Some customers of UK ISP Sky Broadband, usually including those who have just had a new Full Fibre (FTTP) package installed and are using Sky’s latest Max Hub router, appear to be struggling to get their new IP-based phone (Sky Talk) service activated after installation – a situation that can sometimes persist for several weeks. But a fix is on the way.

First things first. Home phone services can sometimes go wrong due to all sorts of different reasons, and the move to digital services only adds an extra layer of complexity to that. But in this particular case we’re largely talking about new FTTP customers who have also taken the Sky Talk Internet service, which requires handsets to be connected into the back of Sky’s router.

“I’ve just had Sky Broadband FTTP installed last Friday 11th OCT. The installation went ok and the broadband is up and running with no issues. The problem I have is with the VoIP line, which connects direct in to the router. I have a dial tone, but when I dial out it just reverts back to dial tone after a couple of seconds. When I try dialling the landline number, I get a “number not recognised” message,” said Nathan, one of ISPreview’s readers.

The official Sky Talk Forum has quite a few similar complaints, but not all are related to this specific issue, and those that are seem to indicate that it is a known problem with service activation. Most phone services go live normally shortly after the broadband side has been connected, but some others can take days or weeks to reach that point, and related faults appear to have become more common over the last month.

Sky’s support agents have been generally advising those impacted by the problem to try a number of things, such as forced firmware updates and a 10-minute power cycle to get the router to pick up a new IP address. But while this seems to work for some, it doesn’t for others, and they then get put on a list of the unresolved. But the good news is that Sky are now starting to deploy a firmware fix for the bug.

A Sky spokesperson told ISPreview:

“A small number of Broadband customers experienced an issue with activating Sky Talk Internet calls. A fix is rolling out that will resolve the issue for the majority of customers without them needing to do anything.”

Sky adds that a very small proportion of impacted customers may also need to restart their routers, even after the firmware update, to resolve the issue. But at the time of writing, those that first reported the issue to us are still continuing to suffer from it.

News 

The funding will be used to help encourage take-up of the company’s fibre services 

UK altnet Community Fibre has raised £125 million from a consortium of lenders including JP Morgan, Alpha Bank, Barclays, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), and Sequoia, in its latest funding round. 

The funds, the company says, will primarily be used to help connect customers within their existing footprint, as well as expanding their network coverage.   

“Community Fibre has been and will continue to be highly focussed on delivering the best customer experience and the best value for money in the market. Our success here, growing from just 10k customers at the start of 2020 to over 310k in less than 5 years, has driven a strong lender appetite. We and our financial backers are aligned on driving acquisition growth and confident in overachieving our penetration targets,” said Graeme Oxby, Community Fibre’s CEO. 

“The lenders and our shareholders share the view that Community Fibre’s momentum will further strengthen its position as the best and largest full fibre only provider in London and is a vote of confidence in its strong management team and their ability to commercialise the large London network,” echoed Olaf Swantee, the company’s chairman. 

In total, Community Fibre has raised £1.1 billion since its inception in 2013, according to a Telegraph report. 

As of November last year, Community Fibre had passed 1.3 million homes across and around London.  

Its last large funding round, back in 2022, had secured a new finance facility worth £985 million, aimed at helping the company to expand its FTTP rollout to 2.2 million by the end of 2024.  

By late 2023, however, the company announced its intention to temporarily pause its network build, cutting jobs and shifting its focus to “deliver a stronger return to our investors by focusing even more on our already successful marketing and sales activities.”  

Indeed, this rollout deceleration was already prominent in the company’s 2023 financial results, which noted that residential premises passed totaled around 1.3 million.  

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

Also in the news:
Nokia and Lenovo forge partnership to drive AI and automation in data centers
UK govt announces £22m investment in ‘smart data’
“We’re on track to close the loop”: Adtran talks data, AI, and network automation at Connected Britain 

Internet service providers across the UK are gearing up for a busy Friday and surge in data traffic, which is once again expected to be fuelled by the release of another ‘Call of Duty’ video game on PC and consoles – Black Ops 6. But despite some frivolous claims that this could cause a “broadband blackout” (here), the event is nothing that ISPs haven’t had to handle before.

The concerns about the impact of Black Ops 6 on UK internet connectivity largely stems from older reports, which predicted that the download would weigh in at a colossal 300GB (GigaBytes). But this only applies to people making a full installation from scratch – this also includes CoD MW2, MW3, Warzone, all content packs and all language packs. Most players won’t be doing that and will often have already downloaded the older content.

