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Edinburgh-based UK ISP and network builder GoFibre has this morning announced that they’ve secured a huge £125m funding boost from the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) and Hamburg Commercial Bank. The money will support their roll-out of FTTP broadband under the government backed Project Gigabit contracts in South and North East Scotland.

The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme is currently working to extend 1Gbps download speeds to reach “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2032. As part of that, GoFibre has already secured three smaller ‘Local’ (Type A) deployment contracts for Teesdale (Lot 4.01), North Northumberland (Lot 34.01) in North England and the Scottish Borders and East Lothian (Scotland Lot 5) area. In July 2025 they also added a fourth contract to that – the large (Type B) £105m (state aid) deal to cover “around” 63,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas of North East Scotland (here).

The new contract – covering parts of Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Dundee, Highland, Moray and Perth and Kinross – was the largest one GoFibre has ever won and seemed to be bigger than their existing funding would allow. This meant that it was likely to be supported by another sizeable funding raise in the future, which is of course precisely what today’s announcement is all about.

The additional £125m being announced today (outside the Forfar Indoor Sports Centre – a GoFibre customer) reflects both a £45m debt facility from the SNIB alongside a further £80m from Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB). GoFibre was advised by Deloitte on the transaction. This means the operator is now being backed by a total private investment of £289m (excluding state aid under the Project Gigabit contracts).

Neil Conaghan, CEO of GoFibre, said:

“This is a significant step-change in GoFibre’s position both as a major independent broadband provider, and as a significant company in Scotland.

Our appointment as the supplier for the biggest Project Gigabit delivery area in Scotland, in the north east, builds on our win earlier this year for the very first Scottish lot to be announced, for the Borders and East Lothian.

We are excited to play a crucial role in bringing the very best full fibre broadband connectivity to rural areas in Scotland, as part of our mission to bridge the digital divide.

We are grateful for the support of The Scottish National Investment Bank, HCOB and Gresham House as we continue to build and grow GoFibre.”

Ailsa Young, Investment Director of Innovation at the SNIB, said:

“GoFibre is a great example of a Scottish scale-up that is targeting growth through delivering tangible local impact. We live in an increasingly digital world where high-speed, reliable internet is essential for accessing services and building and maintaining connections.

Broadband is a critical service for businesses and communities. This continues to be an important sector for us, so we’re delighted to support GoFibre as it delivers important connectivity to the north east of Scotland.”

The big challenge for GoFibre now will be in the need to scale up their operations at pace, albeit without allowing costs to get out of control or deliverability to suffer, which is always a difficult challenge for any business and one that has in the past caused problems for some other rural-focused network operators (e.g. a few years back Gigaclear faced challenges with several government contracts).

At the same time, GoFibre has also committed to leaving a lasting legacy in communities. As part of its roll-out, the company will launch a further round of its GoFurther Fund, with up to £250,000 in grants being made available to local causes in the north east of Scotland and up to £150,000 in the Borders/East Lothian (i.e. focused on their roll-out locations).

Customers of the new GoFibre service, once live over the next few years, can expect to pay from £22.50 per month for a 150Mbps (30Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £33 for their top 1000Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).

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Mobile benchmarking firm RootMetrics (Ookla) has today published their H1 2025 study of UK mobile networks (calls, texts etc.) and 4G/5G mobile broadband speeds. The results once again name EE as the best mobile provider after they scooped up the highest scores and fastest data speeds across most categories.

The study itself is based on the results of over 625,000 tests, conducted by a team of testers using off-the-shelf Smartphones between January and June 2025 (drive and walk tests), to measure the real-world performance of mobile operators in the United Kingdom. But it should be said that this study is focused on the results from 16 of the UK’s largest metropolitan markets, which means that it isn’t much good at reflecting the balance from slower rural connectivity.

The results shown below are typically split into several categories (network reliability, speed, data, call and text quality etc.) and each is assigned a score out of 100 (higher numbers = better). In terms of the UK-wide results, EE came top in every single category, with Vodafone being the runner-up. By comparison, O2 echoed their results in other studies by coming bottom of all the same categories.

