The Quantum Group of Companies, which includes the ISP Quantum Air Fibre, has acquired engineering firm QConex and now plans to undertake a major Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network rollout to 120,000 premises in Lincolnshire.
The state-supported Fastershire project has struck a deal with rural broadband provider Gigaclear and rival firm FullFibre to deliver access to a 1GB-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to 5,000 premises in the town of Ledbury, Herefordshire.
The Marriott Hotels hospitality chain has been has been fined £18.4 million by the UK's data privacy watchdog. According to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the breach of data security may have affected up to 339 million guests, including seven million UK-based guest records.
The Scottish Government has announced that it will combine the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) with the UK's Rural Gigabit Connectivity (RGC) programme to boost the amount of funding available to remote properties in Scotland.
Three UK has announced that it has agreed a £100 million investment deal with SSE Enterprise Telecoms to upgrade its fibre optic capacity in 250 UK towns and cities. The mobile network operator says that the deal will help it to “deliver the UK’s fastest 5G network” and “significantly enhance Three UK’s 4G (mobile broadband) service”.
Ex-BT CEO and former trade minister Lord Ian Livingston will head up a new “Telecoms Diversification Task Force”, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced.
According to a survey conducted by Point Topic for the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA), close to nine out of ten (88.7 per cent) of the UK’s challenger broadband networks are in favour of the creation of a common platform through which to provide wholesale services to third-party providers.
The Scottish government has announced that it will launch a £4 million package to establish a nationwide network of 5G hubs. The aim of the S5GConnect Hubs is to increase take-up of 5G based mobile technology. The project will be delivered through the Scotland 5G Centre (S5GC) and the S5GConnect Programme.
Videotelephony company Zoom has added two-factor authentication (2FA) to its video-conferencing platform as it looks to help organisations tackle identity theft and security breaches.
According to a new report from consultancy firm Arthur D. Little, 10 countries have now passed the 95 per cent threshold for full fibre broadband networks coverage. The report indicates that the UK continues to lag behind these levels, but is improving quickly.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has joined calls for the UK government to form an Infrastructure Bank to help with the delivery of infrastructure projects, such as the expansion of gigabit-capable full fibre broadband, housing, roads and railways.
Northumberland County Council is poised to next week approve an investment of £537,000 to provide 18 rural primary schools with a gigabit-capable broadband connection. Cabinet members will vote on the investment, which comes via the Department for Education’s £200 million Rural Gigabit Connectivity (RGC) programme, on September 8.
An Opinium survey of 2,002 people in the UK, commissioned by Zen Internet, claims that customers are increasingly moving away from TV and broadband bundles, with streaming services said to offer better value.
UK MPs have called on local council authorities to help support the wider rollout of 5G networks and gigabit-capable broadband. The government has claimed that some deals for telecoms operators to access private and public land to build new networks “are not progressing quickly enough”.
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published its 2020 survey of service quality, call wait times, complaint response and install times at the UK’s largest broadband ISPs and mobile operators.
CityFibre has announced that it is planning to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises broadband network in the towns of Slough, Berkshire and Swindon, Wiltshire. The Slough roll-out will cost £24 million, while Swindon will see a £40 million investment.
Scientists at University College London’s (UCL) Optical Networks division have released a research paper detailing the successful use of “hybrid discrete Raman and rare-earth doped fibre amplifiers” in attaining a record single fibre speed of 178.08 Tbps (Terabits per second) over a 40 kilometre distance. The previous record speed stood at 150.3 Tbps.
According to a new Opinium survey from Uswitch.com, 4.7 million people across the UK have suffered a broadband outage of more than three hours within the past year, which it claims cost the economy around £1.5 billion.
Following recent roll-outs of its Gig1 broadband this month and in July, Virgin Media claims that it now has the UK’s largest gigabit capable network. The roll-outs mean that 3.6 million properties across the provider’s network can now access this connectivity and that a quarter of its network is gigabit enabled.
Broadband customers on Openreach FTTP-based networks, across various providers, have reported that their requests to regrade their service to faster tiers are facing delays. The delays seem to be largely impacting new build properties on greenfield sites and is being attributed to a system change made by BT Wholesale.
CityFibre, in partnership with Vodafone UK, has announced the completion of its £10 million FTTH broadband network rollout in Stirling, as well as a £2 million extension to the network. The Scottish city becomes CityFibre’s first completed “Gigabit City” build.
The Digital Scotland project with BT Openreach is almost at an end, and is expected to provide fibre broadband to a total of 950,000 extra premises. Initially, the project aimed to deliver FTTC and FTTP services to hard to reach areas, which otherwise would not have been upgraded through commercial projects.
At least seven British higher education institutions have been targeted in a global ransomware attack on education cloud computing provider Blackbaud. According to the company, student and alumni data was stolen in the attack, which took place in May this year. However, the firm has confirmed that no bank account details, credit card details or social security numbers were stolen.
A new YouGov poll conducted among 1,000 London adults between July 2nd-6th and commissioned by broadband ISP G.Network has claimed that around two-thirds of Londoners have experienced broadband problems.
The Channel Islands has suggested that it will follow the UK in excluding Chinese telecoms operator Huawei from acting as a supplier for its 5G networks. The UK government took the initial decision due to ongoing security concerns surrounding the company.
