Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A new study has provisionally found that Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper), which is in the early stages of launching a new mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the UK and globally, suffers from an all too familiar problem of being a bit too bright – potentially enough to disrupt observational sciences (astronomy).

The new service is currently in the commercial beta phase and will start to launch properly through 2026. The service currently has approval to deploy and operate their own initial constellation of 3,236 LEO satellites (altitudes of between 590km to 630km). A total of over 180 Kuiper satellites have already been placed into orbit (they need at least 500 for basic global coverage) and many more are due to follow over the next few years.

However, a new study from a group of astronomers affiliated with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) suggests that Amazon’s service, which is designed to compete with the likes of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, also appears to suffer from the same brightness problem that we’ve seen occurring across various LEO satellite networks – some more than others.

Just to recap. The IAU recommends that LEO satellites should have a maximum brightness of magnitude +7 at altitudes of up to 550km. On this scale, the brightest objects actually have the smallest numbers (e.g. brilliant Venus can reach up to -4.6, while the North Star is dimmer at +2). If satellites are too bright then that can make it much harder to picture the night sky and do other things, such as to spot dangerous asteroids or detect key celestial events.

According to the new study, which used data collected from nearly 2,000 observations of Amazon’s new satellites, the brightness distribution of satellites at 630km was compared against the IAU’s recommended limits. “For satellites in their operational mode, 92.0% of observations exceed the research limit, while 24.7% exceed the aesthetic limit,” said the study.

The aesthetic limit reflects a Magnitude of 6 (i.e. objects that can be seen at locations where the sky is minimally affected by light pollution). You can see how the various constellations compare below.

Study Conclusion

The mean apparent magnitude of all Amazon Leo satellites is 6.28 based on 1,938 observations. For spacecraft in their operational mode, 92% exceeded the IAU brightness limit for interference with research, while 25% distract from aesthetic appreciation of the night sky.

The reflective characteristics are similar to Version 1 Starlink spacecraft. Both strongly scatter sunlight forward and backward. Based on private communication, Amazon is working on reducing satellite brightness.

The Amazon Leo constellation spacecraft are potentially impacting astronomical research and aesthetic appreciation of the night sky.

Brightness statistics for all major satellite constellations are kept up to date at our website, https://satmags.netlify.app/ .

At present this is less of a concern because Amazon has only launched 180 satellites, but it becomes more of a problem once thousands are up in the sky. For its part, Amazon Leo says they’re working with astronomers to help reduce the brightness problem, which has included “applying a custom dielectric film and non-reflective coating on all of our operational spacecraft,” said a spokesperson (credits to PC Mag). But by the sounds of it, this is already present on their existing satellites. Suffice to say, more changes may be required.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Brighton-based Flexgrid, which describes itself as the UK-focused connectivity aggregator for the channel market, has announced that they’ve launched a new website and now support the ability for partners to compare and order full fibre broadband services through a total of 24 alternative network (altnet) providers and suppliers.

The list of current partners now includes the likes of Zayo, PXC, Openreach, Virgin Media, CityFibre, CommunityFibre, Gigaclear, ITS Technology, Netomnia, MS3, Airband, FullFibre Ltd, Elevate, Freedom Fibre, F&W Networks, Glide, Hyperoptic, Fibrus (Hyperfast GB), KCOM, LightSpeed Broadband, Zzoomm, Quickline and Neos Networks.

Flexgrid’s altnet ecosystem, alongside Openreach’s network, is now said to reach approximately 70% of UK businesses, extending full fibre broadband beyond many traditional wholesale networks. The portfolio of products includes services from Ethernet to FTTP, SD-WAN, cellular and also satellite connectivity services.

Frazer Cannadine, Sales Director at Flexgrid, said:

“Many ISPs are still defining how to approach AltNets, but Flexgrid has built one of the most comprehensive AltNet platforms available to the channel and is already working with several ISPs and MSPs to deliver full fibre broadband for their customers. We are offering services at L3 today and aim to have L2 available for the end of Q1 26. Our channel partners can take a wires only service, deploying their own edge equipment or take a managed service for an end to end experience“.

