The government has granted Welsh businesses a funding boost, allowing them to apply for up to £5,500 worth of funds to install Gigabit broadband on their premises.
A project worth £9.2 million pounds will begin shortly to boost Stoke-on-Trent’s local infrastructure by installing a citywide gigabit broadband network.
The Scottish Government is going above and beyond that of its UK counterpart in Westminster by announcing a complete tax break on the business rates of new fibre broadband infrastructure. Furthermore, the 100 per cent tax relief will last for 10 years, until 31 March 2029.
The government’s Depart of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has gifted the Shetland Islands Council £1.91 million to boost and extend its broadband network across to Yell and Unst. Although the route is still being finalised, it is anticipated that the connection will extend the present network from Graven to Mossbank and Toft, to Yell and Unst, and even to Fetlar in the future.
Chief executive of Virgin Media, Tony Hanway, has said the rollout of super-fast broadband to rural areas in Northern Ireland cannot be done without the support of its government.
According to a recent report published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 5 million adults in the UK, representing 10 per cent of the entire population, are still not using the internet.
In a bid to improve full fibre connectivity throughout the area, Cambridgeshire County Council has devised a set of plans to deploy high speed fibre-to-the-premise superfast networks and updates mobile services to benefit and boost homes and businesses alike.
A funding package of £1.725 million has been released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to Suffolk in a bid to improve broadband networks across the rural parts of the county.
As part of Ofcom’s pledge to be more “clear and honest”, new laws are coming into force that mandate that broadband companies be transparent to its customers regarding their available network speeds.
The UK government announced yesterday that 100 primary schools in rural parts of England would benefit from a £3 million pilot project to provide them with Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband connectivity in the “next few months”.
Research conducted in the middle of December 2018 revealed that 86 per cent of UK train commuters found it difficult to connect to the internet via WiFi or 3G/4G connections through mobile phone networks on their journeys to work.
According to the UK’s Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA), the country’s telecommunications regulator Ofcom’s Annual Plan for 2019/20 is in dire need of reassessment for having “completely overlooked” certain areas and technical aspects.
The UK’s communications regulator Ofcom has been given direction from the government to tackle the “loyalty penalty” faced by customers who do not switch their phone and broadband providers’ services at the end of their contracts.
Residents and business owners across the North Yorkshire town of Selby will now have access to super fast broadband after a new mast was installed on top of Selby Abbey.
A recent investigation revealed that the UK’s decision to implement driverless cars is being hampered by a combination of poor infrastructure in the form of weak broadband and 4G networks, and poor road quality.
Some of UK’s fastest broadband networks are set to arrive in areas across South Essex after local councils secured a £4.5 million funding package.
CBI chief UK policy director, Matthew Fell, has called on the government to alter its digital strategy in light of Brexit, and to ensure that 5G and broadband development are not stymied upon the UK’s departure from the EU later this year.
A Market Update from the Broadband Forum titled “Service Providers Leveraging G.fast to Complement Fibre Optic Infrastructure” found a significant rise in the scope of G.fast deployments.
BT Group has released its coverage results for 2018, showing Openreach’s FTTP and G.fast based ultrafast broadband coverage with speeds of 100Mbps+ at 2.6 million premises. This is up from 1.97 million premises in the previous quarter with take-up of FTTP at 29.9 per cent.
Openreach (BT) has announced its plans to rollout Ultrafast Broadband to 11 new locations.
Dundee and North Lanarkshire have been termed the two most affordable areas in Scotland to foster “smart homes” with the most reliable broadband connectivity to support it, according to recently published research conducted by webchat provider Yomdel.
A new study has revealed that those using personal internet connections for work could charge their employing businesses £11.94 a month as an expense.
BT (Openreach) has been chosen by the Welsh Government to rollout the final LOT 2 of their Phase 2 “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) contract. At present, nearly 95% of premises in Wales can access broadband speeds of 30Mbps and above, delivered by commercial projects.
Moving into the healthcare sphere, Microsoft has announced a strategic partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance. A seven-year deal, the pharmacy chain will use the innovative cloud computing software from Microsoft, with further plans to migrate over Walgreens’ complete information technology infrastructure.
According to a recent study conducted by uSwitch.com, broadband speeds in the Borders have been termed “embarrassing and concerning” after being found to be some of the slowest throughout the UK.
A new study from Thinkbroadband has revealed that the coverage of superfast broadband networks across the UK has risen to 95.8 per cent in the second half of 2018, from 95.3 per cent at the beginning of the year. Similarly, full-fibre (FTTP/H) connectivity has increased to 5.47 per cent of all premises in the country, as opposed to just 3.82 per cent in the first half of 2018’s financial year.
