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Internet service provider WightFibre, which is deploying a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband network across the Isle of Wight – just off the South Coast of Hampshire (England), have begun informing existing customers of their full fibre packages that they’ll now have to pay a monthly fee to keep their “free” phone line service.

Just to recap. Until recently WightFibre had been bundling a “free” fibre-based phone line service with any of their full-fibre broadband packages and also with flexible plans for international calls, anytime calls or evening and weekends. But other customers would have typically paid £6.25 per month for this service, which also includes features like voicemail, call forwarding, rejection, caller ID and more.

However, existing customers of the service have informed ISPreview that WightFibre has emailed them to say, starting in December 2025, they will be ending the free service and instead “introducing a small £2 monthly charge for your telephone line.” In fairness, that’s still incredibly cheap for such a service, particularly given how others can charge several times that amount for the same sort of product.

The provider states that this is because “our costs in providing this service have risen significantly over the last 5 years“. Existing customers who make use of this service will thus find that WightFibre adds an automatic £2 charge for the phone line service to their bills from 1st December 2025.

Customers who no longer wish to use the service can instead request its removal by responding to the provider’s email, but they must do so before 23rd November 2025. But naturally WightFibre adds that “removing your telephone line means you’ll lose your home phone number and you won’t be able to reclaim it later if you decide to add a line again“.

“We understand that price changes aren’t ideal, and we’re committed to keeping costs fair while continuing to improve your service. If you have any questions or would like help deciding what’s best for you, feel free to call us on 01983 24 24 24 – we’re happy to help. Thank you for being a valued WightFibre customer,” concluded the email.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Bad weather means customers of broadband and mobile providers Vodafone, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk on Shetland, which is a remote UK subarctic archipelago that resides north of the Scottish mainland, will have to wait until Tuesday until repair ship Cable Vigilance can complete its fix of the recently broken SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) subsea cable.

The SHEFA-2 cable reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes north up to the Faroe Islands and another that runs south to connect Orkney and the Scottish Mainland. The damage, which occurred on 3rd October 2025 during Storm Amy (here), came only a few short months after a fishing vessel struck the same cable (here and here). But this time the cable was broken around 1.5km off the coast of Orkney on a “section that has previously experienced problems caused by natural forces (tides/current).”

Such breaks typically take a few weeks to fully repair, depending upon the weather, damage, location and availability of repair ships. The last break was repaired within less than two weeks, but this one was expected to take a little longer because the damage is in shallow water – close to shore – and required a new cable landing at the Ayre of Cara (Orkney).

According to Shetland Telecom, which alongside BT has not been impacted by the damaged subsea fibre (they both have better redundancy), “most of the preparatory work is now complete and the vessel is standing by to begin the main repair once weather conditions allow“. The main repair operation is now expected to take place during early Tuesday, “when sea conditions are expected to improve“.

Depending on weather and sea conditions, full restoration of the cable connection is now expected by Tuesday evening (it was previously due for completion yesterday).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Broadband, technology and telecoms operator JT (Jersey Telecom), which is owned by The States of Jersey and headquartered in St Helier, has expanded its reach from the English Channel Islands to include the Isle of Man after they partnered with CVC DIF (CVC Capital Partners) to acquire the Manx Telecom Group.

Manx Telecom is of course the primary telecoms network for premises across the remote Isle of Man, which is a British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. Suffice to say that JT’s deal will see them deliver a combined group that serves customers in Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and across the globe – creating the largest full-service telecoms provider across the Crown Dependencies.

Details of the agreement remain unclear, although JT has vaguely expressed that they hold a “shared commitment to continue investing in resilient and secure, next-generation digital networks, including 5G, fibre, IoT platforms, and managed services to support customers’ use of those networks“.

The partnership with CVC DIF is also expected top “bring additional capital and sector expertise” to support the long-term growth of the partnership, although once again there were no specifics in the announcement.