The actual file sizes for just Black Ops 6 are much more in keeping with past CoD releases, which means they’re still huge, but nothing that internet providers haven’t had to handle before. In addition, many players will have already preloaded the game ahead of release on 25th October 2024 (pre-loading began at 5pm on 21st Oct in the UK).

Platform
Black Ops 6 File Size

PC
Campaign + Multiplayer – 102GB

Sony PS5
Campaign – 37.43GB
Multiplayer – ?

Sony PS4
Campaign – 17.4GB
Multiplayer – 12.1GB

Microsoft Xbox
Campaign + Multiplayer – 98.6GB

Broadband and mobile providers typically use sophisticated Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and systems to help manage the load from big online events and software release, which caches popular content closer in the network to end-users (i.e. improves performance without adding network strain). This in turn lowers the provider’s impact on external links and helps to keep costs down.

Put another way, we do expect a modest to high traffic surge on release day, particularly as there are often last-minute patches that get deployed as new games unlock (i.e. even those that pre-loaded may get hit by those). Some consumers with certain providers might still experience a reduction in their normal broadband speeds, but such falls are usually only small to modest and rarely cause too much of a problem (assuming the provider has done its due diligence with capacity planning).

Lest we forget that demand for data is constantly rising and broadband connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every ISP. Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2023 study noted that the average monthly data volume per household on fixed broadband connections increased over the past year to 535GB (up by 11%), which also helps to put the large size of Black Ops 6 – a single game release – into context.

So contrary to one newspaper claiming that “Call of Duty gamers pose serious threat to UK internet“, the reality on the day may be rather more mundane than that, thanks in no small part to the excellent work of each ISP and their network management teams.

The latest annual accounts from network operator and broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which has deployed a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 1.32 million UK premises (mostly in Greater London), reveals that their revenue grew by 109% to £41.7m at the end of 2023. But losses before tax surged to £134.6m (2022: £50.4m).

The provider, which is currently being backed by a finance facility of £985m, has had somewhat of a rough year due to the rising cost of build, strong market competition and high interest rates (a not uncommon challenge in the current market). This was reflected by their previous slowdown in network build and related redundancies during 2023 (here and here), which resulted in CF pivoting their strategy to focus on growing customer uptake.

The latest company accounts for CF (note: we found the text in this to sometimes be barely legible), which cover the year to the end of December 2023, similarly confirm that they expected to “reach a peak network size in excess of 1.3 million residential premises and 0.2 million business premises primarily within Greater London during the first half of 2024” (fibre coverage), which was largely achieved.

The results add that the “group’s core business challenge is [now] to connect customers quickly enough, with low enough customer acquisition and connect costs and tightly controlled network maintenance and other overheads to ensure sufficient economic returns on its assets.” The good news is that CommunityFibre’s revenues and gross profit have surged, but those gains are still being overshadowed by a larger surge in losses.

Summary of Community Fibre’s 2023 Results

➤ Total committed debt facility of £685m, with £605m drawn

➤ Revenue grew by 109% to £41.7m (2022: £20m), due to customer growth

➤ Gross profit increased by 86% to £35.8m (2022: £17m)

➤ Total employees grew to 930 (2022: 788), although this doesn’t yet take account of the November 2023 redundancies (these won’t show up until their 2024 accounts)

➤ Total losses before tax grew to £134.6m (2022: £50.4m)

➤ Residential premises passed grew to 1,288,000 (2022: 780,000)

➤ Customers connected 222,000 (2022: 111,000), although the most recent figure from August 2024 puts them at 300,000 (here) and we think it may now be c.310,000.

➤ Total non-curent assets of £604m (2022: £432.9m)

➤ Total current assets of £35.9m (2022: £45.6m)

Despite the challenges, it’s worth noting that CF may not have completely given up on network expansion, and consolidation could be one option. Back in September 2024 we noted a report on Sky News, which claimed that the operator had made an offer worth around £300m to acquire rival altnet G.Network in London, but were rebuffed (here). Equally, CF could be a target for larger consolidators, such as nexfibre, CityFibre or possibly even Netomnia (Brsk).

The other bit of positive news today is that, according to a separate report in the Telegraph (paywall), CF has just managed to raise a further £125m in funding (debt raise) – taking their total to c.£1.1bn. This has come from a string of banks including JP Morgan, Barclays, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Sequoia and Alpha Bank. But oddly, CF hasn’t yet put out an official press release about this.

