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Edinburgh-based alternative UK broadband network GoFibre, which is building a gigabit full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of Scotland and Northern England, has today awarded £12,000 to four community projects under their GoFurther fund in the Scottish Borders area where their infrastructure is being built.

The GoFurther Fund currently offers grants of up to £3,000 (each) to help local charity projects and community organisations in the Scottish Borders and other areas. Applicants to the fund must present projects that meet one or more of four criteria: Environmental Benefit, Community Wellbeing, Education and Skills, or Internet Safety and Digital Inclusion.

The latest four funding awards saw £3,000 being allocated to Cornerstone Community Care (Galashiels), The General Store (Selkirk), Stable Life (near Selkirk) and Hawick High School Inclusion Hub (Hawick), supporting adults with learning disabilities, older residents facing everyday tech barriers and young people who need alternative routes to thrive.

Since launching in 2023, the GoFurther Fund has supported 17 charities and community organisations across its network areas, in addition to the latest Borders-based recipients.

Neil Conaghan, CEO at GoFibre said:

“Building full fibre broadband is an important part of our job, but it is not the whole story. How we show up for customers and invest back into the areas we serve matters just as much. These projects speak to that commitment as they each help people build confidence and skills and foster a sense of community through the region. The Borders is our home, and we’re genuinely looking forward to seeing the difference this funding makes for people across the region over the months ahead.”

To date, more than 6,500 homes and businesses are now able to connect to GoFibre’s network, with over 1,000 already connected across the Scottish Borders and East Lothian. The local network build is now complete in Innerleithen and Oxton, while work is taking place across Chirnside, Eyemouth and surrounding villages, Lauder, Denholm, Coldingham, St Abbs, and Jedburgh.

Further expansion is also underway in Kelso and Galashiels, where around 2,000 additional premises in each location are expected to benefit, contributing to the 20,000 total premises set to benefit across the wider region. The provider currently expects to deploy their new full fibre based broadband network to reach a total UK footprint of 250,000 premises by around mid-2028, and they were home to a total of around 15,000 customers as of June 2025.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

Major global sporting events have always attracted opportunistic fraud. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, played across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is no exception. Every major cybersecurity vendor, and the FBI itself, has published warnings about the surge in FIFA-branded scam domains ahead of the tournament. That coverage has focused almost entirely on fan-facing fraud such as fake ticket sites, counterfeit merchandise stores, and phishing emails targeting supporters. But what CUJO AI’s Security Research Laboratory has unearthed is a separate, targeted campaign employing fake FIFA job portals designed to harvest corporate credentials from would-be job applicants. 

The targeting mechanism no one is talking about 

The researchers identified 21 domains posing as FIFA recruitment pages. These sites presented as professional-looking careers portals, carrying official FIFA branding, stolen recruiter profiles with photographs and job titles, and an invitation to schedule a 30-minute phone call via Google Calendar (Figure 1). Examples included fifa-careerhub[.]com, fifa-careerportal[.]com, and fifajobs[.]com. 

Figure 1: A fake FIFA recruitment portal presenting official branding, a stolen recruiter identity, and a Google Calendar booking prompt. 

When attempting to sign in with a personal email address, the form returned the message “Please use your work or business email” (Figure 2). Personal email providers that triggered this response included: gmail.com, googlemail.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, icloud.com, live.com, hotmail.com, outlook.com, protonmail.com, and aol.com. This mechanism was clearly designed to coerce victims into exposing their corporate login credentials and is inline with the campaign’s objective to access corporate Google Workspace accounts. 

Figure 2: The email validation error returned when a personal email address is submitted. The JavaScript filter accepts only work or business email domains. 

What happens after the email check passes 

Applicants who passed the email check were then sent to a page impersonating a Google Calendar booking interface, where they were prompted to sign in with their Google Workspace account. This page hosted a malicious sign-in service that then sent the victim’s login credentials to a backend server hosted on “fifa2026back”. The backend domain was accessed via an obfuscated string that replaced each letter “a” with the characters “eq”, a technique commonly used to avoid detection by automated keyword-matching systems. 