Daragh McDermott, CEO of JT Group, said:

“Alongside our strategic partner in CVC DIF, this marks a major step forward for JT and Manx Telecom. With the deep sector expertise, we’re building a powerful platform for innovation and investment – one that is rooted in supporting our local economies and communities and built to compete and grow globally.

The JT and Manx Telecom teams share similar values and ambition, making the acquisition a perfect fit, and allowing us to accelerate our plans to secure further scale and growth of IoT and managed service lines of business, whilst continuing to serve our existing markets, with the same dedication and care that has become our hallmark.”

Tom Goossens, Partner and Co-Head of the DIF Infrastructure fund strategy at CVC DIF, said:

“Our investment in Manx Telecom Group reflects our conviction in the long-term value of resilient, locally rooted digital infrastructure. As the Isle of Man’s incumbent operator, Manx Telecom Group offers a strong platform for innovation and growth, and we are excited to support its next phase of development.

The partnership with JT Group further builds on this foundation, enabling us to scale operational capabilities across the Crown Dependencies and beyond. Together, we aim to accelerate investment in next-generation networks and deliver enhanced connectivity and enterprise services to customers.”

Apparently, customers across the Crown Dependencies can now “look forward to broader service options” (again, no details or examples were provided), although it’s worth noting that both operators were already busy investing in FTTP and 5G mobile deployments before the agreement was signed.

The deal also makes no mention of whether or not JT will retain the Manx branding or eventually bring everything under one roof, but for now most of the changes are likely to be more internal.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Hundreds of customers on Netomnia’s (Substantial Group) alternative broadband network in the Bristol (South West England) area, which has now covered 2.8 million UK premises RFS (inc. 400,000 customers) with their full fibre (FTTP) lines, are suffering connectivity problems after Openreach “took down one of our main cables” yesterday afternoon.

According to a brief service status update, which was posted to the website of their main ISP, YouFibre: “We are currently experiencing issues in the Filton area. If you are in the area and you are experiencing issues, please rest assured that we are already working hard to resolve the issues. Thank you for your patience.”

Filton is a town about 6 miles north of Bristol on one of Netomnia’s main fibre links into the city. Details of the outage remain unclear, although Netomnia’s CEO, Jeremy Chelot, this morning stated via X that Openreach’s engineers were to blame: “Sorry Bristol, Openreach took down one of our main cables yesterday evening! We have c.500 customers impacted!”

The latest update a few minutes ago indicates that the number of customers still offline is around 200-300. ISPreview understands that the accident occurred at around 5pm yesterday, while Openreach’s engineers were working to pull a new sub duct, albeit breaking Netomnia’s duct/cable at the same time. Repairs to main fibre links can be complex and time-consuming, although Netomnia hope to have it fixed by tonight.

Sadly, such accidents, while rare, do occasionally occur when network operators need to work in close proximity to each other’s infrastructure (Netomnia runs a lot of their fibre via Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles). Thankfully, this outage only impacts part of Netomnia’s network in the Bristol area. The operator has invested £47.7m to deploy their fibre across 159,000 premises in the area.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Scottish Government put out a brief notice this week to say that their “upgraded address checker … is now live” for broadband coverage, which apparently “now includes more detailed info on access and our delivery programmes“, albeit seemingly without providing any further specifics to better explain what’s changed.

The checker itself can be found here – https://broadbandchecker.service.gov.scot – and to our eyes the output is still fairly basic. In particular, we note that if your area hasn’t yet been reached by a gigabit-capable broadband service, but it is PLANNED to be covered, then the checker still doesn’t provide any indication of when that roll-out is expected to take place.

Scotland currently has two major gigabit-broadband focused roll-out programmes. Firstly, there’s the R100 £697m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT), which aims to expand full fibre (FTTP) coverage to a further 113,000 hard to reach premises by March 2028 (here). After that there are also several recent Project Gigabit contracts with GoFibre and Openreach, which should reach another 139,00 premises (combined) over the next few years with a UK public investment of around £288m (here, here and here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The United Kingdom isn’t exactly short on consumer ISP options right now, but Glasgow-based Fibeo has revealed to ISPreview that they’re currently planning to join the club sometime in “early” 2026 – powered by the Dotlines Catena Cloud platform and the PXC (formerly TalkTalk Wholesale) broadband network.

