SpaceX’s Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband speeds via a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), appears to have quietly added a new and super cheap £8 per month roaming plan for customers in the UK. But as usual, there are a few catches to consider.

At present Starlink has over 7,000 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (c.3,00 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (inc. £19 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of 25-100Mbps and uploads of 5-10Mbps.

However, Starlink has previously also introduced a couple of ROAM plans for “RVs, nomads, and campers, and working on the go“, which tends to cost either £50 per month with a 50GB (GigaByte) monthly usage allowance or £96 if you want unlimited usage (plus £299 to £399 for the hardware and £19 shipping). Service performance on ROAM can be more variable, but it does support in-motion use, international travel and the ability to pause your service when not in use. Handy.

The big news today, as spotted by Stewart on ISPreview’s discussion forum (here), is that Starlink appears to have added a third roam plan that only costs £8 per month with a 20GB usage allowance (not much, but ideal as a short-term backup)! The catch is that this plan doesn’t currently show up for new customers, but existing subscribers seem to be shown the option when they attempt to unpause an already paused service.

In an ideal world, we’d like to see Starlink offering something similar to this plan on their Standard fixed location package. But this is still going to be very attractive for those who only need it as a backup or for limited usage in rural areas, as well as travel. Hopefully the provider will make this available to new sign-ups too, although there’s still the cost of hardware to consider.

News 

The European Commission has announced an €8 billion investment to improve the security and resilience of submarine cables

This includes major funding for projects such as the Baltic Synchronisation (€1.23 billion), the Great Sea Interconnector (€658 million), Bornholm Energy Island (€645 million), the Biscay Bay Interconnector (€578 million), and the Celtic Interconnector (€531 million). 

Speaking in Helsinki, Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen outlined the EU’s plan to protect submarine cables amid rising security concerns. “In response to growing geopolitical tensions, particularly in regions such as the Baltic Sea, the European Commission is taking decisive action to safeguard our critical submarine cable infrastructure. With this Action Plan, we are taking a significant step forward to strengthen their security. We want to make sure Europe is equipped not only to prevent and detect sabotage to cables but also to actively deter, repair and respond to any threat to critical infrastructure that is key to our economy and collective security,” she confirmed. 

Recent incidents, including suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea in December 2024, have highlighted the risks to these vital links. As 99% of intercontinental internet traffic and a growing share of Europe’s energy supply dependent on subsea cables, their protection is now a priority.  

Throughout this year and 2026, the Commission and the High Representative will work with Member States and the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) to map existing and planned submarine cables, assess risks, develop security measures, and identify key projects for investment. 

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

Also in the news:
Navigating the depths: Strategies for delivering successful subsea cable projects
Vodafone–Three reveals leadership team
French energy giant EDF offers up land for data centre projects

Network testing firm Ookla (i.e. Speedtest.net, Downdetector.co.uk) has today published an interesting new report that examines the adoption and performance of 5G Standalone (5GSA) based mobile broadband networks across the UK and Europe. This also compares the new technology against existing Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G networks.

Just for some context. 5G SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G connections that remove the legacy of slower 4G connectivity (still present in current NSA networks) and can thus deliver lower latency times, greater energy efficiency, better upload speeds, network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for Voice over New Radio (VoNR or Vo5G) and increased reliability and security etc.

Vodafone was the first UK mobile operator to launch 5GSA technology during mid-2023 (here), and they’ve since been followed by both EE (BT) and O2 (Virgin Media). By contrast, we have spotted several Three UK sites with 5G SA support, but they haven’t yet officially launched this service and are instead aligning their deployment plans with Vodafone as part of the recently agreed merger.

As usual, customers need supporting hardware (mobile handsets / routers etc.) in order to benefit from 5GSA. The initial focus of all these deployments has also tended to be on the busiest parts of various UK cities and large towns, although until now we haven’t seen a lot of data on the real-world performance difference between newer 5GSA and older NSA networks.

Comparing 5G SA and NSA Performance

The good news is that Ookla’s new report (PDF), which evaluates the UK and Europe’s progress on 5GSA deployments with other parts of the world (conducted in collaboration with Omdia), does finally give us a look at the key performance differences it can bring. The list of countries isn’t very long below because many have yet to start major 5GSA deployments.