Victims were likely directed to these pages via social media posts and phishing messages framed as outreach from FIFA recruiting contacts. Research published by Group-IB covering the broader 2026 FIFA fraud landscape documents similar referral mechanisms across multiple campaigns targeting the tournament. 

WHOIS records for the 21 identified domains revealed that most were registered via name.com between April and May 2026. All registrant countries in the dataset were the United States. 

By the time of CUJO AI’s analysis, most of the domains had been replaced by parking pages serving generic search links through a commercial domain monetisation service (Figure 3). This pattern is common to short-lived phishing campaigns where infrastructure is stood down after the active window closes, with registered domains held for future use or left to generate residual ad revenue. 

Figure 3: A parked page returned by one of the identified domains, indicating the active campaign phase had concluded. 

A broader pattern: the same kit, different brands 

The phishing kit deployed in this operation was not specific to FIFA. The same infrastructure and approach have been used in campaigns impersonating Heineken, Hilton, Coca-Cola, Netflix, PepsiCo, Delta, and Spotify, each using a different stolen recruiter identity sourced from LinkedIn. Arctic Wolf identified at least ten FIFA-specific phishing domains active as of late May 2026. 

The timing of domain registrations is shown in Figure 4, based on WHOIS creation dates across the identified domain set. The concentration in April and May 2026 aligns with a measurable increase in FIFA-related threat traffic observed across CUJO AI-protected networks during the same period. 

Figure 4: FIFA-related scam domain registrations per month, based on WHOIS creation dates. 

The operator’s position: visibility before the credential is submitted 

DNS lookups to these fake job portals, and the subsequent traffic to credential-harvesting backends, passed through network operator infrastructure regardless of whether the operator was aware of the campaign. Every subscriber who searched for a FIFA job and clicked on one of these domains generated a DNS query on the operator’s network before any interaction with the malicious site had taken place. 

This is precisely where the benefits of network-layer intelligence shine. Operators who can see DNS resolution patterns in real time, and who have access to aggregated threat signals across large network footprints, are afforded the opportunity to identify and block these domains before a single credential is entered. Operators without that visibility are dependent on endpoint security, which in a BYOD or remote-work context may not be deployed on the device the employee is using when they fall for the scam. 

Regulatory pressure is moving in the same direction with NIS2 and the UK’s Online Safety Act both pushing operators toward more active roles in the detection and blocking of harmful traffic on their networks. 

What this campaign reveals 

For operators, the takeaway of our research is that phishing campaigns are becoming more selective, more targeted, and more focused on corporate access than ever before. 

Every interaction with these domains began on the operator’s network. Long before credentials were entered, DNS requests, domain lookups, and traffic patterns provided signals that a campaign was active. Operators with visibility into those signals have an opportunity to disrupt attacks before they reached enterprise accounts. 

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be remembered for the matches played on the field. But for network operators and security teams, it may also be remembered as a case study in how modern phishing campaigns identify, qualify, and target victims long before credential thefts occur. 

The post FIFA scams shift focus from fans to employees, CUJO AI finds appeared first on Total Telecom.

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Hundreds of millions of people around the world maintain family, work, and community ties across borders. The United Nations estimated the number of international migrants at 304 million in 2024. This large, dynamic population relies heavily on cross-border communications. Consequently, international calling serves as an essential infrastructure for staying connected with families and households split across borders. 

Yet for decades, the pricing, reliability, and user experience of international calls from traditional operators lagged behind domestic mobile services.

Pricing was often difficult to interpret, rates varied widely by destination and plan, and call quality was inconsistent on certain routes. This gap created the conditions for a new category of providers to emerge — cross-border communication apps, including international calling apps for expats and diaspora communities.

The telecom operators’ diaspora market gap

In 2024, the World Bank estimated record remittances to low- and middle-income countries at $685 billion, larger than foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined. World Bank projections also put remittances to low- and middle-income countries at $690 billion in 2025, reinforcing the scale and persistence of the cross-border relationships behind the market.

