Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Broadband Forum, which is an industry-driven global standards development organisation, has begun a new industry-led initiative that aims to equip internet providers with “high-level guidance and a holistic vision” of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be implemented into their networks.

The ‘AI in Broadband Networks‘ project, which initially and perhaps unusually seems to be entirely backed by Chinese companies (CAICT, China Mobile, China Unicom, Huawei, and ZTE Corporation), intends to outline a framework for internet providers to better develop their services-led broadband networks to align with AI trends, as well as to identify real use cases and gaps.

The work will detail how the likes of AI agents, such as metahuman for “intelligent user support“, can be deployed in broadband networks and enable natural human-computer interactions. It will also advise how the network can support the quality requirements of AI enabled intelligent applications, such as AI training/inferencing.

The report will also discuss how to leverage AI for autonomous networks, including identifying and addressing network faults, predictive maintenance, and energy consumption tuning. The goal is to help ISPs offer intelligent solutions for improved network performance, reliability, and efficiency. Equipment manufacturers will also be provided with guidance on how to incorporate AI into their products.

Hai Ding, Fixed Access Network and Home Networking Expert at China Unicom, said:

“In the long-term, by embracing AI-driven approaches, BSPs can enjoy savings, see a faster time to new revenue, and deliver new applications and services to their customers. The new project aims to offer a strategic insight and provide guidance on the additional value that AI for broadband networks can create for the service provider.”

We’re not sure how this will go down with western operators and governments, many of which seem to be increasingly sceptical of any Chinese involvement in fixed and mobile broadband networks, although hopefully we’ll see more input or leadership from western network operators in this field as the project progresses.

The first phase of the project is set to be finalised by Spring 2026.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Telecoms giant Vodafone have today confirmed that the long-running 2Africa project, which has spent the past 6 years building a 45,000km long subsea (submarine) fibre optic cable between the United Kingdom and most of coastal Africa, has completed the core part of its cable system.

The new cable network has landings in 33 countries – including one in England at a site in Bude (Cornwall) – and should help to support faster broadband speeds, boosting mobile network capacity and better international internet connectivity. On the West segment – from the UK to South Africa – the cable supports 168Tbps (Terabits per second) of data capacity. In the Mediterranean, shorter distances allow speeds of over 180Tbps.

The new cable broadly doubles the internet capacity available to the African continent. Over 35 offshore vessels and extensive local operations were mobilised to lay the cable, with specialist equipment deployed to ensure safe and resilient installation. Cable burial depth was also increased by 50%, reducing the risk of accidental cuts. 2Africa was also carefully routed to avoid seabed hazards like hot brine pools and the fierce currents in the Congo Canyon.

“2Africa took nearly six years to build and required constant adaptation to dynamic regulatory landscapes. The project’s success depended on strong partnerships and close collaboration with regulators and policymakers across many countries. Their support was essential in navigating requirements, overcoming challenges, and keeping the project on track,” said Vodafone’s statement.

The leap in capacity is expected to contribute up to US$36.9 billion to Africa’s GDP within the first two to three years of operation, boosting job creation, entrepreneurship, and innovation hubs across the continent.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

TechUK, which represents many of the UK’s key technology firms, has today drawn on 23 indicators from across the economy, connectivity, and skills to paint a regional and national picture of the tech ecosystem via their 2025 Local Digital Index. But the report also calls on the government to “fast-track” completion of its broadband and mobile projects to tackle slow spots, ideally alongside relief from business rates.

The new index shows that while the UK tech sector continues to outperform most of the economy – now contributing £101bn in Gross Value Added (GVA) and employing 1.7 million people – growth remains uneven. The index highlights some dramatic progress since 2020, such as in terms of the gigabit broadband roll-out, but it also identifies that growth and investment remain “too heavily concentrated” in London, Oxford, and Cambridge.

Overall growth for the digital sector has a forecast of 8.9%, which is above the general UK average. However, the projected rate has decreased slightly since last year’s index (10%). The report also warns that, despite the improvements in digital infrastructure, “too many communities and business parks still face slow or unreliable connectivity“.

In response, techUK has “urged” the UK Government to treat business connectivity as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and to start “fast-tracking” the completion of their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out and the industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) for boosting 4G mobile coverage, while expanding coverage measurements to include commercial sites, not just homes (Ofcom’s reports often focus on residential properties).

Matthew Evans, Director of Markets and COO at techUK, said:

“Our Index shows that there is incredible innovation happening across the whole of the UK. However, only some of the regions are reaping the benefits. We must ensure the benefits of innovation reach every region and community. If we invest now in infrastructure, capital, and skills, we can build a digital economy that delivers growth and prosperity everywhere.”

