforce of 106,000 people, based in 180 different countries. It is one of the biggest rounds of corporate layoffs a British company has ever seen.</p><p>"The job cuts are a lot more savage than people expected," our source says.</p><p>"People inside the company were expecting another round of 5,000 this time last year. But 13,000 is a lot." Inside BT right now, stress levels have gone through the roof. "Nobody has done any work today because everyone is just in meetings about the announcement, or is talking about it. For weeks, no decisions will get made about anything," the source says.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)</span></p><p class="caption">The BT Tower is a distinctive part of the London skyline.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The cuts are expected to fall most heavily on BT's "management" layer. That word is in quotes because almost anyone who is not an actual telecoms engineer - "a man in a van," so to speak - is regarded as a "manager" at BT. Many of these managers don't actually manage anyone underneath them. They are "singleton managers." Those are the jobs most at risk. They are also the people doing all the work, our source says.</p><p>It's not just about layoffs and redundancies.</p><h2>What if the job cuts are preparation for the sale of BT?</h2><p>The gossip inside BT is that the entire future of the company is at stake, and what form it will survive in. Although BT is essentially Britain's monopoly internet provider - a description its management would doubtless aggressively dispute - it is also beset by decades of intractable "technical debt" and an actual financial debt to its pension fund of £11 billion.</p><p>Insiders believe the cuts - along with the depressed stock price - are part of a plan to prepare the company to be sold, possibly in a transaction involving Deutsche Telekom. A spokesperson for BT told Business Insider that the company did not comment on rumours and gossip. The spokesperson did say that the company has reached a funding agreement with the pension trustees. Deutsche Telekom did not respond to a request for comment.</p><p>To get an idea of just how extreme BT's problems are, consider this little-publicised episode from the company's history:</p><p>In 2016, a fire broke out in a BT datacentre in Rochdale, England, and it paralysed large parts of the company internally for about 10 days, a source tells Business Insider. "A contractor put a battery in the wrong way round in a storage array, and it burned through some discs. No data was lost. People could still make phone calls. But the company couldn't operate on a normal basis, people couldn't use the internal services." The intranet was down for a week, says our source (who worked at the company for 19 years).</p><p>BT said the fire was not that serious. "In 2016 a storage array at our Rochdale data centre overheated following routine maintenance work. This affected a proportion of BT's back-office systems. All business critical systems were restored within a day," a spokesperson said.</p><p>Either way, it's an example of BT's "technical debt," the concept which describes the toll in time and expenses it takes companies to maintain legacy technology that should have been replaced years ago. Or, in BT's case, decades ago.</p><p>The mere act of running BT as a company cost £16 billion in 2017, according to its financial statements, and that's one of the factors that drove Patterson's decision to lay off 13,000 people.</p><h2>"The exchanges are pretty filthy and badly looked after"</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>(Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)</span></p><p class="caption">This was a BT publicity stunt in 1981: A man dressed as the company's giant mascot bird, Buzby, to launch BT's recorded phone service for gardeners, the Woolworth Gardenline, with a model identified only as Holly.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The technical debt at BT is extreme, our source says.</p><p>For instance, many of BT's exchanges - the local sites that connect your house to BT's "trunk line" phone and internet services - are still dependent on VAX minicomputers, a technology that dates back to the 1970s. VAX machines have less computing power than your mobile phone.</p><p>Most people don't notice BT's exchanges. They are small buildings, about the size of a church hall, probably built in 1940s, 50s, or 60s. There is one every three or four miles in urban areas. You can recognise them by the BT sign on the front and a load of BT vans parked outside. "That's the bit that connects the copper wire from your house to the phone network," our source says.</p><p>"The exchanges are pretty filthy and badly looked after," our source says. "This ancient stuff in the exchanges gets covered in dust and dirt because everything is so filthy and old. Dust gets into them and the vibrations [from traffic] pushes chips out of the memory boards, so you have to hoover it. It sounds ludicrous," our source says.</p><p>This is why Asian countries like South Korea have fibre optic broadband, with internet speeds up to a gigabit per second, while Britain struggles along on copper wires that typically deliver only 76 megabits per second. Asia built an entirely new infrastructure from scratch. Britain is trying to use a copper-wire phone system initially installed in the 1920s to run the web.</p><p>But that's how BT keeps the phones and internet working.</p><p>VAX machines are "in half a dozen exchanges around the city, if one goes down loads of people lose their internet access. There is stuff like that all over the company. No one has really had the guts to tackle that. This is why BT is so slow to market. Every time they build a new product they have to integrate with all these old systems."</p><p>The situation is so bad that "people would refuse to speak to me if I mentioned the words 'technical debt,'" our source says. "They'd say, 'we're not talking about that.'"</p><p>A BT spokesperson said the company was investing £3.7 billion over the next two years into an "all-IP fibre network that enables seamless converged access across fixed, WiFi, and mobile."</p><h2>"Somebody new buying the company would just go, 'let's scrap this piece of shit'"</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="REUTERS/Denis Balibouse" title_caption="Gavin Patterson at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5af5ae5e428d041a008b47ad-960/gavin patterson 2.