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Network operator Freedom Fibre has today announced that they’ve chosen network solutions provider Xantaro and their related “Cabinet-as-a-Service” street cabinet solution to help “accelerate” their ongoing roll-out of a full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in Shropshire (England). This is being conducted alongside fixed and IP services from Nokia.

In case anybody has forgotten, Freedom Fibre currently holds the £24 million (state aid) LOT 25.02 Project Gigabit contract (here) to cover “around” 12,000 hard-to-reach rural homes in North Shropshire (England). The first homes and businesses on this network started to go live in October 2024 (building began in March 2024) and the 3-year deployment is roughly due to complete by around mid-2026.

As part of today’s complementary collaboration, Xantaro have implemented their “Golden Cab” concept — taking street cabinets to a staging facility for testing before field deployment. This proof-of-concept approach is said to help ensure the Nokia kit is fully tested and configured, ready to be installed with minimal disruption.

In addition to the physical cabinet services, Xantaro is also providing its professional services team, the High Level Design (HLD) and Low Level Design (LLD) for the active network, including the configuration of the network elements and the installation and commissioning of the Nokia Altiplano management platform.

David Hough, Network Operations Director at Freedom Fibre, said:

“We sought a partner that could provide an end-to-end solution and Xantaro brings a wealth of experience to the table. Their agility, responsiveness, and strong ties across Nokia will help us accelerate our network rollout and support our ambition to become one of the top five altnets in the UK.”

The service that Freedom Fibre provides is typically offered via wholesale to a variety of supporting broadband ISPs, such as TalkTalk, iDNET, Home Telecom, Fusion Fibre Group, Squirrel Internet, Yayzi etc.

Xantaro is currently supporting over 40 other altnets across the UK to build networks for hard-to-reach and underserved communities.

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Business focused UK ISP and Managed Service Provider (MSP) Connectus has today announced that they’re investing a further £500,000 into the Doncaster Airport Business Park in South Yorkshire (England), which is on top of the £1m they previously put in to help ensure all businesses on the park could enjoy access to their gigabit full fibre (broadband and Ethernet) network.

The investment, which comes just days after the Government announced it would plough £30m into the newly-reopened Doncaster Sheffield Airport, will see Connectus “turbocharge its work in and around the site’s Innovation” (the park consists of 140 business units for start-ups and growing businesses).

The funding will help to create two diverse links for increased connectivity (reliability) to the site, as well as the development of new engineering roles to manage and support demand for their services. Not to mention the roll-out of additional renewable and alternative power solutions to further improve reliability in the event of a Heathrow-like outage.

In addition, Connectus said they would be building new AI based diagnostics and tooling via their partner Kaseya, while some investment would also go toward community outreach projects (i.e. continued support to Doncaster Knights Rugby Union and other grassroots sports clubs).

Roy Shelton, CEO of Connectus, said:

“This new investment underlines our commitment to provide the very best connectivity services to Doncaster Airport Business Park and the businesses based there.

Connectus is the leading managed services provider around the City of Doncaster, and this investment will further strengthen this.

We’ve already invested £1m over several years at the Business Park, which has helped to ensure all businesses on the park can enjoy access to our gigabit full fibre network. Now we’ll go further and faster to give lift off to even better services.”

Covering an area of around 62 acres, the Business Park also has planning consent for over 2,000,000sq ft (186,000sq m) of commercial development.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

Newspaper reports suggest that the newly merged telco giant is preparing to bundle Pay-TV services with fixed broadband, phone, and mobile plans

According to reports, Vodafone and Three may be preparing to launch a Pay-TV, seeking to capitalise on their newfound scale and help grow their subscriber base.

The Telegraphnotes that discussions between the two operators on this topic have already begun, but highlights that no formal decision has been made.

As such, the specifics of the potential offering are yet to be decided but are likely to include broadcast TV as well as streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Vodafone–Three’s  largest rivals, Virgin Media O2 and BT (EE) both already offer Pay-TV services, hence the operator’s interest in this space is hardly surprising. However, success in the Pay-TV market is far from guaranteed. These offerings must compete in a highly competitive streaming market, with viewing habits shifting away from conventional TV services.

BT itself has notably reduced its focus on the Pay-TV segment in recent years, with the traditional customers increasingly preferring to subscribe to streaming services independently.