At present the internet provider’s official website is just a blank holding page, although they’re promising no hidden costs and to “[put] people first with simple, reliable connections and support that’s responsive, personal and built around the customer“.

Every broadband package will also include the Audra Safe wireless router (the same one Carnival Internet UK use – here), designed to give households greater control over their internet use. With built-in security features, parental controls, and device management through an easy-to-use app. An optional VPN product to enhance online privacy and security will also be made available.

Caelan Grant, Founder & MD of Fibeo, said:

“The UK broadband market has been dominated for too long by the same names, the same problems, and the same poor customer experience. Fibeo is here to disrupt that. Our focus is fast, fair broadband with clear pricing and customer support that actually works for households.”

The company added that they’re working with other trusted partners, including The Kenton Group for hardware distribution and GoCardless for payment processing. The goal is to ensure their network is reliable, scalable and future-proof from day one.

“Fibeo exists to fix what the big providers broke. No hidden costs. No endless call queues. No passing the buck. Just reliable broadband, clear answers, and a team that genuinely cares,” said the announcement. We’ve heard claims like this before, and the proof will always be in the pudding.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

As expected, Ofcom has today confirmed that they will make part of the 1900MHz radio spectrum band (1900-1920MHz), which had previously gone unused by mobile operators, available for use by both the UK’s rail network (5G / data services) and to extend coverage for the 4G Emergency Services Network (ESN).

Mobile operators do in fact make use of the 1900MHz band, just not the 20MHz slice of unpaired spectrum in question (i.e. they lacked an ecosystem for deploying higher-power services). In addition, the need for a guard band against paired spectrum (reducing an already limited pot of spectrum) and the limited bandwidth it offers were also seen as discouraging factors.

Suffice to say that, in March 2024, Ofcom ended up revoking existing licensees’ access to the band with 5 years’ notice, thereby enabling authorisation of new users from 4th April 2029. Instead, the regulator believes the “optimal use” of the first 1900–1910MHz spectrum in the future will be for the latest 5G mobile technology for rail networks: the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS).

On top of that, they’ve today decided that the “optimal use” of the next 1910–1915MHz slice in Great Britain will be for providing extended coverage for the Emergency Services Network (ESN), through the use of “gateways” installed on emergency vehicles such as ambulances. But Ofcom is NOT yet proposing to authorise any use in the final 1915–1920MHz part of the band, “primarily because of the power restrictions necessary to protect the mobile band above 1920MHz from interference, as well as uncertainty over demand for the spectrum“.

Ofcom’s Decision

Authorise 1900–1910 MHz for operational rail communications to enable the rollout of FRMCS throughout the UK. The new FRMCS licences will:

• Be restricted to the provision of operational rail communications.

• Contain technical conditions suitable for the deployment of FRMCS.

• Authorise a geographic area covering the applicant’s rail infrastructure, which would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

• Require technical coordination with other existing or future FRMCS licensees in overlapping or neighbouring geographic areas.

• Have an annual fee of £1,458,000 for a licence covering Great Britain, and £42,000 for a licence covering Northern Ireland. Licences for smaller rail networks would pay a smaller fee, scaled by the length of the rail routes covered.

• Come into effect on or after 4 April 2029.

• Be issued via a simple process, with checks on applicants’ ability to comply with key licence conditions.

Authorise 1910–1915 MHz to enable the use of Emergency Services Network (ESN) gateways in Great Britain. The licence will:

• Be restricted to the provision of ESN gateways by the provider(s) contracted by the UK Government to supply these gateways (currently BT/EE).

• Have a fixed duration, aligned with the contract to supply ESN gateways.

• Allow use throughout Great Britain.