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Denis Balibouse</span></p><p class="caption">Gavin Patterson at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Among the oldest systems at BT is its "CSS" mainframe.</p><p>"The main company database is CSS, it runs on an ancient mainframe. It's literally ancient. That's the database that holds all the records of all BT customers and all of the phone calls anyone makes. That's the centre of the company's IT." The CSS data goes back years. Our source says the system is so old that he doesn't even know what the initials CSS originally stood for. "In 20 years [of working at the company] no one has ever said what it stands for!"</p><p>"It was old in 1998. You had to log in via a special terminal, via special text. No one has ever tackled it. Somebody new buying the company would just go, 'let's scrap this piece of shit.'"</p><p>Inside BT right now, the gossip is that the layoff plan is about exactly that - preparing the company to be acquired by someone bold enough to actually say, "let's scrap this piece of shit."</p><p>The gossip - which obviously cannot be confirmed because it is speculation - runs like this:</p><p>Deutsche Telekom owns 12% of BT and has a seat on the board through BT's acquisition of EE, the wireless service provider that is a joint venture under Deutsche Telekom. BT, for all its troubles, controls a virtual monopoly on British phone and internet service provision. BT informally controls Openreach, the service infrastructure company that provides the wire from your home to BT's exchanges. Because of Openreach's dominant market position it has a legal duty to provide everyone in the UK with a phone line and to sell its services to other companies like Sky or Vodafone on equal terms to BT.</p><p>Although Openreach is a different company to BT, everyone inside BT knows that BT basically controls it. "The Openreach split is very odd. It's not really a split in truth because everyone in the company [BT] works on stuff that Openreach are doing. The regulators must know. There is formal legal separation but there isn't real separation." Last year, BT and Ofcom (the UK government telecom regulator) agreed a framework to make sure that Openreach would treat all customers fairly. Sharon White, Ofcom's chief executive, said at the time: "Ofcom will keep a careful eye on whether Openreach is working for telecoms users, ensuring BT and Openreach live by the letter and spirit of their commitments."</p><p>All that infrastructure - some of it consisting of actual tunnels between exchanges and BT - is valuable because to compete against BT, other companies would have to start building from scratch.</p><p>So BT maintains a virtual monopoly on British phone and internet provision, despite the comically outdated technical infrastructure.</p><h2>If BT could ditch its pension obligations, its finances would be fundamentally different</h2><p>Monopolies are valuable if you can control their costs. BT's revenues may be in decline (down 1% to £24 billion) but it is profitable (£7.5 billion EBITDA). Those profits are spoiled by one of the biggest costs BT is wrestling with: the pension plan deficit. There is a £11 billion hole between the plan's funding and its future obligations to retired BT workers.</p><p>That pension scheme is subject to a "crown guarantee." When the government privatised the former General Post Office in 1984, it promised it would back the pension fund even in the unlikely event that BT went bankrupt.</p><p>Put all this together and you can see what an aggressive acquirer might do with BT:</p><ul><li>Wait until the share price is depressed (it's currently at a low of around £2.19, less than half what it was in 2015).</li><li>Cut out as much of the workforce as you can (making the earnings per share look a bit better).</li><li>Use a legal manoeuvre to technically end the company known as "BT."</li><li>Orphan the pension fund to the government.</li></ul><p>Hey presto - you'd be in charge of a monopoly internet provider with fewer legacy costs and a nicely dominant position in the UK market.</p><p>Our source thinks Deutsche Telekom may have something like this in mind. <a href="http://www.capacitymedia.com/Article/3790075/Deutsche-Telekom-CEO-says-BT-attractive-a-year-before-embargo-on-bid-expires">Deutsche Telekom has wanted to acquire BT since 2016, according to sources who spoke to Capacity Media</a>. </p><h2>BT staff are riven with speculation about who will get the axe and who will stay.</h2><p>A BT spokesperson told Business Insider that was not the intention of the layoff plan. "The focus is on taking out layers of management in BT because there's too many of them, freeing up £1.5 billion of cost savings that can be reinvested ... in new networks such as ultra-fast broadband and 5G." BT wants to hire 6,000 more engineers as well, the spokesperson said.</p><p>The spokesperson did confirm that the pension fund is subject to a crown guarantee, however.</p><p>In the meantime, BT staff are speculating about who will get the axe and who will stay. Among the IT staff, the more highly qualified, ambitious workers will be tempted to take a voluntary redundancy package, which might typically consist of a week's pay for every year worked, up to a maximum of 48 weeks. BT has many longtime employees for whom the idea of nine months' pay in a lump sum would sound very attractive.</p><p>The people who won't be offered redundancy packages are those who are already close to retirement, on sick leave, maternity leave, or on BT's "performance plans" (for underperforming staff), our source speculates, based on past redundancy offers. "So the remaining workforce ends up being really weird. Everyone is in their late 50s, on performance plans, is sick, and people who wish they'd gone because now they're left with everyone else's work."</p><p>Our source says he won't miss trying to maintain BT's prehistoric architecture. "I don't miss the stress of something breaking and me going, 'I have no idea where we start with this.'"</p><p><em>If you work at BT and have information that might be of interest to Business Insider please contact jedwards@businessinsider.com.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-interview-axel-springer-ceo-amazon-trump-blue-origin-family-regulation-washington-post-2018-4">Jeff Bezos reveals what it's like to build an empire and become the richest man in the world - and why he's willing to spend $1 billion a year to fund the most important mission of his life</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The 13,000 'savage' layoffs at BT could be preparing the company for a sale, insiders say

