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Mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) recently kicked off their Summer Sale 2026 across various plans, which among other things says they’ve reduced their unlimited Three 5G Home Broadband package to just £18 per month on a 24-month contract term (although it was just £16 when we tried just now).

The aforementioned package comes with a Three 5G Hub MC888AD Wi-Fi 6 router from ZTE, a 30-day money-back guarantee, the ability to claim up to £200 in switching credit where applicable (terms apply) and a promise that the service will deliver average download speeds of 150Mbps (varying between locations).

However, the availability of Three’s Home Broadband packages is still a bit of a postcode lottery across the UK (some areas can get it and others cannot), which often also seems to be irrespective of whether or not your location can already access a strong 5G signal from the operator.

The other catch stems from Three’s mid-contract price hikes, which means that their 5G Home Broadband package may start at £16 (our checking) per month, but then it rises to £19.50 from 1st April 2027 and £23 from 1st April 2028. Lots of Three UK’s other mobile plans and handset bundles have also been discounted in price.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) recently kicked off their Summer Sale 2026 across various plans, which among other things says they’ve reduced their unlimited Three 5G Home Broadband package to just £18 per month on a 24-month contract term (although it was just £16 when we tried just now).

The aforementioned package comes with a Three 5G Hub MC888AD Wi-Fi 6 router from ZTE, a 30-day money-back guarantee, the ability to claim up to £200 in switching credit where applicable (terms apply) and a promise that the service will deliver average download speeds of 150Mbps (varying between locations).

However, the availability of Three’s Home Broadband packages is still a bit of a postcode lottery across the UK (some areas can get it and others cannot), which often also seems to be irrespective of whether or not your location can already access a strong 5G signal from the operator.

The other catch stems from Three’s mid-contract price hikes, which means that their 5G Home Broadband package may start at £16 (our checking) per month, but then it rises to £19.50 from 1st April 2027 and £23 from 1st April 2028. Lots of Three UK’s other mobile plans and handset bundles have also been discounted in price.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) recently kicked off their Summer Sale 2026 across various plans, which among other things says they’ve reduced their unlimited Three 5G Home Broadband package to just £18 per month on a 24-month contract term (although it was just £16 when we tried just now).

The aforementioned package comes with a Three 5G Hub MC888AD Wi-Fi 6 router from ZTE, a 30-day money-back guarantee, the ability to claim up to £200 in switching credit where applicable (terms apply) and a promise that the service will deliver average download speeds of 150Mbps (varying between locations).

However, the availability of Three’s Home Broadband packages is still a bit of a postcode lottery across the UK (some areas can get it and others cannot), which often also seems to be irrespective of whether or not your location can already access a strong 5G signal from the operator.

The other catch stems from Three’s mid-contract price hikes, which means that their 5G Home Broadband package may start at £16 (our checking) per month, but then it rises to £19.50 from 1st April 2027 and £23 from 1st April 2028. Lots of Three UK’s other mobile plans and handset bundles have also been discounted in price.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) recently kicked off their Summer Sale 2026 across various plans, which among other things says they’ve reduced their unlimited Three 5G Home Broadband package to just £18 per month on a 24-month contract term (although it was just £16 when we tried just now).

The aforementioned package comes with a Three 5G Hub MC888AD Wi-Fi 6 router from ZTE, a 30-day money-back guarantee, the ability to claim up to £200 in switching credit where applicable (terms apply) and a promise that the service will deliver average download speeds of 150Mbps (varying between locations).

However, the availability of Three’s Home Broadband packages is still a bit of a postcode lottery across the UK (some areas can get it and others cannot), which often also seems to be irrespective of whether or not your location can already access a strong 5G signal from the operator.

The other catch stems from Three’s mid-contract price hikes, which means that their 5G Home Broadband package may start at £16 (our checking) per month, but then it rises to £19.50 from 1st April 2027 and £23 from 1st April 2028. Lots of Three UK’s other mobile plans and handset bundles have also been discounted in price.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) recently kicked off their Summer Sale 2026 across various plans, which among other things says they’ve reduced their unlimited Three 5G Home Broadband package to just £18 per month on a 24-month contract term (although it was just £16 when we tried just now).

The aforementioned package comes with a Three 5G Hub MC888AD Wi-Fi 6 router from ZTE, a 30-day money-back guarantee, the ability to claim up to £200 in switching credit where applicable (terms apply) and a promise that the service will deliver average download speeds of 150Mbps (varying between locations).

