The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents thousands of landowners (farmers and businesses) across England and Wales, has joined with over 50 MPs to “seek clarity” from the Government over the future of Project Gigabit broadband funding and what proportion of the spend will be going toward rural vs urban areas.

The group, which has written an open letter to the new technology secretary, Peter Kyle MP, appears to be responding to recent reports (here) that suggested the government could be preparing to shift some public funding, which is currently earmarked for the rural-focused £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out programme (c. £2bn of that budget is still unallocated), and using it to help upgrade parts of major towns and cities (e.g. central London).

Just to recap. The previous government, via the executive Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, was already well known to be exploring how the issue of urban slowspots and notspots could be tackled (here). For example, a trial solution was proposed earlier this year (here), which would extend the gigabit broadband voucher scheme to be used in certain urban, as well as rural, areas. The new government has simply continued this work.

The reason for this is that some urban patches, which are typically dotted about like small islands inside major cities and towns, have long become notorious for being left neglected by commercial operators. The problem can be caused by all sorts of challenges (e.g. high build costs, issues with securing wayleave / access and permits or road closures etc.). But competition law often prevents the use of state aid in such areas, which typically leaves vouchers as the only solution.

The answer to how the new government will ultimately approach this could well surface in next week’s budget announcement, but before that the CLA and many MPs are clearly keen to see their viewpoint respected. The new letter is thus calling on the government to be clear about whether the full allocation of £5bn will be retained for Project Gigabit and what proportion, if any, will end up going toward rural vs urban areas. The letter also seeks an assurance that rural areas, specifically those that are not commercially viable for gigabit broadband, will continue to be prioritised.

CLA Statement

The CLA has sprung into action to prevent any change in the aims of Project Gigabit.

The previous government launched Project Gigabit in 2021 with £5bn of funding. The broad aim of the project is to ensure that 85% of the country has full-fibre broadband coverage by 2025 and encourage broadband providers to deliver broadband where it would otherwise be commercially unviable. It’s logical, therefore, to expect the majority of its funding to be focused on rural areas where the need is highest.

There have been reports however that the body overseeing the programme, Building Digital UK, has been exploring plans to use funding to tackle internet ‘not spots’ in urban areas. This would include areas of cities such as London that do not currently have gigabit-capable broadband.

This would be against the original aims of the programme and not address the need to reduce the urban-rural digital divide. The government regulator Ofcom shows that only 49% of rural households can get gigabit-capable broadband. In comparison, 85% of urban households already have access to this.

The CLA’s response

In reaction to this, the CLA has devised a joint letter with the former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sir John Whittingdale. In the letter, we have called for clarity over the objectives for Project Gigabit. We have also asked for the UK Government to retain the full £5bn intended for the programme and to guarantee that future spend is focused on rural areas.

This letter has received significant interest from the Conservative opposition and garnered more than 50 signatories. This includes the Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, Shadow Business and Trade Secretary Kevin Hollinrake and the former Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden.

The CLA continues to advocate for greater connectivity for all rural communities and works extensively with government departments and the rural connectivity forum.

The previous government’s Project Gigabit programme aimed to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks from 85% coverage today to “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here), albeit with a focus on the final 10-20% of hardest-to-reach premises. The new Labour Government have, thus far, appeared to be broadly supportive of this and even pledged to make a “renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030”.

A government (DSIT) spokesperson said (7th Oct):

“We have been clear that addressing pockets of poor connectivity in all areas of the country is necessary to reach our goal of nationwide gigabit coverage by 2030 and grow the economy. Rural areas remain a priority for us, with over a million rural premises now covered by contracts under Project Gigabit – with many more rural properties set to benefit in future.

We are committed to exploring all avenues to achieve this ambition. No decisions have been made yet.”

In our view, the storm over all this may be significantly overblown (broadband vouchers for urban areas have been done before, albeit with a limited scope), but much will depend upon precisely what sort of changes the government end up making in next week’s budget and how much funding gets allocated to vouchers vs directly subsidised rural builds. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the CLA’s announcement.

Oxfordshire-based network operator and ISP Zzoomm, which have built a 2Gbps full fibre broadband network to cover 202,000 premises (RFS) in England, has today reported that another four of its newer towns have passed the 15% market penetration mark (Penistone, Sherburn-in-Elmet, Sandbach, High Green & Chapeltown).

The operator’s network, which is home to over 30,000 customers (15%+ take-up), is currently available across parts of around 29 market towns and small urban communities in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. Zzoomm originally planned to cover 1 million premises across 85 UK towns by the end of 2025, but the difficulties of raising fresh capital recently forced their build to stop (here and here), although growth via mergers and acquisitions is still being actively explored (here).

In the meantime, Zzoomm has switched to focus on growing their customer base, and the rate of network take-up naturally tends to accelerate once it’s no longer being suppressed by an active build phase. This is one of the reasons why we’ve been seeing a surge in their take-up over recent months.

For example, Zzoomm have already passed the 20% mark in several locations (e.g. Sandhurst and Crowthorne, Shiplake, Northallerton, Hereford, Stokesley & Great Ayton and Thirsk), which is a positive sign for network operators. The latest news is that they’ve also gone past the slightly lower 15% figure in Penistone, Sherburn-in-Elmet, Sandbach, High Green & Chapeltown.

This rapid growth in market penetration has been achieved on network builds that were completed only 5 months ago in Penistone and 9 months ago in Sherburn-In-Elmet, High Green & Chapeltown.

Matthew Hare, CEO of Zzoomm, said:

“Despite these four towns only having our network build finished a few months ago, we are seeing a very rapid take-up. This is a reflection of our premier service that meets our customers’ needs and our standout marketing and sales teams plus customer and field service operations.