For the average consumer or business, reliable and speedy broadband is critical. The provision of such effective connection is underway in the UK but still has some distance to cover.
A real estate agency has told British farmers to develop and establish their own private broadband networks instead of waiting for the Government to deploy its Universal Service Obligation (USO) initiative that will deliver 10Mbps+ internet speeds to all poorly connected areas in the country.
A number of high-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Louis Theroux and Eamonn Holmes, have been temporarily hacked by Insinia Security to expose security flaws in the social media platform’s service. The cybersecurity firm claims it had previously warned Twitter of the underlying problems numerous times.
Ofcom has unveiled plans to increase airwave capacity, a piece of good news for mobile network operators going into the new year. Two auctions will take place in late 2019 or early 2020. The airwave capacity is anticipated to increase by 22 per cent and 62 per cent in the sub-1GHz portion of the spectrum.
The UK is the sixth largest cloud user compared to other countries in the European Union, outpacing the EU average, according to new statistics published by Eurostat. The European Statistical Office has revealed that British businesses have a relatively high cloud service adoption rate of 41.9 per cent, compared to an average of adoption rate of 26.2 per cent amongst other EU nations.
Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband is now available to remote areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, making them the first to benefit from Openreach’s new 1 Gbps FTTP broadband technology.
Rural areas across the north of the UK have been found to have the worst 4G connections, with the country’s regulator Ofcom stating that the Highlands and Islands and Wales were “most likely to have neither a decent fixed or good mobile service available.”
UK media regulator Ofcom has announced it will crack down on broadband providers who rip off loyal customers by only providing their best deals to new subscribers.
The recent unfolding of new rules has dictated that customers of some of the UK’s largest internet service providers could receive automatic monetary compensation should their broadband connection break at any given point.
According to the South Norfolk Council, the rural region has been the first in the East Anglia district to fully achieve a broadband coverage of 10Mbps or more. South Norfolk has said it is the first area where every home and business can install an internet connection with a minimum download speed of 10Mbps, but on the condition that every sign up is a wireless one.
UK’s telecom regulator, Ofcom, will confirm by the end of this year whether telecom operators will have a duty to deliver minimum standard broadband services across the whole or part of the country.
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Openreach has announced that it will be conducting a trial of Seamless Rate Adaptation (SRA) technology on Fibre-to-the-Cabinet across the UK based on superfast broadband ISP lines with speeds of 40-80 Mbps. The success of such trials could improve service stability with effective speed variability.
A new study has found that over 2,000 villages across England have been classified as unsuitable for future development and affordable homes by local planning committees.
A new study conducted by Opinium surveyed 2,008 British adults to find that 17 per cent of Britons would be deterred from moving to the countryside due to the fear of being isolated by poor internet connectivity.
Businesses are encouraged to apply and take advantage of a new government-sponsored £2,500 Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme as soon as possible.
Newport-based Next Generation Data (NGD) has partnered with wholesale fibre broadband infrastructure provider Nextgenaccess (NGA) to help deliver ultrafast 10Gbps broadband connectivity to more than 4,000 small businesses in South Wales and South West England.
UK regulator Ofcom declared yesterday that it will be broadening the current radio spectrum in the licence exempt 57-71GHz bands to allow 5G connectivity and fixed wireless broadband at nearly “fibre-like speeds”.
Openreach has announced they will be next launching their “Fibre First” programme in Nottingham and Belfast. The rollout will consist of a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network and work is expected to start imminently.
Although there has been radio silence over the last year, TalkTalk - UK’s budget ISP - has announced it will be deploying a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) which aims to cover three million premises. Its vision to be “at the heart of Britain’s full-fibre future” remains unchanged.
The final Budget 2018 plans will be announced today with an expectation that the government will give farmers and rural enterprises special attention with a £250 million injection to ensure full fibre broadband connectivity.
CityFibre has announced its plans to roll out extended broadband services to 11 Yorkshire cities and towns by expanding its full fibre network with a £2.5 billion investment deal. The telecommunications provider has stated that five million homes and businesses will improve from access to full fibre broadband, which is expected to meet a third of the government’s 2025 target.
An independent study has revealed the top 25 local authorities that provide the highest availability of ultrafast fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband connectivity across the UK.
Consultation is currently underway by the Scottish Government to create a uniform technical standard for “narrow trenching”. The government intends to change Section 130 of the New Road & Street Works Act 1991 to increase the use of narrow trenching for broadband network builders and establish a range of safeguards for the 33 road authorities in Scotland.
New guidance has been populated by telecoms regulator Ofcom to ensure consumers using broadband-based phone services to make calls can still access emergency services in the event of a power cut.