That said, it is worth noting that Vodafone Group already has experience with the converged Pay-TV formula, with the company already offering similar bundled services in Germany and the Netherlands with some success. In the UK, the company’s TV offering has so far been limited to providing subscribers with an Apple TV box as part of certain packages.

The £15 billion merger of Vodafone and Three was finally approved by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in December last year. The move will make Voda–Three the largest mobile network operator in the UK, with around 27 million subscribers.

How will the Vodafone–Three merger impact the UK telecoms industry? Join the discussion next week at Connected North, live in Manchester

Also in the news: 
Nokia, Telia, and Finnish military demo 5G network slicing across borders
Mobile operators quibble with Ofcom over spectrum fees
Deutsche Telekom commits to Google Cloud through 2030 

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The move is the latest step in Telefonica’s ongoing retreat from its Latin American businesses

Telefonica has announced it will sell all its shares in Telefonica del Peru to Argentina’s Integra Tec International for around PEN 3.7 million ($999,000).

The deal will see Telefonica sell its 99.3% holding in the business, with Integra Tec pledging to purchase the remaining 0.7% via a public tender offer.

”Today Telefónica Hispanoamérica, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Telefónica (Telefónica Hispam), has sold all the shares it holds in Telefónica del Perú, representing approximately 99.3% of its capital stock, to Integra Tec International,” the company announced in a statement, adding that “the price has been determined considering the situation of Telefónica del Perú and the context of the agreement reached.”

Telefónica del Perú, which serves over 13 million customers, has been in financial trouble for many years, having faced a myriad of historic tax and regulatory problems that left the company “at a competitive disadvantage”.

In total, the operator owes €1.24 billion ($1.41 billion)to tax authorities and bond holders – debt that Integra Tec will assume as part of the transaction.

Telefonica instigated voluntary bankruptcy proceedings for the business earlier this year, having recently written down the business’s value by €314 million ($357.49 million).

The sale represents a continuation of Telefonica’s ‘strategic shift’ that began in 2019, when the operator announced it would pull back from the majority of its Central and South American operations and instead focus on four key markets: Germany, Spain, Brazil, and the UK.

Since then, the company has quickly divested of operations in smaller markets, such as Guatemala and El Salvador, and slowly working towards deals in its larger markets.

Telefonica is currently in the process of selling its Argentinian unit to local rival Telecom Argentina for $1.2 billion. The deal is facing strong regulatory scrutiny due to competition concerns.

The operator is also in negotiations around the sale of its Colombian unit and is looking for a buyer for its Mexican operations.

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to our newsletter 

Also in the news: 
Nokia, Telia, and Finnish military demo 5G network slicing across borders
Mobile operators quibble with Ofcom over spectrum fees
Deutsche Telekom commits to Google Cloud through 2030 

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Edinburgh-based UK alternative broadband network operator and ISP GoFibre, Neil Conaghan, has now quietly also been named as the Interim CEO of network provider Wildanet – they’re doing something similar to GoFibre, albeit at the other end of the United Kingdom.

Just to recap. GoFibre is currently busy building their gigabit-capable broadband network across rural parts of Scotland, the Scottish Borders areas and also Northumberland in North England. The operator, which is backed by £164m of investment from Gresham House (here), has so far managed to build their network to cover over 120,000 premises (RFS) across 40 “local areas”.

By comparison, Wildanet, which only just lost its last CEO (here) and is also being backed by an investment of £100m from Gresham House (plus £35m from the National Wealth Fund), is deploying a mix of full fibre and wireless broadband networks across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon in South West England.

Suffice to say that both operators share the same primary investment partner, although there’s also a fair bit of geographic distance between the two. Nevertheless, ISPreview has noted that the CEO of GoFibre, Neil Conaghan, recently updated his LinkedIn profile (‘Experience’ section) at the end of last week to state the following: “In addition to my existing role as CEO at GoFibre, I am fulfilling the role of Interim CEO at Wildanet.”

We had caught some whispers about this on Wednesday last week and emailed Wildanet’s PR firm to find out more. But they did not respond to provide a comment.

UPDATE 12:16pm

Wildanet has now issued the following comment.