In terms of the overall results, every single mobile operator managed to improve their scores over the previous biannual study, with the biggest improvements being recorded by Three UK and O2. Otherwise, EE delivered the fastest median mobile broadband download speed of 110.8Mbps, followed by Vodafone (48.4Mbps), Three UK (45.7Mbps) and O2 (36.2Mbps).

Overall Scores for H1 2025 (vs H2 2024)
1. EE –  93.2 (up from 91.7)
2. Vodafone – 85.8 (up from 85.3)
3. Three UK – 84.2 (up from 81.2)
4. O2 – 80.1 (up from 76.7)

Finally, in terms of 5G specific mobile broadband speeds, EE delivered median download speeds of 241.2Mbps, followed by Three UK (217.3Mbps), Vodafone (163.8Mbps) and then O2 (98.7Mbps). 5G availability also continued to improve – EE and O2 each recorded more than 70% availability in UK-wide testing. Three UK followed at just over 60%, while Vodafone trailed at 53.6%. For perspective, the highest availability they recorded in 2H 2024 was EE’s 66.8%, highlighting the progress made as 5G continues to expand.

However, the RootMetrics’ report only provides bits and pieces of selected information, while we would have preferred to see a bit more detail (e.g. upload performance and latency). As above, the data is also dominated by an urban focus, which gives little weighting for poorer performance in rural areas. But that is often the caveat with this type of scientific, albeit very manual, testing – there’s simply not enough data to give a complete picture of the UK.

RootMetrics UK Mobile Performance Review H1 2025
https://www.ookla.com/../rootmetrics-uk-state-of-mobile-union-1h-2025

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Technical Director for rural connectivity provider Wavemobile, Anthony Timson, has complained that the “biggest issue” they face today is the interaction devices roamed onto their network face with respect to the popular WiFi Calling service. Users who roam on to Wave’s network find that the big mobile operators (EE, O2, Vodafone and Three UK) seem to block it.

Just for some context, it’s important to recognise that Wavemobile are a company that specialises in deploying both private and public 2G/4G/5G mobile network services. For example, the provider can deliver community mobile networks to serve remote UK villages (here) and they’ve also worked to extend their cells on to buses in rural parts of the Swansea Bay area (here). Not to mention indoor connectivity solutions.

“Wavemobile is realistically the fifth UK (MNO). I am happy to be corrected on this, but we are a licenced [Radio Access Network] operator with our own MNC, Core, Numbering resources, and DIAMETER/MAP peering into the GSM cloud. We have engineered a practical solution to not-spot coverage that actually works (not perfectly, but that is for another post),” said Anthony.

The provider says they use British made cellXica Ltd M3Q radios for all operators, and can deliver coverage to a hamlet or small village in a “discrete rooftop package” that consumes less than 100 Watts. But the most annoying problem that they experience is the inability to get WiFi Calling to work with the big operators.

Anthony Timson said:

“Our biggest issue today is the interaction devices roamed onto our network face with WiFi Calling. For some reason known only to the big four, if a phone is roamed onto our network and you go inside a building to join WiFi Calling, you are blocked from using it.

This is made worse by the fact that our present solution for that is to deny access to customers affected by this, which means only Emergency Call access – but even denying access to our network still doesn’t allow WiFi Calling. This needs attention by the UK operators as we are lawfully allowed to transmit wherever Ofcom grants us a license. It is [the mobile operators] that [are] preventing use of WiFi calling, not us!

Our team loves solving coverage issues independently of any other operator control. We have had some support, but not where we need it which is on opening up the S6a/S8 or ePDG over cellular interfaces to support a better customer experience.”

ISPreview did ask the big mobile operators to respond to Wavemobile’s concern, but sadly none of them chose to comment. But we have since been informed that the provider may be making some progress, at least with respect to O2 (VMO2); an operator that Wave has worked with a few times before. Time will tell.