Many traditional operators prioritized ARPU from domestic subscribers, while international calling was handled mainly as a source of margin. In practice, it was rarely developed as a service built around the needs of expat communities.

Apps built specifically for diaspora communities underserved by traditional communities took a different view. They competed on price transparency, destination breadth, and reliability to reach mobile numbers in countries where generic VoIP termination alone was not enough. The result was a better kind of international calling service, and it helped define the international calling app market around repeat cross-border communication needs.

What cross-border communication apps got right — three structural lessons

The rise of cross-border communication apps offers more than a competitive warning. It shows how specialist providers earned repeat usage by addressing practical problems that legacy international voice services had not fully resolved. Three decisions stand out.

1. Pricing transparency as a trust mechanism

Cross-border calling apps displayed per-minute rates, making the cost clear before a call was placed. That reduced friction in a category where users had often been exposed to unclear usage charges and bill shock. International calling rates transparency became a trust mechanism for diaspora users making repeat calls to the same destinations.

2. Ecosystem thinking beyond the call

The most durable platforms in this space combined international calling with complementary services, knowing that diaspora communities had multiple needs.

That same understanding helps explain why diaspora mobile top-up services and mobile recharge abroad became natural extensions of the calling relationship. One study published in the International Journal of Data Science and Analytics found that international airtime top-up transfers are heavily used by expats to support families in their home countries.

The call was only one part of the service. The stronger platforms added messaging, domestic calling plans, and mobile top-up around international calling. Mobile top-up lets users send credit or data to a family member’s prepaid SIM abroad.

3. Routing quality for emerging-market destinations

Dependably reaching a mobile subscriber in Guatemala, Nigeria, or the Philippines requires a different termination strategy than calling a landline in Western Europe.

This is because real-time voice is sensitive to delay, congestion, and the quality of the interconnection path. A 2025 IETF RFC document on congestion control notes that workloads such as Voice over IP can face performance issues from congestion, and that network evaluation should account for added latency or increased packet loss.

For cross-border communication apps, routing quality was not a back-end detail. It was part of the user experience. Platforms that invested in direct carrier relationships and redundant routing paths for high-demand corridors were better positioned to deliver reliable call quality than generic VoIP alone.

They treated termination as a corridor-specific problem rather than defaulting to the cheapest or most convenient available route.

With diaspora communication, quality is measured less by technical architecture than by whether a call connects, stays connected, and is clear enough for a conversation.

BOSS Revolution international calling as a case study

The BOSS Revolution international calling model is a useful case study in the cross-border communication app category. IDT launched the brand in 2008 as a low-cost, PIN-less international long-distance calling service. Since then, it has grown to 6M+ active subscribers and processes 36M+ mobile top-up transactions annually (across more than 280 carriers in 95 countries). It also has a 25K+ retail distribution network.

What largely fueled the BOSS Revolution calling app growth was a combination of app-based international calling access, strong features, and complementary services. It offers international diaspora communities services that support their wider needs. Users can make international calls, send mobile airtime to relatives abroad, and use related services such as money transfer from the same ecosystem.

BOSS Revolution illustrates the bundle logic and user-experience-first approach that made a defined product category rather than a legacy add-on.

The operator opportunity in migrant communication services

Traditional operators are not structurally excluded from the cross-border communication market. In many cases, they already have the assets that specialist apps had to build around. They have network relationships, billing infrastructure, distribution, customer trust, and experience operating regulated communications services.

The issue is not access to the market. It is whether operators treat migrant and diaspora communication as a product design challenge, not a pricing exercise. The tools to do that already exist, which makes this a practical telecom operators diaspora market opportunity rather than only a defensive response to specialist apps.

eSIM technology is lowering entry barriers for MVNOs by eliminating physical SIM distribution and enabling digital-first launches. This allows MVNOs to partner with major carriers to target specific diaspora communities without building a massive retail footprint from scratch. Consequently, an MVNO diaspora strategy provides carriers with a practical, precise route to serve niche markets. Finally, API-driven platforms seamlessly connect airtime, data, and payment flows across these international borders.

