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A recent survey of 5,014 UK adult consumers, which was conducted by Which?, has claimed that the average broadband-only ISP customer could save £100 per year by switching to a new provider – rising to £160 and £155 on Sky Broadband and Virgin Media respectively. Similarly, those who haggled saved £65 (rising to £92 and £85 respectively on Virgin Media and BT).

The story is similar for mobile and TV customers. Mobile customers who switched operators and swapped to a SIM-Only deal were found to have saved an average of £258 a year, while those who stayed with their existing network and instead opted to haggle their way to a SIM-Only plan were able to save £210.

Across all types of mobile contracts, EE, O2 and Vodafone customers stood to make the biggest savings by switching away from their provider. Meanwhile, EE, O2 and Vodafone customers who left their current provider and switched to a different network or SIM-Only deal saved an average of £163, £127 and £121 respectively. Finally, out-of-contract TV and broadband customers could save an average of £169 by switching (rising to £237 on Sky TV), while haggling with an existing provider resulted in savings of £99.

However, it’s important to say that haggling is more likely to work with providers, particularly the biggest players (they have dedicated retentions departments), where discounting is a routine practice for attracting new and retaining existing customers. By comparison, smaller providers don’t traditionally offer big discounts to new customers and their prices may be more stable, thus haggling is less likely to return a positive result. Nevertheless, it’s always worth a try, and the worst thing they can say is “no”.

All of this is particularly relevant given the recent announcements from a number of broadband and mobile providers (e.g. BT – here and Virgin Media – here), which have increased the level of mid-contract price hikes they apply. For example, BT’s mid-contract hikes, which are applied from April each year, jumped from £3 to £4 (monthly). We’re expecting a number of other providers to soon follow suit, as per usual.

On the other hand, it’s now easier for consumers to switch providers than even before, thanks to systems like One Touch Switching (OTS) on broadband and Text-to-Switch (Auto-Switch) on mobile. Which?’s survey similarly discovered that most consumers found the switching process easy. This was the case for 80% of broadband and 79% of mobile customers, albeit falling to 69% for those with a broadband and TV bundle.

The main reason(s) people switched also varied by sector. Mobile customers switched for a better mobile deal with another provider (41%) or because they had issues with signal and reception (13%). By comparison, broadband customers switched to avoid slow speeds (21%) or an unreliable connection (16%), while broadband and TV bundlers looked for a new provider because of poor customer service (17%).

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News

The FCC took the initial step of revoking permission for Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) to continue providing telecom services in the United States.

By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has sent an order to Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) asking them to explain why revocation proceedings against HKT shouldn’t commence.

The FCC announced the development last week. It marks an initial step to revoke HKT’s ability to operate in the United States, the FCC said.

According to Chairman Brendan Carr, the order to HKT is the latest of the FCC’s efforts to unravel Chinese Communist Party involvement in U.S. telecom networks.

“As an affiliate of China Unicom—a provider that is already listed on the FCC’s Covered List due to national security concerns—the FCC’s action on HKT today is an appropriate step towards ensuring the safety and integrity of our communications networks,” Carr said through the FCC’s release. “The FCC will continue to
safeguard America’s networks against penetration from foreign adversaries, like China.”

A report, published by CNBC, said HKT acknowledged receiving the order.

The company further pledged to appropriately respond to relevant authorities, according to CNBC.

Scrutiny on Chinese telecoms is bipartisan

As the FCC’s release explains, the commission’s intensified focus on companies like HKT has continued with bipartisan support.

In addition to HKT, the FCC said they also directed HKT’s wholly owned subsidiaries to provide similar explanations regarding why their authority to operate in the U.S. should not be revoked.

Other companies to face denials, or revocations of the ability to operate in the U.S., have included China Mobile International (USA) Inc. in 2019 and China Telecom (Americas) Corp. in 2021.

The following year, along with China Unicom, Pacific Networks Corp. and ComNet (USA) LLC. in 2022 faced similar actions, the FCC said.

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Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Senior MD at Macquarie, Oliver Bradley, has revealed that that one of the alternative broadband networks they support, Voneus, recently completed a renegotiation on their existing £70m debt facility over the summer. The move saw existing investors inject an unspecified amount of fresh funding to keep the operator going.