Martin Harriman, Chairman of Wildanet, said:

“We are delighted to confirm that Neil Conaghan has been appointed Wildanet’s Interim Chief Executive Officer following the recent departure of Helen Wylde-Archibald.

Neil is a highly experienced and successful CEO, he currently serves as the CEO of GoFibre, another alternative network provider backed by Gresham House, and will continue in this role as well as assuming leadership of Wildanet in an interim capacity working with the senior management team to ensure continued delivery of the strategic plan to provide gigabit speed full fibre broadband to underserved communities in the South-West of England.

Neil brings extensive industry experience and a strong track record of leading fibre broadband rollouts. His dual role will support the ongoing execution of Wildanet’s Project Gigabit contracts and the broader strategic ambitions of both Wildanet and GoFibre.”

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Alternative network operator and ISP Grain has today announced that their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network has grown to cover 250,000 UK premises (up from 220k in May 2024) and 43,000 customers (up from 30,000). But crucially, they also did as expected (here) and went EBITDA positive during the quarter ended March 2025.

The ability to achieve a positive EBITDA (i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) usually indicates that a company’s core operations are becoming profitable. Grain today said their total operating costs per customer continued to “fall rapidly” to c. £21 by the end of the year, with “total operating costs flat across the year despite significant growth in customers“.

The operator’s full fibre network can currently be found in parts of around 60+ UK locations (plus over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of modest-to-large sized patches of various urban cities and towns like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Hull, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.

The latest progress update reveals that Grain’s homes ready for service (RFS) grew by 24% during the financial year to cover over 250,000 premises. Customer numbers were also up 58% at 43,000 with take-up growing steadily from 13% to 17% over the last 12 months, despite adding 50,000 new premises during the year.

Grain said they were continuing to invest in network expansion. The operator added that it was now “fully funded” and is due to turn cashflow positive on its current footprint in 2026, “generating a surplus of EBITDA more than covering the cost of connecting customers and servicing the interest payments on its debt“.

Grain CEO, Richard Cameron, told ISPreview:

“The Altnet market has experienced significant challenges in recent years, with many providers struggling to generate sufficient returns to service their debts and deliver a return to their shareholders. This is often due to high costs, low take-up and the high connection costs required to connect customers to PIA based networks. I am pleased to say that these are problems which Grain doesn’t face, putting us in a unique position having already built a sustainable business over the long term.

Also, Openreach and other Altnets describe a home ready for service as one which has a live network at the top of a pole or in a chamber, somewhere near a premise, which could be over 100 metres from the home, still requiring substantial network investment and potentially signed wayleaves to connect a customer. Grain describes a home ready for service as one that already has a live network at the boundary of each premise.

Grain connects homes for about a quarter of the cost that Openreach incurs to connect a home. As a result of this Grain doesn’t have the large capital expenditure overhang costs to connect customers that the rest of the industry faces. This coupled with an efficient customer acquisition model makes Grain unique with new customers paying back in the first year of their contracts.

We are excited about the future of Grain and the competition it offers, allowing more customers to make the move to Full Fibre broadband, at affordable and transparent prices.”

The network operator said they planned to continue investing additional capital into the expansion of its footprint, “given the strong financial returns being generated” and are currently also offering broadband customers a price freeze offer (i.e. prices locked until 2027).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A new cost-of-living study conducted by market research firm Maru, which polled 40,000 UK adults at multiple touchpoints over three years to date, claims to have found that 53% of respondents thought it was “likely” that they would need to consider changing their home broadband in order to cut costs. A further 52% said the same for their mobile phone plan.

In addition, some 54% of Britons also say that they are considering cancelling at least one entertainment subscription, such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube Premium, or Amazon Prime, in order to save money. All of this comes against the background of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, which for many has become even more of a challenge following recent tax rises and fiscal drag in other areas.

According to Maru’s most recent polling, most Brits think that it is ‘likely’ that they will need to make further cuts to their spending in other areas, including holding off on big purchases and spending less on food, eating out, energy, insurance, and home appliances.

“Our cost-of-living research shows that Brits are increasingly looking for new ways to cut their spending as rising costs continue to squeeze household finances and reduce spending power – and one of the most common ways in which they are looking to doing this is by reducing the cost of their broadband and mobile phone bills,” said Stephen Brockway, Chief Research Officer at Maru.