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The One Touch Switching Company, which is the industry-led company responsible for helping to deliver Ofcom’s solution for easier and quicker UK switching between home broadband and phone providers on different networks (One Touch Switching), will next week pass the milestone of 1.5 million successfully completed migrations since launch (up from 1m in early May 2025).

The OTS system, which went live on 12th September 2024, remains a Gaining Provider Led (GPL) process, where the customer contacts their new (“gaining“) ISP to start and manage the process on their behalf. But despite a bit of a bumpy start, which we won’t recap today, this has now been widely adopted by the vast majority of ISPs; TOTSCo is now working to make a similar switching system available to businesses in “early 2026” (here).

As it stands a total of 337 brands (e.g. broadband ISPs), alongside various Managed Access Providers (MAPs), are now said to be live on TOTSCo’s production directory and the daily switch match success rate is currently hovering around 66% – 69% (up from around 64% back in January 2025). But it should be noted that some failed switches will still get approved later, after corrections are made.

However, it should also be noted that the rate of switching tends to fall a bit during the summer months, before picking up later in the year as we get closer to the Black Friday season of big discounts. This may yet impact the switching success rate of TOTSCo’s Hub.

Paul Bradbury, CEO of TOTSCo, said:

“We’re fast approaching a significant industry milestone — early next week we will reach 1.5 million switches completed through the Hub since the launch of One Touch Switch (OTS). With match rates also edging upwards, OTS is performing strongly. This is a huge achievement and a testament to the collaboration and commitment across the industry to make switching simpler for residential customers.

But this success doesn’t mean we’ll rest on our laurels. Next week, users will see improved reporting performance, making it quicker and smoother to access the data they need. We’ll also be inviting more members to join the OTS Operations Forum — keeping ideas and improvements flowing so OTS stays strong for the future.”

Despite the progress, we’ve noted a few cases where some smaller ISPs continue to lag behind on their adoption or implementation of OTS, which can cause problems for consumers who wish to escape or even join those same providers (Ofcom has yet to take any solid action on this front). In addition, TOTSCo’s messaging platform, including the systems that some ISPs have put in place for engaging with it, still has some room for improvement.

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The latest company accounts for broadband ISP Plusnet, which is part of wider BT Group, has revealed that the company’s turnover fell by -15% to £343m in the year to 31st March 2025 (down from £402m last year) and their employee headcount declined by 133 to total 944.

According to the same accounts, the provider’s customer base also fell by 9% following the closure of their mobile service (all mobile operations ended in September 2024). By comparison, the broadband base only declined by a more moderate 3%, which was largely due to Plusnet’s “strategic decision” not to offer its own VoIP style Digital Voice service alongside FTTP broadband.

We always felt as if it was an odd move for Plusnet not to offer an IP based phone service, particularly given how parent BT were a pioneer for this product and they also had a fair few customers on bundles (inc. some vulnerable users). But the results indicate that it was all about “minimising the costs of implementation“.

The 12% fall in the number of employees was also said to have been “driven by the strategic refocus and the necessity to streamline operations“. The BT Group are of course planning to cut many more jobs by 2030.

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Fibre optic network supplier Emtelle UK, which is a global manufacturer of blown fibre, cabling and ducted solutions, has been chosen to help supply GoFibre’s new £105m (state aid) Project Gigabit contract for North East Scotland (here), which aims to extend their full fibre broadband (FTTP) network to “around” 63,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas.

The two companies already have an established relationship from prior builds, and the new deal extends that to include GoFibre’s expanded rollout. In other words, Emtelle will supply duct, sub-duct and fibre infrastructure for the new full-fibre network – supporting speeds of up to 10Gbps. This will cover parts of Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Dundee, the Highlands, Moray and Perth and Kinross.

The contract itself was only signed last month, and the first connections aren’t currently set to be delivered until summer 2026. Emtelle and GoFibre are separately also working together to enhance digital connectivity for 8,000 residents and businesses in Hawick.