For example, in terms of median download speeds (Megabits per second), regular 5G NSA networks in the UK delivered 108.55Mbps but on SA networks this jumps to 181.9Mbps. Some countries, such as Greece, show an even bigger performance gap, which is often due to the accompanying released of additional radio spectrum bands. On the flip side, the UK still sits quite low in the table below.

“Within Europe, while 5G SA rollout progress remains highly varied, the best outcomes have been observed in countries that have specific policies intended to incentivize 5G SA deployment. Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain—all four-player markets benefiting from targeted 5G SA-specific fiscal stimuli or coverage obligations— lead Europe in terms of 5G SA rollout across multiple operators,” said Ookla (this is clearly more of a reference to coverage than network performance).

Meanwhile, Southern and Central European countries have supplanted the Nordics at the forefront of this phase of the 5G cycle, with Greece (547.52Mbps) leading on median download speed in Q4 2024 thanks to its 3.5GHz usage, and Spain and Austria excelling in rural 5G SA coverage on the back of intensive deployments of the 700MHz band.

The next useful metric to check is latency (i.e. the response time between servers) and here the UK saw a median (average) 5G latency on older NSA networks of 47ms (milliseconds), while SA networks were able to achieve an even faster time of 35ms. However, once again, the UK is still far from being the fastest 5G SA or NSA country for latency performance.

Ookla adds that European operators at the forefront of business model evolution with 5G SA – “such as BT’s EE in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Elisa in Finland, and 3 in Austria” – are said to be leveraging the technology to consolidate their positions at the premium end of the market and stimulate average revenue per user (ARPU) growth. But clearly the UK still has plenty of room for improvement.

In terms of performance, Ofcom currently has several auctions planned, which will release more radio spectrum for 5G mobile services, such as in the millimetre wave (mmW) friendly 26GHz and 40GHz bands (here). Some lower frequency mobile bands, such as in part of 6GHz, may also become available for use by mobile networks in the future. Suffice to say that this should help to boost 5G performance in the UK over the next few years.

Hopefully bad things don’t come in threes. Graeme Oxby, the CEO of London focused full fibre broadband ISP CommunityFibre, has apologised to customers after the operator suffered a second service outage yesterday, which much like the first one appears as if it could have been related to their Domain Name Servers (DNS). But this outage was much shorter.

In case anybody has forgotten, CommunityFibre was hit by a protracted outage on Monday (here), which lasted for several hours and impacted a sizeable portion of their customer base. But some savvy customers were able to work around it by using a third-party DNS provider (Quad9, Google Public DNS, OpenDNS, Cloudflare DNS etc.) to circumvent the ISPs own domain name system.

The DNS service typically works by converting Internet Protocol (IP) addresses into a human-readable form and back again (e.g. 123.56.32.122 becomes – examplezfakedomainlols.uk). Services like this tend to be provided automatically by your broadband and mobile provider, usually operating seamlessly in the background.

However, it’s not uncommon for ISPs to very occasionally suffer from problems with their DNS servers, which may arise due to a fault or misconfiguration in the system. When this happens, your physical broadband connection may still be live, but many of your requests to online domains will fail (other issues can also cause this, so we’re not 100% certain it was DNS).

Sadly, a similar outage struck CommunityFibre yesterday at around 3:45pm, although unlike the first outage they were able to resolve it within the space of about 30 minutes. Once again, some customers reported that they could work around it by changing DNS provider, but a few others found this didn’t work and opted to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) instead. The situation prompted the provider’s CEO, Graeme Oxby, to issue a personal apology to his customers.

Graeme Oxby said:

“Unfortunately, I am having to apologise again as we had a network outage for 30 minutes this afternoon. Most customers should have had service restored immediately and we will keep working to get everyone restored.

If you’re still experiencing any issues getting online, please switch the power off to the fibre box for 2 minutes and turn it back on. Then, switch off the power to the router for 2 minutes and turn it back on. Your connection may take 1 to 3 minutes to re-establish.