The Most Common Ways in which Britons Plan to Save Money:

1. Eating in rather than eating out – 84%

2. Shop around for lower insurance costs – 81%

3. Buying more budget or own brand groceries – 78%

4. Holding off on big purchases (e.g. holidays, new car) – 76%

5. Spending less on clothes and shoes – 77%

6. Using the heating less or turning down the thermostat – 78%

7. Spend less on home appliances – 73%

8. Spend less on home improvements – 71%

9. Switch more of my food shopping to a lower prices supermarket – 68%

10. Cancel gym subscriptions or memberships – 66%

11. Spend less on food and groceries – 58%

12. Seek help/advice on lowering energy bills – 55%

13. Cancel entertainment subscriptions – 54%

14. Change home broadband to a lower cost – 53%

15. Change mobile phone plan to a lower cost – 52%

16. Improve insulation in my home – 51%

In the past, we’ve often been sceptical about the accuracy of consumer surveys like this, since real-world data doesn’t always reflect the snapshot of opinions collected by such studies. In terms of broadband, we can now actually see just how wide of the mark the situation between surveyed samples and reality really is, thanks in large part to the public data being released by the industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo).

TOTSCo reflects the central messaging platform for implementing Ofcom’s recently launched (Sept 2024) solution for easier and quicker consumer switching between broadband and phone providers (aka – One Touch Switching). According to TOTSCo’s data (see live switching data), the Hub has delivered over 852,000 switches successfully completed since its launch in September 2024, which suggests that significantly fewer people are actually switching than those surveyed above may indicate.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The UK telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, has today opened a new investigation into call centre solutions’ provider Primo Dialler, which will examine “concerns that numbers sub-allocated to [the company] are/were being misused, including to facilitate scams.”

The regulator is concerned that Primo Dialler may have failed to comply with its obligations under their rules, specifically the General Conditions of Entitlement GC B1.8 and GC B1.9(b) and (c). The rules reference a requirement for such businesses to ensure that they’ve taken reasonably practicable steps to ensure that their customers are using telephone numbers correctly and that they don’t transfer use of such numbers from the National Telephone Numbering Plan (NTNP) unless that is the case. The numbers, once transferred, must also be used effectively and efficiently.

Ofcom added that they “also have concerns as to whether Primo Dialler is persistently misusing, or has persistently misused, an electronic communications network or services“, which is all explained in more detail below.

Ofcom’s Statement

We have concerns as to whether Primo Dialler has failed to comply with its obligations under the GCs, specifically:

GC B1.8 which states that “the Communications Provider shall take all reasonably practicable steps to secure that its Customers, in using Telephone Numbers, comply (where applicable) with the provisions of [GC B1], the provisions of the National Telephone Numbering Plan and the Non-provider Numbering Condition”; and;

GC B1.9(b) and (c) which state that “the Communications Provider shall not transfer use of Telephone Numbers from the National Telephone Numbering Plan unless… the Telephone Numbers are used in accordance with the National Telephone Numbering Plan; and the Telephone Numbers are Adopted or otherwise used effectively and efficiently”.

We also have concerns as to whether Primo Dialler is persistently misusing, or has persistently misused, an electronic communications network or services. Under section 128(5) – (7) of the Act, a person misuses an electronic communications network or service if:

1. the effect or likely effect of his use of the network or service is to cause another person unnecessarily to suffer annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety; or

2. he uses the network or service to engage in conduct the effect or likely effect of which is to cause another person unnecessarily to suffer annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety.

Misuse can be considered “persistent” where it is repeated enough for it to be clear that it represents a pattern of behaviour or practice, or recklessness about whether others suffer annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety.

The investigation will now seek to establish the facts surrounding this matter and examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that Primo Dialler has failed to comply with the rules. Such investigations can often be a slow and complex process, which means we may have to wait until much later this year or sometime in 2026 to learn the final outcome.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Broadband ISP Lit Fibre, which now harnesses CityFibre’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (they originally ran their own UK fibre network – here), has refreshed their existing range of packages and also introduced new a range of “specialised” product packages called ‘Lit Ultimate’, ‘Lit Homeworker’, ‘Lit Family’ and ‘Lit Gamer’.