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Scott Olson/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast Corp.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Comcast CFO Michael Cavanaugh gave an initial indication of how Comcast's offerings might inform decisions at its newly acquired Sky.</li><li>Sky execs expressed interest in Comcast's Xfinity xFi mobile app, which lets customers access and control their Comcast broadband service, Cavanaugh said.</li><li><span>Comcast sees xFi as a differentiator that attracts and retains broadband customers. </span></li></ul><p>After a blockbuster summer of media bidding, Comcast walked away with the crown jewel of British broadcasting, Sky.</p><p><span>Sky, a pay-TV business that serves 23 million customers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, is seen as a rarity in that it owns premium content and a broadband service to distribute it. Comcast, the largest US cable-service provider, serves 22 million video customers and 26 million internet customers.</span></p><p>But details about Comcast's plans for Sky have been sparse. Speaking at a UBS investor conference in December, Comcast CFO Michael Cavanaugh gave an initial indication of how Comcast's offerings may inform those plans.</p><p>Sky executives expressed interest in Xfinity xFi<span>, a mobile app that lets Comcast customers access and control their network. With xFi, customers can set up wifi networks, troubleshoot network issues, see what devices are connected to their networks, and block or pause connected devices. </span></p><p>Cavanaugh said Sky executives were like "kids in the candy store in terms of how can they take that and ... use it to differentiate themselves as a broadband reseller, basically in the Italian market," according to a transcript of the conference.</p><p>"In markets [where Comcast offers its X1 video platform], you hear a lot more about xFi, you see a lot of <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> about our differentiated broadband product and what xFi is and examples of the app," Cavanaugh said.</p><p><span>Sky and xFi also share a history; Comcast exec</span> Fraser Stirling, who oversees product development for <span>xFi, </span>worked at Sky for eight years, leading emerging product strategy and hardware.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comcasts-sky-future-of-hulu-disneyflix-now-tv-2018-9">Comcast's bid for Sky throws uncertainty into Hulu, Disneyflix and Now TV</a></em></p><h2>Differentiation is important to telecom companies</h2><p>The ability to differentiate their broadband product is important to telecom companies, which are increasingly concerned about retaining customers. That Comcast, the largest pay-TV provider in the US, has more broadband customers than video customers shows just how vital broadband service is to the company as traditional linear TV subscribers decline.</p><p>Sky is similar to Comcast in that it has the ability to bundle video and broadband offerings. Here, Comcast has an advantage over telcos by virtue of the coaxial cable it uses to deliver broadband. <span>In telecom, the cheapest option for broadband access is typically DSL. DSL - digital subscriber line - is a service that's provided over a copper wire. This type of service is slow and unreliable with limited ability for streaming. The cheapest option at cable companies, on the other hand, is coaxial cable, which delivers broadband at faster speed and more reliably. Fiber is the fastest and often most costly option.</span></p><p><span>Sky has both DSL and fiber offerings, though it <a href="https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/03/31/sky-italia-and-open-fiber-launch-fibre-only-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched fiber-only service in Italy this year.</a> </span>Sky has an advantage over traditional satellite companies with its ability to bundle through Openreach, a UK telecom company that connects nearly all homes in the UK to a national broadband network.</p><p>"Sky does sort of have a double play because in the UK ... through Openreach," <span>Greg Williams, an analyst at Cowen, told Business Insider</span>. "The UK allows Sky to get really good broadband for cheap. The government allows it for really good rates, wholesale prices, so they get the copper connection or even the fiber connection under UK regulation."</p><p><span>On top of potentially building out an xFi-like product at Sky, Comcast seems eager to expand its newly acquired international footprint.</span></p><p>"[Sky] can expand, we think, and are trying to, in early days in Spain, and some other markets, they can expand into adjacent geographies," Cavanaugh said.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/psychology-trick-curb-appetite-lose-weight-2016-8">A Harvard psychologist reveals the secret to curbing your appetite</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Comcast hinted that its mobile app xFi might be key to its plans for newly acquired Sky

