Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Earlier this year ISPreview reported on how customers of internet provider iTalk (iTalk Affiliate Telecommunications) had been complaining about protracted service outages and a lack of support (here), while others claimed the provider tried to push them on to a new contract as a way of resolving the issues. Sadly the company now appears to be falling into administration. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Alternative broadband network Netomnia (Substantial Group, YouFibre), which has so far built their UK full fibre network to cover over 3 million premises RFS (inc. 500,000 customers), have confirmed that their deployment across the Manchester suburb of Didsbury has reached more than 40,000 homes and businesses. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The AllPoints Fibre Network (APFN), which is a Fern Trading backed wholesale platform that aggregates connectivity from several different UK networks including their own, has this morning announced that they’re opening up access to their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband infrastructure (formerly Jurassic Fibre, Giganet and Swish Fibre) to their partner ISPs. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Broadband and mobile operator Vodafone (VodafoneThree) has this morning announced the launch of two major new products, including the provider’s first pay TV product for UK customers with a home broadband, 5G Broadband or mobile plan and “SuperMobile“, which promises to give you up to 4x faster data speeds via their 5G+ (Standalone) network for an additional cost. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Internet, mobile and phone providers BT and EE will today refresh their range of pay TV (IPTV) and broadband bundles, which will see various TV plans renamed and features changed. For example, the current ‘Entertainment’ package will become ‘Entertainment Plus’ and there will be a new ‘Entertainment’ plan in its place, which excludes some key content. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Norfolk County Council (NCC) in England has published a new document, which reveals the future plan for gigabit broadband deployments after CityFibre scaled-back their contracted roll-out of full fibre infrastructure under the UK government’s Project Gigabit scheme in May 2026. As expected, Openreach (BT) look set to pick up the slack. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has confirmed that their long-running Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which offered grants to help those in digitally disadvantaged areas get significantly faster internet connections installed, has now closed to the submission of new voucher projects. (more…)
Original article Total Telecom:Read More
Sceye, a U.S. aerospace and material science company specializing in High-Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) for telecommunications and real-time environmental monitoring, today announced the successful trans-Pacific flight of its Service Test 1 (ST1) mission from New Mexico to Japan. Traveling more than 15,000 km through the stratosphere in 13 days, upon arrival over Japan, ST1 demonstrated mobile broadband connectivity to unmodified devices through SoftBank Corp.’s core network and HAPS-based edge computing and communication with drones to support the development of a 3D communications network.
Conducted in partnership with SoftBank Corp., a leading operator of telecommunications and IT businesses in Japan and globally, ST1 marks Sceye’s first flight to Asia and a groundbreaking milestone towards the commercial deployment of HAPS as stratospheric infrastructure.
“This flight marks a defining moment for Sceye and for the commercial potential of HAPS,” said Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, Founder and CEO of Sceye. “Flying from the US to Japan demonstrates the performance required to make the stratosphere a viable layer of infrastructure and realize the future of AI, edge computing, and 6G. Together with SoftBank, we are moving beyond proving the technology to demonstrating how Sceye can complement and extend existing networks and deliver persistent connectivity at scale.”
The stratosphere offers the optimal vantage point: It is close enough to Earth for high-capacity connectivity and observation, yet the altitude is high enough for wide-area reach. Importantly, the stratosphere offers space-like conditions without the cost of being in space and the disadvantages of being in orbit. Sceye’s HAPS maintain altitude and their area of operation in the stratosphere through consecutive day and night cycles, operating like geostationary satellites, only 1,800 times closer to Earth and at a fraction of the cost.
In 2025, SoftBank Corp. invested in Sceye’s HAPS-based stratospheric infrastructure as a scalable solution to complement terrestrial towers and satellite constellations. The strategic partnership advances a shared vision for HAPS and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) as transformative infrastructure that can expand connectivity, support communications during disasters, and enable future applications across AI, IoT, aerial communications, edge computing, and 6G.
ST1 carried SceyeCELL, a first-of-its-kind “cell tower in the sky” designed to deliver wide-area mobile broadband directly to standard devices from the stratosphere. When deployed at full scale, one Sceye HAPS is designed to cover the equivalent area of approximately 500 terrestrial towers. During the ST1 mission, Sceye and SoftBank demonstrated mobile broadband from the stratosphere, including text messaging, voice calls, internet access, and video streaming. Testing also included emergency calls, using an emergency alert messaging system designed for large-scale disasters, and communications with drones.