• Contain technical conditions consistent with the requirements of the ESN.

• Have an annual fee of £364,500 for a licence covering Great Britain.

The commencement date for the ESN gateway licence is subject to a further consultation.

At present, we are not authorising use of 1910–1915 MHz in Northern Ireland where the emergency services have different communication arrangements to Great Britain.

We are also not authorising 1915–1920 MHz throughout the UK, primarily because of the power restrictions necessary to protect the mobile band above 1920 MHz from interference, combined with uncertainty over demand for the spectrum.

Despite the April 2029 date, Ofcom are now seeking views on whether or not they can allow access to the 1910–1915MHz spectrum for ESN Gateway use ahead of that date. Finally, FRMCS itself will support greater digitalisation of the UK’s railways by replacing existing 2G technology and “enabling trains, signalling and railway staff to be better connected than before, helping to improve the operation of the rail network“.

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The Government’s (DSIT) Building Digital UK agency has today finally started to publish monthly updates on the delivery progress of contracts that have been awarded under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which among other things reveals that some 150,730 contracted premises have already been built out of a planned total of 1,002,270 (October 2025).

Just to be clear. The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s official statistics releases; they track the number of contracted premises to which the supplier has delivered a gigabit-capable connection, whereas the official statistics report on the number of premises that have received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of public BDUK subsidy (i.e. those also cover other schemes, like vouchers etc.).

At present over 88% of UK premises can already access a gigabit-capable network (here) and Ofcom separately forecasts that this could hit c.97% by May 2027 (here). Most of this has been delivered by commercial deployments (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas), but there are some areas in the final 10-20% of premises that are simply too expensive for commercial providers to tackle.

Project Gigabit was originally established in 2021 to help extend broadband ISP networks capable of delivering download speeds of at least 1000Mbps (1Gbps) to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by 2030 2032 (here) – focusing on the commercially unviable areas (usually rural and semi-rural locations). The project has already committed most of its budget up to 2030, but there are still some contracts yet to be awarded and others that have failed or been scaled-back (here, here and here).

At this point it’s worth remembering that all of the listed contracts below were awarded at different times. For example, Openreach’s cross-regional (Type C) deployments are some of the most recent ones – awarded between 2024 and 2025, while the contracts for North Dorset (Wessex Internet), Teesdale (GoFire) and a few others are the oldest and awarded all the way back in 2022. In short, they’re all at different stages of development.

Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (Oct 2025)

We should point out that CityFibre’s progress under the £58.6m (public subsidy) contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) is perhaps a bit misleading (0 premises), since Connexin originally held this until only a few months ago – after they were acquired by CityFibre. Connexin only began the build phase at the end of last year (here), thus its delivery has been disrupted by the consolidation.

The above is an example of why it’s important to understand the context behind each contract before judging its delivery progress, since a face-value assessment will overlook some of the realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects recent contract modifications (the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial networks going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).

Otherwise, we intend to keep an eye on these progress reports and post occasional updates, but we won’t be spamming by publishing monthly progress updates.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The German broadband market is currently focused on an aggressive transition from older Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) infrastructure to high-speed fibre optic services. This transition is being driven by a combination of commercial necessity and increasing regulatory demand for transparency.

Vodafone Germany is taking commercial action to actively encourage this technology shift. The company has launched a new set of aggressive fibre tariffs from 26 October, aiming to boost the uptake of faster broadband, a strategic priority for the country’s Digital Ministry. The move is crucial for Vodafone, as its German operations—the group’s largest market—have been a financial drag, partly due to customer churn following a regulatory change that granted tenants the right to choose their broadband provider in multi-tenant dwellings. The company previously acknowledged that “Slowing growth in Germany’s fixed broadband market may affect overall performance” in its most recent quarterly earnings report.