Please do not attempt any other troubleshooting steps like adjusting any settings or taking out any cables as this may prevent service restoring automatically.

Thank you so much and sorry for any inconvenience.”

We have to give credit to the provider, and it’s CEO, here for taking responsibility and responding in a much more personal way than we’re used to seeing from ISPs in this market. Most providers tend to just fob customers off with a vague notice and then offer no follow up after the event (although it would have been even better to get some explanation for the cause).

However, brief outages like this are of course to be expected in the complexity of modern broadband networks, although in this case CommunityFibre appears as if it may have been dealing with a reoccurrence of the same or a similar / related issue to the one that struck on Monday. Hopefully there won’t be a third event anytime soon.

Several credible sources have informed ISPreview that broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) is gearing up for an important new product launch, which is expected to occur in March 2025 (delays still possible). The expectation is that this will reflect the opening up of their new XGS-PON powered full fibre network in existing coax (cable) areas to live customers.

The operator is currently in the process of upgrading millions of their legacy Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC / DOCSIS 3.1) powered areas to support the latest Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) technology, which is a programme they’re aiming to complete by 2028. On top of that, they’re separately rolling out the same technology to an additional 5-7 million premises via nexfibre (this can already reach 2 million premises).

Despite this, Virgin Media has so far only made nexfibre’s newly built XGS-PON network available to new customers, while those existing customers in HFC (non-nexfibre) areas (c.16 million premises) are NOT currently able to access or order packages using their XGS-PON upgraded areas (aka – Project Mustang / Fibre Up). The latter includes those served by Virgin’s older Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG) based FTTP lines.

Admittedly, most of their HFC / RFOG areas have yet to see the XGS-PON upgrade take place (it’s a multi-year upgrade programme, costing c.£100 per premises), but several million premises do now have both Virgin’s HFC / RFOG and XGS-PON networks existing side-by-side. The fact that XGS-PON is just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing (i.e. not generating revenue), makes very little sense. But that may, finally, be about to change.

Several credible sources have informed ISPreview that Virgin Media is gearing up to launch new products in March 2025 (although delays are still possible). The expectation is that this will also involve making their network upgrade (XGS-PON) areas, at least those that have been fully completed, available to customers for the first time.

ISPreview has seen no indication of any bulk automated HFC to XGS-PON upgrade plans, which would be very difficult due to the need for an engineer visit (e.g. installing an optical modem / ONT inside homes). Instead, this is likely to be a much more organic process, with the change only occurring when customers choose to upgrade or re-contract their package.

However, this is not strictly the first time that Virgin Media has made their XGS-PON upgrade areas available, since a brief test or soft launch also appeared to occur late last year. Several customers reported that they had been upgraded via a door-step sold trial in selected areas, which gave them 6 months of free service and £200 worth of Amazon vouchers alongside an FTTP package (most appeared to have got Virgin’s 2Gbps package). But we understand this was paused due to problems with Virgin’s ordering/billing system, which have hopefully now been ironed out.

The official line from Virgin Media on all this is, of course, “no comment“, which is generally what they seem to say for absolutely every query we send their way about future products. Finally, we should point out that Virgin Media are also gearing up to make these same XGS-PON upgrade areas available to wholesale during the first half of 2025, but we don’t yet know precisely when that will occur (we suspect much later in the spring than March, but you never know).

Four years have passed since we first reported on the emergence of a new alternative network (altnet) called WhyFibre (here). The operator had expressed a plan to build a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across “underserved” parts of South England, but until recently they had appeared to be dormant.

Just to recap. ISPreview’s original article in 2021 noted how WhyFibre were busy securing Code Powers from Ofcom to help speed-up their planned deployment of new fibre optic infrastructure and cut costs, not least by reducing the number of licenses needed for street works. But until now we’ve seen no major activity and assumed that the operator had given up on their plans.

The company, which in 2021 was controlled by Dumitru Ban, then appears to have gone through several changes of control and its sole Director is now listed as Stephen Parry (here), while Rodica Ciobotaru gained “significant control” of the business in November 2024. But WhyFibre’s most recent “micro company accounts“, which admittedly only run to the end of June 2023 (published 11th March 2024), don’t yet show the sort of financial activity needed for an FTTP build and lists a single employee.