In fairness, both Project Gigabit and the SRN have so far met their initial targets, although Project Gigabit did recently delay its coverage target (99% of UK premises) from 2030 to 2032 (here). Suffice to say, the notion of “fast-tracking” may not be very realistic; much of this is down to the network operators and their ability to deliver in some very challenging areas, although there’s still some scope for the government to remove red tape (planning / road permissions and MDU access etc.).

Overall, the new report makes three key recommendations for action, and the ones for digital infrastructure are particularly interesting.

The Three Priority Areas for Action

• Catalyse investment beyond the Golden Triangle:

Investment remains at the heart of innovation; yet capital, both public and private, is still clustered in the South East.

techUK calls for a deliberate effort to channel investment into high-potential regional ecosystems, ensuring that scale-ups from across the UK can access the finance they need to grow. This includes expanding regional investment funds, aligning Innovate UK and the British Business Bank to support early-stage innovation pipelines, and establishing a Digital Technologies Office for Investment to showcase UK strengths to global investors.

• Accelerate digital infrastructure for business connectivity:

The UK’s digital infrastructure has strengthened significantly since 2020, yet too many communities and business parks still face slow or unreliable connectivity. techUK urges Government to treat business connectivity as critical national infrastructure, fast-tracking the completion of Project Gigabit and the Shared Rural Network while expanding coverage measurement to include commercial sites, not just homes.

 

To incentivise deployment, techUK proposes “targeted business rates relief for next-generation fibre and 5G standalone networks“, alongside support for alternative technologies such as satellite to close the rural gap.

• Align skills supply and demand to drive regional growth:

The UK produces exceptional digital talent, but the Index shows growing disparities between where people train and where they find work. Some regions risk becoming “training grounds” for talent that relocates elsewhere.

 

techUK calls for a more flexible, regionally empowered approach to digital skills. Reforming the Growth and Skills Levy would allow employers to fund short, modular training aligned with emerging technologies such as AI, semiconductors, and cyber security. Local and devolved authorities should also be empowered to reinvest levy underspends into digital inclusion and community-based upskilling.

 

Universities, meanwhile, should act as anchor institutions for digital adoption, helping local SMEs modernise management practices and embed digital tools across supply chains.

Regular readers will know that the Government has recently been facing heavy criticism from network operators, particularly bigger players like BT and Virgin Media (here and here), over their plans to reform business rates; this may actually increase the tax on broadband operators and at a time when they’re trying to invest in the deployment of new networks.

However, so far, there’s been no indication that the government might consider “targeted business rates relief” for fibre and 5G networks. Failing to address this may thus risk causing a slowdown or even abandonment of some deployment plans, at least that’s what Openreach have been warning (here).

The prospects are better for the government to introduce greater support for alternative rural broadband technologies in rural areas, which could perhaps take the form of a new voucher scheme. The new agreement between BT (EE) and Starlink also looks set to target this area next year (here), although we’re still of the view that foreign owned satellite networks should be considered a stop gap solution, with fibre in the ground remaining the ultimate goal.

The difficulty for the government is that they’re extremely strapped for cash, due to the level of debt and related repayments that has accumulated in recent years. The flexibility may not exist to do everything the industry might want.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Good news for residents of the remote Falkland Islands, which are a British Overseas Territory off the South American coast. After a long and complex battle, SpaceX’s ultrafast Starlink broadband service has recently gone live and its final pricing appears to closely mirror the standard packages that are available to UK consumers.

The Starlink constellation currently has around 9,000 satellites in orbit (c.5,500 are GEN2) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km (Low Earth Orbit). Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for many areas) on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers) directly from Starlink, which promises UK latency times of 26-33ms, downloads of 116-277Mbps and uploads of 17-32Mbps. Cheaper, albeit more restrictive (data capped), options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £50 per month for 50 GigaBytes of data).

The situation in the Falkland Islands is, however, a little bit different due to the history of local satellite connectivity – the main means of local communication and one that was previously dominated by a slow and expensive solution from Sure (Sure Falklands Islands). But we’d suggest reading the prior article for a history lesson on that and the battle to overturn it (here).

Consumers on the Falkland Islands can now legally sign-up to Starlink and the Standard no-contract Residential package will set you back 75 FKP per month (1FKP is almost identical to £1), plus 300 FKP for the hardware (terminal, router etc.) – or 160 FKP for the Mini kit –  and 20 FKP for shipping (postage). In addition, customers will also need to secure a VSAT licence from the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) – get one here – and provide the related code to Starlink (this costs £180 per year).

