CityFibre has officially started work to deliver its full-fibre network across the town of Cheltenham. The operator says that the £30 million rollout will make full-fibre connectivity available to “almost every” premises in the town.
Community Fibre has announced that it has struck a deal with social housing association EastendHomes to deliver its full-fibre (FTTP) network to 4,000 homes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
BT has revealed that it will launch a new tariff called Home Essentials, an affordable package aimed at people in the UK who receive benefits such as Universal Credit. The package will offer full fibre broadband at less than half its usual price with more than 4.5 million UK households potentially eligible.
New research from telecoms regulator Ofcom has shown that the UK’s digital divide has narrowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a significant minority still lack a proper broadband connection.
The Scottish Conservatives have made delivering full fibre broadband to every premises in Scotland by the end of 2027 one of its five core election pledges and said it would prioritise connecting rural and remote areas in the Highlands.
According to new data released by UK broadband ISP TalkTalk, the latest weekly broadband figures for the provider’s network show a 13 per cent fall in internet usage in the week of April 12 compared to the previous week.
CityFibre has announced that it will add an additional 7,000 homes to its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) rollout in Milton Keynes. The provider’s initial build in Milton Keynes, which began in 2018 and was among its first in the UK, had been largely completed by the end of 2020.
Openreach has announced that it will invest over £100 million in Northern Ireland over the next year. The investment will help to improve the country’s full-fibre network and will contribute to Openreach’s aim of connecting 20 million UK premises to full-fibre by the mid to late-2020s.
Community Fibre has announced that it has entered a partnership with Kelly Group, which will see the civil engineering company support the further rollout of Community Fibre’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in London.
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has confirmed slight inflation-related increases in the amounts to be paid out for poor broadband coverage under its automatic compensation payments system.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden met with leading figures from the UK broadband industry on April 1 to praise the sector for its creation of over 22,000 jobs within the last year.
According to a new report by WIK-Consult, commissioned by CityFibre, a new labelling system with clear information for broadband products in the UK could result in a 40 per cent increase in the take-up of full-fibre broadband services.
CityFibre has announced that it will partner with social housing provider Citizen to extend its full fibre network to more than 18,000 customers in Coventry.
Quickline Communications has begun a rollout which will see it deliver its new 100 Mbps+ capable network to 1,500 premises in rural North Lincolnshire. The project, which follows a £1.8 million investment to improve connectivity in the area, will target premises that are currently unable to access downloads speeds of 30 Mbps or faster.
The UK government has announced the first stages of “Project Gigabit”, its £5 billion plan to deliver gigabit broadband to 85 per cent of the UK by the end of 2025. The first areas to benefit from the project will be over 500,000 premises in Northumberland, Cornwall, Durham, South Tyneside, Tees Valley, Cumbria, Essex, Dorset and Cambridgeshire.
Following telecoms regulator Ofcom’s unveiling of a new plan to stimulate rapid growth in the UK’s broadband infrastructure, BT has said that it will embark on an effort to expand Openreach’s FTTP network to 20 million UK premises by the mid to late 2020s.
The Scottish government has announced that it will begin work this spring on delivering fibre broadband to some of the country’s remote islands through LOT 1 of its Reaching 100% (R100) project. LOT 1, or the North Lot, will connect 15 islands via new subsea cables.
Full fibre broadband ISP CityFibre has announced that it has identified an additional 216 towns and villages across the UK for its network rollout. The additional locations will represent the completion of CityFibre’s planned £4 billion investment.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee has criticised the government over its plans for the rollout of gigabit broadband and 5G. Prior to its 2019 general election win, the Conservative Party promised that it would make full-fibre broadband available to all premises in the UK by 2025.
Full-fibre broadband ISP Toob has announced that it has begun its rollout in the Surrey towns of Camberley and Frimley. The work is the first step in Toob’s plan to expand its network across 11 towns in Surrey and Hampshire.
UK ISP CityFibre has today launched work to extend its full-fibre network to the borough of North Tyneside. The £50 million private investment will see CityFibre roll out its FTTP network to “almost every” premises in the borough.
Fibre broadband ISP Hyperoptic has announced a partnership with house builder Avant Homes Group, through which the provider will help deliver gigabit capable broadband to around 2,000 households across 22 Avant Homes development sites.
Rural broadband provider Gigaclear has announced plans to extend its FTTP network to over 18,500 premises in the South West of England in 2021. After connecting 12,000 premises across the South West last year, the provider says it plans to accelerate its rollout “through more efficient delivery times and a significant reinvestment in the area.”
New ISP Lightspeed Broadband has announced plans to invest £300 million in rolling out gigabit-capable full fibre broadband to 1 million UK homes by the end of 2025. The rollout will initially begin in the East of England, starting with eight towns in South Lincolnshire and one in Norfolk.
According to a new survey of 2,000 parents from full fibre ISP Truespeed, just 36 per cent of parents say they have a highly reliable broadband connection at home.