However, the availability of Three’s Home Broadband packages is still a bit of a postcode lottery across the UK (some areas can get it and others cannot), which often also seems to be irrespective of whether or not your location can already access a strong 5G signal from the operator.

The other catch stems from Three’s mid-contract price hikes, which means that their 5G Home Broadband package may start at £16 (our checking) per month, but then it rises to £19.50 from 1st April 2027 and £23 from 1st April 2028. Lots of Three UK’s other mobile plans and handset bundles have also been discounted in price.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A new report from consultancy firm FarrPoint has confirmed that the Swansea Bay City Deal’s Digital Infrastructure Programme in Wales has so far secured £44.8m of investment in digital connectivity during 2024–25, which went towards various broadband and dark fibre roll-out projects.

Readers might recall that the UK and Welsh Governments gave approval for a £55m digital infrastructure investment under the £1.3bn Swansea Bay City Region project back in 2021 (here), which among other things aimed to expand full fibre and 5G mobile connectivity to benefit homes, businesses and the public sector across Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire and Swansea. Some of this investment also came from the Local Broadband Fund (LBF) for Wales.

A number of related projects have since been awarded and made good progress, such as the £1.9m Full Fibre Infrastructure Build project with BT that helped to upgrade 69 key public sector sites (here), among others. The latest Digital Infrastructure Programme Report produced by Farrpoint, shows the overall £44.8m investment has been driven by a combination of City Deal funding, wider public sector support and sustained private sector commercial rollout.

Of the total investment, £2.2m was delivered through the Swansea Bay City Deal Digital Infrastructure Programme, funding major projects such as Dark Fibre East and the PSBA Full Fibre Infrastructure Build, alongside programme activity that helps unlock long term economic growth.

A further £6.1m of public sector funding supported connectivity in areas less likely to benefit from commercial rollout alone, particularly in rural and hard to reach communities. But the majority of this investment, £36.4m, came from the private sector.

Jonathan Burnes, Swansea Bay City Deal’s Portfolio Director, said:

“This investment is about far more than digital infrastructure. It is about creating lasting benefits for people, businesses and communities across the Swansea Bay City Region. Strong digital connectivity supports inclusive economic growth, helping businesses to innovate, attract investment and create quality jobs, while enhancing skills, education and access to services. It also enables improvements in public service delivery, including supporting wellbeing and more efficient ways of working.

City Deal funding is playing a vital role in unlocking wider public and private investment and ensuring that communities across the region, including rural areas, are able to fully participate in and benefit from a modern digital economy.”

A lot more detail can be found in the full report.

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A new YouGov survey, which was conducted during late May 2026 with an unspecified number of UK respondents, has claimed that 82% of Britons believe water companies should be run in the public sector, with 70% saying the same of energy companies. But only 38% said the same for broadband “internet and phone providers” (16% didn’t know and 47% felt they should continue to be run by the private sector).

Regular readers might recall that the current party of government (Labour) has long since have moved away from their heavily nationalisation focused “free full-fibre broadband to all by 2030” pledge of 2019 (here and here), which raised more than a few questioning glances and a fair bit of scepticism from within the industry (here), as well as more widely.

Part of that was because the idea had missed the opportunity boat somewhat, not least since it occurred at a time when commercial builds were finally starting to flood the UK with tens of billions of pounds to help roll out FTTP (i.e. taxpayers didn’t need to foot the full bill) and appeared to misunderstand the complex interconnected structurers of the existing market / networks (BT Group didn’t hold the same grip they once did and that’s even more true today).

The questions everybody should always ask, when talking about either privatisation or nationalisation, is how much will it cost and what are the pros and cons (both approaches have their negatives). Much would naturally also depend on the detail of such a plan and its regulatory framework.

At the end of the day, it is possible to do what was proposed in 2019, but nobody should suggest that doing so would suddenly have produced a magic fix for remote rural broadband connectivity, or that there wouldn’t be significant cost, delay, legal challenges, job losses and disruption involved in that transition. For some, such radical change would still be absolutely worth it, but the industry didn’t agree.

Lest we forget that there are different ways of nationalising something, so it’s possible that the industry might have given a different reaction with a less radical approach in 2019, rather than putting a grenade to the entire market.