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Sky; Michael Loccisano/Getty; Ethan Miller/Getty; Justin Sullivan/Getty; Jenny Cheng/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Comcast's Brian Roberts, Fox's Rupert Murdoch, and Disney's Bob Iger are fighting for Sky.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>US entertainment giant<span> </span><a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/cmcsa-stock">Comcast</a><span> </span>increased its bid for European broadcaster Sky last week, stymieing Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt for the company.</p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Comcast's newest offer came in at £14.75 a share, valuing Sky at £26 billion ($34 billion), up from its previous offer of £22 billion. Earlier in the day,<span> 21st Century Fox bid £14 a share for Sky.</span></span></p><p>So why are Comcast and Fox locked into a bidding war for Sky?</p><h2>Actually, it's not just Fox and Comcast</h2><p>Both offers for Sky are part of a larger fight between Comcast and Disney to acquire assets from Fox. Fox already owns 39% of Sky, and is bidding for the remaining 61%.</p><p>All of those assets will go to Disney if it should succeed in its acquisition plans for Fox.</p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"Disney is very serious about wanting Sky," Mary Ann Halford<span>, a former Fox International executive vice president, told Business Insider.</span> "This wouldn't have happened without Disney and Fox executives talking and discussing," Halford, <span>who is now a senior adviser at the strategy consulting firm OC&amp;C Strategy Consultants, said.</span><br /></span></p><p>But Comcast is also very serious about wanting Sky. In fact, it may drop its plans to go after Fox, and solely focus on winning majority stake in Sky, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/16/Comcast-unlikely-to-raise-fox-bid-focused-on-sky-sources.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to CNBC.  </a></p><h2>So what exactly is Sky?</h2><p>Sky is a European telecom company that serves 23 million customers, mostly Satellite DBS subscribers, in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. </p><p>For perspective, Comcast, the largest cable service provider in the US, serves 22 million video customers and 26 million internet customers.</p><h2>I thought satellite was dying and customers are cutting the cord on cable?</h2><p><span>While cord cutting is a real concern to businesses that that offer cable and satellite-TV services, there is still a market for these products.</span></p><p><span>"It will go that route eventually, but it'll be a very long tail," Greg Williams, an analyst at Cowen, told Business Insider. "There are still a lot of folks that still like the traditional linear experience, especially the older cohorts."</span></p><p><span>Williams said cord cutting cuts the cable subscriber base by 3-4% each year with satellite closer to 6-8% a year.</span></p><p><span>"Satellite is an inferior product to wireline linear television for a couple reasons," he said. "The </span>main one is you don't have the bundle." </p><p><span>Satellite companies typically provide linear TV without an accompanying broadband experience, meaning there's no ability to incentivize customers by offer service packages together.</span></p><p><span>This is where Sky has an advantage over traditional satellite companies. UK telecom company Openreach connects nearly all homes in the UK to a national broadband network.</span></p><p>"Sky does sort of have a double play because in the UK ... through Openreach; The UK allows Sky to get really good broadband for cheap," Williams said. "The government allows it for really good rates, wholesale prices so they get the copper connection or even the fiber connection under UK regulation."</p><p>The double play factor, in addition to 'inferior competition" in the UK, places Sky in strong standing in Europe, according to Williams. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images for Netflix</span></p><p class="caption">Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2><span>What about competing with OTT?</span></h2><p>TV delivered over the internet, or 'OTT,' is the future, and all the major media companies realize this. So a play for Sky doesn't mean Comcast or Disney are attempting to revive a dying business model. They want to use subscribers and create an OTT foothold of their own.</p><p>"They know that [Sky's] 23 million base is slowly depleting, but they can migrate those customer onto next TV platform or some other OTT platform in the future," Williams said of Comcast.</p><p>Having an international footprint is especially attractive to Comcast, which trails Fox and Disney in non-US markets. </p><p>"They punch underweight" internationally, Halford said of Comcast.</p><p><span>With Sky, Comcast would have "this huge international base now that Comcast has been dying to have for quite some time," according to Williams.</span><span></span></p><p><span>And while OTT consumption is growing around the globe, some experts say that <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/uk/en/insights/news/2016/nearly-70-percent-of-brits-pay-a-subscription-to-watch-TV-or-video-on-demand.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cord cutting</a> in E<a href="https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2018/01/11/liberty-globals-fries-ott-and-cord-cutting-not-a-threat-in-europe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urope isn't as extreme as it appears in the US.</a></span></p><h2>What else does Sky own?</h2><p><span>"Comcast is the preeminent pay-TV provider in the US," Halford said. "In Europe, the preeminent provider is Sky."</span></p><p><span>Sky provides a strong content portfolio to whichever company eventually acquires it. In addition to the original content it produces, it has the majority of Premier League football TV rights, and exclusive rights to the German Bundesliga. </span><span>Those exclusive, or majority, sports-viewing rights are attractive to Fox, Comcast, and Disney. </span></p><p><span>And it may be a long summer of increased bidding before we know which company wins out.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/300-million-world-cup-stadium-is-nearly-abandoned-2018-6">Brazil's empty $300 million World Cup stadium</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Comcast and Fox are in a heated to battle to snatch up Sky - here's why they both see the UK satellite company as vital to their futures