We should point out that there are a variety of altnet aggregators out there today (Zen’s Fibre Hub, PXC etc.), although these are difficult providers to accurately compare.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Over four months have now passed since mobile operator giffgaff, which is owned by Telefónica UK, become the only other retail ISP after Virgin Media (O2) to start selling fixed broadband packages over nexfibre’s new full fibre (FTTP) network (here). But despite this welcome development, customers on Virgin Media are still struggling to switch.

Just to recap. Nexfibre was established a few years ago as part of a £4.5bn joint venture between Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here). The operator has since built FTTP to cover 2.5 million premises – supported by Virgin Media’s engineers (Telefónica is also co-owner of VMO2). But the operator’s original plan to cover “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) recently stalled and future build remains uncertain (here).

Despite the uncertain climate, many of those covered by nexfibre’s network welcomed the arrival of giffgaff’s service, not least because they appear to have adopted simpler packages with clearer pricing, as well as short (flexible) monthly contracts and the ability to use a third-party router directly from the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) on your wall (officially this is NOT yet supported, but various customers say it works).

However, it wasn’t long before some interested consumers, who happened to still be customers of Virgin Media in the same nexfibre areas, found that they were unable to order and directly switch to giffgaff’s service (giffgaff’s support staff also echoed this). The only way around this was to cancel their Virgin Media connection first and then place an order for giffgaff’s service as a new line, which is far from the smoothest thing to do and often involves some downtime.

Speculation has been rife about the reasons for this. Some people suggested it could be down to limitations of their order management system / processes and others have indicated it may be more of a competitive decision, such as to avoid giffgaff hoovering up Virgin Media’s existing base with ease. Initially we thought it was just a post-launch teething issue, but the problem remains today and continues to attract complaints.

A spokesperson for VMO2 told ISPreview:

“There’s nothing preventing Virgin Media customers from switching to giffgaff, it’s just not currently a fully automated switching experience. We are working on a solution which we hope to have live soon.”

The above should perhaps be considered a joint statement, since it was given with the approval of giffgaff, although it’s currently unclear how long it will take to resolve the issue. In the meantime those in this boat who wish to switch to giffgaff will need to follow the manual cancellation route and all the extra hassles that may entail.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

European telecoms giants Telefónica and Liberty Global, the joint owners of Virgin Media and O2 in the UK, have reportedly now joined with private equity firm InfraVia Capital to progress their previously proposed £2bn bid to buy alternative full fibre broadband network Netomnia toward conclusion. The deal is likely to offer the altnet more than rival CityFibre could muster, but competition issues could be raised.

Just to recap. Netomnia (Substantial Group) is one of the UK market’s largest altnets and has deployed their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband service to cover 3 million UK premises RFS (inc. 445,000 customers) – available across parts of 98 cities and towns. The group aims to cover 5m UK premises by the end of 2027 (inc. 1m customers by 2028).

By comparison, Virgin Media operates a gigabit-capable fixed line broadband network that covers over 16 million premises (mix of hybrid fibre coax and full fibre connections), although they’re aiming to upgrade all of that to full fibre (FTTP) by 2028.

In addition, Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital also jointly own the semi-separate nexfibre business, which has rolled out an open access (wholesale) full fibre network to 2.5 million premises in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s own network. But at the time of writing, the only two retail ISPs selling services via nexfibre are all part of the same parentage (Virgin Media and giffgaff).

Back in October 2025 reports emerged that VMO2’s parents and CityFibre appeared to be battling over a major network consolidation deal to acquire Netomnia (here). According to today’s FT (paywall) report, VMO2 now appears to be leading with the most attractive offer (CityFibre may be more constrained on this front) and is allegedly close to signing a deal, although none of the parties involved have officially commented on this.

