Read More

Crowdfunded mobile operator Honest Mobile, which harnesses Three UK’s network via a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) agreement, has today announced the launch of a “first-of-its-kind SIM” plan – Smart SIM – that is multi-network and designed to tackle expensive global roaming, as well as poor UK phone signals.

The supposedly “industry-first” eSIM solution works alongside your main SIM to provide 200+ essential apps with “unlimited data” (broadband) on mobile operators including EE, O2 and Three UK, plus free global roaming on those same apps in 180+ countries.

The key detail here is that the new Smart SIM only “kicks in when you lose signal in the UK or go abroad“, automatically connecting essential apps to the strongest available network. To date, these 200+ apps include WhatsApp, Google Maps, Uber, and Monzo, with more added every week.

After almost 100,000 people signed up to the operator’s waiting list last year, Smart SIM is now available to buy instantly.

Andy Aitken, CEO and co-founder of Honest, said:

“The big mobile networks have set the bar shockingly low when it comes to meeting consumer needs. Too many people still struggle with connectivity, both in the UK and abroad. With yet more price hikes coming this April, Brits deserve better. We developed Smart SIM to tackle poor UK signal and expensive roaming, giving people peace of mind about staying connected, without worrying about losing signal or expensive roaming.”

The price of Smart SIM starts at either £10 per month or the equivalent of £3.75 per month if you pre-pay for a year in advance (normally £120). The plan is clearly focused more on data connectivity.

Network analyst firm Streetwave has revealed that they’ve won another contract, this time via the Derbyshire County Council (DCC) in England, to map 4G and 5G mobile broadband coverage across another 10,000km of the UK’s road network in the East Midlands of England, using bin lorries.

Streetwave have spent the past 1-2 years harnessing waste (bin / refuse) collection trucks to map mobile network coverage and speeds in various parts of the UK (e.g. here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse trucks are installed with several off-the-shelf Smartphones using software from Streetwave on top, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go around their routes.

The data they collect is then being used by local authorities to help identify areas that may require additional intervention in order to improve local mobile coverage and or network capacity. In addition, members of the public have also been given access to some of this data via address-based coverage checkers and interactive maps (example).

The new deal with DCC will thus see mobile coverage quality being benchmarked across every road in each of the councils listed below – nearly 10,000 km in total. As above, Streetwave states that “the 1,600,000 people living in the region will also be given the ability to check which mobile networks have the highest performance outside addresses of interest through [a] free to use coverage checker“.

Councils Included in the DCC Streetwave Survey

1. Derbyshire County Council
2. Amber Valley Borough Council
3. Bolsover District Council
4. Chesterfield County
5. Derbyshire Dales District Council
6. Erewash Borough Council
7. High Peak Borough Council
8. North East Derbyshire District Council (NEDDC)
9. South Derbyshire DC

The survey is likely to then be extended to 8 more councils in the region:

10. Nottinghamshire County Council
11. Ashfield District Council
12. Bassetlaw District Council
13. Broxtowe Borough Council
14. Gedling Borough Council
15. Mansfield District Council
16. Newark and Sherwood District Council
17. Rushcliffe Borough Council

In addition, we understand that Streetwave will be announcing another contract with the Liverpool City Region next week too.

Multiple Suffolk Fire and Rescue crews were called in late yesterday morning to tackle a blaze at the first floor of an office block on BT’s research and development focused Adastral Park site near Ipswich. The business park is home to around 150 other ICT companies that contribute toward both BT and their own development.

At this stage, little is known about the event, except that Firefighters with seven appliances attended the site just after 10:30am on Saturday (1st March 2025). The fire is understood to have been contained quite quickly, which limited the damage, and the fire was then extinguished just before 2pm.

According to the BBC News, a total of 12 firefighters entered the building wearing breathing apparatus to extinguish the fire. Investigations into the cause of the fire will begin next week and there’s currently no mention of anybody being hurt during the incident. We have approached BT for comment and will update when they respond. Thanks to one of our readers, Ian, for spotting this.

UPDATE 4:23pm

We’ve been informed that the fire wasn’t in one of BT’s own buildings on the site and no BT asset was impacted. It’s not currently known who was hit.