Olaf Swantee, Chair of Community Fibre, said:

“The lenders and our shareholders share the view that Community Fibre’s momentum will further strengthen its position as the best and largest full fibre only provider in London and is a vote of confidence in its strong management team and their ability to commercialise the large London network.”

UPDATE 6:50am

Added a bit of extra detail about CF’s new £125m debt raise. The company also announced it has been EBITDA positive since April 2024.

Mobile provider giffgaff, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on O2’s platform in the United Kingdom, has today launched some early Black Friday discounts that boost the data (mobile broadband) allowances on some packages and cut the prices on several Smartphone bundles.

In terms of giffgaff’s promotions on their 18-month Pay Monthly SIM plans, the operator has boosted their £10 per month plan from 25GB to 60GB (GigaBytes), while the £15 plan goes from 40GB to 120GB and their £20 plan goes from 120GB to 200GB – these offers will be available to take until 4th December 2024.

Some other highlights include the iPhone 16 128GB with £50 off, as well as £500 off the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold or the Google Pixel 9 128GB for just £16.09 a month over 36 months.

The UK government has today unveiled details of their new Data Use and Access Bill (DUAB), which aims to deliver a £10bn economy boost by “unlocking the secure and effective use of data for the public interest“. The measures will also support personalised market comparisons for utility pricing and a new digital map of underground broadband cables and pipes on a “statutory footing“.

Improving the sharing of sensitive personal data tends to be one of those hit-and-miss areas for governments, which don’t necessarily have the best history of keeping our private information safe and secure. Nevertheless, the government is keen to create the right conditions to support the future of open banking and the growth of new smart data schemes, while also cutting down on bureaucracy (admin) for police officers and the NHS etc.

For example, police officers across the country may benefit from measures that will remove unnecessary manual logging requirements whenever accessing personal data to work on a case. Similarly, healthcare information – like a patient’s pre-existing conditions, appointments and tests – will become easily accessible in real-time across all NHS trusts, GP surgeries and ambulance services, no matter what IT system they are using.

Naturally our focus in all this is more on those aspects of the new DUA Bill that bleed into the UK telecoms (broadband, phone and mobile) sector, particularly where it has relevance to future network deployments and consumer services. Some of this is reflected in the aforementioned focus on “smart data schemes“, models which allow consumers and businesses to safely share information about them with regulated and authorised third parties.

For example, price comparison sites could use such schemes to generate personalised market comparisons (broadband and mobile packages) and financial advice to help cut costs. In theory, such legislation might similarly allow consumers to view all their bills in one place or introduce easier management across accounts, which could even be designed specifically for vulnerable consumers.

On the other hand, personalised pricing can be a bit of a minefield, which may end up resulting in some people paying more for the same service and thus growing a risk of “unfair” price discrimination. Ofcom’s research from a few years ago found that most people “felt personalised pricing was ‘unfair’, with a lack of transparency about how the price would be calculated and uncertainty about whether they had a good deal.”

Improved Underground Utility Maps

The bill will also move to put the Government’s new National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) – developed alongside Ordnance Survey (OS) and Atkins – on a statutory footing, which is a digital UK map of underground pipes and cables (broadband, water etc.) that is partly designed to help reduce accidental damage.

The NUAR is due to enter its public beta phase by spring 2025 (here), but once the new bill becomes law (likely after the beta phase) then it will also become a statutory requirement – mandating that owners of underground infrastructure, such as water companies or telecoms operators, register their assets on the NUAR.

“The use of the Register will mean that companies will know exactly where any underground asset is placed, reducing the risk of accidents on pipes and cables, making construction safer for workers and reducing the disruption – and hazards – caused by holes being dug up in the streets. This will generate approximately £400m a year, boost construction and tackle accidental damage currently costing the economy £2.4 billion a year,” said the government.

Davey Stobbart, Water Networks Regional Manager, Northumbrian Water, said:

“Our field crews have found the way information is presented in NUAR to be more useful than anything they have seen or used before. It has reduced the time taken for crews to understand what lies below the ground where they are about to dig.

In the field, we frequently find the precise point of excavation needs to be made not-quite where our office-based planners predicted and previously in this case the job would have been delayed whilst a new plan pack was prepared. Now with NUAR, our crews are simply able to pan and zoom to that point instantly, seeing everything they would have seen on all those individual plans without the back-office cottage industry and without these delays. In fact, they will be seeing more because we’re now able to easily access information from local authorities through NUAR too, such as street lighting, highways gulleys and tree preservation orders all in one place.