The strategic question is whether operators will use those tools to compete, partner, or continue leaving the segment to specialists. Cross-border communication apps have already shown that the demand exists. The operator opportunity is to treat migrant and diaspora communication as a designed proposition for a defined audience, not as prepaid international calling plans or a legacy international calling line managed at the edge of the core business.

The communities that international calling apps were built for were never hard to find. They were simply not treated as a priority.

The post What Telecom Operators Can Learn from the Growth of Cross-Border Communication Apps appeared first on Total Telecom.

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Mobile and broadband operator VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) has today announced that they’ve extended their existing partnership with CityFibre, which will see the fixed line operator’s full fibre network being used to feed capacity for network transmission services at “selected mobile sites” in support of the operator’s 5G Standalone rollout.

As one of the country’s largest alternative broadband networks, CityFibre’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure already covers over 4.7 million UK premises (4.5m Ready for Service) and they aspire to reach 8 million in the future. Many of these can also access their dedicated Ethernet (Leased Line) solutions, and they have a fairly large Dark Fibre network.

At present Vodafone already has a long-term partnership with CityFibre and sells consumers broadband packages over their network. But the operator is also keen to leverage some of the same infrastructure to help fuel their post-merger plan, which includes investing £11bn into upgrading the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next decade (here, here and here).

The combined business has previously stated that it aspires to reach more than 99.95% of the UK population with their latest 5G Standalone (5GSA / 5G+) network by 2034 and push fixed wireless access (mobile home broadband) to 82% of households by 2030.

The new agreement will see Vodafone continue their existing broadband partnership with CityFibre, while also naming the operator as a “preferred supplier” for network transmission to connect a number of its mobile sites across the UK underpinning its ambitious 5G+ build. The deal also extends to CityFibre’s future network expansion (up to 8m premises).

Breaking news.. more to follow..

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

At the end of last month CityFibre announced that they’d reached an agreement with the Government to significantly cut the roll-out scope of their Project Gigabit broadband contracts. At the time this was expressed as being because commercial builds by rivals would reach further than originally expected. But this overlooked the hidden gap of premises that have been left with no alternative plans.

Just to recap. CityFibre previously held ten Project Gigabit contracts – originally representing over £920m of government funding for a subsidised build to 557,000 premises in “hard-to-reach” rural areas (1.36 million if we included their supporting commercial build). But in May 2026 these were “re-scoped in response to the accelerated rollout of commercially funded full fibre” (here).

In practice, the agreement saw the operator abandon their £58.6m Project Gigabit contract for Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) and significantly reduce the roll-out for most of the nine other contracts that remained. CityFibre now expects to connect a total of 450,000 rural and harder-to-reach premises by 2030, including 226,000 subsidised through Project Gigabit (c.70k of that 226k has already been completed).

On the surface this sounded like gigabit broadband coverage would not be negatively impacted because those areas descoped by CityFibre would still be reached commercially, except we soon learnt that wasn’t the case.

Explaining the real change

The first thing to understand here is that Project Gigabit contracts do change a bit over time due to various different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region, which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected.

Suffice to say, there’s often a bit of a yo-yo movement as contracts progress (they may expand or even shrink over time), although in this case CityFibre has significantly reduced their plans. The catch is that commercial builds usually have a much more modest impact upon Project Gigabit contracts, which tend to be focused on rural areas where rivals often struggle to build FTTP at pace or scale.

On top of that, ISPreview soon began receiving quite a bit of feedback from those impacted by the change, which strongly indicated that some communities previously covered by these contracts were being left with no future plans for gigabit broadband coverage – either commercially or via subsidised builds. When challenged on this, CityFibre informed us that the “majority” of impacted premises originally due to be upgraded by CityFibre through Project Gigabit will now be connected commercially.

A spokesperson for CityFibre told ISPreview:

“The majority of premises due to be upgraded by CityFibre through Project Gigabit will now be connected commercially, meaning no public funding is required. Given the extent of commercial build in these areas, and the options for alternative delivery to the remaining premises, these changes will not affect BDUK’s ability to achieve the UK government’s target of 99% UK gigabit coverage by 2032. The plan for the premises that CityFibre are no longer building on is a question for BDUK.”