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>John Petter, the CEO of BT's consumer business, has brushed aside calls for BT to be broken up by the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword> government so that its Openreach unit, which operates the largest national broadband internet network, can be forced to compete on its own.<p>Instead he called for <span>Ofcom, the UK TV regulator, to break up</span>&#xa0;Sky TV instead.</p><p>He was joking, but he made an interesting case.&#xa0;Sky, which has&#xa0;21 million customers across its five countries, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/11304186/Sky-dominance-of-pay-TV-and-football-remains-a-risk-to-competition.html">takes 70% of UK pay TV market revenues</a> and charges around four times for its subscriptions as the average TV bill in France, Petter said. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/11/bt-executive-says-premier-league-deal-vindicates-entry-into-market">Sky recently paid about £4 billion for rights to broadcast</a> most English Premier League matches, and Petter claimed Sky would pass on one third of the cost of that to its customers in the form of higher prices.</p><p>So if you're looking for a company that dominates its market and has the power to extract "monopoly prices" for its services, "Go west!" Petter told the Enders Analysis conference in London, "to the offices of Sky!" which he said should be separated into its "wholesale" and "retail" divisions.</p><p><span>Sky group CEO Jeremy Darroch didn't respond when he presented to the conference shortly after Petter.</span></p><p>BT of course bought a slice of the Premier League's TV rights for just under £1 billion, pushing up the price of those rights for Sky, too. BT will broadcast those matches free to its broadband customers who take up its TV packages but at some point in the future will charge extra fees for viewers who want to see Champions League matches.</p><p>Petter was also angry about <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/da90aa76-c888-11e4-8617-00144feab7de.html#axzz3UdgsXMcJ">a recent report in the Financial Times that suggested BT be broken up</a>, and its Openreach broadband unit be hived off, which stated:&#xa0;</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Some in the industry have urged the watchdog to take a closer look at BT, following its decision to acquire EE, the UK's largest mobile operator. Companies such as TalkTalk and Sky are calling again for the break-up of the former national operator, which owns the country's largest broadband network.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">With the planned acquisition of EE, BT will have about a third of the entire UK consumer telecoms market and over 70 per cent of the wholesale market, according to analysts at Macquarie. TalkTalk said it was "crucial that we now seize this opportunity to structurally separate" Openreach, a unit of BT that operates the national broadband network."</p><p>This tweet summarises his reaction:</p><div><div></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/daredevil-selfie-hong-kong-skyscraper-2015-2">This video of teenagers dangling at the top of a Hong Kong skyscraper is beyond intense</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RnOXVhczpeVOfVX1NGBWG37F2ChKgVdZ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