Some hidden data selectors on Starlink’s Coverage Map also allow you to see what kind of performance the network can currently deliver across the Falklands. The data suggests that download speeds of between 208-358Mbps, uploads of between 29-45Mbps and latency times of 37-42ms (milliseconds) should be possible. But officially, Starlink’s advertised speeds propose downloads of 135-305Mbps and uploads of 20-40Mbps.

Credits to one of our readers (Danny) for spotting the update on the Open Falklands blog.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The NordVPN service, which is a familiar Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider, has today announced that they’ve expanded the availability of their Call Protection feature (formerly known as scam call protection) – initially only available across the USA – to also cover Android users in the United Kingdom and Canada. Support for iPhone users is coming soon.

The rebranding to “Call Protection” is said to reflect the provider’s focus on moving beyond scam detection and including more detailed caller identification as part of the service. In short, the feature gives an early warning, notifying the recipient of a potential scam attempt before they can pick up the phone. NordVPN does this by examining “call patterns and metadata to spot potential scams“, without touching your actual conversations.

The feature also runs quietly in the background without needing an active VPN connection. Customers of the NordVPN service in the UK need only open their Android app, navigate to the “Threat Protection” tab, and toggle the feature on. The app will then guide them through updating the necessary Android settings.

In addition, NordVPN are planning to introduce a “user reporting system” in the future, which will let people flag suspicious numbers, helping to strengthen the scam database for everyone.

Domininkas Virbickas, Product Director at NordVPN, said:

“Scam calls are a global problem that requires a global solution. By expanding call protection to the UK and Canada, we’re taking another step toward our goal of making phone communication safer and more transparent for users worldwide. We want to give people the context they need to make informed decisions about every call.”

Admittedly, while such features are always welcome, it’s worth pointing out that many modern Android Smartphones already work with UK mobile operators to provide a user reporting system and most mobile operators have already adopted sophisticated network-level scam call and spam detection systems (these often block such calls before they even reach you).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has revealed that they’ve recently boosted 4G and 5G based mobile (mobile broadband) coverage across 590 miles of road in the UK (i.e. major motorways and A roads, including the M1, M4, M6, M8 and M25). The move aims to improve network reliability and help drivers with navigation, charging apps and calls to breakdown services etc.

As part of the network optimisation work, many routes have received upgrades including a 4G boost for 311 sites and 338 brand-new 5G builds, “significantly enhancing network performance and reliability for road users“. Further improvements are also being planned for the A14 (Rugby–Ipswich), the M20 (London–Folkestone) and the A75 (Gretna–Stranraer).

At the same time, the Liberty Global-backed EV charge point operator, Believ, is installing up to 30,000 new public charging points nationwide to expand its charging footprint, including in areas where O2 has recently boosted mobile coverage.

In addition, VMO2 recently commission Strand Partners to conduct a nationally representative online survey of 1,000 people, including a sub-sample of 298 EV drivers between 29/08/2025 – 01/09/2025. This revealed that 76% of EV drivers worry about losing mobile connectivity, which can also make it difficult to access charging apps (you can usually charge without these, but some services adopt a subscription).

Jeanie York, Chief Technology Officer at VMO2, said:

“Connectivity underpins a huge part of the driving experience today, but particularly for EVs. By optimising coverage on more than 40 motorways and A roads as part of our £700 million investment in our Mobile Transformation Plan, we’re helping make every journey safer and more reliable. Alongside Believ’s new charging points, this is about removing barriers so more people can make the switch to electric with confidence.”

The upgrades form part of VMO2’s wider £700m Mobile Transformation Plan, which is expanding 4G and 5G coverage, rolling out Small Cells in dense urban areas, and tackling persistent network pain points along railways, airports, stadiums and now main roads.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

Microsoft has unveiled Project Gecko, a research-driven initiative aimed at producing cheaper, localised generative AI systems for populations under‑represented in current models , starting with smallholder farmers in Kenya and India.

The project, led by Microsoft Research with contributions from Microsoft Research Africa in Nairobi, Microsoft Research India, the Microsoft Research Accelerator in the US and partners including agri‑tech NGO Digital Green, seeks to tackle the language, cultural and infrastructure barriers that limit AI uptake in low‑resource settings.

At the centre of the effort is the MultiModal Critical Thinking Agent (MMCTAgent), a multimodal system that ingests speech, images, and video to produce context‑rich, locally grounded answers. Microsoft says MMCTAgent can break complex queries into sub‑questions, verify its own outputs, and anchor responses in community‑generated practice captured in videos and transcripts.

