Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Contributed Article

by James Lilley, Director of All-IP at Openreach

The UK is gearing up for a historic moment – the final full-scale infrastructure transition of our lifetimes. The Public Switched Telephone Network will be switched off on 31st January 2027 in favour of internet-based (All-IP) networks. Even though this deadline is fast approaching, many businesses are still resistant to the move. Switch-overs are continuing to happen, but the progress is slower than expected, considering the finality of the deadline. By 2027, most people in the UK will need to have a digital phone line, or risk being left behind.

Why aren’t businesses moving?

Many businesses are avoiding the switch due to the perceived difficulty of switching. Continuing with current systems seems like an easier option. The classic idea of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ echoes with businesses happy to stick to their current trusted systems. Many organisations will have only ever used their current networks and are satisfied with the way they run.

However, as the world becomes increasingly digital, PSTN simply can no longer keep up. Legacy PSTN networks already have far more service disruptions and outages than all-IP systems, and in 2024 alone the number of PSTN incidents reported to Ofcom increased by 45%.

Many businesses aren’t fully aware that though the PSTN switch-off is scheduled for January 2027, the practical deadline for businesses to act is December 2025. After that, support for legacy services will diminish, and businesses could be exposed to operational risks. The reason being, that Openreach has formally notified Communication Providers (CPs) that the current Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) contracts will terminate on 31 December 2025.  After this date, any remaining WLR assets i.e. services not yet migrated or cancelled, will be subject to new contract terms. Under the revised terms, Openreach reserves the right to terminate any remaining WLR services with just 90 days notice.  After that, services may continue only at Openreach’s discretion, and with reduced service guarantees. This could mean businesses facing things like slower repair times and reduced service response guarantees.

So, while ‘it ain’t broke’ currently, delaying the switch will only create bigger problems for businesses in the near future as well as further down the line

There are common misconceptions about the difficulty of switching over from PSTN to all-IP. The switch over is simple and for many can be completed in just a number of days. By resisting the transition, businesses may actually be costing themselves more money and time. Legacy infrastructure is expensive to maintain. Reliance on copper materials and outdated hardware means that maintenance and replacement parts are costly and difficult to source. This not only drives up maintenance costs but also leads to longer repair times, meaning that delaying the switch ultimately results in greater disruption and downtime for businesses

Alongside technological improvements, an all-IP network is actually cheaper to run and maintain than the current legacy network. Streamlined all-IP systems use less hardware than legacy networks. With fewer pieces of hardware involved, there’s less that can break, and if something does go wrong, repairs are faster and more affordable.

A final reason that businesses may be delaying is due to assumptions that the deadline may move but there are several reasons why the January 2027 deadline is non-negotiable. Since September 2023, Openreach has enforced a “stop sell” on PSTN and ISDN services. This means no new analogue lines can be activated and existing ones can’t be expanded which means the infrastructure is already being phased out, not just planned for future removal. The January 2027 extension was granted to allow more time to safely migrate vulnerable customers, especially those using telecare devices like personal alarms. Around 2.3 million people rely on these services, and some devices failed during early migrations. Since then, more safeguards have successfully been brought in to protect those deemed vulnerable.  This was more of a one-time reset than a rolling extension. In addition, industry-wide migration is well underway with providers already migrating tens of thousands of customers weekly.

The role of CSPs in helping businesses transition NOW

Customer Service Providers (CSPs) are crucial to this switch-off. To begin the transition, businesses should reach out to their communications providers (CPs), who can guide them through the process. The deadline is the same across the UK, but some CSPs will require businesses to move ahead of the switch-off. Transferring to the all-IP and VoIP system will bring different benefits across the various service providers so businesses should check for any extra benefits.  With some CSPs, calls over the internet may be cheaper than analogue phone lines or even mobile, particularly if you’re calling someone abroad, and some providers will be offering add-ons and enhanced services made available by the digital system.