Nevertheless, one of ISPreview’s readers (Sánchez) recently reported (here) that a business called FibreOne (could also be Fibre1 – several businesses use similar sounding names) had been spotted building a new FTTP network in the Hertfordshire (England) town of Letchworth, which when challenged said they were working on behalf of WhyFibre. The contractor appeared to be laying fresh fibre through Openreach’s existing ducts (PIA).

After roping in Marcus of the Better Internet Dashboard (BIDB) project, we were then able to identify another two locations where WhyFibre (SWA code of 7572) appeared to be building, including one fairly extensive network in the large Bedfordshire town of Luton (an odd choice given how well covered the town is by Openreach, Virgin Media and CityFibre, as well as some smaller altnet builds) and neighbouring Hitchin (Hertfordshire).

In addition, a couple of smaller works were also spotted in the West Yorkshire town of Normanton, which is well covered by Openreach and Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable broadband networks, albeit admittedly without much in the way of any competing altnets.

At present, we cannot find any public announcements about any related projects from WhyFibre and have no contacts for them, although more information may surface once they publish their next batch of annual accounts (due next month).

Similarly, it’s unclear whether they’re acting as a civil engineering organisation for another network or still intend to run their own retail ISP or wholesale platform. The provider’s website domain is currently just a holding page, although you can still view their old partly-finished ISP website from 2021 by using this URL instead – https://whyfibre.co.uk/home.

Suffice to say that launching a new altnet deployment into an already overcrowded market, which is also one that remains under considerable strain due to high builds costs, competition and high interest rates, is currently quite a risky endeavour.

European satellite operator Eutelsat has announced that their OneWeb network, which is a global constellation of broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that is partly still supported by the UK government (11% stake), has just conducted the “world’s first successful trial” of a 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN).

OneWeb (aka – Eutelsat OneWeb) currently has 654 small (c.150kg) first generation (GEN1) LEO platforms in space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km (c.600 of them for coverage and the rest for redundancy). The network was completed in March 2023 (here), promising both ultrafast broadband speeds and fast latency times. But a further 15 satellites (plus one GEN2 prototype) were then launched in May 2023 to add “resiliency and redundancy to the network” (here) and then 20 more in October 2024 (here).

However, Eutelsat has long held an ambition to adopt mobile (5G) communications support into their satellite network, which would use the Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) standard within the 5G specification (3GPP Release 17). The latest test using a live commercial network is thus said to “pave the way for deployment of the 5G NTN standard, which will result in future satellite and terrestrial interoperability within a large ecosystem, lowering the cost of access and enabling the use of satellite broadband for 5G devices around the world“.

The trial used OneWeb satellites, with the MediaTek NR [5G New Radio] NTN test chipset, and NR NTN test 5G g-NodeB (gNB) provided by ITRI, implementing the 3GPP Release 17 specifications. Sharp, Rhode & Schwarz provided the antenna array and test equipment and the LEO satellites, built by Airbus, carry transponders, with Ku-band service link, Ka-band feeder link, and adopting the “Earth-moving beams” concept.

During the trial, the 5G user terminal successfully connected to the 5G core via the satellite link and exchanged traffic. “With the integration of 5G standards shared and accepted by the entire mobile industry, all compatible satellite constellations will naturally and seamlessly complement terrestrial networks, enabling truly ubiquitous connectivity with economies of scale, and opening up new markets for smartphones, the automotive industry and the Internet-of-Things,” said Eutelsat.

Arlen Kassighian, Chief Engineering Officer at Eutelsat Group, said:

“These trials show the commitment of Eutelsat Group in developing and adopting new technologies, in order to provide the best possible services to our customers, in collaboration with trusted partners. 5G NTN will be a key feature of the IRIS2 constellation, and Eutelsat is at the forefront of this innovation and active member of the ecosystem. We are proud to be the first satellite operator to demonstrate the 5G air interface working on a commercial fleet in Ku-band and paving the way for new applications in future constellations.”