BT chief John Petter just called for the government to break up Sky's 'monopoly' on cable TV

<p class="source"><span>Daniel Leal-Olivas-WPA Pool/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">UK PM Boris Johnson.</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>The UK announced on Tuesday it would allow Chinese tech firm Huawei to play a limited role in building its 5G networks.</li><li>Guidance issued by the UK's National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) bans Huawei from building any "core" equipment and limits the amount of "non-core" kit it can install to 35% of the overall network.</li><li>Telecoms expert Peter Clarke told Business Insider that short of an all-out ban the decision "couldn't be much worse" for mobile operators.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>The UK government announced on Tuesday it would <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-boris-johnson-defies-donald-trump-five-g-network-2020-1?r=US&amp;IR=T">allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to build limited amounts of its 5G telecoms infrastructure</a>, defying pressure from the Trump administration to freeze the firm out completely.</p><p>The US has been urging allies to freeze out Huawei on the grounds that it believes the firm aids Chinese state spying. UK's National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) decided however that although Huawei is a "high-risk vendor" it can mitigate the risks.</p><p>In a statement sent to Business Insider the UK's Department for Culture, Media, and Sport said Huawei would be:</p><ul><li>Excluded from security-critical "core" functions, the sensitive part of the network.</li><li>Excluded from sensitive geographic locations, such as nuclear sites and military bases.</li><li>Limited to a minority presence of no more than 35% in the periphery of the network.</li></ul><h2>The difference between "core" and "non-core"</h2><p>The distinction between core and non-core telecoms equipment is not always black and white, but essentially non-core equipment (i.e. that which is used in the network periphery) is only able to relay data and has no access to what's contained within.</p><p>"Effectively [the equipment] just acts like pipes really, pipes that carry encrypted traffic in them. So the pipes can't really see what they're carrying," telecoms expert Peter Clarke told Business Insider. An example of a piece of non-core equipment is the antennas that communicate with people's smartphones via radio.</p><p>The core network meanwhile handles much more sensitive information. This doesn't signal too much of a change for UK operators, as they have mostly steered clear of installing Huawei core kit already. "Certainly already Huawei's not too present within core networks that handle things like billing, and personal information about customers," Clarke said.</p><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Alastair Grant</span></p><p class="caption">Phone masts like these pictured in London are an example of non-core equipment.</p><p>On the non-core side however Huawei is fairly prominent, and the 35% cap will be a major blow to UK operators.</p><p>"Outside an outright ban this couldn't be much worse for the operators," said Peter Clarke, adding specifically that EE and BT-owned Openreach already have Huawei kit making up more than 35% of their peripheral networks. He noted that major British operator Three had been planning a total swap to Huawei equipment for its 5G rollout.</p><p>NCSC's technical director Ian Levy <a href="https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/the-future-of-telecoms-in-the-uk">wrote in a blog post</a> the 35% figure is geared towards preventing Britain from becoming overly reliant on Huawei. "The cap at 35% ensures the UK will not become nationally dependent on a high-risk vendor while retaining competition in the market," he wrote.</p><h2>How are the UK telecoms operators responding?</h2><p>The UK's mobile operators - BT and EE, Three, O2, and Vodafone - will now have to set about calculating what kind of damage the decision will do, and the <a href="https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/ncsc-advice-on-the-use-of-equipment-from-high-risk-vendors-in-uk-telecoms-networks#section_5">NCSC said it would give them three years</a> to adhere to its new guidelines.</p><p>In response to the decision, Three's CEO Dave Dyson said in a statement: "We note the government's announcement and are reviewing the detail."</p><p>A spokeswoman added that Huawei is contracted to build Three's non-core equipment, and its core equipment is handled by Nokia.</p><p>"This decision is an important clarification for the industry," a BT spokeswoman told BI. "The security of our networks is an absolute priority for BT, and we already have a long-standing principle not to use Huawei in our core networks.</p><p>"While we have prepared for a range of scenarios, we need to further analyse the details and implications of this decision before taking a view of potential costs and impacts."</p><p>BT started <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46672550">removing Huawei kit from the core of its 3G and 4G networks in 2018</a>.</p><p>A Vodafone spokesman also said the company doesn't use Huawei in its core tech.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">"[Vodafone] will now analyse the potential impact of today's decision on the non-core elements of its network (masts and transmission links). Vodafone UK uses a mix of Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia equipment for its 4G and 5G masts, and we continue to believe that the use of a wide range of equipment vendors is the best way to safeguard the delivery of services to all mobile customers. By working closely with the relevant authorities on any required substitution of equipment and it's timing, we aim to keep any potential disruption to customers to a minimum," he said.</p><p>An O2 spokeswoman said Huawei kit makes up less than 1% of the company's network equipment.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">"Huawei kit makes up less than 1% of our owned network infrastructure. We will continue to develop our 5G network with minimum disruption with our primary vendors Nokia and Ericsson. Whilst we agree with the government that diversity of supply is the best way to serve customers, careful consideration must be given to the distinction between 'core' and 'non-core' as 5G networks develop and evolve. We'll now take time to review the full report."</p><p class="tagline"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/connectivity-and-tech-pro?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_subscription&amp;itm_content=huawei&amp;itm_campaign=connectivity-and-tech-pro-2"></a></p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-spacex-blew-up-rocket-on-purpose-2020-1">SpaceX and NASA just blew up a Falcon 9 rocket on purpose, and it has something to do with Apollo 1</a></h3>

