Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has tweaked alternative network ISP Connect Fibre’s (Fibre Assets) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Derbyshire (LOT 3) in England again. The contract now has a reduced “total scope” of reaching 12,876 hard-to-reach premises via a public subsidy £34.64m.

The contract, which was first announced back in December 2023 (here), originally aimed to cover an additional 17,000+ premises and was valued at £33m. But it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular reviews of existing UK deployment plans.

For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas. The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged.

Adjustments like this may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change over time.

The latest contract modification was made after BDUK accounted for one of their recent Open Market Reviews (OMR), which are periodically run every few months in order to assess existing roll-out plans over the next c.3 years.

BDUK description of the modifications

Nature and extent of the modifications (with indication of possible earlier changes to the contract):

Net decrease of £364,100 in subsidy for the removal of:

411 premises from Initial Scope Drawdown 1;

745 premises from Deferred Scope Drawdown 1; and

4,619 premises from Deferred Scope Drawdown 2.

New total scope 12,876 and total subsidy £34,647,455.

According to the latest June 2026 data from BDUK (here), Connect Fibre has so far only managed to complete the build for 1,200 premises in Derbyshire out of 13,290 contracted (not yet updated to reflect the above change), which is fairly slow-going given that the contract was first awarded all the way back at the end of 2023 and this figure hasn’t increased for a few months now.

The usual catch is that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction. So, it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end of the contracted build.

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Ookla (Accenture), which operates the popular broadband Speedtest.net benchmarking service, has today published a new report that evaluates metrics like 5G upload capacity, latency under load, and cloud infrastructure pathways across 22 countries in order to identify how well they’ll handle AI workloads.

The first thing to understand here is that AI readiness tenders to favour specific kinds of network performance, such as upload capacity, latency under load, and the path to the cloud. As such the leaderboard for AI is going to be a bit different from those that would otherwise normally be dominated by download performance, and the gap widens as adoption shifts toward heavier use cases like conversational voice and multimodal AI.

Overall, the report finds that existing 5G infrastructure generally supports text-centric AI, yet often falls short of the performance required for emerging modalities. For example, while latency (server response time) targets for text LLMs / Large Language Models (under 50 milliseconds) are achieved in 18 of 22 markets and conversational voice targets (under 40ms) in 13, no market currently reaches the sub-10ms requirement for AR (Alternative Reality).

Latency was also found to generally hold up under normal conditions, but degrades sharply under load, and unevenly. Degradation ratios run from 3.7x to 11.4x across markets, and the gap between operators inside a single market is as wide as the gap between markets.

Upload allocation also turned out to have the widest and most persistent gap. The typical operator devotes only around 10% of throughput to the uplink, while fewer than half meet the 20Mbps target for AR and multimodal AI, and upload share has declined or held flat in 12 of 22 markets since 2023.

Finally, cloud latency and worst-case jitter vary as much as the operator network does, and within one market the choice of cloud provider can swing latency by nearly 100ms, enough to decide whether real-time AI is viable. The results for just the UK are mixed, which leaves plenty of room for improvement.

Ookla’s UK Findings on 5G for AI Performance

Baseline AI Readiness: The UK records a multi-server latency of 46.4ms. This means the market meets the target for text-based large language models (under 50ms), but misses the target for conversational voice AI (under 40ms).

Resilience Under Stress: The UK shines when the network is fully utilized, tying with Indonesia for the lowest latency degradation ratio in the dataset at just 3.7x.

The Operator Divide: Loaded latency varies sharply within the UK market, a 2.6x gap between the best and worst-performing operators sharing the same market.

Upload Capacity: The UK allocates 9.18% of its 5G throughput to upload, delivering a median absolute upload speed of 10.96Mbps. Furthermore, the UK’s upload share has contracted slightly by 0.26 percentage points between 2023 and 2025.

Path to the Cloud: Europe leads the dataset for low cloud infrastructure latency. The UK records strong routing times across the major hyperscalers: reaching AWS at 44.0ms, Azure at 48ms, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at 48ms, and Google Cloud at 49ms.

We’ll publish a link to the full report once it’s available later this morning, although there’s clearly some work to do in a few areas of the UK’s 5G performance for AI purposes. The rapid roll-out of 5G Standalone (5G+) networks may well help matters, although adoption is currently still quite low and so that may take a bit of time to feed through to studies like this that use crowdsourced data.