In any case, YouGov’s survey appears to indicate that Brits broadly support the current telecoms market being part of the private sector, although this isn’t to say that they agree with everything. For example, above-inflation mid-contract price hikes remain a widely disliked practice. But you don’t need nationalisation to solve that, just a government willing to push Ofcom in the right direction (this hasn’t happened).

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Broadband-based live TV streaming service Freely, which is backed by the major UK TV broadcasters and is an evolution – not (yet) a replacement – for the existing Freeview platform (inc. Freeview Play and Freesat), has revealed that they now have well over 1 million users (up from 500,000 from Sep-Dec 2025) and the number of Freeview homes in 2034 is forecast to fall to 860,000.

The latest forecasts from ‘3 Reasons’ show that the number of homes without broadband are projected to fall to 220,000 by 2034, which equates to 0.8% of TV households. Meanwhile, as audiences increasingly switch to viewing online and replace or upgrade existing TVs with Freely, the new platform is expected to be in 10.5 million UK households by 2034.

Instead of falling a predicted 10% between 2023 and 2025, the number of homes without broadband actually fell 30% and stands at 1.2 million today. The updated forecasts for homes without broadband in 2034 (220k) now represent around a quarter of the 800k originally forecast in a report for DCMS from 2024.

At the same time, data from Barb shows the number of homes connecting their TV to the internet is also growing at pace, 84% today up from 66% in 2020. “Together, the figures underline the growing readiness of UK audiences for internet-delivered television,” said Freely, just as the UK Government prepares to set out their proposed plan for switching off terrestrial TV signals in the future (here).

Key Figures

· Freeview is in 9.7m households today on main TV sets – 73% of these homes are also watching TV over the internet as well as DTT (BARB Q1 2026)

· 2.6m households rely on Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) to watch TV today either because they don’t have access to IPTV or broadband (BARB Q1 2026).

· DTT accounted for 29% of viewing in 2025 (BARB’s 2025 ‘What People Watch’ Annual Review).

· Key UK TV market dynamics that have impacted the forecasts are:

o The launch of Freely: Earlier analysis pre-dated Freely’s launch and assumed that free live TV within a traditional programme guide could only be accessed via DTT, satellite or cable. Freely delivers live TV channels over IP.

o Faster-than-expected broadband adoption: Broadband take-up in 2024 and 2025 exceeded previous projections. Earlier forecasts estimated around 1.5 million TV homes without broadband in 2025 whilst the actual figure is 1.2 million. The forecasts for non-broadband homes in 2034 were originally 0.8m vs the 0.2m now predicted on the basis of recent broadband take-up rates.

o Shifts in platform propositions: New internet-only channels have joined the Freely line-up while some existing channels have left Freeview. Earlier forecasts did not account for any change in the DTT proposition.

· The updated forecasts assume a transition to television delivered primarily over broadband by 2035 but do not assume any formal government announcement to that effect, nor any new measures to support broadband affordability or take-up. Were such interventions to be introduced, 3 Reasons assert that the number of unconnected TV homes could fall even more quickly.

· 3 Reasons and parent company MTM worked on the forecasts that were part of the Exeter University study commissioned for DCMS in H1 2024. The study was used to inform the workings of DCMS’s TV Stakeholder Forum looking at the future of TV distribution which concluded at the end of 2025.

The above is relevant because the Government have been particularly concerned about how to deal with people (particularly vulnerable TV viewers) who still aren’t connected to broadband by the time the DTT switch-off arrives (an official date for this has yet to be set). The issue is perhaps less about coverage and more about take-up (30Mbps+ broadband is expected to reach at least 99.65% of homes by 2030 – at the end of 2025 it was around 98.5%).

Jonathan Thompson, Everyone TV’s CEO, said:

“The way audiences engage with TV is changing and these updated forecasts reflect that clear direction of travel. It is vital that any future change in TV distribution is carefully planned and managed, that issues of connectivity and affordability are addressed, and that no viewer is left behind.

Freely provides simple, trusted access to live, linear channels and on-demand content from our public service broadcasters and combines this with innovation that can benefit all audiences. It can be a gateway for people to safely and easily enter into an increasingly digital society and not be excluded.”

Obviously, it should go without saying that Everyone TV has a vested interest in putting a positive spin on the challenges, while the Government ultimately have to deal with the reality of bridging any gaps in reach that may remain. One of the other challenges will be in getting Freely into more homes, given that a lot of people can hold on to their existing non-Freely TVs and devices for many years.