The system is available on Azure AI Foundry Labs and its code has been published on GitHub.

Agriculture is Project Gecko’s first focus because of its economic weight in countries such as Kenya and India, where millions of smallholders work plots of under five acres. Microsoft and partners argue that existing AI tools often fail farmers because models are trained predominantly on English data, do not handle local dialects, and do not reflect region‑specific agronomic terms or practices. Farmers commonly rely on oral instruction and video demonstrations, both of which are channels that conventional text‑centric models struggle to exploit.

Project Gecko builds on Digital Green’s FarmerChat platform, which already serves millions of farmers and holds more than 10,000 agricultural videos in over 40 languages and dialects. Microsoft says Project Gecko enables a farmer in Nyeri County, for example, to ask a question verbally in Kikuyu and receive a text, audio, or video response, including a jump to the precise timestamp in a training clip. Field studies in Kenya and India reportedly show improved accuracy, usability and trust compared with generic AI systems.

A key technical strand of the work is creating speech infrastructure for under‑served languages. The team has collected roughly 3,000 hours of crowd‑sourced Kenyan speech and expanded support to Swahili, Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Dholuo, Maa, and Somali. To run on the low‑cost devices typical in rural areas, the project uses small language models (SLMs) and is preparing a public leaderboard to benchmark African language performance.

Microsoft plans to broaden Project Gecko beyond agriculture into healthcare, education, and retail, and will publish a multilingual playbook for developers.

While major challenges still remain for the project, including limited connectivity for the target consumers and sparse datasets for many languages, Project Gecko represents a significant attempt to bridge the rapidly growing digital divide.

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

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

New research from Broadband Genie, which recently interviewed 3,997 broadband bill payers over a 4-month period, claims to have identified the “worst” ten locations in the UK for “broadband overspend” (i.e. where consumers are out of contract and thus paying more than if they were to switch ISP for a better deal). Wolverhampton tops the table with an overspend of £292.56.

The study compares the average spend in each area with the hypothetical savings customers could make over a 12-month period. On average, broadband customers overspend £183.60 and over the Black Friday period, this can top £230. Annually, this is claimed to equate to £2 billion a year. Across the UK, some 8.8 million customers are estimated by the study to be out of contract and thus free to switch to something cheaper.

The somewhat anecdotal results found that Wolverhampton bill payers overspend the most for broadband than any other area in the UK (£292.56), although the differences between the listed locations were overall found to be fairly small (possibly reflecting some differences in network and ISP availability).

Top 10 cities which overpay the most on broadband

As usual, we feel it’s important to take opinion surveys like this with a fairly big pinch of salt, since they often reflect highly subjective analysis that doesn’t consider the wider context for each consumer decision. How we all value our broadband package and ISP tends to differ, and many of us value quality and support over getting the cheapest price. Likewise, not all ISPs play the post-contract price hikes game.

Suffice to say that how each of us chooses to value the service we receive is different and can’t always be whittled down to an assumption of “overspend” vs the cheapest available deal from another provider. On the other hand, it’s always wise to keep your options open and do a bit of research to identify comparable providers and packages that might suit.

The alternative avenue, which tends to be more viable with the largest providers, is to try haggling for a better deal – see our Retentions Tips article for some help on that. The above survey doesn’t seem to have considered whether those they questioned had already secured a better deal with their existing ISP.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Ofcom has today released their Connection Nations 2025 digital infrastructure report earlier than usual, which reveals that residential gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks now cover 87% of the UK (up from 84% in 2024), while outdoor 5G coverage from at least one mobile operator is available to 97% of premises (up from 95%). But rural cover remains weaker.

The latest CN2025 report typically offers a general overview of fixed line broadband and mobile network availability, as well as related service take-up and data usage from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is largely based off data that was gathered during July 2025 (varying between the results).

Before we begin, it’s important to note how Ofcom defines the different broadband performance classes. For example, “Decent Broadband” means a 10Mbps+ download speed with 1Mbps+ uploads (i.e. the Universal Service Obligation), while “Superfast” is 30Mbps+, “Gigabit” equates to 1Gbps+ (1000Mbps+) and “Full Fibre” essentially means a pure Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/B) network (these are also gigabit capable).

As usual, we’ve split our summary of the key results from this report into categories for fixed line broadband and mobile networks.

