Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
A new study from DTP Group has analysed monthly UK internet searches relating to broadband outages among the country’s largest ISPs and found that Virgin Media tops the table as the provider most commonly associated with service disruptions, accounting for 44% of searches (i.e. 27,100 searches every month related to Virgin Media outages). (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Scottish Government yesterday set out their work plan for the next five years, which among other things initiated a feasibility study to “identify and evaluate potential options” for deploying a new subsea fibre optic cable between mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands. The goal being to improve broadband and mobile redundancy, as well as performance. (more…)
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Network benchmarking giant Ookla, which collects data from consumers via their popular broadband and mobile Speedtest.net service, has today published one of the first independent studies of real-world 4G and 5G mobile (mobile broadband) coverage quality on the London Underground. The good news is that it works and exists exactly where TfL says it should. (more…)
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The staff of alternative UK retail broadband ISP Truespeed, which now forms part of the wider FreedomTruespeed Group (FTG), were informed last week that the rural internet provider’s former Chairman since 2014, Clarke Osborne, had sadly passed away after being unwell for some time. (more…)
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A new report from the Digital Connectivity Forum (DCF), an industry think-tank, has today been published that examines the apparently “growing workforce and skills challenges” of the telecoms sector and highlights how 200,000 UK engineers are expected to leave the workforce by 2030 – risking a future “skills cliff“. But quite a few of those may be leaving due to maturity of the full fibre broadband build. (more…)
Original article Total Telecom:Read More
In a market where full fibre broadband now passes 82% of UK premises and mobile connections outnumber people, acquiring genuinely new customers is hard. Most acquisition growth today comes from switching, not from bringing net new subscribers into the market. Every customer an operator wins is one another operator has lost. In such an environment, retention is no longer a secondary concern.
One of the less-discussed challenges in the UK is that a large share of consumers already believe they have fibre, even when they don’t. FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet), FTTP (fibre-to-the-premise), FTTH (fibre-to-the-home), full fiber, superfast: the terminology has been used interchangeably in marketing for years, and customers have absorbed the confusion. When genuine full fibre arrives in a street, it often doesn’t land with the impact operators expect. Take-up of full fibre where it’s available sits at just 42%, according to Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2025 report.
Part of the experience gap is in-home. A customer on a full fibre connection with inadequate Wi-Fi equipment will still have a poor experience, and operators who can’t distinguish network performance from in-home equipment issues can’t fix the right problem. Operators are therefore left with a multi-layered conundrum: how to educate consumers about what they actually have access to, while also ensuring those same consumers take the right actions to receive the full promise of the network.
At Opensignal, we measure network experience from the consumer’s perspective, capturing “lived,” what actually happens when you stream, video call, or work from home.
Even though I’ve spent 20 years analyzing telecoms data, when I’m on a Zoom call or trying to video call my mum, I am not thinking about what technology powers my connection. I care whether it allows me to do what I need to do, when I need it. Most people are the same. We compare notes and complain about the moments when connectivity lets us down: the dropped call, the frozen screen, the meeting where audio kept cutting out. That’s what customers remember, and that’s what they act on when it’s time to renew.
Opensignal’s Subscriber Analytics product tracks switching patterns at the sub-regional level, giving operators a view of where churn risk is building before it shows up in their quarterly numbers. It also shows where the opportunity is: markets where penetration of converged customers sits well below what the network footprint would suggest. Paired with visibility of competitor performance, operators can see not just where they’re losing customers, but to whom and on which metrics.
The data shows that retention risk is concentrated where altnet FTTP experience is genuinely strong and customers have a credible alternative. This is not a low-end market problem. We are seeing the premium end of the market switching to altnets and Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) too. Ofcom estimates 23% of UK households, around 5.3 million, struggle to afford their communications services. But even customers who can afford to pay a premium are shopping for the best combination of price and experience, and they move when they find it.
The case for bundling is clearer than operators tend to act on it. Consider Vodafone: nearly half its broadband customers already use Vodafone for mobile, yet the other half don’t, despite being reachable within the same commercial relationship. Opensignal’s Subscriber Analytics shows that customers who do bundle churn at a fraction of the rate of those who don’t, and the effect holds consistently across the major UK players. Bundled customers are harder to lose, and they give operators more to work with: more experience data, more touchpoints, more insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
So, what’s the path to closing that gap? It starts with treating the broadband–mobile relationship as an experience question before a pricing one. Operators who target cross-sell based on where the experience is strong, rather than on the basis of promotional timing, convert better and retain longer.
Sylwia Kechiche is VP Industry Analysis at Opensignal and will be speaking on the Customer Strategy panel at Connected Britain 2026, 10 September, 12:40, Keynote Theatre.
Speakers include:
The post Why the telecom industry acquisition problem is really about retention appeared first on Total Telecom.
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
A new online survey of 401 full-time UK business connectivity decision-makers, which was conducted by alternative UK broadband network provider LightSpeed Networks (company with a vested interest), claims to have found that 45% of respondents have experienced a fault where “responsibility between suppliers was disputed or unclear“. (more…)
Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
After a long delay it appears as if the Scottish Government may finally get around to awarding a new gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Orkney & Shetland by the end of 2026. The procurement, which forms part of the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme, aspires to expand full fibre (FTTP) networks to 13,550 premises in hard-to-reach parts of the remote Northern Isles. (more…)
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Business ISP and IT provider Gamma Communications has this morning confirmed that their board has proposed to accept a cash offer from private equity firm Epiris, which implies an enterprise value of approximately £1.079bn. The deal, if approved, will be managed through a newly incorporated entity called Bradbury Bidco Limited. (more…)
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After a turbulent year, broadband provider Wildanet, which is deploying a new 2Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon in England, has published their annual accounts to the end of 2025 and revealed revenue growth of 43% to £2.51m (2024: £1.75m). But they also wrote another £17.1m off the value of their assets. (more…)