Some readers may recall that Voneus, not unlike many other altnets, has been struggling a bit recently with redundancies and a slowdown in their network build (here). This came after the operator also found itself having to withdraw (here) from their publicly funded Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01), which was this month picked up by Openreach (here).

The company’s most recent accounts, which cover the year to 31st March 2024, revealed that turnover had increased by 34% to £4.417m, while gross profit shrank by -17% to £768.6k and total employees grew from 156 to 238. But Voneus’ loss before tax has also more than doubled to £36.65m (up from £14.83m), although their net assets have grown to be worth £93.43m (up from £23.32m).

However, a new report on TelcoTitans (paywall) reveals that Voneus appears to have quietly completed an important refinancing effort over the summer, which is a process that took around 3 months and involved some difficult negotiations with banks (creditors). The hope is that this will now enable the network operator to reach positive cash flow in the future.

Oliver Bradley indicates that this resulted in a sort of “amend and extend” agreement, wherein Voneus has been given some relief on the covenants it had agreed in securing the £70m debt facility, and an extension of the loan term by a number of years “to give us breathing room while we get to profitability and cash flow break even”.

In the meantime, details of how much extra funding has been injected alongside this remain unclear, although Voneus does confirm (Companies House) that the stated capital in terms of allotment of shares held by the company is now worth £131.48m (up from £110.68m a year earlier).

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Alternative network ISP Quickline, which is rolling out a new gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) and wireless (FWA) broadband network across rural parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England (3-Year Rollout Plan), has just extended their fibre network to three additional rural communities along the banks of the River Ouse – the villages of Swinefleet, Reedness and Whitgift.

The deployment, which represent just over 550 addresses served, forms part their £118.9m (public subsidy) East Riding of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (Lot 23) contract under the government’s Project Gigabit programme; this was announced back in July 2024 (here) and aims to reach around 72,000 additional premises over the next few years.

Just to recap. Quickline’s network rollout is currently aiming to extend gigabit-capable broadband to a further 360,000 UK premises across thousands of rural communities (roughly 170k via publicly funded projects and almost 200k from commercial builds) and the provider hopes to end 2025 with a total of 200,000 premises passed.

Residential customers reached by their new full fibre network are typically charged from £22 per month on a 24-month term for 100Mbps (50Mbps upload) speeds with free installation, which goes up to £49 for their top 1000Mbps symmetric speed tier (you also get the first 8 months of service for free on their top tier).

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News

Researchers are aiming to optimise the networking technology for large crowds and to avoid surveillance

Monitoring the devices of protesters – or even shutting down networks entirely – has become a staple of authoritarian regimes around the world. From Myanmar to India to Bangladesh, denying connectivity to entire regions is a common tactic used to suppress unrest.

Now, however, as first reported by IEEE Spectrum, researchers from City College of New York, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins University are building a protype mesh network called Amigo that could keep protestors connected throughout a state-imposed internet blackout.

“Shutting down the Internet during times of great civil protest is a way to prevent people from being able to organize and come together,” said Tushar Jois, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at City College. “That is what we’re specifically tailoring our technology for.”

Mesh networks are a type of local area network (LAN) where multiple devices (nodes) connect directly to as many other nodes as possible to share data. In the context of protests, users’ smartphones operate as the nodes, dynamically connecting to devices in the local area and forwarding data through the chain to its intended recipient. In this way, the users form their own LAN, bypassing the need to connect to local wireless networks.

This decentralised networking technology – which has widespread applications in more conventional settings, such as for office WiFi – has been used by protesters for several years, but results have been mixed, with messages failing to deliver, appearing out of order, and allowing users to be traced. Part of the challenge, the researchers explain, is that when the mesh network comes under strain nodes within it can begin sending redundant messages, flooding the system.

The researchers’ new system, Amigo, overcomes this challenge by dynamically segmenting the network into ‘cliques’ based on their geographical position. Within a clique, each node may only communicate to a designated lead node, which then communicates the data to other lead nodes. This reduces the number of redundant messages sent, significantly reducing pressure on the network.

Amusingly, this system somewhat resembles the clandestine cell systems use by resistance groups for decades, whereby members of a cell could only communicate to the wider organisation through a local (typically anonymous) leader, who in turn is part of another more senior cell. This limits the number of members who could be betrayed if one were to be captured.

Another major consideration for Amigo is security. In the past, it has been difficult to remove compromised devices from encrypted groups on the mesh network, and older mesh standards also leaked compromising metadata.