The question that’s harder to answer here is how do they define “majority“, since 51% can be just as much a “majority” as 99% – the gap left with no build by either Project Gigabit or commercial coverage could thus either be a few tens, hundreds or thousands of premises. We simply don’t know, so we asked the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, and they couldn’t give us a completely clear answer either (we assume the final third of premises being referenced below includes those still under contract and those being left in limbo).

A Government (BDUK/DSIT) spokesperson said:

“As commercial gigabit broadband rollout has accelerated across the UK, we’ve agreed changes to CityFibre’s Project Gigabit contracts to ensure we are getting the best deal for taxpayers.

Two thirds of premises that were due to be upgraded by CityFibre through Project Gigabit either already have access to a gigabit capable connection, or will now be connected commercially – meaning public funding is no longer required.

We are already engaging with other suppliers so that the remaining premises are upgraded at pace and communities get the connectivity they deserve. These changes will not affect our ability to hit our target of 99% UK gigabit coverage by 2032.”

In fairness, BDUK do regularly publish detailed datasets setting out which premises are in commercial rollout plans, and which are in Project Gigabit contracts. But we don’t have the resources to be able to process such complex data in order to accurately identify the gap left in limbo by CityFibre for each contract, which in any case is an answer that BDUK should already have and yet the government chose not to share it when asked.

However, the Arundel and South Downs MP, Andrew Griffith, recently asked a similar question about the specific situation in West Sussex. As we noted in our original article, CityFibre’s £100m Project Gigabit contract for East and West Sussex had originally aimed to reach c.52,000 hard-to-reach premises, but after the change they would now only tackle around 13,000 premises for £25.2m.

According to the government’s response to Mr Griffith, of the 6,490 premises in Arundel and South Downs that were included in the original scope of Project Gigabit to be delivered by CityFibre, some 5,890 have now been “de-scoped” from the contract. Out of those, 850 now have access to gigabit broadband, while just 890 are included in future commercial delivery plans, which is said to leave 4,150 premises without either a commercial or subsided build plan.

The above reflects just one area inside one of the contracts, but it’s not unreasonable to expect that the gap now likely to be left in limbo by CityFibre’s change across all contracts may be bigger than they’d like to admit. The good news, if you can call it that, is we have seen similar situations before where contracts have been abandoned or scaled-back, but where alternative solutions were later found.

The most common fix is for such premises to be swapped into one of Openreach’s larger Type C (Cross-Regional) contracts under Project Gigabit (no other suppliers tackle Type C), which is precisely what that framework exists to help tackle (examples here, here, here and here).

According to our sources, a good portion of the premises that have been left in gigabit broadband limbo by CityFibre’s retreat should hopefully soon end up being moved into a Type C contract, assuming there’s no significant interest from other suppliers.

However, the situation will inevitably cause additional delays to delivery, since any new supplier will naturally need to conduct its own work to figure out which premises they can and cannot tackle, as well to plan the necessary resources and to conduct engineering surveys. History suggests that this can add an extra year or so to the roll-out plan for an area vs the original plan.

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Network analyst firm Streetwave has published the partial results from a new study, which compared real-world mobile network (4G, 5G) coverage and mobile broadband performance across the Neath Port Talbot Council (NPTC) area in Wales, which sits just next to Swansea and is home to around 145,000 people.

Just to recap. Streetwave works by harnessing waste bin (refuse) collection lorries to map mobile network coverage and data speeds across 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 special software, 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 often then used by local authorities to help identify areas that may require additional intervention in order to improve local mobile coverage and or network capacity, while also giving locals access to some of this data via address-based coverage checkers and interactive maps (https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/) – this now includes the new data for Neath Port Talbot.