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We’ve today published our biannual summary of fixed broadband coverage for the first half (H1) of 2026, which reveals that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have grown to reach 85.05% of UK premises (up from 81.89% in H2 2025) and 91% are within reach of “gigabit” 1000Mbps+ speeds (up from 89.6%). Read on to see details for England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland.

All the new gigabit-capable network coverage added during the first half of 2026 has largely come via Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based networks from Openreach (BT), CityFibre, Quickline, Netomnia (YouFibre), Grain and a few other alternative networks (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds). However, the overall deployment pace has slowed, when compared with prior years, due to wider market pressures.

The reason why “gigabit” coverage is currently still a few points higher than FTTP is down to homes that continue to be covered by some of Virgin Media’s older infrastructure, which uses gigabit-capable DOCSIS 3.1 technology via a Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network (there’s a lot of overbuild with FTTP in urban areas). Virgin is currently upgrading all of that to FTTP, but that’s a very slow multi-year process.

In addition, most of the progress on gigabit-capable builds seen during 2026 is still down to private investment (commercial builds have already delivered the vast majority of deployments), often with only a little support from the Government’s subsidy schemes. But Project Gigabit, and its subsidised rollout contracts with various providers, is having an impact on this, albeit primarily via the hardest to reach rural premises that typically take longer to cover.

H1 2026 Broadband Coverage Figures

Listed below is the latest independent modelling from Thinkbroadband to the end of June 2026 (H1 – 2026). We should point out that the figure for ‘Under 10Mbps‘ doesn’t include any mobile (4G/5G) coverage (we only looked at fixed line services), which plays a part in the official Universal Service Obligation (USO) but isn’t included in TBB’s mapping. Sadly, it’s incredibly difficult to do an accurate model for mobile networks, especially in terms of a specific performance level.

Fixed Broadband Network Availability H1 – 2026

NOTE: It’s very important to remember that Government / political coverage targets, like the current c.99% for gigabit by 2032, reflect a national average – this will of course be better or worse for different regions / areas.

Take note that each region (Scotland, Wales etc.) may also have its own policy and targets, which will feed into the central UK coverage figure. Furthermore, it’s worth highlighting how much of an impact newer alternative networks (altnets) are having on all this – excluding coverage by Openreach, KCOM (Hull) and Virgin Media.

Altnets were found to have covered 46.13% of the UK with FTTP by the end of H1 2026 (up from 44.79% in H2 2025). This breaks down as 48.84% in England (up from 47.36%), just 21.91% in Wales (up from 20.87%), 35.25% in Scotland (up from 34.81%) and 42.42% in Northern Ireland (up from 41.65%). But the overall coverage improvement delivered from this will be reduced due to overbuild between networks, particularly in urban areas.

As stated earlier, this data is a modelled estimate, not least because it won’t always reflect the very latest real-world position of every single network. But it’s still one of the best and most up-to-date gauges that we have for checking against official claims (Ofcom’s own data tends to be many months behind the latest developments, so TBB’s data is usually more current).

Solutions for Slow Broadband Areas

Finally, those still stuck in sub-10Mbps speed areas will, at least for now, be left with little option but to try harnessing the flawed 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) via BT (UK-wide) or KCOM (Hull-only). Many of those who have pursued the USO say they were offered a mobile broadband (4G or 5G) connection via EE, but those considered “delivered” under the USO itself usually get full fibre (FTTP) lines.

However, the reality is that some people will find they live in areas where not even the USO can cover the colossal upgrade costs of getting FTTP (here and here). Ofcom currently puts the figure for those unable to get 10Mbps+ by any terrestrial means at 39,000 premises (here). The previous government was in the process of examining support options for remote premises and had also been preparing to review the broadband USO (here), which may bring some changes in the future (back in 2017 the Labour Party called for a 30Mbps USO). But we haven’t seen any solid updates on this since 2024.

Failing that, consumers could either try waiting to see if the problem gets resolved or consider exploring the option of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based satellite service (Starlink is good, and they will be joined by Amazon’s Leo network this year). We would also recommend that consumers check via the other mobile operators (Vodafone / Three UK and O2) to see if any of those deliver better 4G or 5G mobile coverage than EE in your area (ideally by conducting your own tests, since official coverage maps are fairly useless) – see our guide to external antennas.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

VodafoneThree is trialling a new process to help the banking sector block scams

VodafoneThree has helped develop a proof of concept to help banks tackle fraud and protect their customers.

Created with Barclays, and in partnership with Mobile Ecosystem Forum* and Cyber Defence Alliance, the proof of concept has since expanded to include The Co-operative Bank, now part of the Coventry Building Society, and TSB.