One of the most recent customers from Penistone commented ‘With Zzoomm, you’ll experience the speed and reliability of full-fibre broadband at its best. Say goodbye to sluggish downloads and long wait times — this is a broadband service that keeps up with your lifestyle.”

Customers who take their residential service typically pay from £32.95 per month for an unlimited 200Mbps (symmetric speed) package on a 12-month term with an included router and installation, which goes up to £54.95 (normally £64.95) if you want their top 2Gbps tier or £29.95 (usually £39.95) for 1Gbps.

The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has today confirmed that they will be taking on the responsibility for day-to-day regulation of Premium Rate Services (PRS) – effectively transferring them from the Phone-Paid Services Authority (PSA) – on 1st February 2025.

Consumers can access a range of interactive services via their broadband-based landline and mobile phones, as well as via computers and digital TV. Where these services are charged for via the customer’s telephone bill, they are known as phone-paid services or premium rate services (e.g. charity donations by text, music streaming, broadcast competitions, directory enquiries, voting on TV talent shows and in-app purchases).

The PSA is currently the designated day-to-day regulator for the PRS market (this derives from Ofcom having exercised its statutory powers to give the PSA that role), while Ofcom itself only provides a legal “backstop” function through enforcement of the PRS Condition. But all that is due to change on 1st February 2025, when those powers are returned from the PSA to Ofcom.

The PSA is still said by Ofcom to have been an “effective regulator for the PRS market for many years” and has helped to significantly reduce complaints. But the market has also undergone some big changes, with legacy services – often provided via smaller companies – in decline and the rapid growth of PRS provided by global tech platforms (Apple, ITV, Sony and Google etc.) and a more compliant market. In short, bigger fish need to be managed by a bigger regulator.

Ofcom’s statement

This statement confirms that, following consultation in November 2023, we have decided to:

– withdraw our approval of Code 15 and replace it with the Regulation of Premium Rate Services Order 2024 (PRS Order);

– modify the PRS Condition to require compliance with the PRS Order; and

– modify our Enforcement Guidelines to set out our enforcement approach for the PRS Order and PRS Condition respectively.

To implement a smooth regulatory transfer of PRS regulation from the PSA to Ofcom and after carefully considering the responses to our November 2023 consultation, we have decided to retain in the PRS Order most of the key principles and outcomes relating to PRS regulation that were in Code 15, including:

– consumer protection standards and, specifically, requirements relating to transparency, fairness, customer care, vulnerable consumers and prevention of harm and offence;

– organisational standards and, specifically, requirements relating to registration, due diligence and risk assessment and systems; and

– other responsibilities and obligations, including funding, information requirements and records retention.

We explain in this statement how Ofcom intends to approach any enforcement action we take under this new PRS regime.

The original plan was to bring the PRS Order into force on 1st October 2024, but clearly this has taken longer than planned and so it will now be introduced early next year.

A historic legal case, which challenged the fairness of the Government’s Valuation Office Agency (VOA) and how it was choosing to tax fibre optic broadband cables between different UK network operators, has reared its head again after several criminal summonses were issued for members of the VOA, HMRC and others for alleged “perjury and fraud“.

Complaints against the business rates system are nothing new and in the past a number of smaller network providers (e.g. Vtesse / Interoute), specifically those that were building their own fibre optic broadband infrastructure, have claimed that the VOA’s “Fibre Tax” treats them unfairly (i.e. forcing them to pay more for their cable deployments than big fixed line providers like BT (Openreach) and Virgin Media).

A few years back, Vtesse Networks (original name before Interoute’s acquisition) challenged the VOA’s method of valuation primarily based on the length of its fibre network, which extended to just over 7,500km. The VOA had valued the fibre at £250/km, whereas Vtesse argued for £20/km (that ostensibly payable by BT), which would have reduced the rateable value (RV) from around £2m to a little over £234k.

Vtesse’s argued that the VOA’s basis of assessment was unlawful in the EU context, in that it breached competition law principles (these require equal treatment in tax terms for comparable businesses and networks). But the Tribunal ultimately found that a different valuation approach was justified, and the appeal was dismissed.

Just to be clear. The Tribunal’s decision made a key point that equality of treatment is a fundamental principle, not only of EU law, but also of UK domestic law insofar as it relates to non-domestic rating. But the principle of equality of treatment applies to comparable hereditaments (i.e. the comparison of like with like, not like with unlike). This principle exists in domestic law for rating purposes, yet the two hereditaments being referred to in this case, Vtesse and BT, were found to be “two wholly different hereditaments, not two comparable businesses”.

However, Aidan Paul, Vtesse’s original founder and chairman (until 2014), has long questioned the outcome of the case and maintained an active interest in investigating the issue. But anybody who thought this one was done and dusted might be in for a shock after Aidan’s latest LinkedIn post went live yesterday.

Aidan Paul said:

“Fibre Tax latest

5 criminal summonses have been issued to 3 members of the Valuation Office Agency, an HMRC Solicitor, and a retired member of the Renfrewshire Assessors by West Herts Magistrates for perjury and fraud for the submission of false evidence and withholding evidence in the 2020 Upper Tribunal hearing, of Vtesse v Gidman [2020] UKUT 13 (LC).

First Hearing December 6th at St Albans Magistrates Court – open to the public.”

Clearly this is a significant development and we have reached out to the VOA for a comment. But it would be quite understandable, given the nature of those summonses, if the agency chose not to issue any detailed public statements until after the case has concluded. At the time of writing we don’t have any further details on this but are investigating.

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.”