New research from SignalTracker, which runs a popular Android mobile app (but not iOS) for monitoring and examining mobile phone reception, appears to show that although your handset may say 5G, it frequently only has a 4G connection. In UK samples, when the 5G icon was displaying, 38% of tests were in fact found to be a 4G connection.

“This is because most phones show 5G when the base station to which they are connected has 5G equipment potentially available. The actual connection may be 4G or 5G,” said the study. “On some phones the icon becomes more distinct when an actual 5G connection is made, but on other phones the same icon is shown whether 5G is merely available or whether it is actually connected.”

The issue described upon is indeed a familiar one, although until now we haven’t seen any UK studies that have attempted to examine how much of an impact it makes. “Actual 5G is about twice as fast [mobile broadband] as icon-only connections, averaging 49Mbps as against 27Mbps in our tests,” said the report.

The results come from all the UK mobile networks, but SignalTracker said displaying the 5G icon when there is only a 4G connection is “more common with some operators than others“. For example, for Three UK, the 5G icon means real 5G some 94% of the time and for Vodafone the figure is 93%. But for O2, only 66% of 5G tests had a genuine 5G connection, and surprisingly for EE it was just 32%.

The latter is unexpected, particularly as EE generally does quite well in other surveys of 5G based data performance and its coverage is often regarded as being quite strong.

Managing Director, Martin Sims, said:

“This issue is not being clearly explained to consumers. Achieving a 5G connection everywhere may not be possible and most people will accept this. But the public deserve clear information about what they are getting.

Mobile networks are an amazing engineering achievement. The best way to get public support for optimising this incredible technology is to keep them fully informed.”

The figures quoted come from over 11,000 tests carried out by PolicyTracker over the past two months, using the SignalTracker service.

Customers of Vodafone UK’s mobile and broadband services, specifically those that also use their internet anti-malware ‘Secure Net‘ service (included with their ‘Pro II Broadband’ packages), may in the near future be able to benefit from quantum-safe cryptography after the operator collaborated with IBM on a new Proof of Concept (PoC) test.

At present, Quantum Computers are still very much in the early R&D stages of their development. But it is anticipated that, someday, future cryptographically relevant quantum computers could be used to break today’s internet encryption techniques. While this risk may still be years away, cybercriminals are already using “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks to collect and store data for later decryption.

In response, IBM’s cryptography researchers have already co-developed two algorithms, which were recently published as part of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) first three post-quantum cryptography standards.

The new collaboration with Vodafone thus represents a demonstration, supported by Akamai Technologies, of how IBM’s new Quantum Safe technology could be implemented into Vodafone’s existing Secure Net service. This would essentially add new post-quantum cryptography standards to the existing encryption methods, helping to protect users against future threats.

Luke Ibbetson, Head of R&D at Vodafone, said:

“We want our customers to enjoy the internet without worry, now and in the future. On the one hand quantum computing could have many societal benefits such as modelling new medicines and optimising advanced digital networks. But on the other hand, it could be used to undermine the cryptographic principles that the Internet relies on today. That is why Vodafone and IBM are working together with other partners to get ahead of the curve.”

Lory Thorpe, IBM’s Quantum Safe Industry Lead, added:

“As a pioneer in quantum-safe cryptography and solutions, IBM is proud to expand our collaboration with Vodafone to help protect its customers from anticipated quantum risks. It’s crucial for organisations to implement4 post-quantum cryptography, and Vodafone has led by example as an early adopter of post-quantum security solutions.”

The PoC is currently being expressed as a “feasibility test” and no indication is given for how long we might have to wait before this becomes a real feature that existing mobile and broadband customers can enjoy. But Vodafone clearly states that they’re “looking to introduce new, attack-resistant cryptographic algorithms across its networks, as well as business and consumer products“. So hopefully it won’t be long.

New research from Broadband Genie, which surveyed 3,200 people across the UK, claims to have identified the best and worst cities, as well as internet providers, for broadband reliability. Overall, Gloucester was named as the best UK city for reliability (only 8% experienced outages last year), while Belfast (51%) was the worst.

The somewhat anecdotal survey asked participants how many outages they’ve experienced in the last year, where they live and who their broadband provider is. Using this, a reliability score out of 100 was calculated. One possible caveat here is that the survey didn’t attempt to separate broadband from local connectivity problems, since consumers can sometimes wrongfully blame their ISP for problems that could be caused by factors outside the provider’s control (e.g. slow WiFi, power cuts, local network congestion, local network/router configuration problems, third-party device errors etc.).