According to Jois, Amigo is tackling these problems with new algorithms, ensuring outsider anonymity and group removal. It also features forward secrecy, which ensures past communications remain secure even if a long-term encryption key is compromised, and post-compromise security, allowing the system to automatically create a new key if the current key is exposed, blocking out the intruder.

According to Jois, the next step for Amigo involves the researchers getting closer to active protests to better understand protesters needs and explore how the network functions as protest evolves.

“[Researcher Cora Ruiz’s] current work is about determining communications dynamics and [group] dynamics by going to protest activists and journalists—in these places where Internet shutdowns are common—and figuring out what are their needs,” said Jois.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news
Connected Britain Award winners 2025 announced!
Netomnia announces ‘powerful and ambitious’ rebrand ahead of Connected Britain
VodafoneThree drops Samsung, relies on Nokia and Ericsson for £2bn network upgrade

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Interviews

At Connected Britain 2025 we sat down with Rob Atkinson from EY to explore the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the telecoms sector

The phrase ‘telco to techco’ has been one floating around the telecoms industry for many years now, but evidence of true transformation remains scarce.

According to Rob Atkinson, Partner, Telecommunications, Media and Technology leader at EY UK&I, most telcos on this journey today are not yet bold enough to push for a full reimagining of their current business model but are instead trying to tighten their focus and simplify their operations.

“The telcos are being more deliberate in the choices they are making – in some cases, between servco and netco,” said Atkinson. “They want to be asset right in the way that they apply themselves, so they’re not trying to be all things to all people.”

Of course, AI has a major role to play in this transformation journey, with industry optimism for the technology – particularly agentic AI – reaching fever pitch. But, as Atkinson points out, studies suggest 95% of AI pilots so far are currently failing. There is a major disconnect between the push for AI-powered customer experience and the reality of legacy IT systems hindering innovation.

“There’s no shortage of engagement – everyone knows there’s opportunity. But the way many organisations are not quite cutting through at the moment,” he said. “These organisations are not being bold enough in the way they’re adopting and trying to embrace these new technologies.”

Finally, Atkinson offered a vital reality check on the massive data centres investment announcements in recent months, highlighting the many practical barriers to turning billions of pounds of capital into functioning deployments. From obtaining planning permission to the crucial challenge of securing cost-effective and sustainable energy, the future of these projects is far from certain.

“I think it’ll be interesting to see, of all the hyperscale projects that we’ve seen announced, which actually get shovels in the ground,” said Atkinson. “Many of these projects are dependent on new innovations in cooling system and energy reuse, which are the other half of the equation. If we don’t get those bits right and deal with the carbon problems associate with these power-hungry data centres, we could see these projects stall.”

Watch our full interview below:

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Two of the largest backers of the UK’s alternative broadband networks, NatWest and Lloyds, have now scaled back new lending to the heavily indebted sector. The move follows an earlier report in August 2025 (here), which revealed that a number of banks had set aside funding to cover loans issued to altnets (now deemed unlikely to be repaid in full).

Over the past few years’ we’ve regularly reported on the growing challenges being faced by network builders. Most of that has been fuelled by rising build costs, fierce competition from rivals (e.g. overbuild and the challenges of growing take-up) and the difficulties of securing fresh investment during a period of stubbornly high interest rates (e.g. tackling rising debt repayments).

Many altnets responded to this by switching their strategy from rapid network expansion to focus on commercialisation of what they’ve already built (i.e. growing take-up), which is a sensible approach. But this could also be seen as buying time for natural market consolidation to ramp-up, although it’s so far been moving more slowly than hoped; likely tempered by some unrealistic asset valuations of built infrastructure.

According to the FT (paywall), NatWest and Lloyds have now taken another step by scaling back new lending to the sector. The move, which doesn’t impact existing loans, means that any altnets seeking fresh loans from these banks will need to meet a much higher bar. In the case of Lloyds, they have not implemented a formal or informal policy to halt lending, but are judging prospective clients much more closely on their respective merits.

A spokesperson for Lloyds said:

“Lloyds continually looks for opportunities to help businesses across the UK, in all different sectors and sizes, giving them the funding and support they need to grow.”