Truespeed, which deploys broadband to rural areas across the South West of England, has announced that its next FTTP rollout will be in the city of Bath in Somerset. The provider will also expand its network to surrounding areas, including South Widcombe, Saltford and Keynsham.
CityFibre will this week begin a £110 million project to roll out its new 1 Gbps FTTP network across the city of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The project is scheduled to take five years to complete. Currently, CityFibre has an existing Dark Fibre network in the city, followings its acquisition of KCOM’s UK network assets in 2015.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom has published its proposal for a simplified broadband switching process. The proposals, which will come in from December 2022, are aimed at making it easier for consumers to switch between internet providers on separate networks, following Ofcom research that found around 40 per cent of people were put off from switching because they thought it would be too complex.
Hyperoptic has agreed a deal to expand its full fibre broadband service to 8,000 homes in East London’s Poplar HARCA housing association. The roll out is due to begin immediately.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has launched a consultation featuring several proposed changes to the Electronic Communications Code (ECC), some of which are targeted at improving the rollout of faster broadband, as well as mobile 4G and 5G.
Pembrokeshire County Council has announced that it has begun four new pilot schemes to deliver gigabit-capable full fibre broadband to rural premises in the areas.
Yorkshire-based ISP Purebroadband has joined CityFibre’s FTTP network and will deliver gigabit-capable broadband services across an initial nine regions in the north of England. Founded in Hull in 2009, Purebroadband has expanded to offer full-fibre broadband services to houses across the UK.
Hyperoptic has announced that it has partnered with 37 local authorities in the UK to deliver free 50 Mbps broadband to homes with slower connections in which children are home learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Broadband ISP Airband has signed a £4.5 million contract with Cheshire East Council to deliver gigabit-capable FTTP broadband to over 4,000 premises in rural and hard-to-reach areas in the region.
According to a study from Rouge Media, the UK government’s 2014 Digital Inclusion Strategy has failed to meet some of its core targets.
Full-fibre network provider Hyperoptic has announced that it will connect thousands of Southampton City Council social housing tenants to its network following a new supply agreement.
Spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said that the UK government will miss its target of rolling out full-fibre broadband nationwide by 2025 due to a “litany” of failures by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
According to a survey of 3,000 people in the UK commissioned by Uswitch, around 5.38 million households who are out of contract with their ISP are overpaying for broadband due to a lack of confidence in the process of switching providers.
Openreach has said that broadband usage across its UK ISP networks more than doubled during 2020, reaching a total for the year of 50,000 PetaBytes (PB), compared to 22,000 PB in 2019.
According to Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2020 report, one in four homes across the UK can now access broadband speeds of 1 Gbps. The figure equates to almost 8 million UK homes, with the highest availability being Northern Ireland, where over half of homes can access gigabit-capable speeds.
Openreach has announced that it plans to hire a further 5,300 fibre engineers in 2021 as part of its £12 billion plan to extend its FTTP network to 20 million UK premises within the next decade.
CityFibre has announced that Giganet has joined its full fibre networks and will provide gigabit-capable home broadband across the south of England. Giganet will become the latest ISP to become a customer of CityFibre’s £4 billion Gigabit City Investment Programme.
According to a new survey by Eutelsat, UK homes that suffer from poor broadband speeds can sell for around £38,900 under their market value. Respondents to the survey said they would only be willing to buy a house with poor broadband connection if the price was discounted 16 per cent.
According to telecoms regulator Ofcom’s latest biannual update, the average download speeds of UK broadband ISP’s has risen to 71.8 Mbps, from 64 Mbps in May 2020, an increase of 7.8 Mbps (15 per cent). The report is based on data gathered in May 2020.
Ofcom UK CEO Dame Melanie Dawes has told the FTTH Council Europe that the regulator does not “expect to introduce cost-based prices for fibre services until at least 2031.” Ofcom is looking to giver full fibre providers as much flexibility as possible while they build and Dawes’ statement suggests it will be at the very least a decade before such charges
UK Broadband ISP Airband has revealed that it is planning a major FTTP deployment after Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI) acquired a majority stake in the Worcestershire-based firm.
A new Prysmian Group study, commissioned by Europacable, has found that Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) is the most energy efficient broadband, compared with other technologies such as FTTC and Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC).
CityFibre has announced that Zen Internet has become the latest provider to join its national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. Zen Internet joins the likes of major operators TalkTalk and Vodafone and smaller providers like Giganet on CityFibre’s network, having previously focused on selling Openreach products.
The European Commission has ruled that the proposed merger of mobile operator O2 (Telefonica UK) and broadband provider Virgin Media should be referred back the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Over 2,000 Stoke-on-Trent homes will now have access to gigabit-capable FTTP broadband resulting from a £19.2 million partnership between Stoke city council and Swedish firm VXFIBER (VXF).