Gavin Faulds, Chief Commercial Officer of Emtelle Group, said:

“We are delighted to be strengthening our partnership with GoFibre in order to bring full-fibre connectivity to more than 60,000 premises in the North-East of Scotland. As a major Scottish employer, we firmly believe Scotland needs a first-class digital network across every town and village in order to reduce the digital divide and boost economic growth. That is why we are committed to improving its networks, especially for those in rural regions who are the hardest to reach.

Through this partnership with GoFibre, we will provide our market-leading range of award-winning pre-connectorised blown fibre cable and ducted network solutions that not only create high-speed networks but also future-proof them for decades to come. In the long term, we aim to continue our partnership with GoFibre, and build the infrastructure that further transforms connectivity in both Scotland and the UK.”

GoFibre CEO, Neil Conaghan, said:

“Our strategic partnership with Emtelle is an important enabler for GoFibre to deliver our Project Gigabit contract in the north-east of Scotland. GoFibre and Emtelle are both Borders-born, and for two Scottish businesses to play such a crucial role in delivering gigabit connectivity for the country shows the strength of local supply chain. We’re glad to have Emtelle as our strategic infrastructure partner.”

Customers of the new GoFibre service, once live over the next few years, can expect to pay from £22.50 per month for a 150Mbps (30Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £33 for their top 1000Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).

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In a small but interesting update, the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has announced a string of new studies to evaluate the performance, delivery and value of its various mobile and broadband roll-out programmes – including Project Gigabit (subsidy and vouchers), Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN), Shared Rural Network (SRN) and GigaHubs (extension of LFFN).

According to the first brief, BDUK has commissioned Winning Moves, Belmana and Darren Kilburn to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of waves 2 and 3 of the £200m Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme (wave 1 was already evaluated), which helped to extend fibre optic networks to public sector sites. The same network could also be harnessed to help improve local business and home broadband connectivity, albeit requiring separate private investment. The follow-on GigaHubs scheme, under Project Gigabit, will also be separately evaluated by Belmana, Hatch and GC Insights (here).

The second brief reveals that BDUK has commissioned Ipsos UK and partners to undertake an evaluation of the £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) Programme, which has helped to extend geographic 4G mobile coverage from ‘at least one operator’ to 95% of the UK and will continue to expand until the start of 2027. This project involved both the construction of new masts and the sharing of existing ones between the operators.

The third brief confirms that BDUK has commissioned Ipsos UK and partners to undertake an evaluation of their headline £5bn Project Gigabit scheme, which includes the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) interventions and the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS). The overall goal of this has been to help extend gigabit broadband to c.99% of premises by 2032 (recently delayed from the original target of 2030).

Such evaluations are typically conducted periodically, usually once a programme has been up and running for a while (i.e. so there’s actually something to evaluate in the first place). The prior Superfast Broadband (SFBB) programme saw several evaluations and so did related schemes (examples here, here and here), so this is really just a continuation of that approach.

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Internet and web hosting provider Freeola has complemented their existing range of Openreach-based broadband (FTTC/P) packages by quietly launching a new range of complementary packages via two alternative networks, Freedom Fibre and CityFibre.

Just to recap. CityFibre’s full fibre (FTTP) network current covers around 4.5 million premises across the UK, while Freedom Fibre’s similar infrastructure covers 350,000 premises across parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Essex and North Shropshire in England.

The new Freedom Fibre based packages tend to range from around £36.72 per month for symmetric speeds of 100Mbps on a short 30-day term and rise to £55.44 for their top 2300Mbps tier. Oddly the monthly prices for longer 12 and 24 month terms are actually slightly more expensive (normally ISPs entice users to lock-in for longer with lower pricing), although you do get free setup with those (saving £60 one-off).

As for the CityFibre based packages, they range from £32.40 for a symmetric 150Mbps service on a 30-day term and rise up to £50.04 for their top 2300Mbps tier. But once again the 12 and 24 month terms seem to attract a more expensive monthly rental, albeit saving between £30 and £65.28 on the setup fee.