Improvements for businesses using all-IP networks

Even without the extra benefits provided by CSPs, all-IP networks will bring significant improvements for businesses. All-IP networks are purpose-built to meet the demands of modern businesses that operate in the digital world.

• Reliability – They are more reliable than traditional networks, as fibre is more resistant to environmental damage. This means reduced downtime for businesses whose critical services run on connectivity.
• Scalability – Running services over the internet means new lines and services can be added easily, without needing to adjust physical infrastructure, to scale with business needs.
• Bandwidth – Fibre technology can handle massive amounts of data at the same time. This makes it possible for technologies such as IoT that demand high bandwidth to be more performant. As more business operations become digital, we need the infrastructure to keep up.

Moving to all-IP allows businesses to gain the network performance required to keep pace with today’s digital demands.

New revenue opportunities

All-IP can also create new revenue streams unavailable on the legacy network. All-IP networks will allow businesses to harness more modern technologies, including cloud-based communication systems such as Zoom or Teams, more efficiently. These advanced communication platforms can play an essential role in opening new revenue streams. For example, chat functions between businesses and customers can be better supported by an all-IP network. An all-IP network enhances chat functions by handling all communication types – text, voice, and video—as data packets over a single, unified infrastructure. This can help create upselling opportunities that were difficult or impossible to achieve over legacy networks. Many businesses are already reaping the rewards of the all-IP network and PSTN connections are now only 27% of residential landline connections.

With the 2027 deadline rapidly approaching, the reasons for businesses’ hesitance to switch must be addressed. The deadline will not move again, and holding back from switching means a delay to the benefits of an all-IP system. The increased capabilities of an all-IP network will allow for digital transformation for businesses previously reliant on outdated hardware, so while business can wait until the end of 2026 to switch, the benefits of switching earlier are clear.

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

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Original article Total Telecom:Read More

London – October 20, 2025 – RETN, the leading independent global network services provider, today announces the launch of Flex IX, a new wholesale connectivity solution that, for the first time, combines Remote Internet Exchange (IX) access and IP Transit in a single service.

RETN analysis shows that at least 70% of capacity at industry peering and interconnect points goes unused – highlighting a long-standing inefficiency: IX bandwidth often sits idle when peers are inactive. Flex IX solves this by combining Remote IX and IP Transit on a single port, automatically converting unused peering bandwidth into IP Transit with the option to burst beyond the committed rate – allowing operators to fully utilise purchased capacity without the cost and complexity of separate services.

“This is a first in our industry,” said Tony O’Sullivan, CEO of RETN. “Flex IX ends wasted capacity. Carriers, ISPs and Content networks can commit once and be certain that their bandwidth is always working for them – whether for peering or transit. It simplifies operations, increases efficiency, and builds resilience into networks.”

Key benefits of Flex IX include:

• Zero waste – unused IX capacity automatically becomes available for IP Transit.
• Resilience by design – if a peering partner or IX has an outage, traffic continues over transit (based on BGP setup).
• One solution – peering and transit combined on a single RETN port and CDR.
• Global reach – access to RETN’s Remote IX portfolio, including: AMS-IX (Amsterdam), BBIX (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore), BCIX (Berlin), BIX (Budapest), DE-CIX (Frankfurt), DTEL-IX (Kyiv), ESpanix (Madrid), France-IX (Paris), INEX (Dublin), JPNAP (Tokyo), JPIX (Tokyo), LINX (London), MIX (Milan), Netnod (Stockholm), VIX (Vienna).

William Manzione, Product Manager at RETN, added: “We designed Flex IX because we care about the quality of our customers’ networks. Every network buyer knows the frustration: you commit to IX capacity, but traffic patterns shift, peers aren’t always active, and valuable bandwidth sits unused. Meanwhile, you’re managing separate contracts for IX and transit, adding cost and complexity. Flex IX is designed to address this.”