On the surface such a deal would not appear to make much sense, since quite a bit of Netomnia’s fibre has already overbuilt the combined nexfibre and VMO2 footprint (over half of Virgin Media’s gigabit network is overlapped by Netomnia, albeit less so on the nexfibre side). But the move, if confirmed, would also remove a major competitive player in the alternative network space and will, crucially, prevent CityFibre from securing its own merger with the operator and thus growing the scale it needs; this alone could be seen as a win for VMO2, albeit a potentially expensive one.

On the flip side, customers of Netomnia’s network, many of which will have used them to escape from legacy incumbents like Virgin Media and their cycle of inflation busting mid-contract price hikes, will probably be less than pleased about such a transaction and the future impact it may have upon their services.

Indeed, for consumers, a deal between Netomnia and CityFibre is likely to have been much more palatable. This due to the limited level of overbuild and shared position as lower cost broadband disruptors, which makes for a more competitive market. But if CityFibre can’t deliver the most attractive offer, then none of that matters.

The next big question mark remains over how the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) would view such a deal, since it’s hard to imagine them treating the networks of Virgin Media and nexfibre as being truly separate, due to the shared parentage. The CMA is likely to consider the wider competitive ramifications of such a major operator buying into control of the altnet space like this, and you can bet CityFibre will raise a complaint.

This is all before we even consider the usual complexities and costs for VMO2/nexfibre when it comes to tackling any differences in network infrastructure, retail ISP relationships and technology. All of this could create issues for later network and customer base integration (e.g. what do they do about those areas of network overlap – discard them and migrate customers or discard their own network and migrate the other way).

However, it’s worth remembering that such deals aren’t unexpected in today’s market, particularly with so many altnets being under pressure from competition, rising build costs and high interest rates. Netomnia has been one of the few altnets to continue building through this phase of the market, seemingly with some success, but they’re not immune to the challenges.

As it stands, the FT’s wording appears to suggest that a deal is now all but signed, but nothing’s done until it’s done and that’ll be down to Netomnia’s decision in the next few days or weeks. What they decide may have a noticeable impact upon the wider competitive landscape and force CityFibre to focus on different, and possibly less attractive, consolidation targets; growing the scale they need thus may become harder.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The app provides GPS location tracking and an SOS button to quickly contact the police

Today, Openreach has announced the launch of a new worker safety app aimed at tackling the rampant abuse its engineers face while on the job.

The app, created in partnership with Peoplesafe, includes various safety features designed to support staff in the field. These include an SOS button and fall alarm connecting to a 24/7 control centre, GPS tracking for accurate emergency response, two-way audio and direct police dispatch, and commute monitoring and critical event alerts.

The app will be installed on all devices carried by Openreach engineers and will be optional for office staff.

“Fall alarms are activated by sensors in the person’s mobile phone, while the SOS alarms can be set off with a simple press of the handset. Emergency services can be on their way within minutes which is just incredible,” said Adam Elsworth, Safety Director at Openreach. “While Peoplesafe will only be mandatory for our field teams (due to the nature of their work) we hope all of our people will use the app to have peace of mind and support if and when they need it.”

Openreach recorded 700 incidents of either physical or verbal abuse since April last year. These include “being spat at, pushed down stairs, threatened with dogs and knives, punched and kicked and even barricaded into homes and vans”.

The company also says it has seen an increase in racially motivated incidents.

“The Peoplesafe app gives our people an added layer of safety while on the job and particularly for many of our colleagues that work alone for long periods of the day. It also helps us to address an area we have less control: attacks by members of the public,” said Elsworth.

Keep up to date with all the latest telecoms news with the Total Telecom newsletter

Also in the news
World Communication Award Winners 2025
Ofcom clears the way for satellite-to-smartphone services
LG Uplus’s AI voice call app glitch leaks user data

The post Openreach launches app to keep engineers safe from abuse appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

The move seeks to capitalise on Southeast Asia’s booming date centre market

This week, media reports suggest that a consortium led by KKR and Singtel is closing in on a deal to acquire ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC).