Fixed Line Broadband Coverage

The rapid deployment of “full fibre” broadband networks by various providers continues to be the main area of growth and change during 2025 (Summary of UK Full Fibre Build Progress), which predominantly reflects the efforts of commercial investment in urban areas. But that is starting to change due to the Government’s £5bn state aid funded Project Gigabit programme.

The project, which aims to make gigabit speeds available “nationwide” (c.99%) by 2032, is starting to convert contract awards into tangible build activity across various rural areas. Admittedly, its impact is still small to modest, but it’s growing and the focus on rural connectivity is helping to lift some of the figures in this report. Upgrades via Project Gigabit can also lead to additional commercial coverage in nearby areas.

Overall, the picture today is that “full fibre” network coverage has risen from 10% of the UK in 2019 (3 million premises), then 18% (5.1m) in 2020, 28% (8.2m) in 2021, 42% (12.4m) in 2022, 57% (17.1m) in 2023, 69% (20.7m) in 2024 and now stands at 78% (23.7m) for 2025. As for “gigabit” coverage, which is driven by both FTTP and Virgin Media’s HFC network (there’s a lot of urban overbuild between these two), that has grown from 84% (25m) last year to 87% now (26.4m).

Elsewhere, “superfast” coverage has risen to 29.7m premises or 98% (up from 29.4m last year), which falls to 91% in rural areas (up from 89%). But the number of premises that cannot get a “decent broadband” service is 44,000 premises (down from 58,000 last year). But this includes 4G and fixed wireless coverage into the figure too, which reaches 1% (340,000 premises) when you only look at fixed lines (down from 385,000 in 2024).

Sadly, many of those that remain in sub-10Mbps areas are often too expensive for even the USO to fix (here and here), but this gap continues to fall. Ofcom predicts that the number of premises unable to get 10Mbps (decent) broadband could fall to around 36,000 by the end of 2026, mostly as a result of upgrades via publicly funded schemes (connection vouchers, project gigabit contracts etc.).

Ofcom also provides some useful data on the rural vs urban coverage split for superfast, decent broadband, full fibre and gigabit lines below – split by region.

In terms of take-up, some 42% or 10.6 million premises have now taken up a “full fibre” network (up from 35% and 7.5m last year). But it’s also noted that 56% of premises in rural areas have taken full fibre (up from 52%), compared to 40% in urban area (up from 32%). The take-up of services on gigabit-capable networks, where they are available, is now at 56% (up from 49%). Over time, the gigabit and full fibre figures should align, once Virgin Media fully migrates from coax to FTTP.

Breaking news.. more to follow..

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Network operator CityFibre appears to be getting close to completing the integration of Connexin’s 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband infrastructure, which is present across parts of East Yorkshire (Hull etc.), Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire (England), into their national UK network.

In case anybody has forgotten. CityFibre announced the acquisition of Connexin’s broadband network back in March 2025 (here). The deal included Connexin’s built network assets of more than 80,000 premises passed, as well as work-in-progress to a further 20,000 premises and options to extend further throughout Hull over time. PATRIZIA’s European Infrastructure Fund II also became a minority shareholder in CityFibre.

The acquisition also saw CityFibre take on responsibility for Connexin’s £58.6m (public subsidy) Project Gigabit contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10), which has been stuck in a state of limbo since the agreement but originally aimed to cover 34,320 hard to reach premises (this will also make it possible to reach over 50,000 non-subsidised premises in the target regions).

Overall, CityFibre expected the deal to eventually enable a total expansion of their existing FTTP footprint by “up to” 185,000 premises, while the associated retail customer base would remain controlled by Connexin as a now independent retail ISP. At the time CityFibre said they expected to complete the integration of Connexin’s network “later this year“.

The latest development, as spotted by Thinkbroadband, is that Connexin’s main footprint in Hull is now starting to come up via CityFibre’s availability checker, which suggests that the network integration work is starting to make some real progress. But at present Connexin is the only ISP on CityFibre’s wholesale-only network able to serve this; it’s unclear if this is related to a degree of time-limited wholesale exclusivity (they’ve done that before) or just the fact that other ISPs haven’t had a chance to expand into it yet.

However, some testing reveals that not all of Connexin’s network patch has been integrated yet, since we saw positive results for tests with the HU5 2JN postcode area and others, but negative ones when testing a few like HU7 5DF and HU8 9PD (those two do come up as positive via Connexin’s website, but not CityFibre’s checker). Clearly there’s still some work left to do.

Take note that we didn’t check the status of Connexin’s other FTTP builds in Tickton, Leven, Brandesburton, North Frodingham and Beeford. We have asked CityFibre if they could provide a progress update on their network integration work and will hopefully be able to share their response later today.