Discover more about Flex IX here: https://retn.net/trending/FlexIX 

About RETN 

RETN is one of the fastest-growing independent Eurasian network services providers, awarded the title of Innovation Disruptor of the Year, at the Global Connectivity Awards 2024, and the Digital Infrastructure Action Award, by The Tech Capital in 2025.

RETN’s unique solution to connect Europe and Asia is built on its own homogenous DWDM and IP/MPLS Network Platform and widely branched land routes, passing through Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia up to the border with China and further onwards into Southeast Asia.

RETN provides telecommunication services throughout its Eurasian network with short lead times, industry-leading uptimes, and multiple layers of redundancy.

For more information on RETN and its services, please visit the company’s website at www.retn.net

For press enquiries, please contact pr@retn.net

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The UK Government has announced the launch of the Sterling 20 initiative, which is a partnership of the country’s twenty largest pension funds and insurance companies (Nest, Aviva, Legal & General, M&G etc.) that have all agreed to pump extra investment into local infrastructure and businesses to boost growth. Rural broadband will be one of the winners.

All of the participants say they’ve agreed to “channel the nation’s savings into key infrastructure and fast-growing businesses in key modern industrial strategy sectors like AI and fintech”. As part of this, Nest, which is currently said to represent approximately 46% of the UK’s working population, has already committed to invest £40m into expanding the reach of fibre optic broadband across rural parts of Scotland and northern England.

At present the full details of how this new broadband funding will be used have not yet been revealed, although it’ll need to be respectful of the existing Project Gigabit programme. The latter is already doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting alongside existing commercial investments in remote rural areas.

It’s possible that other members of the new scheme may also commit some funding toward broadband, although the main focus seems to be on other areas like housing development. For example, Legal & General has made a £2bn commitment to invest in delivering 10,000 affordable homes by 2030.

The UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to reveal more details when she hosts a related Regional Investment Summit in Birmingham this week.

Rachel Reeves said:

“This is about getting Britain building again – bringing our savings, our investors and our regions together to deliver the homes, infrastructure and industries that will drive growth and create good jobs in every corner of the country.

Our country’s pension funds are some of the biggest in the world. When they invest in Britain, everyone benefits – from the construction worker on site, to the small business on the high street, to the saver seeing their pension grow.

Sterling 20 shows what can be achieved when we all pull in the same direction to build a stronger economy that works for, and rewards, working people.”

The announcement follows shortly after the government launched a fresh drive to encourage pensions firms to commit more of their private investment toward the country’s science and technology sectors – supported by a new Innovation Cluster Map (here). Prior to that, the Mansion House accord, which was agreed in July 2025, had seen 17 pension providers pledging to commit at least 5% of their main default funds in UK private markets (c.£25bn).

As we say, little detail currently exists over how any funds that are committed to improve rural broadband will actually be spent, although the most likely area of focus will probably be on tackling those very hard to reach remote rural communities. Such areas are often too expensive for even Project Gigabit to tackle (this represents somewhere around 0.3% of UK premises).

The government has yet to set a clear strategy for such areas and the 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband is now overdue for a proper review (here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Broadband, phone and TV provider Virgin Media (O2) and their security partner, Akamai, have this morning warned that they’ve seen a 285% rise in phishing attempts this year. This figure has jumped to a huge 232,365 average new phishing threat entries to their threat intelligence feeds each day between April to June 2025.

Phishing typically reflects the fraudulent use of legitimate / trustworthy business or personal images (brands) that have been designed to fool users into entering their personal, financial or security information (scammers sending you fake bank emails etc.). This data is then stolen and abused by the fraudsters.

As part of its ongoing ‘Swerve the Scammers’ campaign, VMO2 has continued to invest in new tools and technologies to keep customers safe online. This year, the company has blocked over 600 million scam messages so far and rolled out AI-powered scam call detection to flag potentially fraudulent calls to customers before they even pick up the phone.