Negotiations, which are already at an “advanced stage”, would value the data centre business at around $10.22 billion.

“Singtel, as part of a consortium, continues to have discussions in relation to STT GDC. While these discussions are at an advanced stage, there is no certainty that such discussions will lead to any definitive or binding agreement,” said Singtel in a statement on Sunday.

STT GDC owns and operates around 100 data centres in over 20 markets, including Singapore, Malaysia, India, Germany, Italy, and the UK, according to the company website

Rumours that KKR and Singtel were in discussions to acquire STT GDC were first reported in July last year.

Both companies already hold stakes in the business, having jointly invested  $1.3 billion in 2024, with KKR owning 14.1% and Singtel 4.2%. The remaining majority stake in STT GDC is held by ST Telemedia, itself owned by Singapore’s state-owned holding company Temasek.

For Singtel, the deal would represent the operator’s latest step in its drive to become a regional AI data centre powerhouse.

The company’s Digital InfraCo unit was rebranded as Nxera in 2024, with the company aiming to expand its data centre capacity in Southeast Asia to 200MW by the end of 2027 in partnership with Nvidia.

By combining Nxera’s existing and planned data centre assets in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia with those of STT GDC, Singtel would immediately become one of the region’s largest digital infrastructure players.

KKR, on the other hand, already owns roughly 155 facilities with a pipeline of 12-gigawatts of capacity. The company has been on a spending spree in recent years to grow this capacity even further, most recently including a $1.5 billion investment in Global Technical Realty, a company specialising in building bespoke facilities for hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

How is the data centre landscape evolving in 2026? Join the industry in discussion at Total Telecom’s Hyperscale Live event!

Also in the news
World Communication Award Winners 2025
Ofcom clears the way for satellite-to-smartphone services
LG Uplus’s AI voice call app glitch leaks user data

The post KKR–Singtel consortium near $10bn deal for STT GDC appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced the launch of a new mobile safety app to help combat a surge in abuse and assaults on its UK telecoms engineers. Since April last year, there’s been around 700 incidents of either physical or verbal assaults and threats, including some cases where people have needed time off work to recover.

The sort of incidents involved here tend to vary and in the past we’ve heard of it covering everything from verbal abuse to threats with scissors, assault (e.g. being pushed down some stairs, punched or shaken off ladders), racism, spitting, swearing, homeowners preventing staff from leaving (i.e. barricading them inside homes or vans), as well as inappropriate or threatening behaviour toward female engineers etc.

The sadly growing problem (in the previous year the number of incidents was closer to 450) has previously caused Openreach to trial panic alarms with some their 27,000 employees (here) and they’ve now evolved that approach by launching a new app, created by Peoplesafe.

The app will help protect Openreach’s engineers and office-based staff in the event of safety incidents when they’re working alone, at height or just on their commute to and from home. The app, which has already been through a successful trial in the company’s Service Delivery unit, offers several features.

Features of Openreach’s New Engineer Safety App

• SOS and fall alarms connecting directly to a 24/7 control centre
• GPS tracking for emergency responders to pinpoint locations
• Instant two-way audio and direct police dispatch
• Commute monitoring and critical event alerts

Admittedly, it’s extremely sad that such an app is even needed, but it’s better to have it than not. The app will be installed on all devices carried by Openreach’s engineers, as well as being offered as an optional safety precaution for its office-based staff.

Adam Elsworth, Safety Director at Openreach, said:

“Nothing’s more important than the safety of our people and making sure everyone gets home each day safe and well. That’s why we’re constantly looking at ways to protect our people as they go about their work, whether that’s through training, PPE, specialist kit like climbing harnesses or new technologies.

“The Peoplesafe app gives our people an added layer of safety while on the job and particularly for many of our colleagues that work alone for long periods of the day. It also helps us to address an area we have less control: attacks by members of the public.”