In case anybody has forgotten, OneWeb conducted a related test back in October 2023 (here), although Eutelsat’s latest test is much closer to a final commercial product. The 2023 trial saw a team at the University of Surrey test a 5G mobile network by connecting Surrey’s 5G core to a cell site through the LEO constellation. But that wasn’t the same approach as Starlink or AST Space Mobile are using, where the satellites can directly connect to existing Smartphones (i.e. OneWeb’s original test seemed to be more about providing the backhaul (capacity) for 5G cells, which is still useful).

Network access provider CityFibre, which has so far built their 2.5Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 4.3 million UK premises (4.1m Ready for Service), have confirmed the completion of their “primary” £59m build in the city of Aberdeen (Scotland).

The long-running network deployment, which was originally announced in February 2018 (here), has now built to over 105,000 homes in Aberdeen (around 97% of the city’s premises) via over 762km of new fibre cable. The full fibre network also connects more than 160 public sector sites, including council offices, schools, libraries and leisure centres (this bit is more akin to Dark Fibre).

As usual, CityFibre aren’t the only gigabit-capable broadband network present in the city, with Aberdeen also being home to significant FTTP coverage from Openreach’s network. On top of that there are several smaller deployments from Hyperoptic, OFNL, Grain and probably others.

The operator said they would now “continue to explore opportunities to connect more homes and businesses, including flats, new-build homes, business parks and homes on private roads.”

Paul Wakefield, Partnership Manager at CityFibre, said:

“We’re really excited to have finished our primary build in Aberdeen. Across the city, residents can now access all the benefits full fibre connectivity has to offer, enabling more people in the area unlock seamless homeworking, streaming and learning.

“Aberdeen’s economic strength and vitality make it a cornerstone of prosperity, not just for Scotland, but for the entire UK, and we look forward to building on our previous success powering the city’s future economic development.”

The alternative network operator, which has so far attracted 518,000 live customers and also expects to have upgraded their entire network to 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology by mid-2025 (here), 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.£800m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK. But quite when they’ll reach that point is unclear, and they’re known to still be in need of fresh funding (here).

News

Using Taara’s wireless optical networking tech, two drones can establish a birectional connection over multiple kilometres, allowing the operator to bypass damaged sections of its network

This week, Vodafone has announced it is piloting a new drone solution aimed at helping networks stay operational in the event of cable damage.

The drones, operating in pairs and equipped with wireless optical technology from the Taara Project, aim to provide a wireless bridge across damaged network infrastructure. The Taara terminals themselves include a mirrors and sensors that point, acquire, and track beams of visual light, which is delivering data point-to-point.

Vodafone says it has completed a success trial of this technology in Seville, Spain, which saw one drone tethered to a mobile mast and another tethered to a Vodafone data transport hub 3km away.

Little detail was given about the quality of the ‘temporary connection’ achieved by this pilot project, but in tests back in 2021, Taara’s optical technology was shown to be capable of delivering bidirectional throughput of up to 20Gbps at a range of up to 20km.

Vodafone says that the drone solution’s versatility lies in its speed of deployment, making it ideal for quickly responding to cable breaks from construction or vandalism. It could also be a useful option for providing emergency connectivity in the event of natural disasters.

Taara itself suggests its technology has far broader applicability, such as establishing connections across difficult terrain, such as across rivers and sea straits, and connecting areas where terrestrial infrastructure may not be permitted, like national parks. In these more permanent deployments, deploying the Taara equipment directly on suitable fixed infrastructure will likely be preferred if available.

Further details of the partnership are expected to be shared at this year’s Mobile World Congress event.

The Taara Project is a product of X (previously Google X), part of Google’s so-call ‘mooshot factory’ that also produced the now defunct Loon connectivity platform project.

Taara’s technology is already being used by a handful of operators worldwide, including Bharti Airtel in India, Digicel in various parts of the Pacific, and T-Mobile in the USA.

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

Also in the news:
Navigating the depths: Strategies for delivering successful subsea cable projects
Vodafone–Three reveals leadership team
French energy giant EDF offers up land for data centre projects

NOTES FOR EDITORS

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