Take note that all Virgin Media customers receive their Essential Security software as standard to help fight phishing scams, viruses and to provide other protections. Customers can optionally add Advanced Security, for three months free via a trial, or pay £3 monthly or £30 annually, which offers on-the-go protection in and out of the home. The ISP also offered a few security tips.

Virgin Media’s Security Tips to Avoid Phishing Scams

1. Be sceptical of unexpected messages: If you receive an email, text, or call out of the blue, especially one asking for personal or financial information, pause and think. You can act as an additional layer of security yourself. Scammers often pretend to be from trusted organisations like banks, supermarkets, HMRC, or even the NHS. If you’re unsure, don’t click any links or give out personal details. Instead, apply caution and contact the organisation directly using a verified number on its website to verify the request.

2. Check the sender carefully: Phishing messages often use email addresses or phone numbers that look almost legitimate. Look for misspellings, extra characters, or generic greetings like “Dear customer.” If something feels off, it probably is. Keep an eye out for the below examples.

• “Lookalike” characters from non-Latin character sets, for example virginme~diạ.com  
• Typos that evade a quick glance, i.e. Virgenmedia.com 
• Domain name links that contain lots of extra info at the end such as Virginmedia.com.winner.ru    
• Different top-level domain “.xyz” is NOT the same as “.com” i.e. virginmedia.xyz

 

3. Never share sensitive information: No genuine organisation will call you and ask to confirm your PIN, password, or bank details via email, text, or phone. If you’re being pressured to act quickly or share private info, it’s a red flag.

4. Use strong security tools: See if any extra security comes with your broadband package. All Virgin Media customers get Essential Security, software that fights against phishing scams, as standard. On top of this, customers can also add Advanced Security, for three months free via a trial, or pay £3 monthly or £30 annually, which offers on-the-go protection in and out of the home. In addition to security software, where possible, enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of protection to your devices, even if your password is compromised.

5. Report and Get Help: If you think you’ve received a phishing message, report it. In the UK, you can forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk, and report calls and texts to 7726 (free on any network).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Connectivity to many popular internet services and systems across the world, such as Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite, Signal, Perplexity, Slack, HMRC, Roblox, Ring and many more (payment providers, VoIP services etc.), are being disrupted this morning after cloud-platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) appeared to suffer a major global outage.

According to Ookla’s Downdetector service, the disruption appears to have started just after 7:44am, although in the past few minutes the situation has started to improve. AWS currently says that its engineers have applied “initial mitigations” and “are observing early signs of recovery” for at least some affected services.

Meanwhile, Cloudflare’s data shows a clear drop in AS14618, associated with AWS’s US-East-1 region (Ashburn, Virginia) — one of AWS’s largest and busiest data centre regions — starting around 8am UK time. Traffic fell by as much as 68% at 9am UK time.

Some of the services impacted include Amazon itself (partial), Amazon Alexa, Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Web Services, Ancestry, Asana, Atlassian, Bank of Scotland, Blink Security, BT, Canva, Clash Of Clans, Clash Royale, Coinbase, Dead By Daylight, Duolingo, EE, Epic Games Store, Eventbrite, Flickr, Fortnite, Halifax, Hay Day, HMRC, IMDB, Jira, Life360, Lloyds Bank, My Fitness Pal, Peloton, Perplexity AI, Playstation Network, Pokemon Go, Ring, Roblox, Rocket League, Signal, Sky, Slack, Smartsheet, Snapchat, Square, Tidal, Whatsapp, Wordle, Xero, Zoom and more.

UPDATE 10:46am

AWS are now reporting signs of recovery. “We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information,” said the company.

Summary of AWS Service Status Updates

Increased Error Rates and Latencies

 

Oct 20 2:27 AM PDT We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information.

 

Oct 20 2:22 AM PDT We have applied initial mitigations and we are observing early signs of recovery for some impacted AWS Services. During this time, requests may continue to fail as we work toward full resolution. We recommend customers retry failed requests. While requests begin succeeding, there may be additional latency and some services will have a backlog of work to work through, which may take additional time to fully process. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 3:15 AM.