The survey of the Neath Port Talbot area collected data from all four of the primary mobile networks (EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK) and across over 800km of roads in the council between 5th to 26th March 2026. Overall Streetwave found that the average Basic Coverage scores for the operators across the council were 71.5%, which fell away to 54.5% for Good Coverage. “In some wards and parishes, the average ‘Good Coverage’ falls below 35%, highlighting the ongoing digital divide many rural communities in the council face,” said the brief update.

Sadly they haven’t included any operator specific results this time or data for download/upload speeds, but you can find location specific figures on the aforementioned map. Streetwave defines Basic Coverage as reflecting locations where the mobile network provides users with data speeds of above 1Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload, and below 100ms (milliseconds) of latency (i.e. supporting only the most basic of use cases or needs).

The company defines Good Coverage as being locations where the mobile networks provide at least 5Mbps download, 1.5Mbps upload, and less than 50ms latency – supporting a wider range of everyday tasks including video calls, remote working, and higher quality streaming. The results were as follows.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

News

India’s largest mobile operator is targeting a landmark public listing as it ramps up investments in AI, cloud and next-generation digital infrastructure.

Reliance Jio’s MD and Chairman Mukesh Ambani has announced that the company will file the initial public offering (IPO) papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) later today.

The IPO could raise around $3.8 billion, according to analyst estimates, making it India’s largest IPO to date.

“The proposed listing of Jio will demonstrate to the world that India can build technology companies of global scale, global capability, and global value,” said Ambani at the company’s Annual General Meeting.

Backed by the billionaire Ambani, Reliance Jio Infocomm burst onto India’s mobile scene in 2016, with its discount prices triggering a major price war. Since then, the company has soared to become the country’s largest mobile operator with over 500 million customers.

The listing is expected to be closely watched by investors seeking exposure to India’s fast-growing digital economy. Jio has expanded well beyond mobile connectivity in recent years, building out a portfolio that includes fibre broadband, enterprise services, cloud offerings, digital payments and connected devices.

AI was also a significant focus of the meeting, with Ambani calling for India to continue its efforts to embrace AI and develop its own platforms, saying that the country should be a creator of AI as well as a consumer.

Jio is investing heavily in AI, with Ambani saying earlier this year that the company would invest around $110 billion over seven years to build India’s AI backbone infrastructure.

The company’s JioBrain platform, which it uses for network planning, predictive maintenance, resource optimisation and customer service automation, notably won the AI Innovation award at the World Communication Awards 2025.

Also in the news
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VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy

The post Reliance Jio lining up India’s largest IPO appeared first on Total Telecom.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The relatively new broadband provider Olilo has today become the latest retail ISP to sign up to the Government’s Telecoms Consumer Charter (TCC), which was first introduced in February 2026 and follows the addition of Hyperoptic at the start of this week.

The Government has so far succeeded, via the TCC, in getting all the major and a few smaller UK broadband and phone providers to make a commitment to “stop unexpected bill increases“, make social tariffs easier to access and provide clear contract / package information etc. – including BT (EE, Plusnet), Virgin Media and O2, VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK), Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, KCOM, CommunityFibre, WightFibre and Hyperoptic.

The good news is that Olilo has now signed up to the charter too, although we can’t yet see a social tariff on their website. But it should be said that the TCC doesn’t have any real teeth, won’t do anything to stop mid-contract price hikes themselves and nor does it address the unfairness of how such price hikes are currently being applied (e.g. applying the same flat c.£2-£4 monthly increase to those who pay just c.£20 a month and those who pay c.£100 – disproportionately targeting those least able to afford it).

The TCC was instead a late reaction to last year’s controversial decision by mobile operator O2 (here), which suddenly increased the cost of their existing mid-contract price hikes policy and applied that to their existing customers too (i.e. those who had signed-up via the previous policy were forced to accept the new one and its higher prices). Of course, providers that aren’t yet signed up to the TCC could still behave in this way.

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A new independent research report has been published by BroadbandSwitch.uk, which provides a fairly detailed and useful overview of Britain’s move to switch-off the old analogue phone network on 31st January 2027, which was previously delayed from the original end of 2025 deadline in order to protect vulnerable consumers.