Since August 2025, more than 2 million fraudulent messages have been blocked from reaching participating banks’ customers. This marks an estimated 25% increase in blocked scam messages on VodafoneThree’s network.^[1]As UK banks lose £1.17 billion a year due to fraud^[2], this process helps stop fraudulent SMS messages before they reach banking customers, while ensuring legitimate messages still get through.

Building on the success of VodafoneThree’s existing scam prevention tools, which blocked 139+ million fraudulent SMS in 2025 alone, the process sees VodafoneThree working closely with banks to build bespoke rules to the existing SMS firewall. This intelligence can differentiate between fraudulent SMS content and legitimate communications from banks to their customers.

Recent malicious SMS messages focus on impersonating banks and asking customers to share their personal or financial information urgently via scam phone numbers or phishing links included in the messages.

Rachel Andrews, Director of Corporate Security and Fraud, VodafoneThree, said: “Preventing fraud on our network and protecting trust in the UK’s digital economy is a huge priority. With fraud now accounting for 44% of all crime^[3], no single organisation can tackle it alone. We’re working closely with banks, government, law enforcement, and industry partners to stay ahead, evolving our capabilities as quickly as fraudsters change their tactics. What’s clear is that we need to innovate as well, scaling new solutions like this is crucial in making the UK one of the toughest places in the world for fraudsters to operate.”

Nick Gliddon, Business Director, VodafoneThree, said: “Banks sit at the frontline of the UK’s fight against fraud, and their role has never been more critical. Together, we’re leading the way by stepping up our work with banks to strengthen protections and accelerate new solutions. And we’re challenging partners across the sector to match that ambition by working with us to raise the bar and better protect customers at scale.”

Paul Davis, Head of Economic Crime, Barclays, said: “Protecting our customers’ money and data is our highest priority. With reports of APP scams originating via SMS increasing by around 40% in 2025 compared with 2024, it is essential that we continue to work together to stay ahead of new threats. By sharing intelligence across banks, telecoms providers and industry bodies, we can help stop suspicious messages before they reach customers, while ensuring our customers still receive genuine messages from us. VodafoneThree’s work is a strong example of how collective action can help tackle fraud at source and better protect consumers.”

Garry Lilburn, Operations Director, Cyber Defence Alliance, said: “At the CDA, we seek to bring our banking members, Telecommunication, Law Enforcement and Tech partners together to problem solve on cross-sector problems. This project, initiated at such a cross-sector meeting, with MEF, Vodafone Three and Barclays bank, is an excellent example of cross-sector collaboration. Working with MEF, collectively, we will scale this project and its success to protect a wider number of banking and telecom customers.”

Dario Betti, CEO, Mobile Ecosystem Forum, said: “For many years, MEF has been at the forefront of the fight against smishing, continuously evolving our strategy to keep pace with the changing tactics used by fraudsters. We are very pleased to have supported VodafoneThree in this successful initiative, which shows what can be achieved when industry partners work together in a practical and targeted way to tackle fraud. The results are significant, and we look forward to seeing this approach adopted more broadly across the industry.”

Chris Gray, CISO, The Co-operative Bank, said: “Our customers’ safety is our top priority. Alongside our Cyber Fraud Fusion Cell – where we bring together expertise to spot and stop scams fast – this initiative helps tackle fraud at source. By partnering across sectors to block fraudulent messages before they reach customers, together, we’re strengthening everyday banking security and keeping people’s money safe.”

George Hulland, Fraud Prevention Manager, TSB, said: “For too long, UK households have lost life-changing sums to cruel fraudsters posing as their bank, so this much-needed intervention with Vodafone should help cut scams off at source. Fraud can only be tackled with different businesses coming together, and this is a great example of cross-sector collaboration to protect consumers. Banks will never ask you for personal information, or to transfer money to them – so if you’re ever asked, hang up, it’s fraud.”

VodafoneThree urges customers and members of the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious messages or voice calls to our dedicated 7726 SPAM reporting link, either by clicking on the SPAM icon or forwarding to 7726 at no extra cost. This valuable intelligence is then shared with other mobile network providers and anti-scam organisations, helping to protect customers.

Keep up to date with the latest news with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news
TELUS and L-SPARK give Canadian startups access to AI supercomputer
Belden to acquire RUCKUS Networks for $1.85bn
VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy

The post VodafoneThree blocks over 2 million fraud attempts for banking sector appeared first on Total Telecom.