 

Oct 20 2:01 AM PDT We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:45 AM.

 

Oct 20 1:26 AM PDT We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM.

 

Oct 20 12:51 AM PDT We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause. We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.

 

Oct 20 12:11 AM PDT We are investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region. We will provide another update in the next 30-45 minutes.

UPDATE 11:34am

Despite AWS slowly getting back to normal, people are still reporting problems with various linked services, such as Ring. It may take time for everything to fully return. A number of broadband ISPs, such as YouFibre, appear to have support (phone, chat etc.) systems that depend upon AWS and have been disrupted. Sky Broadband are also reporting phone problems, although it’s unclear if they’re AWS related.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Internet access and online security provider Gigabit IQ (formerly Grayshott Gigabit) has begun inviting selected people to invest in their company via crowdfunding, which they rightly warn is a “high risk investment” and one where those who make a commitment are “unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong“.

The idea of crowdfunding in this way is rather unusual for a broadband provider and isn’t likely to scale as well as shares or direct investment agreements (e.g. private equity, debt, bank loans, public subsidy etc.). But for a smaller provider, it could still have some benefits, provided you’re willing to accept the risks.

According to an email sent out by Gigabit IQ, which was seen by Thinkbroadband, the scheme is currently in the “pre-launch” phase. Due to this, we don’t yet know much about how the crowdfunding campaign will operate, what it will seek to raise, its eligibility rules or how the funding will then be used (i.e. will it go toward FTTP network expansion, development of their wholesale internet security products or be used more generally?).

Gigabit IQ’s Email Invite

Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong

Hi, we’re crowdfunding! What began as a community project in Grayshott is now expanding across the UK. As one of the people who supported us early, we’d love you to join our national journey by offering you the exciting opportunity to share in the exclusive pre-launch to join Gigabit IQ’s first investment round before our crowdfunding campaign goes public.

At Gigabit IQ, we’re not just another broadband company. We are redefining the ISP space by combining full-fibre gigabit speeds, award-winning managed Wi-Fi, and AI-driven online safety tools to protect families, schools, and businesses. 

Here’s why now is the right time to get involved:

1. Proven traction: We’ve doubled our customers in the past year and achieved 3x revenue growth in 3 years. 
2. Massive addressable market: With access to 1.5 million homes across the UK, we can serve over 500 towns and villages.
3. Award-winning innovation Winner: Best UK Rural ISP and Best OTT Service.
4. Shortlisted: 5x nominations at the ISPA 2025 Awards.
5. Industry leadership in online safety: We’re working with Internet Matters 
6. Community-first model: We actively support schools and PTAs, and we’re launching

Overall, it’s an interesting idea, although much will depend upon the detail and what they’re actually planning to do. All of this is very important because Gigabit IQ isn’t a large, familiar brand like some of the market’s other players. People who commit their money to this will want to know precisely what it’s going to support and what targets will be set to ensure some accountability on the delivery side.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A recently published judgement by the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has revealed the disturbing case of how a simple mistake by one of BT’s (Openreach) broadband engineers led to three people, who shared the same house, having their lives turned upside down after they were wrongly accused of child sex offences.

The Open Judgement (PDF) details the case in all its excruciating detail (credits to The Register for an excellent summary). In short, the Dyfed Powys Police ultimately traced an Internet Protocol (IP) address, with BT’s help, that had been identified as being involved with the downloading and sharing of indecent images of children to the address of the three individuals.

Two search warrants were then executed at the home address of the first Claimant, on 4th August 2016 and 24th January 2017. The second and third Claimants were both present at the premises when the first warrant was executed; the premises were unoccupied when the second search took place. Electronic devices belonging to each of the Claimants were then seized.