Adrian, Openreach Engineer, explained:

“Recently I was working in the street to reconnect a vulnerable customer which involved a road closure, when a local resident furious at having to wait a short time started throwing traffic cones around and swearing. He got into his car drove along the pavement and then directly at me.

I was genuinely frightened for my safety, so I pressed the SOS button on the Peoplesafe app and thankfully the police arrived within minutes and diffused the situation, so I was able to continue work. It’s really reassuring to know that I can get help with just the press of a button.”

We should point out that this problem is by no means unique to Openreach, with engineers from other fixed line and mobile network operators also becoming subject to similar events. Some such cases do get reported to the police, although it’s unclear how many people have ever been prosecuted as a result.

Either way, the rise in abuse is incredibly disturbing, although it’s possible that some of this might be related to the fact that Openreach’s engineers are currently much more active and visible due to being in the peak phase of the operator’s national full fibre broadband roll-out.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that engineers are human beings too and only doing their jobs, so if somebody has a complaint then there are formal ways to raise it.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

French internet connection benchmarking firm nPerf has this morning published the results from their annual 2026 crowdsourced study into UK mobile broadband (4G, 5G) performance. The results see both EE and Three UK being named as delivering the country’s “best Mobile Internet performances“.

The latest nPerf study (PDF) is based on masses of tests carried out – between January and December 2025 – exclusively by customers of the various mobile network operators, using tools on both nPerf’s website and via their dedicated mobile testing apps for Android and iOS. The results are said to reflect “users in real conditions” from across the United Kingdom, although they only include the major national operators with a test share above 5%.

However, there are caveats to this sort of data, such as the fact that it could be impacted by any limitations of the devices being used, which hampers the ability to adopt a common type of hardware in order to establish a solid baseline of performance. But those caveats are shared by all operators in the study.

Overall, EE and Three UK were both top of the pack and virtually neck and neck for performance. The United Kingdom’s mobile internet sector displays an average score of 78,222 nPoints. EE and Three UK share the leadership positions with 86,470 and 84,993 nPoints respectively, dominating across download speed (both exceeded 110Mbps in download speeds), upload speed, and latency.

By comparison, Vodafone scored 74,892 points, while O2 once again found itself at the bottom of yet another mobile performance study with a score of just 66,557 points. The full results can be found below, which includes a second set of results for 5G-only connections (Three UK pulls out in front on that one).

2026 nPerf UK Mobile Benchmark (All Connections)

2026 nPerf UK Mobile Benchmark (5G-only Connections)

One other thing to consider above is that Vodafone and Three UK began to merge their networks during the latter half of 2025. This is a slow multi-year process, but it may well start to impact the results for next year’s study.

“The UK mobile market demonstrates strong competition at the top, with both leaders delivering comprehensive performance and user experiences that benefit from high-speed connectivity across all key indicators“, states Sébastien de Rosbo, CEO of nPerf.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Alternative rural network provider Voneus, which has built a mix of full fibre (FTTP) and wireless (FWA) broadband networks across some remote parts of Wales and England, have published their annual accounts to the end of March 2025. The figures show that turnover increased 43% to £6.33m due to customer growth, but they suffered a loss before tax of £38m.

Just to recap. Voneus was last year hit by some redundancies and a slowdown in their network build (here), due to many of the same pressures as other altnets have been facing (rising build costs, competition and high interest rates etc.). Back in 2024 they also withdrew (here) from the publicly funded Project Gigabit broadband build contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01), which has since been picked up by Openreach (here).

However, at the end of last year they did manage to strengthen their position for “long-term growth” with a business reorganisation, which was said to have secured their funding through to 2030. This involved the renegotiation of an existing £70m loan facility with banking partners, which is intended to support future network commercialisation.

The company’s latest annual accounts help to show why they needed to strike the aforementioned agreement and Voneus’ directors say they now have a “reasonable expectation that the company has adequate resources to continue to operate in the foreseeable future“.