The UK has banned Huawei from 'core' parts of its 5G network. Here's what that actually means.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Leah Millis</span></p><p class="caption">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing regarding the company's use and protection of user data on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 11, 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Twitter's founding engineer, Blaine Cook, thinks regulating big tech companies might end up cementing their power and stifling competition.</strong></li><li><strong>He used an example from Twitter's early days, when regulation targeting AT&amp;T meant Twitter was in contravention of SEC rules.</strong></li><li><strong>He thinks lawmakers are too focused on regulating issues around data and privacy and not </strong><strong>Facebook's most valuable asset - its network.</strong></li><li><strong>He thinks it's a 'failure' that there is no viable alternative to Facebook.</strong></li></ul><p><br />Regulating big tech companies like Facebook and Google might just make them stronger, according to Twitter's first chief architect, Blaine Cook.</p><p>In an interview with Business Insider, Cook outlined his theory of how regulation targeted at specific companies might stymie future innovation.</p><p>"There are lots of people calling for regulation as a solution to all of [tech's] problems, and I really worry about that being the approach we take," he said.</p><p>"Regulation will be written by whoever is currently in government, with the companies in mind that have dominance at the moment. So that regulation might constrain what they can do in terms of tightening down their service, but it will also protect them from competitors."</p><p>Cook <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-twitter-was-founded-2011-4">was involved in building the first iteration of Twitter</a> alongside founder Jack Dorsey. He left in 2008 and went on to work at Yahoo and BT, then founded and sold Poetica, a real-time content editing system, to Condé Nast. Now living in the UK, and more than a decade out of Twitter, he sees it as a failing that no one has really managed to build an alternative to Facebook.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Blaine Cook</span></p><p class="caption">Blaine Cook, founder of Poetic and formerly one of Twitter's founding team.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"The fact there aren't more networks I see as one of the big failings of my work on Twitter," he said.</p><p>"Our generation of technologists, I'm not sure we can take personal responsibility, but we didn't build those alternatives from the start. I would just like to see that promise fulfilled that is fundamental to civil society .... to rely on being able to organise ourselves in free and open ways. I think the internet has strayed from that original promise."</p><h2>Twitter was held back by US laws originally intended for AT&amp;T</h2><p>Cook has an anecdote from the early days of Twitter to show how laws targeted at a monopoly can stifle smaller startups. It dates from his time at podcasting startup Odeo, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-twitter-was-founded-2011-4">which eventually morphed into Twitter</a>. Cook went on to become its first lead engineer, and was an integral part of its founding story.</p><p>When Twitter first started, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/">users had to send an SMS message to a mobile number</a> in order to post a tweet.</p><p>"When we started Twitter, the first version of Twitter was in contravention of [US] SEC regulation," Cook told Business Insider. "We had a laptop with a modem attached to it. Literally, a cellphone would send updates via that modem. Under SEC regulations, you can't send automated texts without a licence. We did not have a licence, and we were sending automated texts. To get started, we spent a huge amount of time and effort setting up a shortcode in the US, and getting SEC permission."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/418293943/sizes/o/">Flickr via Scott Beale/LaughingSquid</a></span></p><p class="caption">Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, and Ev Williams publicising Twitter at SXSW in 2007.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Those rules, he said, stemmed from <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/att-breakup-1982-directv-bell-system-2018-02">the breakup of US telecommunications giant AT&amp;T in the 1980s</a>. He likened AT&amp;T's monopoly to British telecoms provider BT in the UK which, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38141510">until recently</a>, offered broadband services but also ran the UK's entire broadband network through its Openreach arm.</p><p>Even after government-mandated breakups, AT&amp;T and BT remain dominant in the US and UK respectively.</p><p>"I guess I'm worried about a future where Facebook becomes BT and AT&amp;T, and you stop being able to create new alternatives," Cook said. "Everything is done within the rubric of Facebook."</p><h2>Lawmakers are focused on regulating for privacy, when they should focus on Facebook's network</h2><p>If governments must regulate Facebook, then they should at least regulate the part of Facebook that's actually valuable - its network, according to Cook.</p><p>"The connective fabric is the place where we see the value," he said. "We see that in the Cambridge Analytica leaks, where it's actually your friends' network being exploited, not your personal data."