During the course of all this, the three individuals faced a serious impact upon their lives, with family members, social services and places of work all being informed about the child protection investigation. As you can imagine, this caused all sorts of problems with employment, family splits and the stress of it alone must have been horrific.

The case itself actually ended up being closed on 15th September 2016 after officers found no solid evidence of any wrongdoing, and all three were told they were no longer persons of interest. But curiously, the police continued to be notified of child abuse content being shared by IP addresses that resolved to the same address. BT was then asked to investigate the problem.

Extract from the Judgement

Enquiries made of BT on 27 January 2017 were responded to on the following day. Following a network test involving the temporary break and restoration of service at both addresses, BT identified that a pair of crossed connections in the local network had caused a high likelihood that the IP addresses had been misattributed as between ‘Address X’ and the home address of the first Claimant.

BT explained that approximately eight years previously, two wires within a street cabinet servicing both addresses had been inadvertently crossed. In consequence, the authentication result for the IP address relating to ‘Address X’ had been incorrectly attributed to the first Claimant’s address.

Once traced, the correct individual was finally identified as living within a very close proximity to the home of the first Claimant. A search warrant was then executed at ‘Address X’ and the occupant was arrested on suspicion of possession of child abuse content, which was later found on their devices. The arrested individual made partial admissions and was subsequently convicted of related offences.

The trio who had been wrongfully accused later raised a case over the matter by arguing that their Article 8 rights (i.e. the right to a private family life) under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act were infringed. The claim largely seems to have hinged on the idea that the police’s RIPA requests for communications data from BT were unlawful because they could have made other lines of inquiry before issuing them.

Sadly, despite nobody denying that the trio had been through a horrific ordeal and suffered “far-reaching consequences“, the tribunal ultimately dismissed their arguments and ruled in favour of the police. The judgement found that the RIPA requests were lawful and that the main fault rested with BT, which was initially criticised for failing to offer a “meaningful response” during an internal review of the case that occurred on 19th January 2017 (although as above, BT eventually did respond in a more effective way).

The case certainly raises plenty of questions about how the police and telecoms operators conduct themselves in such cases, as well as the potential for the data they use to be unreliable.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

New customers looking to join Virgin Media (O2) should note that the ISP has just introduced some bigger discounts across some of their home broadband and bundle packages. For example, Virgin’s 1130Mbps (1Gbps) package is now just £29.99 per month on a 24-month minimum term (price increases to £33.99 from April 2026 and £37.99 from April 2027).

The provider’s home broadband plans, which include a wireless router and free setup, generally start at £23.99 per month for their 132Mbps service (rising to £27.99 from April 2026), then £25.99 for 362Mbps (rising to £29.99 from April 2026), £27.99 for 500Mbps (rising to £31.99 from April 2026) and £29.99 for 1130Mbps (rising to £33.99 from April 2026). A 2Gbps tier also exists in nexfibre areas, which is priced at £56.99 (rising to £60.99 from April 2026); people in nextfibre areas can also access symmetric speeds, if they so wish.

The new prices are expected to be available to order until 5th November 2025. But just remember that Virgin Media’s packages also apply sharp price increases once you reach the end of your contract, which are currently listed in the small print as £48 for the 132Mbps tier, £66 for 362Mbps, £72 for 500Mbps, £78 for 1Gbps and £90 for 2Gbps. This is why, if you intend to stick with Virgin at the end of your term, it’s critical to renegotiate.

Virgin Media’s fastest 500Mbps, 1Gbps and 2Gbps tiers also now come with Netflix bundled at no extra cost (i.e. the Standard with Ads plan).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Network operator and broadband ISP 4th Utility, which have been quietly deploying their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service to UK homes (SDU) and large residential buildings (MDU), this week published their annual accounts for the year ended 31st March 2025 and reported a “doubling of monthly subscriptions sold through the year“.