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News

The South Korean giant is betting heavily on both chip production and data centre growth

South Korean conglomerate SK Group has announced a massive 2,100 trillion won ($1.36 trillion) investment roadmap targeted at domestic semiconductor manufacturing and AI data centre deployments.

The strategic push focuses heavily on securing upstream supply chain dominance and scaling computing infrastructure to reposition South Korea on the global AI stage.

“We should not simply export AI products. We need to export intelligence itself while building a domestic market for AI-driven intelligence,” said SK Group’s chairman Chey Tae-won, as reported by Yonhap News Agency.. “To achieve that, we will rapidly build AI factories in the form of large-scale AI data centers.”

SK Hynix plots memory chip production expansion

The group’s semiconductor division, SK Hynix, is spearheading the hardware allocation by committing 1,100 trillion won ($706 billion) to scale production capacity for High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and next-generation DRAM and NAND flash components critical for AI workloads.

Key capital projects within the chip investment include:

• Cheongju: 100 trillion won ($65 billion) allocated for site expansion.
• Southwest Cluster: 400 trillion won ($261 billion) earmarked to construct an entirely new semiconductor production hub.
• Yongin Mega-Cluster: 600 trillion won ($392 billion USD) dedicated to fast-tracking the deployment of its primary semiconductor hub. The group has pulled forward the completion timeline for this project to 2033, moving it 12 years ahead of its original 2045 deadline.

The broader long-term vision outlines a sustained capital expenditure of approximately 100 trillion won ($65.3 billion) annually in South Korea over the next decade, according to Chairman Chey.

SK Telecom pivots to GPUaaS and regional infrastructure

In tandem, telecom unit SK Telecom will deploy 1,000 trillion won ($642 billion) to build out physical AI data centres. The operator intends to establish 15 GW of AI data centre capacity across South Korea by 2035, with an interim target of 5 GW operational by 2029.

The initial phase involves a 140 trillion won ($91.5 billion) investment targeting the southeastern Yeongnam region to create a localised AI hub. This rollout begins with a 100MW hyperscale AI data centre in Ulsan, scheduled to begin operations in Q4 2027. SKT plans to expand this site by an additional 900MW, alongside another 1GW deployment elsewhere in the region.

“The massive AI data centers could transform the region into a hub for the verification and expansion of manufacturing AI, when combined with the manufacturing capabilities in the region,” SK Telecom’s CEO Jung Jai-hun announced during a public briefing with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung last week.

SK Group’s multi-year investment plans arrive amid unprecedented infrastructure spend across the global technology landscape; US hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle, are forecast to spend a combined $600 billion to $750 billion USD in 2026 alone. While SK Group’s investments pale in comparison to these true giants, it nonetheless places the organisation firmly as a regional competitor.

For a telco, on the other hand, the scale of these AI investments is broadly unrivalled. SK Telecom has long signalled its intent to shake off its role as a traditional telco and embracing a new persona as an ‘AI factory’. Backed by architectural alignment with NVIDIA, the operator aims to leverage this massive footprint to position itself as a major GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) provider in the Asia-Pacific region.

SK Group has interntional AI ambitions too.  Last month, SK Telecom said it would invest 738 billion won ($480 million) into the newly formed ‘AI Co.’, a US-based subsidiary of memory giant SK Hynix created in January by repurposing its US flash memory firm Solidigm. The business, which is intended to operate as a strategic investment and ecosystem vehicle, is backd $10 billion from SK Hynix and a further $250 million and $380 million from SK Inc. and SK Innovation, respectively. 

By unifying upstream chip manufacturing via SK Hynix with mega-scale data center infrastructure from SK Telecom, SK Group is establishing a strong foundation for global AI development. This multi-trillion-won capital strategy effectively shifts the conglomerate from a regional component supplier into a high-margin, full-stack intelligence powerhouse capable of reshaping the Asia-Pacific tech landscape.

Keep up to date with the latest news with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news
TELUS and L-SPARK give Canadian startups access to AI supercomputer
Belden to acquire RUCKUS Networks for $1.85bn
VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy

The post SK Group to invest $1.36 trillion in AI chips and data centres appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Global internet connection benchmarking firm Ookla (Accenture), which operates the popular broadband Speedtest.net tool and Downdetector service (among other things), has decided to publish their own ranking of the last 32 countries participating in the FIFA World Cup 2026 – but it’s based on fixed broadband speeds rather than football.