Summary of Key Figures – Voneus Accounts (March 2025)

➤ Turnover increased 43% to £6.33m due to customer growth (2024: £4.41m).

➤ Gross profit increased to £800k (2024: £768k), although gross profit margin declined to 13% (2024: 17%).

➤ Employees grew to 275 (2024: 238).

➤ Losses before tax increased to £38m (2024: £36.6m).

➤ Government grant receipts (gigabit vouchers etc.) increased to £2.25m (2024: £1.12m).

➤ Net assets worth £136.18m

Voneus are currently in the process of conducting a “business reorganisation to ensure operational efficiency and future scalability“, which is already known to include the “outsourcing of some business functions” and may result in a “limited number of redundancies“ (here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Independent data analysis has recently revealed a curious trend where patches of Openreach’s full fibre (FTTP) broadband network, often within urban areas and usually but not always associated to installs that require a more complex stage 2 process, suddenly vanish after somebody places an order. The issue is estimated to be impacting 0.3% of UK premises.

Regular readers will know that there are already various reasons why areas that have already gone live with FTTP may suddenly, albeit temporarily, cease to be available. For example, availability can be impacted if the local distribution nodes (e.g. Connectorised Block Terminals / CBT) run out of spare ports or nearby telecoms poles have no space for new cables. This often causes a delay in availability until engineers can deploy a solution, albeit usually only for a very small area (e.g. one side of a street or a handful of homes).

However, the cases we’re looking at today concern a different issue or set of issues, which can often impact a wider area (e.g. several streets or postcodes). The problem, which was picked up by Andrew Ferguson over at Thinkbroadband (here, here, here and here), concerns areas where Openreach have deployed FTTP, but then latter identify additional complexities after somebody places an order.

Often these will be areas that have already been designated as falling under a stage 2 (KCI2) installation process. Just for context, a stage 1 process tends to reflect a normal property that is expected to be installed within a single engineering visit, while stage 2 usually reflects those that are expected to be more complex (i.e. may require additional external engineering work before a connection can be made to the inside of the property).

During stage 2 installs, engineers may also come across various often unexpected issues, such as cable ducts that are blocked or don’t exist (e.g. the cable may be directly buried in the ground). Properties marked as stage 2 are usually considered to be covered if Openreach have built their FTTP network to the area, but that last little hop into homes can still throw up problems. In some cases this has been causing Openreach to remove some sizeable patches of coverage from areas where the service was previously marked as “available” (RFS).

A Spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:

“We’ve temporarily paused new Full Fibre orders at a small number of previously enabled premises as we don’t want customers there to face long delays when they order. These particular locations have proved more complex to connect than a typical order, so we’re taking a closer look at the reasons for that to make sure we can give people the right service experience from day one. Existing customers and inflight orders aren’t affected, and we’ve already made some paused locations available again. We plan to the remainder as quickly as possible.”

Openreach are certainly not the only network operator to run into this sort of problem, although until recently it wasn’t really possible to get a feel for how much of an impact it was having. However, Andrew’s recent mapping efforts have changed that, which has increasingly identified areas across the UK where the operator’s FTTP coverage figures have been going backwards. Andrew said: “We’ve had plenty of networks where everything says yes and they’ll actually take peoples money to then find out a street has been removed from footprint.”

For example, over in Plymouth (Devon) it was identified that this issue had recently resulted in full fibre coverage dropping from a peak of 80.21% to 79.15% (a reduction of c.1,300 premises), which has created islands of vanishing availability within the city. But nationally, Thinkbroadband estimates that it may only impact around 0.3% of UK premises, although it’s not clear how long it usually takes for operators to resolve such issues and Andrew is still working to fully map the impacted areas.

Suffice to say, full fibre coverage is turning out to be a bit more dynamic than we originally expected, although the above challenges should perhaps be considered par for the course on any network that’s still in the process of building.