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg extolling the company's network.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Cook cited Metcalfe's Law which, in Facebook's case, essentially means the more users it has, the more valuable it is.</p><p>If they must regulate, lawmakers should focus on the fact Facebook's value lies in this structural network effect, and not personal data, he said. If anything, recent history shows that consumers are willing to share their personal data and forego their privacy. That means users will probably try and circumvent stricter privacy protections, negating the intended impact of regulation like the GDPR. And again, the big loser will be smaller companies.</p><p>Better, he said, to try and regulate that network effect. And even that's going to be hard. "The question is how do we, from a legal perspective, break up Facebook in a way that BT was broken up?" he said. "Within the national context, BT still defines how phone networks work even after the breakup."</p><h2>The answer might be to export Facebook's network value outside of Facebook</h2><p>When Business Insider asked what the solution is, Cook cited email as a good template for a decentralised social network</p><p>It is hard to muster much enthusiasm for email as a replacement for social media but, Cook said, it's a technology where people are free to set up their own email server, or pick between something like Hotmail or Gmail.</p><p>"The only challenge is that email is person-to-person, and we need to work on building more collective networks. So if you can imagine email, but for a community," he said.</p><p>Cook points to decentralised social network Mastodon as an example. Unlike Facebook, or Twitter, there's no single website for Mastodon - instead, you pick an independent node to join. You could join multiple nodes, each with its own separate set of rules. And you can communicate between those different nodes - a little like email. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15183128/mastodon-open-source-twitter-clone-how-to-use">You can read a good explainer on Mastodon from The Verge here</a>.</p><p>"If Facebook turned on Mastodon support tomorrow, or was forced to, that would be huge," said Cook. "Everyone could communicate with Facebook but wouldn't have to store data on Facebook's servers. That would fundamentally change the relationship."</p><h2>Facebook is the wedding from hell</h2><p>Were people not locked into Facebook, Cook believes people would splinter off into smaller networks.</p><p>"It's inevitable," he said. "I've described Facebook as the wedding from hell. It's everyone you ever met standing around at your wedding - your mom talking to your boss, and the first person you dated in high school. And you're like, 'This is terrible.' There's a reason they structured it that way ... they could grow the social graph bigger. That's all that mattered for them."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="caption">Facebook's Open Graph, a root cause of its Cambridge Analytica data scandal.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>For Facebook's users though, this "makes no sense" - because it's much more human and normal to present different versions of yourself to different people, he said. "I expect to see Facebook become unfashionable."</p><p>The issue is, of course, that currently most people are on Facebook and are unlikely to quit unless their friends do. "That's where, for me, the abuse of monopoly [power] comes in on Facebook. They have made it difficult for people to use other networks in all sorts of ways," said Cook.</p><p>And even Cook isn't going to delete his account anytime soon.</p><p>"It's more tempting. And maybe I should clarify that WhatsApp and Instagram are both Facebook, and I wouldn't shut those down. The sort of social [interactions] we see on Facebook are very shallow... I think there's an element that Facebook is more like the tabloids. And while I wouldn't ban The Sun or The Daily Mail, I'd be more tempted to."<span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-interview-axel-springer-ceo-amazon-trump-blue-origin-family-regulation-washington-post-2018-4">Jeff Bezos reveals what it's like to build an empire and become the richest man in the world - and why he's willing to spend $1 billion a year to fund the most important mission of his life</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "Openreach" and got 9 results

5G conspiracy theorists are hiding razors and needles as booby traps for telecoms engineers

Isobel Asher Hamilton

BT has been ordered to make Openreach more independent to boost UK broadband

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77 cell phone towers have been set on fire so far due to a weird coronavirus 5G conspiracy theory

Isobel Asher Hamilton

The 13,000 'savage' layoffs at BT could be preparing the company for a sale, insiders say

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Comcast hinted that its mobile app xFi might be key to its plans for newly acquired Sky

Abby Jackson

Comcast and Fox are in a heated to battle to snatch up Sky - here's why they both see the UK satellite company as vital to their futures

Abby Jackson

BT chief John Petter just called for the government to break up Sky's 'monopoly' on cable TV

Jim Edwards

The UK has banned Huawei from 'core' parts of its 5G network. Here's what that actually means.

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Twitter's founding engineer has a compelling theory about how regulation could turn Facebook into the new AT&T

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