Just to recap. Openreach are withdrawing their old Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) products as part of this change, while BT are retiring their related Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). But at present around 1.9 million UK lines are yet to switch to a digital alternative and the focus of the remaining effort is largely on helping those who use vital home telecare systems (e.g. elderly, disabled – vulnerable users), which aren’t always compatible with newer IP-based phone services (telecare providers were slow to adapt).

The Last Dial Tone paper doesn’t say anything that we haven’t reported on before, but we do think it’s one of the better overarching summaries. The report’s modelling also estimates that a residual tail of between 150,000 and 400,000 lines will not be migrated in time, although Openreach are expecting something more in the high tens of thousands.

The good news, as recently reported (here), is that consumer lines won’t face a hard disconnection on the deadline and there will be an emergency solution for those who fail to migrate. Business lines, however, won’t benefit from the same protections and will need to get a move on.

Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith, Report Author, said:

My hypothesis, stated plainly so it can be marked against events: the headline date will hold, but completion will be achieved partly on paper. A residual tail of lines, our modelling suggests somewhere between 150,000 and 450,000, will not be migrated in time. Instead they will be caught by transitional products that BT and Openreach have quietly pre-built for exactly this purpose: an emergency-calls-only line called EVAc, and analogue-style stopgaps known as PDPL and SOTAP that run to around 2030. The platform retires on schedule. A minority keeps a dial tone through the side door. That is a soft landing, not a clean finish, and not a delay.

Why lean this way? Three reasons run through this report. First, the network is failing in plain sight: it consumes around 1% of British energy usage, suffered more than 2,600 major incidents in a single year, and runs on parts nobody manufactures any more. Second, the date is a commercial decision, not a law, and the government has said it will not legislate a pause. Third, and decisively, the escape hatch already exists. The argument that forced the 2023 pause, that vulnerable people would be cut off, has been structurally defused by products designed to make sure nobody is.

We put the probability of this soft landing at 72%, a formal further delay at 23%, and a genuinely clean completion at just 5%. Part Three shows the working, and page 26 publishes the exact criteria by which we will score ourselves after the event. Authority is cheap to claim and expensive to demonstrate. We have chosen the expensive route.

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The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has today released their June 2026 update on the delivery progress of contracts awarded under the £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme. The update reveals that some 271,460 contracted premises (up from 256,680 in May 2026) have so far been covered out of a planned total of 839,340 (32% complete).

Just to remind. The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s annual general statistics releases. This is because today’s report tracks the number of contracted premises to which a supplier has delivered a gigabit-capable connection under the main Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme, whereas the general statistics also include gigabit premises delivered via any public / BDUK subsidy (i.e. that includes other schemes too, like gigabit vouchers and contracts that pre-date Project Gigabit).

So far, most of the country’s gigabit-capable broadband coverage has been delivered by commercial deployments (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas), while Project Gigabit focuses on the final bits that they fail to reach (usually rural areas). The project has already committed most of its budget up to 2030, but there are still some contracts yet to be awarded and others that have been scaled-back or switched suppliers (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here).

Otherwise, it’s worth remembering that these contracts were all awarded at different times and are thus at very different stages of development (some started several years apart). A few of the listed contracts have already completed their delivery, such as Wessex Internet’s build for North Dorset and GoFibre’s roll-outs for County Durham and North Northumberland. Meanwhile, others, such as Openreach’s new contract for Cheshire (here), were only added in the April 2026 update.

Suffice to say, it’s important to understand the context behind each contract before judging delivery progress, since a face-value assessment will often overlook key realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects the usual modifications (i.e. the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial builds by rival operators going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).

The progress this time has been steady for many contracts, although BDUK did note that they’d removed 310 premises from Wessex Internet’s contract for North Dorset, which will be re-added at a later date. Take note that the ebb and flow of a build can vary a lot from month to month as different phases starts and finish. We also note that this list still doesn’t seem to include two of GoFibre’s contracts in Scotland, which is despite those now delivering coverage.

Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (June 2026)

For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for May 2026 (here)