We have found NUAR to be a great additional tool in the toolbox to help us reduce the likelihood of high potential utility strikes.”

However, the UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has previously warned the government against putting the NUAR on a statutory footing before it’s truly “fit for purpose, proportionate and can fully deliver on expectations“, although it’s likely to take a couple of years for the new bill to be passed and to then become enforceable.

Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle MP, said:

“Data is the DNA of modern life and quietly drives every aspect of our society and economy without us even noticing – from our NHS treatments and social interactions to our business and banking transactions.

It has the enormous potential to make our lives better, boosting our National Health Service, cutting costs when we shop, and saving us valuable time.

With laws that help us to use data securely and effectively, this Bill will help us boost the UK’s economy, free up vital time for our front-line workers, and relieve people from unnecessary admin so that they can get on with their lives.”

Network benchmarking firm Opensignal, which uses crowdsourced data from its app to test broadband and mobile networks, has published a new report that shows how Vodafone’s mobile network performance compares across the UK and nine other European countries in which it operates. The Netherlands ends up being the Group Winner, with the UK placing 7th.

The study bases its comparison on their Consistent Quality (CQ) metric, which collects data on several key performance metrics (e.g. download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss and time to first byte). The results are then represented as a percentage of users’ tests that have met the minimum recommended performance thresholds to perform common tasks (e.g. video calling, uploading an image to social media, or using smart home applications without disruption etc.) – these are mostly linked to mobile broadband (4G, 5G etc.) capabilities.

Overall, Vodafone (Netherlands) came out as the Group Winner, with a score of 85.3%, six percentage points ahead of its closest sibling, Vodafone (Albania). However, unlike their Netherlands base, Vodafone (Albania) and Vodafone (Italy) are still outright winners for Consistent Quality in their home markets.

However, it’s important to remember that studies like this don’t tell the whole story, not least because each country and operator within a group can still be very different due to variable product selections, network reach and spectrum allocations, regulation and the differing dynamics of each local economy and company history or service coverage. Put another way, we’re not sure how practically useful this all is to end-users, but it is at least interesting.

Take note that Opensignal only included Vodafone (Italy) for the sake of completeness, though the group is in the process of selling it for €8bn to Swisscom. Similarly, the planned merger between Vodafone and Three UK in the UK has yet to take place, with the market awaiting the Competition and Market Authority’s final decision. The firm also excluded Vodafone Spain as Vodafone Group sold it to Zegona in May 2024.

CityFibre has begun the build phase of their £58m state-aid supported Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire (LOT 26) in England (here), which will see them expand their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 34,000 of the hardest-to-reach premises (150,000 if you include their complementary commercial build).

The government’s Project Gigabit programme, which is overseen by the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, aims to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks from 85% coverage today to “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial investment has already delivered more than 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the final 10-20% (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails.

CityFibre’s engineers have initially begun their construction work for Lot 26 in rural parts of East Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, with works in Hertfordshire set to follow sometime in 2025, although the operator hasn’t said precisely where the build is initially taking place within those counties.

The work will also support CityFibre’s aspiration toward covering up to 8 million UK premises with their new 2.2Gbps speed 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. So far, they’ve covered around 3.8m premises and have connected 400,000 customers (8th May 2024).

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:

“We’re thrilled to be bringing world class digital infrastructure to East Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, helping to ensure no one is left behind. With build now underway, we look forward to helping communities free themselves from the copper networks of the past and experience next generation full fibre services that are revolutionising how people work, relax and communicate.”

CityFibre is currently contracted to build its 10Gbps capable FTTP network to a total of almost 465,000 hard-to-reach homes through the Project Gigabit programme over the next few years. This represents a total of over £782m in government subsidies for the operator and is said to unlock almost £1.2bn in combined public and private investment in rural broadband (pushing the total build to 1.366 million extra premises).

CityFibre’s Project Gigabit Contracts

Lot no.
Location
Subsidised Premises
Public Subsidy

5
Cambridgeshire
45,000
£69m

2
Suffolk
80,000
£100m

7
Norfolk
62,000
£114m

27
Hampshire
76,000
£104m

26
Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire
34,000
£58m

11
Leicestershire & Warwickshire
38,000
£71m

16 & 1
West & East Sussex
52,000
£100m

29
Kent
50,000
£112m

12
Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes
25,000
£51m

Network builder Netomnia (inc. retail ISP YouFibre), which is currently merging with Brsk (here) and rolling out a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the UK, has today announced that they’ve secured an additional investment (loan) of £25m from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to help accelerate their deployment.