The Public Service Broadcasters’ (PSBs) currently support a transition to IPTV in the mid-2030s as it will become increasingly challenging for them to bear double costs from running multiple distribution platforms. At present the UK Government has committed to the future of DTT until 2034, although some Arqiva-based (vested interest in UK tower sites) campaign groups would like to see this extended (possibly to at least 2040).

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Abingdon-based alternative network Gigaclear, which have built a full fibre (FTTP) network across 618,000 premises in rural parts of England and is home to 170,000 customers, has published their annual accounts after lenders recently took control of the business (here). The results reveal that their c.£963m senior debt facility was revised to a principal amount of £575m (shrinking by £388m).

In case anybody has forgotten. Gigaclear was previously owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company had investment commitments estimated to be worth up to around £1.1bn (here) and in late 2023 secured a £1.5bn debt facility (here). At the end of 2025 a consortium of the provider’s existing banks then agreed to pump “at least” £80m of new funding into the company (here).

However, in April 2026, everything changed after the provider’s lenders took control of the business. At that point ownership of the company transferred to a consortium of ABN AMRO, Natwest and the UK taxpayer-backed National Wealth Fund (NWF), which involved a “substantial deleveraging and reduces the debt service requirement” (the lenders took a significant haircut on the company’s debt pile).

The company’s shares were then transferred to Buzz Holdco Limited, which is owned by the same consortium of institutional investors. Gigaclear’s latest results to the end of 2025 now show that their c.£963m senior debt facility was amended and restated, as part of the aforementioned change, to reflect a revised principal amount of £575m (a shrinkage of £388m).

The outcome came after Gigaclear had been suffering from many of the same strains as other alternative networks (altnets). In response, they’d already had to scale-back their network builds and cut jobs, due to the pressures from high interest rates, rising build costs and a highly competitive environment (here and here); nobody ever said building fibre optic cables into remote rural areas was either easy or cheap.

Gigaclear’s Results to the End of 2025 (Key Figures)

➤ Averaged total number of staff 654 (2024: 779)

➤ Revenue up 37% to £64.9m (2024: £47.2m)

➤ Loss for the year (exc. fair value change of interest rate swaps) was £152m (2024: £242.6m). The reduction was primarily due to no impairment of property, plant and equipment in 2025

➤ Net debt of £997.9m (2024: £870.2m) – mostly due to network expansion

➤ Premises passed (Ready for Service) of 618,000 (2024: 588,000)

➤ Live customers of 165,000 (2024: 134,000)

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News

“France is uniquely positioned to become a leading AI infrastructure hub in Europe,” says SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

This week, SoftBank Group has announced plans to invest up to €75 billion to deploy 5 GW of AI-focused data centres in France.

Phase one of the project will see €45 billion building out 3.1 GW of AI data centre capacity at a variety of locations in northern France including Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain.

The first of these new locations is expected to be operational by 2031, with additional sites to be announced at a later date.

SoftBank Group will work with national energy company EDF and digital automation specialist Schneider Electric throughout the project.

“SoftBank is proud to make this major commitment to France,” said SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son. “With its industrial capabilities, talent base and national ambition, France is uniquely positioned to become a leading AI infrastructure hub in Europe.”

The French government praised the decision, similarly highlighting the favourable environment for data centre deployments.

“SoftBank’s decision to invest massively in AI datacenters in France – a first for the group in Europe – is testament to President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition to position France as a leading destination all along the AI value chain,” said Roland Lescure, Minister of Economy, Finance, & Industrial, Energy, & Digital Sovereignty. “ It reflects our country’s substantial assets: fast access to the most reliable electrical grid in Europe, a strong digital and industrial ecosystem with a skilled workforce, and a government that works in unison with local authorities and stakeholders to fast track procedures for strategic projects.”

France is quickly becoming something of a European champion for AI data centres, with major tech and telco consortium AION pledging to build an ‘AI gigafactory’ in the country just last month.

For SoftBank, on the other hand, this announcement comes as an addendum to its Stargate Project, which pledges to deploy $500 billion-worth of AI infrastructure in partnership with Open AI over the next four years.

As well as expanding its AI capacity, SoftBank is also digging deeper into the AI value chain. Last month, the company announced plans to build its own batteries to support its own AI data centres, suggesting that these batteries could eventually be sold to others.

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The post SoftBank lines up €75bn data centre investment in France appeared first on Total Telecom.