Suffice to say that opinion surveys like this don’t always tell the whole story and would probably need to be significantly larger to catch a strong enough sample size for each city, as well as each ISP, in order to deliver a truly useful result. Sadly, the survey doesn’t show us how big the sample sizes were for each ISP and city, but we wouldn’t be surprised if some locations and providers only had a fairly small pool of responses.

In terms of the results for ISPs. Utility Warehouse (UW) came top, with some 93% of respondents saying they hadn’t experienced any outages or at least couldn’t remember having experienced one. However, at the other end of the scale, Cuckoo sat at the bottom on a figure of 12%. But as we said before for cities, you’d really need a much bigger minimum sample size per provider to really do this kind of survey justice. Take with the usual pinch of salt.

Top 29 Best and Worst Cities for Broadband Reliability

Top 21 Best and Worst ISPs for Broadband Reliability

Broadband network operator AllPoints Fibre (APFN) has today signed a new “long-term” strategic partnership with UK business ISP Daisy Communications. The deal will see Daisy both take on APFN’s B2B customers and harness their new aquila wholesale platform to access and sell products via their national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.

Just to recap. Aquila now states that it’s available to 18 million+ UK homes and businesses, which is roughly in keeping with the respective network expansions of major partners at Openreach and CityFibre. In addition, this platform also includes APFN’s own-built FTTP via the recent consolidation of their three alternative networks – Giganet, Swish Fibre and Jurassic Fibre.

However, the new deal with Daisy goes much further than that, not least because it will also see Daisy acquire APFN’s B2B direct customer base, which was previously managed under the Giganet brand. “As part of the migration, both APFN and Daisy have confirmed that all customers will maintain the same level of service at the same in-contract price point,” said the announcement.

Jarlath Finnegan, Group CEO of AllPoints Fibre Networks, said:

“The Daisy deal represents another big milestone for APFN. Daisy now has access to the largest full fibre wholesale offering in the UK which will benefit the loyal customers who have supported us to date. I want to thank them, and we look forward to supporting them via Daisy in the years ahead.”

Dave McGinn, CEO of Daisy Communications, said:

“We’re delighted to have signed a deal with AFPN to bring the UK’s largest full fibre wholesale offering to our customers. We’re also pleased to welcome several customers into Daisy as part of our deal and we’re looking forward to working alongside them to keep Britain working.”

Customers impacted by the migration have already been informed, and the partnership goes live immediately.

Press Release

Boost Mobile, the newest US nationwide carrier, has deployed Nokia’s fully cloud-native 5G Voice Core to enable even faster delivery of advanced services, enhanced network automation, and more efficient cloud utilization than its Open RAN cloud-native network could before.

The deployment includes the consolidation of several IMS voice 3GPP functionalities into a single cloud-native network function (CNF), called Nokia Cloud Native Communication Suite (CNCS). This migration, from Boost Mobile’s previous distributed IMS voice core by Nokia, provides automated deployment and configuration, reduced infrastructure and carbon footprint, and lower operational costs through streamlined life cycle management.

“We anticipate Nokia’s 5G Voice Core to help reduce our network infrastructure costs by about 70 percent in addition to delivering new 5G services faster, with significantly streamlined network operations,” said Dawood Shahdad, Vice President of Core Engineering at Boost Mobile. “Boost Mobile continues to push boundaries with our Open RAN 5G network and the successful nationwide deployment of Nokia’s cloud-native next-generation voice core marks a pivotal moment in our network evolution, as this new network element advances our vision of end-to-end orchestration and dynamic scaling on our path toward 6G.”

CNCS improves energy efficiency by about 10 percent to 20 percent, relative to a standard IMS Voice Core, according to Nokia data.

“As the sole 5G Voice Core provider for Boost Mobile in the US, Nokia is extremely pleased to support Boost in this modernization project and the close partnering that enabled it. This is another demonstration of Nokia’s technology leadership in helping our customers solve problems, address their customer needs, and generate new revenue streams,” said Marcelo Madruga, Head of Technology and Platforms, Products & Engineering, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia.