Sceye’s ST1 mission launched on August 9, 2026 at 7:00 AM MDT from New Mexico. Additional notable mission attributes include:
Traveled more than 15,000 km across the Pacific to Japan in 13 days
Operated within Japanese managed air space for over 7 days
Remained continuously within its area of operation for an extended period, achieving a station-seeking radius as low as 5 km
Operated at approximately 16.5 km in altitude while completing telecommunications, drone, and emergency communications
Confirmed communications performance equivalent to that of terrestrial networks while reducing radio interference with ground-based base stations
Through a server installed on the HAPS, Sceye and SoftBank conducted data processing directly on the platform, demonstrating average round-trip processing response time of 68 milliseconds, reducing communications latency by over 40% compared with internet-based cloud processing. This marks the world’s first successful test in which a mobile core network and a web server for processing were installed on a HAPS, enabling response processing to be performed entirely onboard the HAPS and the results to be relayed back to smartphones.
ST1 remains in flight, returning towards the United States over the Pacific Ocean at the time of this announcement.
“SoftBank aims to build next-generation communications infrastructure that seamlessly connects the ground, the sky, and space. The fact that Sceye’s HAPS reached Japan from the United States and successfully provided Japan’s first trial services from the stratosphere in Japan’s airspace marks an important step toward the commercialization of HAPS, which is at the core of this vision,” said Junichi Miyakawa, President & CEO of SoftBank Corp. “By combining the HAPS flight and operational technologies that Sceye has developed with SoftBank’s communications technologies, we have gained confidence to realize a three-dimensional communications network utilizing HAPS. Going forward, in collaboration with Sceye, we will continue to integrate a wide range of technologies, including communications and AI, to develop HAPS into a new form of social infrastructure.”
This flight builds on Sceye’s Endurance Program, completed earlier this year, when its SE2 HAPS traveled more than 10,000 km in the stratosphere from New Mexico to the coast of Brazil where it stayed over its area of operation for several days to test long-duration performance in preparation for the Service Test Program, the first of which flew to Japan.
Also in the news
Shared Rural Network rollout extends to UK national parks with over 150 4G masts live
Vodafone touts latest attempt to bridge the UK’s digital divide
Virgin Media O2 cuts 5,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions
The post Sceye and SoftBank demo stratospheric connectivity platform appeared first on Total Telecom.
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) organisation, which holds responsibility for expanding gigabit broadband and better mobile connectivity across the United Kingdom (e.g. the Project Gigabit and 4G Shared Rural Network schemes), has officially promoted Ben Whitestone to the post of permanent Chief Executive Officer (CEO). (more…)
Original article Total Telecom:Read More
The UK fibre story has been told in terms of homes reached.
Full fibre now reaches 24.9 million premises (82% of UK homes), with 47% taking a full-fibre service. By 2028, Ofcom expects 73% of UK homes to have access to at least two gigabit-capable networks.
The industry has spent years answering:
“Can we connect the home?”
But in an MDU, that question is only the beginning.
An apartment building may be one premise on a coverage map, but it can represent hundreds of customers, propositions and decisions.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Consider a 300-unit apartment building.
The building has one location, but 300 realities.
One unit has a customer. Another is vacant. Another has a network. Another may be covered by a building agreement. One customer wants an upgrade while another moves out.
The network infrastructure may remain the same.
The commercial context doesn’t.
All can change from one unit to the next.
Take Flat 217, for example. The resident wants to move from 500Mbps to 1Gbps.
The question isn’t whether fibre reaches Flat 217.
The operator needs to establish whether the service is eligible under the building agreement, whether 1Gbps is included or an additional purchase, what price applies, which network should fulfil it, whether the change requires a new order or modification, and what billing should charge.
And this is where I think the MDU conversation needs to change.
The problem isn’t that operators don’t have the data. It’s that the commercial context isn’t travelling with the unit.
Most telecom journeys follow:
Customer → Product → Order → Service → Bill
MDUs add something that doesn’t fit into that model:
Building → Unit → Customer
The customer is temporary.
The unit is persistent.
When one resident leaves Flat 217, the next resident shouldn’t inherit a blank record. The operator should already know the unit’s network availability, applicable building agreement, eligible propositions and commercial rules.
The same applies when something changes at building level.
A new agreement, network, product or pricing rule shouldn’t require teams to manually work through hundreds of units to understand the impact.
The building should establish the context. The unit should carry that context into every transaction.
That’s the missing link.
For me, MDU readiness shouldn’t stop at serviceable.
It should mean that an operator can take a unit and answer, without manual reconciliation:
Can I sell this product to this unit? At what price? Under which commercial terms? Through which network? What order should be created? What should ultimately be billed?
And the answer should remain consistent from:
Qualification → Proposition → Order → Activation → Billing
Operators should look beyond coverage and take-up and start measuring how many MDU transactions require human intervention.
How many need commercial overrides? How many orders are corrected? How long does qualification take to reach activation? How many billing issues can be traced back to an earlier commercial decision?
These questions tell us how efficiently a network converts availability into revenue.
Fibre availability is becoming less of a differentiator. What happens after availability will matter more.
When every unit can have a different customer, product, price, network and commercial agreement, the ability to manage that complexity without manual intervention becomes a competitive advantage.
The building is connected.
Now make every unit count.
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