A spokesperson for NatWest said:

“We take a considered approach to any lending — whether new or existing customers — and evaluate all decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

None of this will come as a surprise to regular readers of this site and indeed other investors have been taking a more cautious approach for the past couple of years, albeit with some deals still being done. For example, Netomnia completed a £300m junior debt raise in September 2025 (here) and Grain (Grain Connect) confirmed a £225m funding boost – mostly debt and some equity – in July 2025 (here). Not to mention the recent funding deals for GoFibre (here), Wessex Internet (here) and Highland Broadband (here).

As for those in a more difficult position, possible solutions other than consolidation (or complementary to that) are likely to involve a combination of things, such as reaching agreements with other shareholders to inject extra cash, swapping debt for equity or extending credit facilities etc. However, it’s important to reflect that, despite the challenges, all of this investment has helped to produce a much wider variety of competition and thus network choice and coverage for consumers.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA), which represents many of the UK’s alternative broadband ISP networks, has announced that their efforts through the previously announced Infrastructure Sharing Group (ISG) have now resulted in the creation of a new infrastructure sharing venture – supporting the use of 500,000km of “spare fibre capacity“.

The issue of infrastructure sharing has been somewhat of a bugbear for the industry in recent years, particularly in locations where several operators may be overbuilding each other and duplicating new fibre infrastructure due to the lack of effective access to existing infrastructure.

At present Openreach (BT), as the incumbent network operator with Significant Market Power (SMP), are already required to share access to their existing cable ducts and poles via the Ofcom regulated Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product – many rival networks use this. But PIA isn’t viable in every location and the market would thus sometimes benefit from a complementary solution, which could further reduce the need for new trenching and telecoms poles etc.

Outside of PIA accessible areas, infrastructure sharing often comes down to the ability to reach commercial agreements between competitors, which is naturally problematic. Put another way, if you’ve invested significant money to deploy a new full fibre network, and you’re a smaller operator that is already taking on a lot of risk, then you’re often dis-incentivised to give rivals a free ride to use what you’ve built.

The ISG within INCA has thus been working to develop a new framework for infrastructure sharing between altnets, which is intended to complement Openreach’s PIA product. This will enable asset owners amongst the independent broadband market to commercialise the ducts, poles and dark fibre that they own by establishing a common means of sharing their infrastructure with others in the altnet sector, as well as mobile operators, datacentres, tier one carriers and hyper-scalers, who are increasingly putting out tenders for ducts to support their own operations.

Guy Miller, CEO of MS3 Networks and Chair of INCA’s ISG, said:

“We’re ready to share our infrastructure and maximise the assets we own for the benefit of our sector as well as the mobile industry and data centres who will now have access to the assets we’ve invested in to deliver gigabit capable broadband across the UK.

Pivotal to making this happen has been the establishment of an Infrastructure Sharing Framework that has put in place a common standard product definition, set of terms and conditions, and commercial and legal documents to support this new marketplace.

Not only will this venture enable asset owners to get the best ROI from their infrastructure, it also has the potential to significantly reduce the disruption that comes about from the duplication of telegraph poles and ducts. It has been estimated that there is currently some half a million kilometres of spare fibre capacity that has not previously been easily identified.

This will save Altnets money, accelerate fibre deployment across the UK and potentially reduce further need for completely new ducts and poles. It will also provide asset seekers with a cost-efficient infrastructure solution compared to investing in such assets themselves.

It also opens up a significant new market opportunity for Altnets, including a slice of the £100m backhaul market in the mobile industry. Asset owners can decide who they wish to share their infrastructure with and the commercial terms. They also have full control over access to their networks and chambers.

We acknowledge the public and government concerns sometimes about construction of new physical infrastructure, and we hope this framework will reduce the need for that, where Openreach PIA is not available.”

Asset owners and seekers can now “register free of charge” with INCA to take advantage of the new venture, which includes access to the standards and the full range of documents that support third-party use of existing fibre assets. Through INCA’s recently signed partnership with AssetHub, users will also be able to access maps that show the location of these assets.

Sadly, the announcement doesn’t include a list of the initial twenty supporting altnets (we have asked and will report back), but this is overall still a very positive move. The downside is that it would have probably had a bigger impact had it existed a few years earlier, although the existence of this venture may still allow some altnets to expand their coverage and without needing to make a huge investment into new infrastructure build.

ISPreview touched on the issue of infrastructure sharing a few times when we interviewed INCA’s CEO, Paddy Paddison, earlier this year (here).