Nokia had the most 5G Standalone Core operator customers, with 123 in total, at the end of 2024.

Learn more about this…
Boost Mobile Executive Vice President, Wireless Engineering & Operations, Jeff Mcschooler will join the keynote panel on mobile future at Connected America, March 11-12, 2025 at Irving Convention Center, Dallas. Joining Jeff on the panel are Adam Loddeke of AT&T and Ahmed Khattak of US Mobile. The discussion is moderated by Kelcee Griffis of Bloomberg News.
Get your tickets at totaltele.com/connectedamerica 

Alternative network operator CityFibre, which has so far deployed their 2.5Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network to cover 4.3 million UK premises (4.1m RFS), is reportedly close to reaching agreement on a much needed £500m equity financing deal to support its existing roll-out and fuel consolidation.

The alternative network operator currently still aspires to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their new full fibre network (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£865m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK. But their original target of hitting that by around 2025 will not be achieved, and have previously indicated a desire to boost their growth by consolidating many smaller alternative networks.

At the start of 2024 the operator signalled that, over the next two years (i.e. by the start of 2026), merger and acquisition (M&A) activity alone could theoretically add up to 1.5-3 million extra premises to their full fibre network coverage. This is on top of the 1.3m expected to be built as part of their rural focused Project Gigabit contracts. But actually delivering on all this will take a few years.

However, CityFibre’s consolidation drive has so far only been able to add a single altnet, LitFibre, since early 2024 (here), and last year’s accounts revealed a clear need for fresh funding (here). But securing fresh investment in a climate of high interest rates (i.e. rising debt repayments etc.), rising build costs and strong competition is not an easy task, much as many smaller players have already discovered.

The good news, according to a Sky News report and its sources, is that existing investors including Mubadala are allegedly in talks to provide around £500m in equity financing to the company. The refinancing deal is expected to form part of a wider balance sheet strengthening, which may also include a “substantial new debt-raise” (i.e. the overall value of both equity and debt may well be a lot more than £500m).

As part of this effort, a syndicate of CityFibre’s lenders, which is said to be led by the NatWest Group, this week appointed advisers from Lazard to assist them during talks with the company.

A CityFibre spokesperson said:

“We are financing the business from a position of strength, with the full backing of our shareholders and investors. We look forward to further expansion as we launch [Sky Broadband] across our nationwide footprint later this year.”

The operator, which recently reported having grown their live customer base by 54% in the year to total 518,000 and delivering adjusted EBITDA of £5m (up from -£55m), is expected to finalise the new funding deal in the “coming weeks“. But we also wouldn’t be at all surprised if a deal this big took until Easter or just after Easter to fully complete.

As above, the funding will enable CityFibre to continue their network expansion and to engage in a new round of consolidation.

Good news. Business broadband ISP and communications provider Northern Telecom, which normally focuses on serving the North of England, has announced the acquisition of Wales-focused wireless provider Dyfed Telecom. The move comes shortly after HMRC filed a winding-up petition against the Kidwelly-based business (here).

Just to recap. Dyfed Telecom has spent the past few years helping to connect various premises across rural Wales to broadband using a mix of mobile (EE powered 4G/5G), satellite (Starlink) and WiFi based solutions. But the provider recently got into difficulty, which may have been partly fuelled by the Welsh Government’s (WG) recent suspension of the long-running Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) grant scheme (here).

The good news today is that Northern Telecom has announced an agreement to acquire Dyfed Telecom, which will bring 4,000 of their customers into the base and provide opportunities for 22 existing employees of the business.

Jon Graves, Founder and CEO of Northern Telecom, said:

“I’m thrilled to announce the acquisition of Dyfed Telecom Ltd, bringing 4,000 customers and an incredibly talented team of 22 into the wider Northern Telecom business. Over the coming weeks and months, we look forward to integrating Dyfed Telecom and ensuring a smooth transition for both customers and employees.

A huge thank you to Mary Daniels Marco Piacquadio & Jordan Martine for their support in making this happen. These deals are never straightforward, and their expertise has been invaluable in getting this over the line.

Coupled with rapid legals from Chris Hughes and the rest of the Mincoffs Solicitors team.

We’re excited about the future and can’t wait to welcome the Dyfed Telecom team into our business! If you’re a customer or partner, rest assured that you’re in safe hands.”