The new GigaZuhause (GigaHome) fibre offers are designed to make the switch from DSL highly attractive for the more than 10 million German households that can access them. Vodafone is increasing value by delivering higher speeds for the same price. New download bandwidths will be 150Mbps, 300Mbps, and 600Mbps (up from 100Mbps, 250Mbps, and 500Mbps respectively), along with up to three times higher upload speeds. In a further incentive, the price for the fastest gigabit tariff, GigaZuhause 1000, will be reduced by €10. The flexibility to downgrade without penalty after six months is intended to remove a key barrier to customer adoption of higher-tier services.

However, the push to accelerate the fibre switch is simultaneously being checked by regulatory action demanding honesty in marketing. This week, the Koblenz Regional Court ruled that ISP 1&1 misled customers by promoting its fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) connections as full fibre optic services. The court banned the use of deceptive terminology, such as “fiber optic DSL,” which it found created a false impression of a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) service.

This ruling is highly significant, emphasising that while FTTC is faster than traditional DSL, it still relies on copper cables for the final connection to the home, a segment that “falls short of FTTH’s gigabit potential without signal degradation over copper.” The court’s insistence on “clear and unambiguous” advertising sets a precedent across the EU, compelling providers to be precise about their network’s final-mile technology.

For the B2B community, these developments underline that the German fibre transition requires a dual strategy: not only must providers offer compelling commercial incentives to migrate customers away from DSL, but they must also invest in true FTTH infrastructure to support their speed claims and avoid regulatory penalties for misleading advertisements.

Zvezdana Lazic-Latincic, Vice President, Fibre & Connectivity Delivery,1&1 Versatel is speaking on a panel on Accelerating network deployment in Germany at Connected Germany. Alongside her are Frederic Ufer, VATM; Benjamin-Georg Ernst-Treffer, Tele Columbus Netz; and Jakob Kwiatkowski, Deutsche Glasfaser. Come and join the at the event, book your place at www.totaltele.com/connectedgermany

Total Telecom are testing AI tools for content generation. This article used Noah Newsroom, please let us know about any inaccuracy

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has this morning revealed the final (assignment stage) results of last week’s auction of the 26GHz and 40GHz millimetre wave (mmW) spectrum bands for use by 5G mobile broadband operators, which sets out precisely which frequencies within each band will be allocated to EE, O2 and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK).

Just to recap. The three mobile operators won a combined 800MHz of spectrum frequency in the 26GHz band and 1GHz of spectrum frequency in the 40GHz band – each paying £13m for this spectrum. The total revenue raised from the Principal stage were £39m, which has gone to HM Treasury. But a final assignment stage was needed in order to decide precisely which parts of each band would go to whom.

Following completion of the assignment stage, Ofcom has now granted licences to the three bidders for the following frequencies across the two bands. This means the auction is now fully complete, and the winners are free to deploy the spectrum in accordance with the conditions of their licences:

• EE – 26.7-27.5 GHz and 41.5-42.5 GHz
• O2 – 25.1-25.9 GHz and 40.5-41.5 GHz
• VodafoneThree – 25.9-26.7 GHz and 42.5-43.5 GHz

At present, most mobile operators already have access to several 5G capable bands between 700MHz and 3.8GHz. Such frequencies reflect the same sort of low and mid-band radio spectrum that the mobile operators have been using since the advent of the first 3G and 4G data networks. But 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) are intended to complement that by providing lots of additional spectrum, which means more data capacity for extremely fast speeds (e.g. multi-Gigabit).

However, such high frequency mobile signals tend to be very weak and can’t cover a wider area without a much denser and thus more expensive network, which in practice means they’ll primarily be used for serving busy urban areas (shopping malls, airports etc. – “High Density Areas“) and fixed wireless broadband (FWA) links. Ofcom has thus made the spectrum available with 15-year licences across 68 “high-density” areas (i.e. cities and select transport hubs).

The catch is that it will take time for the network operators to fully harness the new bands, not least because many modern devices (Smartphones, routers etc.) and radio kit don’t yet fully support them. We suspect there will be some event and location specific deployments in the near future, although a wider roll-out may only become feasible once support improves.