Posted on: 9th December 2025, by Tracey Wright
As has become my tradition here is a brief roundup of our year at Magrathea. I hope you will enjoy, but if you are simply too busy to read what has become quite a lengthy update (it’s been a busy year!), the key message is that I want to wish all of our clients, suppliers and industry partners a very Merry Christmas and a successful, happy 2026!
Last year I wrote about human resilience being a major theme for us. This year, whilst that remains a priority for us, our focus has shifted heavily towards technical resilience. The resilience, capacity and security of our network have always been top priorities – after all, it is the only service we offer. Our days are filled with proactive improvements – updates, upgrades and rigorous testing. But this year has been significant for two reasons.
The first is the final closure of our TDM interconnects with BT, a project that has been in progress for several years now. We are delighted to have completed it with barely any external impact. Starting early and migrating gradually was absolutely the right strategy, allowing us and BT time to address any hiccups before they became issues.
The second is a complete overhaul of our internal monitoring and alerting systems, giving us faster and more specific insights into the network’s health. This is complemented by new internal processes to ensure the human element keeps pace with the improvements in automation.
However, I cannot reflect on our technical progress without acknowledging the very difficult day we had in the summer – the largest outage we have experienced in many years. Any outage is a carrier network’s worst nightmare, and the level of impact on that day in May was deeply disappointing. Around 50% of calls were failing on first attempt, intermittently over several hours, and due to our network topology, that meant that some clients lost 100% of calls whilst others remained unaffected. Thankfully, our infrastructure allowed us to maintain emergency and critical services, but we fully appreciate the impact this sort of incident has on our clients and their customers.
We remain grateful to the many clients who took the time to thank the team for their communication and support on the day. After such a challenging experience, your words meant a great deal and helped carry the team through the days that followed – especially as other networks also suffered large outages that week, compounding the impact for some clients. It’s a period none of us will forget in a hurry.
We would never claim to be entirely fault free across a network of our size. Issues, whether caused by us or our partners, occur daily. But the value we bring is managing the considerable majority of these with no impact on the service. Thanks to the way our network is designed, much of this is automated, and we also have a brilliant team of engineers who remain on top of anything more complex. This remains a point of real pride for us.
Since that dreadful day, our new monitoring and alerting system has been fully implemented, and the underlying cause of that specific issue has been addressed. Whilst we cannot guarantee that every potential scenario is covered, we are confident that identifying and pinpointing issues is now faster and more efficient.
This improved capability has already been tested, particularly during significant outages at some major networks, which caused ripples across the telecoms supply chain. Because the ability to rapidly establish reported issues were outside of our network we were able to focus our efforts on assisting clients to implement backup plans. The AWS outages in particular were especially disruptive for some clients hosting with them, finding themselves with little support or information at a critical moment, relying on national media statements for their insights.
Nobody wants to discover their resilience gaps during an incident, but the challenges at AWS and Azure did prompt many to reassess their setups – resulting in positive changes. As reliance on hyperscalers grows and the requirements of the Telecoms Security Act approach, this kind of planning is increasingly essential.
Our industry is fairly unique in how much we depend on one another. Problems anywhere can cause ripples everywhere. That is why, rather than highlighting the perceived failings of others, it’s vital that we learn from them and work collaboratively to build a more robust communications network for the UK.
We have also made further enhancements to our MAGIC Portal. The migration from our old Client Portal is taking longer than hoped, due in part to resources being diverted to important internal tooling upgrades. However, progress continues, and it will be a priority for our development team throughout 2026. In addition, internal improvements have already been invaluable, enabling us to deliver better service in support and porting through increased automation, smoother processes and better tools. Can we ever be perfect? No. Can we continuously improve? Absolutely.
A major personal milestone this year was taking on the role of Chair of Comms Council UK. Magrathea was a founding member of what was then ITSPA, and between myself and Linus, we have served on the Council continuously for 20 years. It was an honour to be invited into the leadership role. It was not an easy decision – I’m not known for my love of public speaking – but having co-founded a working group to empower women in our industry, it was important to “walk the talk”. Stepping outside my comfort zone has been rewarding and I believe my efforts over the past 12 months have made a positive impact. That will continue to motivate me in the year ahead.
This position has helped me really push forward on key issues, particularly fraud – still one of the biggest challenges our industry faces, now accounting for over 40% of all crime in the UK. With increasing calls for telcos to assume more financial responsibility, this is something that we all must take seriously.
Magrathea has created best practice guidance to help our clients comply with Ofcom rules around due diligence and monitoring for scam traffic. We continue to encourage all clients to join the National Trading Standards Stop Scams Team initiative to share intelligence on bad actors. We have also worked extensively with Ofcom on the issue of mobile CLI spoofing, a significant loophole, but a complex one to close due to legitimate roaming mobile traffic.
Through our Irish interconnects we are further ahead on this matter, with a SIP Proxy solution planned for next year. Our colleagues at Comreg have made impressive progress overall, including the successful introduction of a provider register giving visibility of where Irish numbers are managed – a tool that would be very helpful in the UK.
We recently signed up via CCUK, to the Home Office Telecoms Fraud Charter, reinforcing our commitment to progress in areas such as data sharing and traceback. Until we can quickly and easily identify where bad traffic originates, we will struggle to ever stay ahead of criminals with far greater resources and less compulsion to follow the data privacy rules.
Our combined efforts appear to be having a positive impact for us, we have far fewer bad calls slipping through, and through enhanced onboarding checks, it is now easier to filter out those more questionable prospective clients. As always, the integrity of our network in every form remains paramount.
In porting and switching, we’ve kept a relatively low profile this year while residential switching went live and settled. Business switching is now high on the agenda for 2026 with Ofcom making it clear that industry needs to do better. There is much debate over how best to apply the principles in the more complex business environment, particularly for smaller providers with limited budgets. Expect more updates early in the new year.
Magrathea has continued to sponsor key industry events, including the Cavell Summit and several CCUK activities. For the first time, we also hosted a client dinner in Dublin – a real treat for our team who rarely get to travel outside the UK.
Looking ahead to 2026, we expect more of the same momentum. We will sponsor or attend many key telecoms events in the UK and hope to repeat our Irish visit as that part of our network continues to grow in importance. Our programme of updates to both the core network and internal tools will continue, and we are excited to be launching a couple of new services too – services that many clients have asked for to support their integration with AI and mobile technologies. More details will follow as our plans evolve, but we are genuinely excited by the opportunities within this all-IP world, working with our clients to deliver the solutions they need to thrive.
Finally, I want to send a heartfelt thank you to every team member for being so brilliant in their support to both the business and to me personally, as I take on my wider industry commitments. Thank you also to the many clients and industry partners who encourage and support our approach. We all know how challenging it is to run a business in such a dynamic industry, and I feel extremely fortunate to work with such loyal and engaged clients, colleagues and friends who make it fun, challenging and worthwhile.
Thank you, and I wish each of you a very happy festive season and a healthy, happy 2026