The data, which is based on speed tests recorded across each country during May 2026, provides another way to compare the countries that reached football’s biggest stage. But how much you can really gleam from this that’s useful, when compared with a general country comparison, is likely to be a matter of some debate. So we’ll skip the usual context setting and get right to the results.

Overall, France recorded the fastest median average download speed (352.77Mbps) and median upload speed (276.67Mbps) among the 32 knockout-stage countries. At the other end of the table, Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) had the slowest downloads of 39.57Mbps and poor uploads of 15.15Mbps. Finally, England (United Kingdom) sits in the upper middle of the table with downloads of 181.59Mbps, uploads of 56.57Mbps and median latency times of 12ms (milliseconds).

Scotland isn’t included because Ookla has only considered the 32 knock-out stage countries and not the total of 48 from the initial group stages. Make of all this what you will (here).

32 Knock Out Stage FIFA World Cup 2026 Countries Ranked by Broadband Speed

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile and broadband operator VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) has today announced that a new collaboration with the banking sector has helped to block more than 2 million fraud attempts since August 2025. The trial is said to have resulted in a 25% increase in banking scam messages being blocked on the mobile giant’s UK network.

In short, the operator initially began working with Barclays, the Mobile Ecosystem Forum and the Cyber Defence Alliance on a new trial process (Proof of Concept), which was intended to help block fraudulent SMS (text) messages before they reached banking customers while ensuring legitimate bank communications still get through.

The new process saw the partners help to build bespoke rules into VodafoneThree’s existing SMS firewall. This intelligence can differentiate between fraudulent SMS content and legitimate communications from banks to their customers. The trial has since expanded to include The Co-operative Bank, now part of the Coventry Building Society, and TSB.

Recent malicious SMS messages focus on impersonating banks and asking customers to share their personal or financial information urgently via scam phone numbers or phishing links included in the messages.

Rachel Andrews, Director of Corporate Security and Fraud, VodafoneThree, said:

“Preventing fraud on our network and protecting trust in the UK’s digital economy is a huge priority. With fraud now accounting for 44% of all crime[3], no single organisation can tackle it alone. We’re working closely with banks, government, law enforcement, and industry partners to stay ahead, evolving our capabilities as quickly as fraudsters change their tactics. What’s clear is that we need to innovate as well, scaling new solutions like this is crucial in making the UK one of the toughest places in the world for fraudsters to operate.”

Customers and members of the public should always try to report any suspicious messages or voice calls to the industry’s dedicated 7726 SPAM reporting link, either by clicking on the SPAM icon or forwarding to 7726 at no extra cost. VodafoneThree’s existing scam prevention tools blocked 139+ million fraudulent SMS in 2025 alone.

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Contract-free UK mobile network operator VOXI, a brand of Vodafone (VodafoneThree), has today expanded their cheaper £10 VOXI For Now “social tariff”. Previously only available online via their website, the tariff will now also be offered as a physical SIM through local councils and housing teams, support charities, and prison resettlement programmes.

The tariff itself offers unlimited 5G or 4G data (mobile broadband), calls and texts for just £10 a month to anyone receiving benefits (not just the under 25s). But this only lasts for up to 6 months and after that they’ll switch you over to their standard £10 a month plan (20GB of data), where you’ll still have access to “Endless” Social Media as well as “Endless” calls, texts and the flexibility to change, pause, or cancel at any time.

Vodafone’s charity partner, the Good Things Foundation, will also distribute the SIMs through a selection of its community hubs as part of a new pilot.

Nicki Lyons, Chief Corporate Affairs & Sustainability Officer, VodafoneThree, said:

“Social tariffs play a vital role in ensuring that everyone can access the opportunities that connectivity enables, but too many people either don’t know they exist or face barriers to accessing them. By making VOXI For Now available through trusted local partners as a physical SIM, we’re bringing affordable connectivity directly into communities – helping people get online quickly and simply when they need to.”

Minister for Digital Economy, Liz Lloyd, said:

“Being connected is crucial for finding work, accessing essential services, and staying in touch with family and friends. That’s why efforts like VOXI’s expansion of its social tariff are so important. Making affordable connectivity easier to access helps break down barriers and ensure more people can get connected when it matters most.”

To get VOXI For Now, you need to be receiving one of the following government benefits: Jobseeker’s allowance, Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Disability allowance, Personal independence payment or Pension Credit (‘Verification Evidence’).