The provider, which back in 2022 spoke of holding an ambitious plan to deploy their full fibre “service [to] another 250,000 homes over the next five years” (i.e. roughly 300,000 by 2027), did not provide an update on their progress toward this in their latest results (i.e. no customer or homes passed totals). But we assume they’ve probably been impacted by the same sort of wider economic pressures as everybody else (i.e. rising build costs, high interest rates and competition).

However, the results did reveal that their turnover more than doubled to £4.74m in the year (2024: £1.94m), which also contributed to the negative EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) reducing to £5m. The company also made £2.8m of capital expenditure, which was invested into their infrastructure and systems to support further growth.

The overall loss for the financial year came in lower than the prior year at -£12.7m (2024: -£15.3m), but they also had total assets less current liabilities of £31.6m (2024: £37.7m) and total equity of -£1.6m (2024: £11m). Finally, the average monthly number of people (including Directors) employed by the company during the year was 40, which is down from 58 in the prior year.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Derbyshire County Council (DCC) in England has agreed to invest £900,000 to support the launch of two grant programmes, which will aim to improve broadband connectivity in at least some of the communities – predominantly rural ones – that are currently still expected to miss out on access to faster connections.

At present UK ISP Connect Fibre holds the main £33m (public subsidy) Project Gigabit contract for Derbyshire (LOT 3), which will see them expanding their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to serve an additional 17,000+ premises in hard-to-reach rural areas (i.e. communities such as Eckington, Hulland Ward, Shirley and many more).

In addition, a second £10.7m Project Gigabit contract for the Peak District was also held by network operator FullFibre Limited (Fibre Heroes), which would have covered 4,400 premises (including some in Derbyshire). Unfortunately, FullFibre Ltd pulled out of that contract back in May 2025 (here), but even if both contracts had reached completion, then Derbyshire will still be left with a gap to fill.

According to the DCC, around 32,000 premises (homes and businesses) across the county still receive broadband speeds of less than 100Mbps in areas with no prospect of commercial providers rolling out full fibre within the next 3 years. Of these, around 3,000 premises are still receiving very slow speeds of less than 10Mbps (the level of the Universal Service Obligation).

The county council’s cabinet have thus approved the use of £900k in funding “from our Digital Derbyshire reserves” to set up 2 grant programmes to boost broadband speeds in premises with some of the poorest performing internet connections.

Summary of the New Grant Schemes

The ‘Gigabit Fibre Connectivity Grant’ will provide a full fibre network to clusters of ‘hard to reach’ premises which are close to one another.

And the ‘Interim Connectivity Grant’ will focus on providing short-term solutions, such as satellite or mobile broadband, to properties which:

• are in remote areas where delivery of a fixed full fibre network is too expensive and there is no commercial roll-out planned
• currently use outdated copper-only lines which are only capable of a maximum of 24Mbps.

The council added that they would be continuing to “push” the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) to “prepare proposals for its digital programme and identify appropriate funding to help improve broadband speeds in more homes and businesses in Derbyshire in the future“.

Carol Wood, DCC Cabinet Member for Net Zero and Environment, said:

“Decent broadband is essential to every-day life and something many of us take for granted. But we know that having a reliable internet connection is a postcode lottery with many businesses and residents in rural areas still losing out.

By launching these two grant programmes, we can help improve broadband speeds for lots of local people and help prevent rural communities from falling behind in the digital divide.”

The catch in all this is that, in the grander scheme of building full fibre broadband networks, the allocation of £900,000 is just a drop in the ocean. The funding is roughly enough to hook up a couple of small villages or around 300-600 premises – assuming a rural focus. The expansion to include alternative methods of connectivity via the “interim” grant is welcome, although we don’t yet have any details on precisely how that will be structured.

We should point out that the government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (vouchers worth up to £4,500 per property) is currently also available to poorly served remote rural premises in Derbyshire, which is being supported by the following suppliers: Dragon Wifi, E-volve Solutions, GigaPeak, Openreach and WeFibre. The DCC might thus do well to combine their focus with that of the GBVS.