BT Chairman Jan du Plessis has dismissed rumours that the telecoms company is considering selling a stake in broadband business Openreach, saying at the company’s annual shareholder meeting that Openreach “remains an important part of the BT group”.
The Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) project, which has so far helped 300,000 premises across the counties gain access to superfast broadband, has signed extension contracts with Airband and BT to add a further 8,200 premises by the end of 2021.
The Shetland Islands Council (SIC) has suggested it will look at rolling out superfast broadband across the remote islands itself, due to what it calls the Scottish government’s “failure to deliver” under its £600 million Reaching 100% (R100) programme.
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has called for broadband providers, phone providers and mobile companies to offer continued support to customers struggling to pay their bills due to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that: “The pandemic has changed how we live, with people more dependent than ever on home phones, mobile or broadband services.”
Hyperoptic has reached an agreement to expand its gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) service to cover 5,400 houses in Sheffield City Council’s housing portfolio. Currently, Hyperoptic’s service is deployed to around 3,500 private homes across Sheffield, meaning that the new agreement with the city council brings its coverage in the city up to 8,900.
O2 has announced that its 4G mobile broadband network is now operational in over 18,000 regional towns, villages and hamlets across the UK. The announcement follows a service upgrade during 2020 across over 91,000 postcodes since the year began.
Bahrain-based Bank ABC specialises in providing financial services to retail and wholesale clients. Having launched 40 years ago, the bank has had to adapt over the years to meet the changing needs of consumers.
Thousands of Virgin Media customers in London reported significant broadband outages on Thursday, leaving many without internet connectivity. Virgin TV customers in other parts of the UK, including Manchester, Belfast, Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds, reported being hit by separate outages.
In newly released figures, Virgin Media has revealed that households on their network have used an extra 325GB of data on average since the beginning of coronavirus lockdown. The Virgin network registered its busiest month on record in April 2020, with usage in May close behind, as people worked from home and children attended classes remotely.
A cross-party group of MPs and former ministers has called on the government to ensure that 1.3 million children have a reliable broadband connection at home, or else risk causing serious harm to their education.
Internet service provider Swish Fibre has revealed the full list of 33 Home Counties towns where it will roll out its 10 Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. The plan, which was unveiled with the first tranche of 11 towns in December 2019, will see the FTTP network made available to over 250,000 Home Counties premises.
Cityfibre has begun construction on a new 1 Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home broadband network in the city of Derby. The provider is working with civil engineering firm J. McCann & Co Ltd on the contract, which will cost around £45 million.
According to a new YouGov survey of 2,301 adults in the UK, 28 per cent have experienced a “slightly worse” internet connection than usual during the COVID-19 lockdown. 7 per cent of those polled said that their broadband had been “much worse” but 57 per cent said that they had seen no change.
The Welsh Government has revealed its first quarterly progress report on its £22.5 million Phase 2 full fibre broadband rollout with Openreach. The rollout aims to bring gigabit-capable broadband to 26,000 premises across Wales by March 2021, so far 8,283 rural premises have been completed.
Rural broadband provider Gigaclear has reported that it’s gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network rollout in West Berkshire is approaching completion, providing over 14,000 premises with access to the ultrafast network.
EE has published its most recent Mobile Network Data report, tracking the period from February to May 2020 and showing the online trends and habits of the UK during the coronavirus lockdown thus far.
Virgin Media has announced that it has finished its network expansion in Barnet, enabling 34,000 premises in the area to connect to its gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) platform. The expansion forms part of the provider’s Project Lightning build, a £3 billion project which aims to add an additional 4 million premises across the UK to Virgin Media’s FTTP network.
A £15 million fibre-broadband project by the North Yorkshire County Council and NYnet has been extended to the town of Filey. As a result of the extension, publicly-owned buildings in Filey will benefit from a new gigabit-capable fibre broadband network.
BT is reportedly in talks to sell a stake in its wholly-owned subsidiary Openreach to infrastructure investors as it looks to fund its £12 billion rollout of 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology. The operator is looking to extend FTTP to 20 million UK premises by the mid- to late-2020s.
In its Q4 2019/20 financial results, BT Group has set a provisional target to boost its roll-out of gigabit-capable FTTP broadband to 20 million UK premises by the “mid- to late-2020s”.
Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK and mobile operator O2 are in discussions over a potential merger, O2’s parent company Telefonica has confirmed. The potential deal would see O2‘s 34 million mobile customers come together with Virgin Media’s 5.3 million broadband, pay TV and mobile users.
Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, has published a revision of its proposed annual 2020/2021 work plan, with numerous delays to the UK regulator’s full-fibre broadband, mobile and regulation work, due to the ongoing coronavirus situation.
Arson attacks on underground fixed line broadband and phone cable chambers in the Springboig area of Glasgow have left around 500 premises without broadband or phone connectivity. Police said that the attacks, in which the lids for footway boxes containing cables were damaged with flammable liquids, have caused “severe disruption” to several hundred local premises.
The FTTH Council Europe has revealed its 2020 Market Panorama, prepared by iDate, detailing the latest rankings and trends for fibre deployment across Europe. The UK was among five countries with the highest annual growth rate over the last year, with 50.8 per cent growth.
The government has announced that disadvantaged children will be given a free laptop or tablet and 4G mobile broadband to assist in their home education during the coronavirus crisis.