The new Lit Fibre packages appear to have been designed to complement, rather than replace, their existing speed-centric Lit 100Mbps (£29.99), 500Mbps (£33.99) and 1000Mbps (£39.99) plans (monthly prices are for the 24-month term, but you can also take 18-months for a few pounds extra). All packages include symmetric speeds, free installation, wireless router (models vary) and a pledge of “no mid-contract price hikes“.

By comparison, the four new named packages include various extras, such as a superior router (Lit Hub or Lit Hub Pro), Wi-Fi extenders, an internet security service, parental controls and sometimes also “boost device control“. But these extras do vary a bit between the new packages, and Lit could do with including a few more details to help explain the differences or what they actually deliver.

LitFibre’s New Broadband Packages (24-Month Term)

Lit Homeworker
“Built for remote professionals requiring dependable, high-speed internet.”
500Mbps
Boost device control (“Give your work devices the VIP treatment with a connection boost while working from home” – we’re not sure what this is?)
Lit Secure Plus
Lit Hub

PRICE: £34.49pm per month

Lit Family
“Ideal for households with multiple users and devices.”
500Mbps
Parental controls
Lit Secure Plus
Lit Hub

PRICE: £34.49pm per month

Lit Gamer
“Optimised for gamers needing low latency and fast speeds.”
1Gbps
Lit Hub Pro

PRICE: £39.49pm per month

Lit Ultimate
“For users who demand peak performance across all online activities.”
1Gbps
Lit Hub Pro+ 2 WiFi extenders
Lit Secure Plus
Lit Advanced
Boost device control

PRICE: £47.49pm per month

One issue to be aware of is that, when going through Lit’s availability checker and order page, you’ll only be able to see the new package options if you click the “Usage” button (selector) at the top. Likewise, you can only see the original packages by selecting the “Speed” button. But these are presented in quite a generic way and with little explanation, which means that their relevance can easily be overlooked (i.e. it may have been better to make the distinction between basic and premium packages clearer).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

In a somewhat unsurprising development, newspaper reports have today claimed that Vodafone and Three UK (CK Hutchison) may be gearing up to support their merger by discussing the launch of a new Pay TV service. Such products are typically sold as part of a bundle (convergence), such as alongside fixed broadband, phone and mobile plans.

The merger, which was approved by the CMA in December 2024 (here) and is said to be worth £15bn+, is due to complete any time now. The deal will see Vodafone retain a 51% slice of the business and CKH (Three UK) hold 49%. Both operators have previously promoted the deal as being “great for customers, great for the country and great for competition,” while also resulting in a major £11bn investment to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile (broadband) infrastructure and coverage.

At present, Three UK is a mobile-only operator, while Vodafone have long since branched out into home broadband by offering related packages via Openreach and CityFibre’s national networks. Despite this, it’s not uncommon for major mergers in the telecommunications sector to be followed by a focus on greater convergence of different services, much as we’ve seen via O2 and Virgin Media, as well as BT and EE before them.

According to the Sunday Telegraph (paywall), both Vodafone and Three UK are allegedly considering something similar post-merger, with the possible future introduction of a Pay TV service and or broadband bundles via Three UK forming part of their discussions. But a spokesperson for Vodafone warned it was still too early to comment on the company’s plans post-merger.

Karen Egan, Enders Analysis, said:

“There are certainly some opportunities for cross-selling Vodafone’s broadband product to Three’s 9.3m mobile subscribers, but broadband is a really tough market right now with very slim margins so they’ll be quite constrained in the level of incentive discounts they can offer.”

In recent years’ convergence has become somewhat an area of mixed success. This is partly because many consumers have been gradually navigating away from the traditional Pay TV model and preferring to sign-up independently via a collection of often independent streaming providers (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, NOW TV, Disney+ etc.).

The situation has been somewhat underlined by the recent softening of focus on Pay TV services by the likes of TalkTalk and BT, as well as the complete removal of the TV products by BT sibling PlusNet. Suffice to say that it’s much harder today to make an attractive Pay TV product, and broadband can also be very challenging.

However, it’s worth noting that Vodafone has been seeing strong UK take-up of their home broadband products in recent years, and the operator does have experience in Pay TV via some of their other markets outside the UK. The potential is certainly there to do something more with bundles, but whether that would be successful is another matter.