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Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has reported that they’ve seen the “first measurable improvements” in their data from the recent merger between mobile operators Vodafone and Three UK, which appears to indicate that VodafoneThree is delivering some “significant coverage” improvements and “faster speeds” (mobile broadband).

Just to recap. VodafoneThree’s post-merger plan involves investing £11bn into upgrading the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next decade, while also delivering improvements by combining spectrum and existing 4G infrastructure / mast sites (here, here and here). The combined business has previously stated that it aspires to reach more than 99.95% of the UK population with their 5G Standalone (5GSA) network by 2034 and push fixed wireless access to 82% of households by 2030, among other things.

The merged company has already begun to deploy the benefits of their combined spectrum and joint network roaming via their new Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN), which helps customers to connect to whichever mast/service gives them the best signal. For example, in August 2025 they revealed that the feature had gone live via a total of 600 mast sites, with 9,000 to follow by the end of the first year of the merger being formed (i.e. March 2026).

Similarly, the operator has previously claimed that 7 million Three UK customers have experienced an average 20% boost in 4G (mobile broadband) speeds since they began the multi-year process of fully combining both networks.

What does the new study say?

Based on Opensignal’s early data, once full integration is completed, Three UK users are expected to see around a 13% improvement in “Coverage Experience” (Opensignal’s own metric for measuring network coverage), while Vodafone users will see a 7% increase. For the 5G “Coverage Experience“, the uplift is projected to be much greater — a 92% improvement for Vodafone users and 7% for Three UK users.

Post-merger, Vodafone and Three UK users are also said to be experiencing “improved reliability” in areas of existing coverage, while Three UK users are measuring “improved download speeds“. For example, Three’s network saw the metric for Download Speed Experience increasing by an impressive 8%, from 43.16Mbps recorded in Q2 2025 to around 46.72Mbps as recorded in Q3.

Similarly, both Vodafone & Three UK users are said to be “experiencing more reliable networks post-merger“. Three UK users saw a strong increase of 20 points from Q2 2025 to Q3 2025, going from a Reliability Experience score of 876 points (on a 100 to 1000 point scale) to 897 points in Q3 2025. Vodafone users saw Reliability Experience scores improving by a respectable 10 points from Q2 2025 (887 points) to Q3 2025 (897 points).

Opensignal defines Reliability as the ability of their users to connect to and successfully complete (basic) network tasks.

“These early results highlight that Vodafone and Three’s network sharing is already delivering more than just expanded coverage. Users are seeing faster speeds and more dependable connectivity, marking the first concrete benefits of integration. Together, these gains position VodafoneThree as an increasingly competitive player in the UK mobile market,” said Opensignal.

The rollout of MOCN-enabled sites is expected to conclude around 2033, as both operators upgrade sites via either software or hardware enhancements. But as we’ve previously reported, full convergence into a single core network remains a longer term target and one that doesn’t yet appear to have a solid date attached (here). It will be interesting to see how things progress over the next few years.

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American network supplier ScaleFibre, which manufactures and delivers optical fibre connectivity kit and cables to broadband operators, has announced that they’ve established ScaleFibre UK Ltd as part of their expansion into Europe. Giving digital network builders in the UK another option to consider.

The new entity is said to enable direct import, warehousing, and distribution of ScaleFibre’s full range of optical fibre cables and connectivity systems within the United Kingdom (inc. regulatory compliance under UKCA and CE marking requirements), supporting hyperscale, telecom, industrial, and infrastructure projects across Europe’s largest data-centre market.

The London-based operation gives ScaleFibre a permanent logistics and technical base in the UK, which means faster lead times, as well as better local support, and engineering expertise. The company said they intended to focus on high-density loose-tube and ribbon cables, MPO and MTP assemblies, and optical infrastructure for hyperscale and carrier networks. These systems support 400G, 800G, and emerging multi-terabit architectures, with compatibility across legacy and next-generation fibre types, including hollow-core and multi-core designs.

Daniel Rose, CEO of ScaleFibre, said:

“Our customers in Europe want access to quality, flexibility, and speed of delivery for optical fibre connectivity. Establishing a UK presence means we can respond faster, support large-scale deployments locally, and bring the same challenger mindset.”

A mainland EU distribution and technical centre is also being planned for later in 2026, which should complement the London operation and provide coverage across both regulatory zones.