The investment bolsters a £75m debt commitment made in March 2023, which occurred before the recent transformation of UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) into the NWF – bringing the total NWF backing to £100 million. To date, this specific part of their funding has been credited with helping to facilitate the connection of more than 100,000 premises to their network, with around 10,000 customers live and growing.

The combined networks of Netomnia and Brsk currently reach over 1.82 million UK premises as ‘Ready for Service‘, which is home to a total customer base of 190,000 (30th Sept 2024). But the merged group also has a short-term target of growing this FTTP coverage to reach 3 million premises (coverage) by the end of 2025, as well as 1 million customers by 2028 – cementing their position as one of the largest national fibre networks.

Jeremy Chelot, CEO at Netomnia and Group, said:

“This additional £25 million investment from NWF is a powerful vote of confidence in Netomnia’s vision and execution. It will significantly accelerate our ability to deliver fast, reliable broadband to more homes and businesses across the UK, particularly in underserved communities. We’re not just building infrastructure; we’re laying the foundation for the UK’s digital future, and Netomnia is committed to ensuring no one is left behind.”

Stuart Nivison, NWF Head of Portfolio Management, said:

“This investment will directly support improvements in areas that would otherwise miss out on the opportunities fast, reliable broadband affords, and so we’re pleased to extend our support to Netomnia as an existing client of the National Wealth Fund.”

Take note that the UKIB officially became the NWF on 14th October 2024. The new NWF will expand UKIB’s remit beyond infrastructure in support of the Government’s new industrial strategy. With additional financial capacity and an enhanced risk budget, the NWF will be capitalised with £27.8bn to catalyse private investment in the market.

A new petition, which has already been signed by over 56,200 people across the UK, has called on Ofcom to tackle the issue of “loyalty penalties” by changing the rules so that existing broadband ISP customers can access the same offers as new ones and that any end-of-contract price increases be “limited to a maximum of 30% of their current contract price“.

The issue of “loyalty penalties”, which are not to be confused with the similar debate over annual mid-contract price hikes, is an old one. In short, new customers (i.e. those who hunt around for a better deal and switch ISPs) often benefit from big discounts that are designed to attract them, while existing customers who reach the end of their initial contract can be hit with huge price rises.

The practice is fairly common among the largest providers and, indeed, somewhat normal in any truly competitive market. In recent years, Ofcom has implemented various changes to tackle this, such as the introduction of more Social Tariffs and the new End-of-Contract Notifications (ECN) system. The ECN system requires all fixed broadband, mobile, home phone and pay TV providers to issue such notifications to existing subscribers at the end of their term, which is designed to keep customers informed about the best deals on their current provider and to boost switching.

On top of that, the regulator has also made it quicker and easier for consumers to switch providers via their new One Touch Switching (OTS) system, and they’ve fostered a new Fairness Framework (guidelines), although the latter doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact upon this particular issue. The new Change.org petition thus represents another attempt by consumers to resurrect the issue of loyalty penalties.

The argument is a valid one, although finding a solution remains challenging, and scrapping discounting entirely would of course hit savvy consumers who save money by switching more often or haggling (Retentions Tips). Not to mention that it may be difficult to police, given the variety of different ways in which consumer packages can be constructed, and could make it harder for some smaller providers and new altnets to compete against the incumbents.

On the other hand, there’s certainly something to be said for fostering a more simplistic approach to pricing, which would make comparisons between different providers and packages a lot easier and potentially fairer all-round. The current approach does of course rely on the fact that a good proportion of customers will, at the end of their first contract, choose to remain with their ISP – even though prices may rise. As above, this means that scrapping the approach could result in higher prices for new customers.

One other issue, which still hasn’t been fully addressed, is that not all providers are clear about how much you’ll pay post-contract from the product summaries on their front page. Sometimes, even after you’ve gone through the entire order system, the provider still won’t tell you what the normal post-contract price is – unless you dig into their small print. Ofcom and the ASA’s recent changes around mid-contract pricing (here and here) may indirectly help to change that, but the results are still a bit hit-and-miss.

At this point we should highlight that not all providers adopt the same model and many smaller providers, which may also offer a selection of advanced features (static IP etc.), simply charge a set monthly fee that rarely ever changes.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.