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Last night’s FIFA World Cup 2026 last-16 match between England and Mexico, which saw us walk away with the win after 3 goals (Mexico scored 2), caused an abnormal increase in broadband and mobile traffic across the small hours of the morning as many people stayed awake to watch the event.

The high-stakes match at the Estadio Azteca (stadium) was originally scheduled to kick off at 1am this morning, but ended up being delayed by an hour due to severe thunderstorms and lightning in the Mexico City area. Matches that take place outside of normal working hours don’t usually tend to move the fixed broadband traffic dials all that much because people usually tune-in via traditional TV signals.

On the other hand. The 2am to 4am time window is a particularly unusual one for a match like this because it’s a time when we’d normally expect internet traffic to be in a fairly smooth free fall toward its lowest point of the day at around 5am. After that, traffic levels usually start to pick up as people gradually begin waking up for work and the usual daily routine.

Data from the London Internet Exchange (LINX), which handles a large chunk of UK and global traffic through their switches via around 900+ members (ISPs, mobile and CDN providers etc.), showed that the small hours of Monday morning still had a decline towards the usual daily low. But it’s also clear that traffic was quite a bit above normal for the 2am to 4am window and even showed some notable peaks. You can see how this morning compared with prior days below.

LINX Traffic Between 3rd July to 6th July 2026 (9am)

Take note that internet providers use sophisticated Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and systems to help manage load from events like this, which caches popular content closer in their network to end-users (i.e. improves performance without adding much strain to external links). But the levels seen this morning, against a background of generally low network load, probably wouldn’t have caused any providers much concern.

At present we only have data from LINX, but we’re hoping to get some additional reports from various broadband and mobile providers this week and will add their feedback below. But in general, given the time period, the biggest impacts for fixed broadband usually come from streaming platforms like ITVX, while mobile traffic is generally boosted via social media engagement (most mobile devices will be connecting via WiFi at home, so will also harness fixed broadband).

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A new study of 2,000 UK adults, which was conducted in May 2026 by UK ISP CommunityFibre, has claimed that more than half of Londoners (51%) are currently tied into a contract or subscription they believe is too expensive, while one in five say their broadband “costs more than they would like“.

The survey goes on to highlight how, among those unhappy with their broadband, 17% said the service or quality was not as good as promised and 11% cite poor customer service as a key reason for dissatisfaction. Despite this, some 33% say they are put off switching “because it feels like too much hassle“. The new One Touch Switching (OTS) system has made this a lot easier, so such views may now be out of date with reality.

The research also found that 62% of Londoners are unsure exactly how much they spend on contracts and subscriptions each month, while 25% are actively looking for cheaper alternatives. Finally, some 54% would prefer to combine services such as broadband, mobile and TV if it helped them save money, while 29% are currently looking for a cheaper broadband deal and one in five are seeking a better mobile phone contract.

Peter Rampling, CCO at Community Fibre, said:

“It’s obvious that people want the best value, service and transparency from their broadband provider. Yet many don’t realise they have a choice beyond the traditional national providers.

Broadband Independents’ Day is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on providers like Community Fibre, delivering exceptional service and value to households and businesses in the capital.

At Community Fibre, we’re proud to offer London’s fastest and best full fibre broadband network and we strive to make it as affordable as possible, to keep London online.”

Naturally CommunityFibre, which is one of the City’s cheaper but also fastest broadband providers (speeds up to 5Gbps), has a vested interest in this survey and so its results should be taken with a pinch of salt. The survey is also unclear on what portion of all those it questioned actually lived in London (it merely defines them as being “UK adults“), which would tend to suggest that the London side of the sample could be fairly small (the smaller the sample, the less reliable it is)

On the issue of “overpaying,” it’s important to remember that price alone isn’t the only deciding factor and consumers also tend to consider other aspects, such as service and support quality or value-added extras (some features may not be found on rivals). Not to mention that if your current provider has continued to deliver a good service and the features you want, then you’re less likely to consider switching.

Lest we forget that customers of bigger providers may alternatively try haggling for a lower price, or could have even been offered a lower price automatically, to stay with their existing ISP (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill). But your mileage from haggling may vary and not all providers do it.

Take note that end-of-contract notifications system arguably makes existing customers much more likely to try haggling, rather than switch, unless they’re unhappy with their ISP’s performance. Finally, those on state benefits (Universal Credit etc.) often also have the option of taking a cheaper Social Tariff – see our Quick Guide to UK Social Tariffs, which tend to start as low as £12-£15 per month (CommunityFibre has one of the cheapest tariffs in the market).