All customers benefit from an included Static IP address, UK based support, unlimited usage and a commitment toward no in-contract price rises. Credits to Simon for the news tip.

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Mobile network provider giffgaff, which harnesses O2’s virtual operator (MVNO) platform in the UK, has launched a new promotion that slashes the monthly price of their unlimited data (mobile broadband) plan on an 18-month “flexible” minimum term from £25 to £15 per month.

Ash Schofield, CEO at giffgaff, said: “We’re always looking for ways to improve our SIM plans to make life a little easier for our members, so we’re proud to launch this absolute steal of a deal. Not only that, but while many other network providers increased their prices this year, we stuck to our commitment to no mid-contract price rises.”

As usual the plan also includes unlimited UK calls and texts, inclusive EU roaming up to 5GB, 5G speeds at no extra cost and you can switch your monthly plan up or down whenever you need. Just remember that their “unlimited data” plan is still subject to a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) like most mobile operators and the new £15 offer will only be available to take until 4th December 2025.

The FUP advises customers to “avoid regularly tethering to 12 or more devices or regularly using unreasonably large amounts of data, including but not limited using around 650GB of data twice within a 6-month period.”

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

Two pilot projects will see Openreach’s fibre network turn into real-time leak detection grid

The UK’s largest fibre network operator, Openreach, has announced a pair of trials with water companies and tech partners, aiming to use their network to quickly identify costly leaks.

In the first trial, in partnership with Arcadis, Thames Water, and Cadent, Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology from FiberSense will be used to pinpoint leaks in both water and gas pipes.

The DAS technology works by measuring the impact of nearby acoustic vibrations on the fibre optic cable’s signal quality. This data is then analysed using machine learning to exclude expected acoustic interference (such as that caused by a car traveling overhead) and identify genuine anomalies like leaks or blockages in nearby pipes.

This technique gives utility companies specific location data about network issues and functions largely as an early warning system, allowing them to tackle problems in a less disruptive manner, before they become emergencies.

According to Cadent, unplanned engineering work to repair these issues costs the UK roughly “£750m every year in terms of economic and social impact”.

The initial trial is running for six months in Hounslow, London, with the potential to expand the project into a London-wide pilot in future.

“Openreach were the obvious choice of telecoms partner for this project. We want to create a model that can be adopted in other UK cities, not just in London. Openreach have the national reach we wanted,” said Sam Bright, Innovation Manager for Thames Water.

FiberSense’s technology is already being used in similar projects worldwide, most notably for monitoring submarine cables such as the upcoming SMAP cable in Australia and the Southern Cross Cable Network in the Pacific.

Openreach’s second, similar project will see the operator partner with Affinity Water, who supplies drinking water to parts of London, eastern and south eastern England, and infrastructure monitoring company Lightsonic. This trial will use Lightsonic’s Distributed Fibre Optic Sensing (DFOS) tech to identify leaks, also through acoustic sensing and subsequent analysis.

The details surrounding this project were more limited, with the location and scope of the trial not yet announced. Nonetheless, it should hopefully contribute to reducing the roughly 3 billion litres of water lot through leakage in the UK each year.

“This is a transformative moment for our leakage strategy. By harnessing Lightsonic’s advanced fibre optic sensing technology and Openreach’s extensive network, we’re unlocking a new era of proactive leak detection,” said James Curtis, Head of Leakage at Affinity Water. “This will help us meet our ambitious leakage reduction targets and deliver a more resilient service to our customers.”

Fibre networks are not the only telco assets that can help to monitor utility infrastructure. In Germany, for example, T-Mobile recently announced a new partnership with Fluid Conservation Systems, using their mobile network to connect to the latter’s acoustic water monitoring sensors.

Also in the news:
US judge rules Huawei must face charges of fraud and racketeering
Optus ditches football rights to focus on telecoms
Nokia launches digital twin platform Enscryb to digitalise energy sector